Best CRM For Small Business

Freshworks CRM

Best value CRM with a great free tier

Freshworks CRM is a CRM solution within a larger portfolio of business services called Freshworks, but it can be bought separately like any other software on this list. Features include ticket management, which converts emails, phone calls, and chat requests into tickets to streamline the process, and collaborations, which allow users to share tickets.

Automation is a huge benefit offered by Freshworks CRM. Users can set up scenarios that can be triggered when needed to help them skip over tedious tasks while investing their energy where it's really needed.

Although the interface itself is well-constructed, some users have mentioned a steeper learning curve that needs to be navigated before a new user can expect to fully understand all the features available to them. In addition, the frequent notifications alerts can be bothersome. Overall, however, the features include everything a business needs to better manage its myriad customer relationships.

Monday CRM

Best for a modern interface and easy automations

Small businesses aren't always looking for a lot of bells and whistles when it comes to CRM software. If you're a lean team looking for some core functionality, Monday could be the best option for you, particularly if you've got a lot of newbies that need to learn how to use it.

Monday is an incredibly easy to use CRM platform with a stylishly modern interface that makes it easy for beginners to learn in a flash. With a wide range of views, like boards, calendars, and charts, you'll be able to allow your team to work how they want to work without a lot of training.

Plus, Monday offers a wide range of integrations, including Mailchimp, Slack, Google Workspace, and many others. The feature catalog is a bit lackluster, we'll admit, but if you're looking for something that can get the job done without confusing your team, Monday is it.

Salesforce CRM

Best overall CRM platform for sales teams

The Salesforce software option remains one of the most popular. How popular? Well, not only does it serve thousands of large businesses worldwide, but its cofounder just bought Time magazine on a whim. Salesforce CRM offers almost an overwhelming amount of features and strong analytics, wrapped up in a simple interface.

Like many CRM offerings, Salesforce consists of a suite of services, all available at a range of different prices. Called “clouds,” these cover core CRM needs, as well as more tangential ones.

One of the benefits of Salesforce is all the add-ons. These do cost extra but can add a lot to your offering. Salesforce Anywhere, for example, is the company's answer to remote work, offering real-time chat and document sharing functionality for team collaboration. Salesforce has also rebranded its analytics platform as Tableau, and it offers a true 360-degree report of how customers engage with your business.

HubSpot CRM

Best CRM for stellar marketing features

Unlike many of its rivals, HubSpot has an ace up its sleeve – its CRM is available for free. Can it do everything you need at zero cost? Not quite – users will need to upgrade to a paid plan in order to access the best features. Fortunately, the premium plans are pretty compelling value for a small business.

However, HubSpot's free CRM is nothing to sneeze at: the free tier offers better functionality than any other major free CRM software on the market. The service splits its features into three “hubs” – Sales Hub, Service Hub, and Marketing Hub – all of which come with free tiers and can be accessed through a main dashboard interface.

Additionally, HubSpot is one of the best CRM for marketing you can buy, according to our in-depth research.

Zendesk CRM

Best for service and support teams

Launched in 2007 with customer support ticket software as its main offering, Zendesk has continued adding applications, and now offers a full suite of apps – combined under its open-API Zendesk Sunshine platform – which covers most of the CRM basics that typical businesses need. Any missing features can be covered via third-party integrations, including other CRM services like Salesforce, or the bug tracking software Jira.

Pipedrive

Best for flexible pricing

Popular CRM software like Hubspot and Salesforce can get pretty expensive given all the features you get with them. However, if you're looking for something a bit more simple with a price tag to match, Pipedrive provides the flexible pricing you need to get what you need and nothing more. Plus, it offers 14-day free trial so you can try before you buy.

In addition to its affordable pricing options, Pipedrive is decidedly easy to use. You won't get stuck with complicated feature sets or complex analytics. Simply put, you'll be able to enjoy core CRM functionality without all the to-do.

To be frank, Pipedrive isn't great for enterprise-level businesses, and email marketing features are decidedly more costly than most competitors. Still, if you don't need those features and are more focused on saving money, you can't go wrong with Pipedrive.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Best for enterprise operations

Microsoft's greatest strength is the way all of its software products function together, and its CRM features are no different. The CRM is a great choice for businesses already powered by Microsoft, as Outlook and Office 365 integrate smoothly with Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics functions as more than a CRM, with a suite of applications designed to cover another acronym for a business software niche: enterprise resource planning (ERP). Some ERP applications in the Microsoft Dynamics suite are aimed at more specific industries, such as retail or finance, while others help businesses with tasks like finding and onboarding the best talent. Our review covers the CRM modules, which include Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Project Service.

Microsoft Dynamics features

Features included in these modules cover a sales dashboard that displays up-to-date sales data; an intelligent onboarding feature that uses predictive AI to deliver pop-ups facts when needed; timelines for each lead that allow users to quickly see their history of interactions; a three-step workflow that helps users quickly close cases; project planning features with a team collaboration focus; and automated scheduling and dispatch features for businesses with field agents.

Support options are good: Microsoft offers a free online support center specifically for CRM, and 24/7 live chat and phone support options are available to paying customers. For $115/user/month, businesses can buy just the CRM tools, and starting at $210/user/month, they can buy the CRM and ERP tools as a package.

Microsoft Dynamics is a great choice for large enterprises, but admittedly comes with an interface some have found clunky and counter-intuitive. If you operate a smaller business, the power and depth of integration might not be worth the hassle of the learning curve.

Zoho CRM

Best for international or multi-language companies

This vendor's CRM service has been going strong for over two decades, and it's one of the larger brands available next to Salesforce. Zoho's wide range in pricing means that they can serve small businesses in need of a limited CRM for a cost-effective price, as well as 1,000+ employee companies that need all the enterprise data-crunching options available.

Several stand-out features, including strong email marketing features, smooth Google G-Suite integrations, and support for 20 languages, make Zoho a good fit for a large enterprise. And of course, Zoho offers a great free plan that can get you started without costing you a dime.

SugarCRM

Best for simple pricing 

Founded in 2004, SugarCRM offers a cloud-based CRM software service that handles all the big aspects of business, including sales, customer service, marketing, and IT. It comes with a comprehensive range of the most useful CRM services a modern business could need, including management features for accounts, leads, contacts, tasks, products, quotes, tickets and opportunities. SugarCRM also provides multi-level approval process flows, advanced reporting, custom email features, a workflow visual designer, and a mobile app. The service supports 36 languages, making it a flexible option for international operations.

SugarCRM offers 24/7 phone and email support, but only for users paying for its highest priced plan. Most users will have to make do with phone and email support for 12 hours during each work day, or support that is solely online, depending on which plan they use.

How to Choose a CRM for a Small Business

Picking out the best CRM software can be a little overwhelming: There are so many features, and often a lot of overlap between the abilities of each CRM. Price might be a factor, but you also don't want to lowball a software service that will majorly impact your daily communication with your clients. It's tough to know which CRM is genuinely the best deal.

Here are a few tips for finding a CRM for your small business:

• Know what features you need – Certain CRM services are primarily designed for specific elements of customer relationships. For example, Zendesk is a great customer support desk, while amoCRM provides a great sales pipeline.
• Learning curves matter – A CRM is only effective if your entire team knows how to use it. If the learning curve is too tough, your business's efficiency could take a hit for months, or even years. Don't underestimate how long it can take employees to pick up new tricks.
• Mobile access matters – Similarly, mobile apps are becoming more important: Both clients and agents will likely move faster if they can access the CRM via mobile. Consider using your free trial of a new CRM service to test how it performs on a smartphone or tablet.
• Consider the future – If your company might grow, you'll likely need a higher priced CRM service plan: Make sure you don't pick a CRM vendor with an attractive low-tier plan, but a less cost-effective higher tier. Once you pick a CRM, it's tough to change to a new one.
• Analytics features help you grow – If your business is small, you might not have much data to crunch. And if you're staying small, you won't need to. But if you're a startup with growth on your mind, the more granular your CRM's data analytics features are, the better informed you'll be about your strengths and weaknesses. It's a virtuous cycle: The larger you grow, the better your data becomes.

Once you know what features you need, what service tier is best, and what learning curve your team will enjoy, there's just one step left: Getting quotes. To figure out what CRM services will offer your business the best deal, take just a minute to fill out Tech.Co's quote form below.

Be Clear About How CRM Can Help Your Business

The most important thing to do before you even start researching different CRM brands is to establish your business priorities, and what you need the software to do.

If you need software that will provide you with qualitative insights about how your sales teams interact with their clients at every stage of the sales process, the most important functionality you need to consider is how the system tracks lead activity.

However, if you are looking for ways to automate some of your more manual tasks when it comes to nurturing prospects, you may want to look at software options that allow you to send scheduled email marketing campaigns.

It’s easy to get preoccupied by all the clever features on the market, but several reports reveal that the biggest challenge for many businesses already using CRM software is irrelevant functionality. Choose a system that fits in with your organization’s primary goals – don’t pay for any add-ons unless there is a clear business case for how they will positively impact performance.

Know if You'll Need Mobile CRM Software

If your sales representatives spend a lot of time out of the office, it’s important that they are able to access your CRM system while on the go.

Whether they need to see the sales history of a customer just before a meeting, or they’ve just closed a deal and need to update the system so that your marketing team can push the button on a new digital campaign, having mobile access means that your teams can still get things done – no matter where they are traveling from and to – and you have real-time updates on how your sales force are getting on.

Pick Simple CRM Software With Good Training Tools

CRM software has been designed to help optimize your sales process, not over-complicate it.
If you introduce a system with lots of sophisticated tools that is difficult to navigate, it's likely that your sales team either won’t use it at all (making it an unnecessary and costly investment), or they will end up spending most of their time inputting data and trying to work out how to use the platform instead of actually nurturing relationships (which defeats the whole purpose of CRM).

When looking at different CRM providers, it’s important to consider how good the user experience is – be sure to ask for a comprehensive demo and a free trial for some of your sales team to test out the different options.

This will not only make your employees feel part of the transition process, but it will also give you valuable insights into how user-friendly each option is before you make a final decision.

Choose CRM With Excellent Reporting and Analytics

The more you understand about your customers, the more success you will have when selling to them.

Reporting is the most valuable feature of any CRM system because it helps you draw meaningful insights from the hundreds, or even thousands of complex datasets collected and inputted by your sales team.

CRMs with a comprehensive analytics function allow you to generate a variety of custom reports in real-time, which will help your sales managers make better and more informed decisions that are driven by data. Some of the most valuable benefits of reporting include:

• Identifying your most loyal customers, their buying patterns, and knowing exactly when to reward them with special deals or discounts
• Understanding the reasons behind big wins and losses, and being able to spot new opportunities
• Improving the accuracy of your sales forecasts so you have a better overview of your cashflow

You will want to choose a system that visualizes the data in a way that is easy for your sales team to digest, so make sure you compare the different reporting formats, and how the dashboards are presented.

There is no doubt that CRM systems have the ability to transform your sales process and help your organization become truly customer-led, but it’s important to find a solution that suits your needs and fits in with your long term objectives.

Pick CRM Software that Can Scale as You Grow

Your startup might only be 10 people strong now, but what do the projections for your workforce and customers look like over the next three to five years? A team of 50 managing 200 accounts? As your business grows, it’s important that your CRM software is able to scale with you.

Earlier we mentioned some of the challenges business owners face when convincing their organization to adopt a new process or technology.

Now imagine that your workforce has doubled quicker than you had originally anticipated, and you’ve hit the maximum user capacity on the CRM system you rolled out just six months ago – how difficult will the communication strategy be with more people?

Most importantly, how long will it take to train your teams up to learn an entirely new system when they have just got to grips with the previous software? What impact will this have on the business?

Opting for a system that is scalable is likely to cost a little more, but could mean fewer disruptions further down the line. Keep your long-term ambitions in mind when looking at the different options.