Best CRM for Marketing

The best CRM for marketing teams is HubSpot, thanks to its unparalleled marketing functionality, solid support and training features, and its competitively priced plans, including a free forever option.

Tech.co’s verdict is based on our in-depth, impartial testing, but the most important thing is choosing the right CRM solution for the needs of your business. Whether your team is in the office or working from home, you should plan carefully around what you’ll end up spending with CRM tools, as entry-tier pricing can escalate quickly with add-on features and can get quite expensive depending on the number of team members using the software.

We can take some of the pain out of planning for this with our handy CRM cost comparison tool which can give your bespoke quotes for your business. Otherwise, read on to learn what to expect when it comes to marketing CRM prices and features.

Marketing is a big part of any business and getting it right can be the difference between success and failure. CRM software can have a huge impact on your strategy, provided you use it properly.

In this guide:

• Top Marketing CRM Software
• Essential Features & Benefits of Marketing CRM
• How Much Does CRM Software Cost?
• Signs Your Marketing Team Needs CRM Software
• How CRM Software Can Help with Your Marketing Needs
• How to Find the Best CRM for your Marketing Team
• CRM Integrations for Marketing
• How We Rank CRM Software
• Verdict: Which CRM is best for marketing?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Top Marketing CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a digital business tool that aims to consolidate, automate, and organize a wide range of company functions to improve productivity, increase efficiency, and generally make your day-to-day operations a little bit easier. And if you’re looking for a provider that can help you with marketing, you’ve come to the right place.

Based on Tech.co’s industry research, we’ve rated the best CRM software for marketing below, with more in-depth reviews. Keep scrolling to get a better idea of what you’re looking for. We’ve analyzed feature catalogues, pricing guides, and customer reviews in the hope of providing you with the most comprehensive breakdown of how these CRM software providers operate.

1. HubSpot Marketing Hub – The best option for businesses looking to scale
2. Salesforce Marketing Cloud – A very expensive option that provides robust email and omnichannel features
3. Freshmarketer – A good option for email, but not great for scalability
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing – A bit too expensive for most, but great for managing teams closely
5. Sugar Market – A good budget option for covering multiple marketing channels
6. Keap – Suitable for email marketing, but lacking compared to competitors

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot takes the crown as the best marketing CRM available today, and honestly, it’s the obvious choice given our research. For one, it offers an incredibly robust set of marketing features, from email and content to social and paid, so you can truly handle all your marketing from a single hub. Combine all those features with the many reasonable price points, including a surprisingly impressive free plan, Hubspot easily provides the best value on this list.

Hubspot also offers some solid help and support options, so you won’t have to worry about newbie taking on the platform. It even provides product onboarding, so you can get all the important information directly from Hubspot itself.

We’ll be the first to admit that Hubspot does cost a bit more than the average. However, there are virtually no barriers to entry given the free plan, and the cheap plan is only $45 per month, offering plenty of functionality for your average business. Then, if you need to scale, it likely means you have the funds to invest, and Hubspot easily provides the best option for the price.

HubSpot Pricing

The Marketing Hub is available via three different price plans: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. The pricing varies substantially from plan to plan, with the Starter plan coming in at $45 per month, the Professional at $800 per month, and the Enterprise at a whopping $3,200 per month. Hubspot also has a great free plan to try out the platform before committing to it.

Unfortunately, most of the social and content marketing features aren’t available until the Professional plan, which means you’re going to pay a pretty penny. Still, if you don’t need them right now but might want them down the road, Hubspot aims to provide great scalability for growing businesses.

Learn more in our full guide to HubSpot pricing and plans.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Obviously, Salesforce is a mammoth competitor when it comes to CRM. Salesforce’s CRM market share is just under 20%, which is more than its next four competitors combined. Subsequently, its Marketing Cloud is popular, and we believe that the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement platform is actually the best marketing option for your business. It provides marketing automation, often the primary goal of software like this for any business.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement really shines in some areas. You’ll be able to take advantage of virtually every email marketing feature you can image, except for transactional emails, which aren’t available on any plan. You’ll also be able to access email, social, and paid marketing campaigns with great omnichannel features. Finally, its data visualizations are unparalleled, offering great metrics to improve your business.

Where Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement doesn’t shine is price. The cheapest plan (Growth) starts at $1,250 per month, which is staggeringly high for the average small business. Still, if you can handle the cost, Salesforce is the most popular CRM in the world for a reason.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pricing

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is expensive, there are no two ways about it. With the starting price set at a very high $1,250 per month, no free plan, and no trial, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is definitely an investment. But as we said, if you can afford it, it’s worth it.

The next plans are the Plus, Advanced, and Premium, although the Premium plan is only available in the US. The Plus plan costs $2,500 per month, the Advanced costs $4,000 per month, and the Premium costs a whopping $15,000 per month. Suffice it to say, Salesforce is aimed at much larger businesses with big budgets and plenty of clients, so don’t even think about it if you’re a smaller operation.

Learn more in our guide to Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and plans.

Freshmarketer

The marketing arm of the Freshworks CRM is called Freshmarketer, and it’s really only aimed at businesses in need of email marketing. With no other features for paid, social, or content marketing, the ability to scale is limited. Still, at this price and with these email marketing features, you could make an argument that it’s one of the better options for small budget operations.

For one, it offers a 21-day free trial for all plans. On top of that, you’ll be able to enjoy a free forever plan that could save you a bundle. On top of all that, Freshmarketer does offer a whole bunch of website tracking features, so you can see how your customers are engaging with your page to make adjustments.

Freshmarketer Pricing

Freshworks CRM offers three different pricing plans for its software: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. The Growth plan is $19 per user per month, available with no time limit. After that, the pricing option get a bit more expensive but add a lot of value, with the Pro plan running you $149 per user per month, and the Enterprise plan coming in at only $299 per user per month. Plans are based on how many users you want, though, so be sure to keep that in mind.

Freshworks also offers a free plan, with contacts, phone and chat support, all 24 hours, 5 days a week.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing

If you’re a bigger company looking for a marketing CRM that can handle your massive customer list, Microsoft Dynamics might be what you’re looking for. As you can imagine, this Microsoft-driven platform comes with everything from AI-driven insights to lead scoring and customer dashboards, and plenty of additional apps that you can add from the Windows store.

Simply put, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing works well in tandem with the rest of the Microsoft Dynamics platform, which includes everything from sales to customer service. Honestly, if you’re a smaller company, there’s no way you’re going to need everything Microsoft Dynamics offers. But for enterprise businesses, you really can’t go wrong particularly if you utilize other Microsoft platforms, such as Outlook.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing Pricing

Microsoft Dynamics only offers one marketing specific plan, which will cost $1,500 per user per month. While that is quite expensive and doesn’t allow for scalability with other marketing channels, the offerings otherwise are extremely robust and could be worth the investment, especially if you’re set up with Microsoft Dynamics 365 already.

Sugar Market

SugarCRM offers one marketing plan, dubbed Sugar Market. This automation-driven platform features built-in social and advertising tools, with SEM and SEO functionality to make sure you’re attracting the right people. Plus, with modern analytic and reporting tools, you can see what’s working and what’s not using a stylish interface that doesn’t confuse more than it informs.

This slightly less expensive option offers a wide range of marketing channels, like social, paid, and content, so you can really scale with it for a reasonable price. Still, it doesn’t offer the same level of functionality that Hubspot does while trying to do the same, so we’d still recommend our top choice. If you’re looking to save a little though, Sugar Market is a solid option.

Sugar Market Pricing

SugarCRM offers three pricing plans, but only one is aimed at the marketing plan, called Sugar Market. Sugar Market on its own costs $1,000 per month for 10,000 contacts and is billed annually. If you’re interested in the rest of the SugarCRM platform, you can pay $52 per month for the Professional plan, and $85 per month for the Enterprise plan.

Learn more in our full guide to SugarCRM pricing and plans.

Keap

Keap is a dual threat when it comes to CRM. With sales and marketing functionality paired together, it allows you to offer both services in tandem to improve communication. Still, it does have some limitations when it comes to scalability, as it offers few team infrastructure features, so it’s not easy to manage a larger team.

Keap also offers some great customer support options, so if your team is struggling with the new platform, you can get a bit of help. That combined with the lower prices makes Keap a good option for small businesses on a budget. There are probably better values out there though, so be sure to check out what you can make happen.

Keap Pricing

Keap pricing is well below that of some options on this list, although it can get more expensive if you need to scale, given pricing is based on number of contacts as well as users. Pricing starts at only$79 per month for the first plan but rises to $379 per month for the same plan if you want 25,000 contacts. Similarly, the most expensive plan is $199 per month but rises to $499 per month for 25,000 contacts.

Keep that in mind when considering Keap. The starting prices may look small, but they can really get up there when you grow.

Read our Keap pricing guide to learn about the provider’s plans in full.

Essential Features & Benefits of Marketing CRM

Now that you’ve got a better idea of what kind of providers are out there, you need to understand what you’re looking for. Fortunately, we’ve broken down some of the key features associated with marketing CRM, so you can make sure the one you pick is solid enough to take you to the next level. Essential features include:

• Landing pages
• Ad and SEO management
• Data Reporting & Analytics
• Workflows & Automation
• Customer conversation histories
• Lead form integration
• Customer filtering
• Automated email nurturing

So what are these features working towards? It can be easy to install a new software without taking stock of how it’s specifically improving your business. But with marketing CRM, it’s important to know that you’re building something to improve productivity, and increase efficiency from top to bottom. Key benefits include:

• A central hub for audience data
• The ability to test, learn, and iterate on campaigns
• A connection to your key marketing channels

This is just the tip of the iceberg, however – there are many reasons why businesses need CRM. With the right set of features and the ideal provider, you should be able to get some serious insight into how your business runs. Now the real question: how much is this all going to cost?

How Much Does CRM Software Cost?

Like most business resources, the cost of CRM software is based on a wide range of criteria. For one, the size of your company is paramount in deciding cost. Naturally, larger companies are going to need more features to get the job done, while smaller companies need fewer so larger companies are going to be paying more.

Additionally, the number of users you need on the platform will factor in heavily. In fact, many providers have pricing plans that are specifically increased and decreased depending on how many users will be on the platform, so you can figure out the price on the spot.

Finally, the types of features you’re looking for are a big decider on price. Prices can get pretty steep if you’re looking for plans with marketing features built in, as these features are a bit more robust and, fortunately, have a much better return on investment.

Check out our CRM Pricing Guide for more information

Signs Your Marketing Team Needs CRM Software

By now, you’ve taken in a lot of information about CRM software for marketing but how do you know that you actually need it? If you can afford it, CRM software is proven to have a positive affect on your bottom line, so that’s a good indicator right there. But if you think the return on investment just might not be worth it, here are a few signs that a marketing team is in need of some guidance:

• Inefficient marketing processes
• Lack of data
• Reports of bad customer service
• Customers get lost between departments
• Sub-optimal campaign results
• Lack of engagement from target market

Simply put, if your business is suffering in any of the important business facets listed above, the right CRM software could have a big impact on your business by automating, organizing, and generally improving your day-to-day operations.

How CRM Can Help with your Marketing Needs

There’s no point in installing CRM software if it can’t help your marketing team, which is why understanding the benefits of marketing CRM is so important. Here are a few reasons why CRM can assist in your marketing needs:

• Segmentation – the ability to segment marketing lists by location, demographic, or anything else has proven to be effective in reaching new and repeat customers
• Project management – tracking project progress will help you improve productivity, and keep employees accountable to measurable statistics
• Automation – by saving you time on small projects, CRM automation features are designed to truly improve productivity
• Personalized content – the majority of customers value personalization, and CRM software can help you tailor your customer experience to each and every individual

There’s no denying the value of CRM software when it comes to marketing, which is why finding the right one for your particular business is so important to the success of your company.

How to Find the Best CRM for your Marketing Team

With all these stellar providers and all this information about what they provide, it can be a bit intimidating trying to choose one. That’s why we’ve put together some specifics about what you need to consider to pick the right one.

Team size

The size of your company, and more specifically your marketing team, will very much indicate which CRM provider you should go with. Larger companies would be better suited to robust software like Salesforce or Hubspot, as it’s designed to do a lot for a wide range of companies and industries. Conversely, smaller companies would likely want to opt for software like monday.com or Freshworks CRM, as they’re easier to use for beginners and softer on the budget.

Budget

Speaking of budget, that’s another big decider in which software you should go with. Prices range dramatically from provider to provider and plan to plan, which means you could spend as little as $40 per month or as much as $4,000 per month. Even if you’re a big company, a small budget could seriously hamper your ability to afford the robust software you need, so make sure you get those numbers nailed down ahead of time.

Business needs

Particularly when you’re looking for marketing features, understanding exactly what your business needs and what these providers offer is vital. In fact, there are many popular CRM software providers with no marketing features at all, so be sure to do your research ahead of time. Luckily, all the CRM on this list are decked out with marketing features, so there’s nothing to worry about there.

CRM Integrations for Marketing

Perhaps one of the most convenient aspects of CRM software, particularly when it comes to marketing, is its ability to integrate with popular third party apps. This will help cut down on double work, and will keep your records organized and accurate. Some frequent third party integrations for marketing found within CRM software include:

• Mailchimp
• Autopilot
• GoSquared
• Marketo
• ActiveCampaign
• Customer.io

Additionally, CRM software often integrates with G-Suite, Outlook, Slack, and other communication tools, so that you can keep your whole team connected throughout the customer journey.

How We Rank CRM Software

Tech.co doesn’t just find CRM software providers and rank them willy-nilly; we take this stuff seriously. Our independent research dives into a wide range of metrics, giving you all the information you require to make the right decision about your CRM needs.

More specifically, Tech.co takes into consideration support options, key functionalities, depth of features, and price when evaluating CRM software providers. Additionally, we generate a specific customer score for each provider, which consists of online reviews, competitors scores, and more of our research.

We believe that thorough, independent research is the best way to provide the information you need when it comes to deciding on a CRM software for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions