15 Best Small Business CRM Software in 2024 (For Any Budget)
As a small business, you need CRM software that will provide you with streamlined, modern solutions but also wouldn’t overwhelm you with enterprise-grade features and pricing. Here, I’ve reviewed the top 14 CRM for small businesses and shortlisted the top 5 picks.
Monday.com
Pipedrive
Freshworks CRM
Nutshell CRM
Your small business is so much better off with small business CRM software.
You can’t afford complex, pricey tools that will drain your resources and complicate your workflow instead of improving it.
In choosing the best CRM for your business, you need to keep an eye out for user-friendliness, customization, and affordability, or risk making a costly decision that will negatively impact your operations.
The best CRM software for small businesses are simple enough to use without requiring a steep learning curve.
They’re also flexible and powerful enough to streamline all customer relationship management processes and offer advanced CRM features.
With this comprehensive and straightforward review of the best small business CRM software, you’ll be able to easily choose a solution that best matches your needs.
Best Small Business CRM Software in 2023
1. Monday.com CRM
Best CRM Software for Small Business With Flexible Templates & Friendly Interface
Monday.com CRM provides customizable workflow templates for different CRM processes, including lead management and tracking and a sales pipeline.
The templates and CRM tools are accessible on an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, making it easy for even inexperienced teams to set up and use the CRM system without any hassle.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Custom Automations
Automations are flexible so expect everything from automatic notifications to custom automations for most workflow actions. You can also customize automations by integrating with external software.
Intuitive Visualizations
With Monday.com’s drag-and-drop interface, you can easily visualize and handle your pipeline, organize customer or client details, centralize all your operations, and track all your KPIs and metrics.
User-specific Templates
Making things even easier for users, Monday.com provides workflow templates that match specific CRM use cases, so you don’t have to build one from scratch. You just need to choose a template and make a few tweaks where needed.
Robust Integrations
Monday.com’s CRM software integrates with multiple popular tools used for marketing, automation, communication, eCommerce, and business suites.
Pricing
- There’s a free plan for individual users, but this plan doesn’t offer CRM-specific features.
- Pricing ranges from $10 per seat per month to $20 monthly per seat.
You can try out a 14-day free trial to check out Monday.com CRM’s features.
2. Pipedrive
Best CRM Software for Small Business For Sales Pipeline
Pipedrive is a dedicated CRM system equipped with all the necessary features for managing sales processes and successful lead nurturing.
The software is also simple, user-friendly, and affordable, making it one of the best CRM for small businesses that need to boost their sales funnel.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Flexible Pipeline
As a pipeline-centric CRM, Pipedrive is equipped to manage every stage and aspect of the sales pipeline, but it also makes this process flexible, providing custom fields and convenient drag-and-drop functionality.
Powerful Automations
By setting triggers for your preferred automations, you can automate a considerable bulk of the lead nurturing process. This includes everything from sending personalized email campaigns to moving a lead to the next stage of the pipeline.
Email Tracking Features
Pipedrive can be used to track email campaigns. You get pre-built email templates, mass emailing, and features for tracking your emails.
CRM Analytics
There are customizable visual dashboards that can be tweaked to track the specific data you want to see. Metrics and reports are generated in real-time, and reports can be shared externally with non-users.
Pricing
- For enterprise-grade CRM features, pricing can go as high as $99 per month per user.
- At $24.90 per month, the Advanced plan is more robust for small businesses than the cheaper Essential plan.
All Pipedrive plans come with a 14-day free trial.
3. Freshworks CRM
Best CRM Software for Small Business For Personalized Engagement
Freshworks CRM, also known as Freshsales, is one of the best CRM software for automating sales and CRM processes.
Equipped with AI-assisted analytics and deal management, it’s one of the best CRM for small businesses when it comes to streamlining and improving your customer relationship management.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
AI Assistance
Freshsales AI tools automate integral aspects of the lead generation and nurturing process, including providing a chatbot to interact with website visitors. The AI tool analyzes your data and provides recommendations like the best deals to close, sales predictions, and revenue forecasts. It also helps with prioritizing contacts.
Personalized Engagement
Using the insights provided by the AI tool, you can generate personalized campaigns and experiences for leads. You also get automated notifications when a lead takes an action like opening an email or clicking a website.
Automated Pricing and Inventory Management
Freshworks CRM helps with automatically updating your product catalog with an interface that contains all relevant product data, including images. It also automatically calculates your pricing and helps to generate documents for billing and onboarding customers.
In-depth Sales Analytics
There are visual dashboards for monitoring everything from marketing campaign KPIs and revenue metrics to the website behavior of your leads. You can also use pre-built report templates.
Pricing
- There’s a free plan that small businesses can use, but it doesn’t offer many functionalities.
- Pricing ranges from $15 per user monthly to $69 per user monthly.
Freshworks CRM offers a 21-day free trial.
4. Nutshell CRM
Best CRM Software for B2B Sales and Marketing Teams
Nutshell CRM is an all-in-one CRM software that helps B2B teams to organize and automate their sales and reporting processes. This software provides tailored customization options for different industries.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Intuitive Sales Automation
Nutshell CRM automates your sales process and puts your time-wasting tasks on autopilot so your team can dedicate more time to building relationships and closing deals.
Insightful Reporting
With the Nutshell CRM reporting feature, you can easily customize reports to track different sales performance metrics. Your sales and marketing B2B teams can pinpoint areas for improvement and make changes accordingly.
Email Marketing Features
Tracking and automating your email sequences and campaigns is a breeze with Nutshell CRM. There are tons of pre-built email templates and native email marketing software integrations you can use to convert leads and close more deals.
Pipeline Management
Nutshell CRM provides multiple ways to view and manage your pipelines. You can easily track every lead, and better manage and prioritize leads with different views like list, map, chart, and board.
Pricing
- Pricing range from $16 per user per month to $79 per user per month.
- Pricing add-ons like Campaigns, VisitorIQ and Revenue Booster helps you enhance your marketing campaigns and lead management.
Try Nutshell CRM’s 14-day free trial.
5. Salesforce
Best Customizable CRM Software for Small Business
Ideally a CRM solution for large businesses and SMEs, Salesforce tailored its CRM services to meet the needs and infrastructure of small and new businesses.
The CRM software is customizable and equipped with AI tools to simplify the streamlining of CRM processes.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Robust Pipeline
Salesforce provides complete visibility into every stage of the pipeline and every detail of your prospects. There’s an AI tool that assists with capturing customer data and provides relevant insights to nurture customer relationships.
Personalization
Salesforce’s visual prowess lets you track every lead and customer touchpoint and use relevant data to provide personalized experiences for leads and customers.
Analytics and Reporting
You get visibility into real-time metrics and big-picture data. Analytics are presented in visual dashboards, and the reports are customizable.
Customizable Solution
There’s a drag-and-drop functionality for building a visual experience that matches your style and workflow. Workflows can be customized and streamlined with automations.
Pricing
- Salesforce’s small business CRM platform starts from $25 per month per user.
- Complete sales tools and customer service features are offered at $75 each in different packages.
You can get started with Salesforce using a 30-day free trial.
6. HubSpot
Best Free CRM Software for Small Business For Marketing
Hubspot is one of the most popular CRM software for small businesses and professionals.
Boasting a free CRM and marketing platform, it’s one of the most robust free platforms for streamlining sales and marketing.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Robust Free Software
With Hubspot free CRM, you get free standard marketing and CRM solutions. These include email marketing, lead generation web forms, lead tracking, email tracking, and landing pages.
Powerful Automations
Hubspot’s premium software provides automations for several business processes, including sales and marketing. Users can automate email sequences and streamline several actions in the pipeline.
Analytics and Reporting
There are dashboards to view and track marketing KPIs, while the CRM tool provides customizable reports for your sales and lifecycle metrics.
Vast Integrations
Hubspot CRM provides integrations for a vast number of apps for different processes, including design, productivity, automation, analytics, and several more.
Pricing
- The solutions: sales, marketing, customer service, and CMS, are priced in different packages, and you have to pay for several features separately.
- HubSpot Sales starts at $45 per month for at least two users and elevates to at least $1200 for an enterprise plan.
Get started with Hubspot’s free CRM.
7. Zoho CRM
Best CRM Software for Small Business With Omnichannel and Business Management
Zoho CRM offers more than just CRM and sales automation capabilities.
The platform can be used as a collaboration tool for sales teams and related departments to communicate and work together.
There’s also an omnichannel service and a design studio to customize your interface.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Robust Sales Automation and Management
Zoho CRM provides real-time updates about your leads and customers and helps identify hot prospects. You can automate several tasks such as following up with leads, contact scoring, and updating contact info.
AI Assistant and Predictive Analytics
There’s a conversational AI assistant that automates routine tasks and activities and can predict the likelihood of success for deals and prospects.
Lead Nurturing
There are segmentation and email marketing features for driving personalized campaigns to leads.
Omnichannel
Zoho’s omnichannel service provides features for you to manage significant touchpoints, including social media, telephone, email, and custom online portals. You can link these channels and create a streamlined experience for prospects.
Pros
- Zoho CRM is one of the best CRM for small businesses and remote teams that need to communicate within their workflow. Expect team collaboration tools like online meetings and presentations that make it great for remote teams.
- With visual reports and dashboards, it’s easy to stay on top of leads, sales, and team members’ activities.
- The software is customizable and user-friendly, offering an intuitive layout and custom modules. You can also create custom views and apply filters to view specific information.
Cons
- While the user interface is relatively user-friendly, customizing it can be a bit tricky. Also, there are so many features that some inexperienced users might feel overwhelmed.
Pricing
- While there’s a free plan for people just starting out, Zoho CRM has a specific offering for small businesses at $7 per user per month.
- Regular pricing starts at $12 per month.
You can get started with Zoho CRM using the 15-day free trial.
8. Keap
Best CRM Software for Small Business With Invoicing And Payment Tools
Keap is one of the best CRM software products that truly has native tools for every sales funnel stage, from lead generation and nurturing to payment and upselling.
Expect pipeline automation, email marketing features, and inbuilt payment tools.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Inbuilt Payment and Invoicing
You can create and send invoices to customers and clients. There are native integrations with payment apps like Stripe and Paypal to process payments right from the software. You can also create and promote one-click upsells and promos.
Sales and CRM Automations
Using no-code functionality, you can set conditions and triggers to automate several actions in the pipeline, such as lead capturing, promotional emails, and follow-ups.
Email Marketing
Keap provides email templates for kickstarting email campaigns. Campaigns can be optimized with A/B testing, segmentation, and automated email sequences.
Detailed CRM Analytics
With an analytics dashboard, you can track every variable of data with both a big-picture view and an in-depth micro view. There are analytics and reports for pipeline metrics, sales, revenue performance, and lead data.
Pros
- Keap has several inbuilt tools such as email marketing and payment features, saving users from having to use and integrate external software.
- The app can be used to automate almost your entire sales process, and you don’t have to be a tech guru to make use of the features.
Cons
- Some eCommerce features are pretty basic and not as functional as needed.
- The form builder, which is essential to lead capturing, is also limited in functionality.
Pricing
- Keap’s pricing ranges depending on the number of contacts managed, with the lowest plan allowing 500 contacts at $79 per month.
- There’s a 20% discount if you pay annually.
Keap offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
9. Streak CRM
Free Small Business CRM Software For Workflow Management And Gmail Integration
Streak CRM is a flexible workflow management app that also provides CRM solutions.
The app can be used as a free chrome extension, but users will have to upgrade for more robust features.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
G Suite Integration
Streak can be merged with G Suite as an extension to manage and track your sales pipeline and contacts. Using Streak’s features, you can apply email tracking for Gmail and streamline Google Sheets for managing your contacts.
Workflow Management
Apart from pipelines, there are pre-built workflows for customer support, HR, and project management tools. Using Streak’s extension, you can collaborate with teams on Gmail and track tasks and contacts.
Customizable Workflows
You can customize the workflows to accommodate your sales process. There are filters and color codes to sort and organize data.
Pros
- Streak is an easy and free way to enable email tracking for your Gmail.
Cons
- While Streak is a great way for a new small business to get started with managing pipelines as quickly as possible, it’s not great as a robust standalone CRM software.
- The platform’s free package is only ideal for individual users, not small businesses.
Pricing
- The most ideal plan for small and growing businesses starts at $59 per user monthly.
- There’s a 20% annual discount.
Streak CRM offers a 14-day free trial on the Pro plan, which is the most functional plan for small businesses.
10. Salesmate
Best CRM Software for Small Businesses with Robust Lead Nurturing
Salesmate is one of the best CRM software for email marketing and lead nurturing.
Apart from email marketing and tracking tools, Salesmate also lets you use phone calls, texts, and online messengers for managing customer relationships.
Expect basic CRM solutions such as pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Email Marketing
With Salesmate, you can create personalized email campaigns and track performance metrics such as deliverability, open rates, and conversions. There are pre-built email templates to choose from, and you can also turn on email notifications for lead interactions.
CRM and Sales Automations
Users can automate email sequences, follow-ups, and reminders. This functionality also works for manual tasks such as team notifications, updating records, and assigning tasks to team members.
Visual Pipeline
Salesmate lets you build and customize pipelines using drag-and-drop functionality. You can create to-do lists and sync them with your calendar. You can plan and stay up-to-date with your activity timeline using board views.
Pros
- Salesmate is packed with essential features, but at the same time, it’s intuitive and straightforward, making it a great option for a small business.
- The automations are a great feature set, available for sales, CRM, task management, and email marketing.
Cons
- Some customization features are limited in functionality.
Pricing
- Salesmate pricing starts from $15 per user per month when billed monthly.
- There’s a 20% discount for annual subscriptions.
You can get started with Salesmate on a 15-day free trial.
11. Capsule CRM
Best CRM Software for Small Business For Visual Pipeline Automation
Capsule CRM provides different views for managing your sales processes and related tasks.
The software is flexible as it provides different customization options.
Users can create and add custom fields, milestones, and lists.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Visual Pipeline
Using drag-and-drop functionality on Kanban board views, you can customize each pipeline stage. There’s also a visual dashboard for tracking sales metrics, milestones, and forecasts.
Task Management and Automation
Using the calendar feature, you can create and track task timelines as well as set recurring tasks. You can also set tasks to be automated in a sequence.
Reporting and Analytics
The analytics tool lets you track sales activities and the performance of each sales team member. There are filters for checking reports based on user activity and sales timeline. Reports can be exported to Excel.
Integrations and Open API
Capsule integrates with multiple popular tools for different processes such as time tracking, marketing, accounting, email marketing, and many more. The API is accessible, so you can integrate the software with custom applications.
Pros
- Contact management is a fully-equipped feature on Capsule CRM. Apart from providing complete visibility into contact details, you can use a search button to search for relevant text and details.
- The software offers a free CRM package that accepts up to 2 users and lets you manage up to 250 contacts.
Cons
- The UI can seem unappealing. It can also be a bit tricky to maneuver when using advanced features.
- Third-party Integrations for marketing tools are limited.
Pricing
- Pricing starts at $18 per user per month.
- The Professional plan contains basic features for new and small businesses, while Teams is ideal for businesses looking to scale.
Capsule CRM offers a 30-day free trial for new users.
12. Less Annoying CRM
Easy-to-use CRM For Small Businesses
Less Annoying CRM prides itself on being one of the most user-friendly CRM providers.
The platform packs essential features on a simple interface so expect contact and pipeline management.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Pipeline and Lead Management
You can store and view every related information for a contact on one interface. There’s a simple pipeline view that lets you view the status and priority of each lead.
Task Management
Using an inbuilt calendar, you can schedule and track tasks and also share tasks with team members.
Customization
Less Annoying CRM lets you create custom fields for storing and tracking contacts as well as for managing pipelines.
Pros
- Less Annoying CRM’s primary selling point is its simplicity. It’s relatively easy to manage and organize contacts using the software.
- The customizable features are a great fit for small businesses.
Cons
- Less Annoying CRM is limited when it comes to integrations. For instance, there are no integrations with several essential marketing software.
Pricing
- Pricing is $15 per month per user.
- To add more than ten users, you would have to speak to sales.
Less Annoying CRM offers a 30-day free trial to new users.
13. Insightly
Best CRM Software for Small Business For Email Marketing And Project Management
Insightly is a full-on solution that provides project management features and robust workflow automations.
It’s one of the best CRM software for small businesses that want to streamline marketing and sales.
Users can streamline deals and their sales process using project timelines and automated workflows.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Robust Email Marketing
Email is a powerful feature on Insightly as you can generate mass email campaigns, track email metrics in real-time, conduct A/B testing, and apply segmentation. Using a drag-and-drop email builder, you can customize pre-built email templates for your email campaigns.
Workflow Automation
Manual workflow tasks such as sending email alerts, assigning tasks, and updating records can be automated.
Project Management
Sales processes can be mapped and streamlined in customizable views. Users can track milestones and timeline activity. By integrating with external software, you can use Insightly as a centralized CRM platform for visualizing and managing every aspect of your sales process.
Reporting and Analytics
There’s an analytics tool for visualizing sales and marketing data. You can create and customize visual dashboards and reports.
Pros
- The project management features are a nice advantage. You can map out workflows, track tasks, and involve every team member that needs to be part of a project.
- Contact storing is robust and effective. You can add tags to contacts and create custom fields to record specific contact details. There’s a convenient option to upload your existing contact list, so you don’t have to input each one manually.
- There’s a free plan that allows up to 2 users.
Cons
- The interface is generally unappealing and navigating the software gets a bit clumsy.
Pricing
- Insightly’s pricing comes in different packages. There are different pricing plans for marketing, customer relationship management, and customer service solutions.
- CRM pricing starts at $29 per user per month, while marketing starts at $299 per month.
There’s a free trial in the CRM plans for those who need small business CRM solutions.
14. Agile CRM
All-in-one Software With Free CRM And Multichannel Marketing
Agile CRM is one of the most robust and all-purpose CRM around, with features for email marketing, phone calls, and text messaging.
It also boasts social media management features and a complete lead generation platform.
There’s a robust free CRM solution and a project management tool for visualizing and managing sales workflows with a drag-and-drop tool.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Robust CRM
While there’s contact scoring for managing customers and leads, Agile CRM provides gamification tools to boost customer retention. You can also track deals, create proposals, and handle customer interactions through an inbox.
Lead Generation
Agile CRM provides web forms, website builders, and landing page builders for lead generation. A lead capturing tool allows you to search for and collect leads from social media and email servers into your database.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is robust. You can choose from pre-built email templates, build email campaigns with a drag-and-drop builder, and track email analytics. You can also personalize contacts on your email lists, optimize emails with A/B testing and create automated responses.
Customer Service and HR
There’s a helpdesk ticketing tool and call center software for customer service teams. Users can build chatbots to interact with visitors on websites. Agile CRM can also assist recruitment processes with an interview assessment tool and applicant tracking system.
Pros
- The robust features, multiple integrations, and open API means Agile CRM can be used as an all-purpose tool for sales, CRM, and marketing.
- There are collaboration features that allow you to chat with team members and hold video conferences.
- Agile CRM’s free solution provides contact management, unlimited sales pipelines, email marketing, tracking tools, and a helpdesk and landing page builder. The free plan only allows up to 10 users.
Cons
- Multiple users have complained that several features such as email delivery, reporting, and marketing campaigns start malfunctioning after a while.
- Customer support might not provide solutions to problems encountered when using the CRM software.
Pricing
- The lowest tier starts from $8.99.
- Pricing is flexible, as Agile CRM lets you pay as you add more features.
You can get started with Agile CRM’s free tier and add pay for more features as you need.
15. Close
Best Multi-channel CRM Software for Small Business
Close is a simple multi-purpose CRM ideal for remote startups and growing small businesses.
You can connect with leads through emails, video, texts, and VoIP channels.
Best Features of this Small Business CRM Software
Email Marketing
Expect mass emailing, email sequence automations, and personalization tools. Close provides email templates and email metrics for tracking open and conversion rates. You can easily integrate with existing email apps and sync the email history of your leads when importing them into the platform.
Custom Task Manager
You can create custom fields to track and manage various aspects of your pipeline, including customer data and tasks.
Intuitive Reporting
The reports are visual, and you can easily keep track of big-picture data and specific details. Exporting is flexible as you can sync export data with multiple spreadsheet and reporting tools.
Robust Integrations
Close integrates with Gmail, Zapier, Slack, Zoom, and multiple applications used for several software processes, including marketing, workflow automation, and communication.
Pros
- Close is relatively easy to use and set up. It boasts a user-friendly interface that doesn’t overwhelm new users with too many features.
- The VoIP features are great and quite beneficial for sales teams.
Cons
- Close is fully equipped for CRM and email marketing but not as much for other features. It’s not ideal as a marketing automation software or customer service tool.
Pricing
- Pricing is billed monthly, but there’s a discount for annual subscriptions.
- The Starter plan has enough features for small businesses, but it only allows up to 3 users.
There’s no free plan, but Close offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
CRM Software FAQs
Offering standard marketing and CRM solutions for free, Hubspot is one of the best CRM software for startups.
Monday.com CRM is the best CRM software for software companies that need automated workflows and ready-made CRM templates for their CRM and sales process.
Salesforce is the best CRM software for growing businesses.
It offers a tailor-made small business CRM system and robust flexibility for businesses that intend to scale.
Hubspot is one of the best free CRM software for small businesses.
Not many CRM providers offer free contact management, deal management, lead generation tools, and free email marketing services.
Hubspot is great for small and growing businesses trying to boost their sales funnel and get more conversions.
It has all the features you might ever need for marketing and sales.
The automations are pretty robust, making it perfect for streamlining customer relationship management.
It should be mentioned that Hubspot is built for businesses that place a lot of focus on retaining and managing existing customer relationships, making it ideal for B2Bs than B2Cs.
Also, while it’s paraded as a great free CRM software for new businesses that are just getting started, Hubspot can get pretty expensive as you scale. The pricing comes with powerful features, as it’s one of the top enterprise CRM software.
Which Small Business CRM Software Should I Choose?
As a small business, you should always go for a CRM solution that matches your resources and is flexible enough to accommodate and improve your existing workflow.
The best small business CRMs for CRM automation include:
Monday.com CRM
Pipedrive
Freshworks CRM
Nutshell CRM
Salesforce
For more options and in-depth reviews on the best CRM software for small businesses, check our articles on:
- Best Free CRM Software for Small Business
- Best Cheap CRM Software
- Best Simple CRM Software
- Best Marketing CRM Software
- Best Sales CRM Software