Simplest CRM Systems: Which Easy-to-Use Platform Is Best?

The best simple CRM is Freshsales Suite, thanks to its easy setup process and thorough customizability options. In our research, it was the easiest to use platform, thanks to its supremely intuitive interface that even beginners can get the hang of quickly.

There are a lot of top CRM platforms that are easy to use in 2025, though, and if Freshsales Suite doesn’t fit your needs, we can help you find an alternative. Zoho CRM, for example, was also found to offer a substantially simple interface for beginners, and it offers a bit more overall functionality than other options on this list.

In this guide, you’ll learn about some of the easiest to use CRM platforms on the market, including what they can do and how much they cost, so you can make the right decision for your business.

In this guide:

• Best Simple CRM Systems Reviewed
• Best Free CRMs That Are Easy to Use
• Choosing a Simple CRM Software Solution
• How Did We Research the Simplest CRM Systems?
• Verdict: What is the Best Simple CRM?

Reviewing 5 Simple CRM Systems

A simple CRM system may seem basic, but just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s not powerful. These tools can supercharge your productivity, analytical power, and connectivity for boosted sales, marketing, and customer service. Ultimately, an easy CRM system could transform your business’s growth.

Tech.co has independently researched and tested all the market-leading CRM software so you can trust that these really are the simplest CRM systems to use. Don’t believe us? You can always start with a free trial to see for yourself, risk-free. Below are the best simple CRM systems for easy setup and ongoing use from day one.

The best simple CRM Systems are:

1. Freshsales Suite – Simplest CRM to use
2. Zoho CRM – Best CRM for simple onboarding
3. Pipedrive – Best for easy setup process
4. monday CRM – Best for simple analytics
5. HubSpot CRM – Best for growing businesses

1. Freshsales Suite – Best for Ease of Use

• Starting price: $9 per user, per month
• Free plan: Yes

Freshsales Suite was built to be a CRM for small businesses, and it’s at the top spot for all the ease of use that comes with that goal. With it, you’ll get speedy uploads and a clean interface, plus a fast setup and great marketing tools to keep your business growing.

It all adds up: Our researchers gave Freshsales a high 4.7/5 usability score on our last round of testing due to its simple interface and useful customization options, matching or beating every other CRM we tested.

Why is Freshsales Suite easy to use?

Freshales Suite will guide you through the entire setup process, which includes importing data, making email connections, and adding users. Freshsales’s clear signposting means the process is incredibly easy.

There are also a number of time-saving aspects to Freshsales’ offering, including a vast library of ready-made dashboards that you can use if you don’t want to build your own. Integrating with email apps such as Gmail during the setup process is also straightforward. In our testing, we found the ability to import contacts across a variety of sources, including other CRM platforms such as Salesforce, to be extremely beneficial for email marketing and communication. These perks make Freshsales a great option for users wanting to get set up with a platform quickly.

The ease of use does come with some limitations, though. Our tests found that some specific functionality for particular businesses, like gyms, is a bit restricted. However, if you’re just looking to manage simple CRM processes like consumer tracking or lead generation, the platform will be straightforward to navigate.

Who should use Freshsales Suite

• Newbies to CRM software – Freshsales Suite was found to be the easiest to use CRM in our research, which means that those unfamiliar with the technology will be able to figure it out quickly.
• Businesses that need sales and marketing – Many CRM platforms offer specific functionality for sales, marketing, or customer service, but Freshsales Suite combines sales and marketing into one easy to use platform.
• Small to medium-sized businesses – Freshsales Suite is the small business-focused platform, allowing a maximum of 500 marketing contacts, so larger businesses should probably look for a more enterprise-facing solution.

When I used the Freshsales interface, I was impressed by how easy it was to track contacts through the customizable dashboard. Source: Tech.co testing

Freshsales Suite pricing

Freshsales offer three different pricing plans to choose from, each allowing for up to 500 marketing contacts for your business. The prices listed below are available for those willing to sign up for an annual contract, but the prices increase if you opt for monthly bills instead.

• Growth – $9 per user, per month
• Pro – $39 per user, per month
• Enterprise – $59 per user, per month

On top of that, Freshsales Suite does offer a free forever plan for up to three users. Other limitations include only 100 marketing contracts, limited customization, and less segmentation options.

2. Zoho CRM – Best for easy CRM onboarding

• Starting price: $14 per user, per month
• Free plan: Yes

Zoho CRM manages to offer plans at cheaper price points than its closest competitors, while at the same time providing a more user-friendly and feature-rich experience. Plus, it’ll integrate with Zoho’s suite of other useful business products, which is great news if you already use them. For instance, if you’re interested in unlocking the benefits of CRM and VoIP, Zoho users can integrate with Zoho Phonebridge.

Why is Zoho CRM easy to use?

Zoho CRM was pretty close to taking the top spot for the easiest CRM to use, and our research actually found that it’s the best option for small businesses, given its low price and large feature catalog. Plus, it has a great free plan, which is always a boon for any small business on a budget.

After testing out Zoho CRM we were impressed with its great usability and clearly signposted features. However, it wasn’t quite as easy to navigate as Freshsales due to longer upload times and fewer onboarding details. It comes with a larger feature catalog than you’ll find with Freshsales, too, which will be ideal for businesses with complex CRM needs, but could overwhelm smaller businesses.

Zoho CRM provides an onboarding tour, which gives you a great indication of where you currently are in the process. We found that the ‘CRM checklist’ gave us a great introduction in our tests, and thought it would be particularly beneficial for people who have never used the software before. However, it isn’t as detailed or extensive as Freshsales Suite, and it took slightly longer to upload data (although it was much quicker than providers such as HubSpot).

There are some other nice touches, too, such as social media workflows, within which you can automatically add a lead to a database based on their interaction with your social media account.

Zoho CRM gave me an intro into setting up their sales pipeline. Image: Tech.co’s testing process.

Who should use Zoho CRM

• Sales-focused businesses – Zoho CRM is a primarily sales-focused CRM, so if that is your industry, this platform is an absolute no-brainer.
• Businesses that need customizability – Zoho CRM was found to be one of the most customizable platforms in our research, while still being very easy to use.
• Businesses on a budget – In addition to its free plan, Zoho CRM offers a wide range of affordable plans that aren’t too expensive for any sized business to handle.

Zoho CRM pricing

Zoho CRM offers four different paid plans that are available to users. The prices listed below are for users willing to sign up for an annual contract, which can save you up to 32% off. If you want to be billed monthly, you’ll have to pay a bit more.

• Standard – $14 per user, per month
• Professional – $23 per user, per month
• Enterprise – $40 per user, per month
• Ultimate – $52 per user, per month

Zoho CRM also has a free forever plan for up to three users, but it lacks certain functionality found in the paid plans, including sales forecasting, calendar booking, and social media integration.

Check out our Zoho CRM pricing guide for more information

3. Pipedrive – Best for Simple Setup Process

• Starting price: $14 per user, per month
• Free plan: No

Pipedrive is certainly the ‘Premium’ offering on this list, providing a primarily sales-focused CRM that teams can use to hunt down and close leads with ease. And with a simple and clean design, alongside plenty of features, you could do a lot worse, even for the high cost.

It might be a bit pricier than some other providers, but it definitely has the functionality to back up the cost, including top-notch security.

Why is Pipedrive easy to use?

On the whole, Pipedrive offers the functionality you’ll need to do this successfully, and aside from Freshsales and Zoho CRM, was the provider we found the easiest to use. Specifically, the setup was incredibly easy, providing a simple form-based process that took care of all the nitty gritty details for you.

Pipedrive excels when it comes to security features – it has the best range of options to secure the data you keep inside the system out of the providers we tested. We found it particularly useful that Pipedrive can send you email notifications if users do anything suspicious, such as deleting any data or failing to log in after three attempts. This makes Pipedrive a serious option for anyone who puts data security at the top of their priorities – and with data breaches now so common, why wouldn’t you?

However, Pipedrive plans are a lot more expensive on the whole than Zoho CRM and Freshsales, and you’ll need to pay for some additional features, such as the lead-booster add-on ($32.50 per month on top of your Pipedrive subscription).

That being said, being both easy to use and highly functional is not a given by any means in this space — and Pipedrive can do both. You can always take a look at some Pipedrive CRM alternatives, though, if it doesn’t seem like the right fit for your business.

The Pipedrive marketplace offered us a range of third-party integrations for ease of use. Source: Tech.co testing

Who should use Pipedrive

• Businesses with a flexible budget – With no free plan and expensive paid plans, Pipedrive is a definitely a premium solution that could cost you a lot, especially if you need the add-ons.
• Businesses that need security – Pipedrive offers the best security features we tested, offering a full-on security center to manage all aspects of your business’ privacy concerns.
• Businesses that need integrations – Pipedrive offers a huge library of third-party integrations, allowing you to customize the platform for your particular needs.

Pipedrive pricing

Pipedrive offers four different pricing plans to choose from. Like the other options on this list, you can save money by opting for an annual plan, in this case, up to 42% off. If you want to pay monthly, you’ll have to pay a bit extra.

• Lite – $14 per user, per month
• Growth – $39 per user, per month
• Premium – $39 per user, per month
• Ultimate – $99 per user, per month

Pipedrive does not offer a free forever plan, but there is a 14-day free trial that allows you to test out the various paid plans without a big financial commitment.

Check out our Pipedrive pricing guide for more information

4. monday CRM – Best for Customization

• Starting price: $12 per user, per month
• Free plan: No

Once just a productivity app, now a full-fledged sales CRM, monday CRM still provides an easy-to-use experience and offers more functionality across the board. It may not have all the bells and whistles associated with some other CRM products like Freshsales, but we found that it has its advantages over them too, including the low price.

In general, monday CRM does fair in our research, with above-average usability, thanks in part to robust customization potential. That customizability bleeds into the analytics as well, allowing you to create different dashboards for different metrics, so it’s easy to see exactly what you want and when.

Check out our monday CRM review for more information

Why is monday CRM easy to use?

From an ease-of-use standpoint, monday CRM is an excellent choice for beginners. We found the interface to be decidedly intuitive, utilizing white space to create a decluttered experience for users during our testing. That, combined with the simple, color-coded organization of labels and other markets, made monday CRM simple to use for our team in the testing and analysis process.

Beyond the general experience, monday CRM was also easy to set up, providing speedy data imports that allow you to get all the information input with ease. In our testing, it took just over 8 minutes to import all of our data accurately into the software. We were also able to create useful automations in just a few steps, providing a flexible system that allowed our team to save some serious time.

If you’re having trouble, customer support was helpful and responsive with monday CRM. We were able to easily get in contact with a representative via the live chat function, who provided video walkthroughs to solve the issues we were having.

The monday CRM interface let us create own charts with plenty of customizable features. Source: Tech.co testing

Who should use monday CRM

• Businesses on a budget – monday CRM has no free plan, but its paid plans are all affordable and shouldn’t cost too much, even for advanced features.
• Data-focused businesses – monday CRM makes it easy to create reports that are easy to understand, making it perfect for businesses in need of robust analytics.
• Businesses that need customizability – monday CRM was the most customizable platform on the list with dozens of custom fields and objects throughout the system.

monday CRM pricing

monday CRM provides three pricing plans, as well as an Enterprise plan that provides custom pricing for larger businesses. Beyond that, though, monday CRM is quite affordable, and you can save 18% by signing up for an annual contract instead of a monthly option. 

• Basic – $12 per user, per month
• Standard – $17 per user, per month
• Pro – $28 per user, per month

While monday does offer a free plan for its work management platform, monday CRM does not offer a free plan for users. However, there is a 14-day free trial to test it out before you buy.

Check out our monday CRM pricing guide to learn more

5. HubSpot CRM – Best for Growing Businesses

• Starting price: $15 per user, per month
• Free plan: Yes

HubSpot is a highly customizable CRM platform that has a feature-rich free plan functioning as an all-in-one product, although more specific benefits and features for sales, marketing, and customer service teams can be derived from the provider’s paid plans, including workflow automation and advanced campaign tools.

Our researchers rated HubSpot’s usability on par with monday CRM, though a little below the other providers in this guide: It remains easy to navigate, as it clearly marks how to get in and out of menus and processes. We also enjoyed the level of customizability in our testing that came with editing the sales pipeline, which helped to reflect the unique processes of each business. Tracking sales pipelines and marketing contacts can be complicated at the best of times, but HubSpot makes it relatively easy for beginners compared to competitors.

Why is HubSpot easy to use?

Intuitive and easy to use, HubSpot’s free plan will let you get a taste of the software without paying anything, and it gives you access to a range of sales, marketing, and CRM features. There’s enough included to help you manage a basic marketing or sales campaign and provide a way to keep track of all of your customers, so a great place to start for teams who haven’t used a CRM platform before.

However, marketing, sales, and customer service teams — especially rapidly growing ones — will get more out of HubSpot’s paid plans as they start to grow and increase their contact bases and campaign sizes. For example, marketing teams will be able to run A/B tests on different email formats and remove HubSpot branding from their correspondence. Sales teams, on the other hand, will get access to powerful forecasting tools and advanced team management features when they upgrade.

Other features reserved for paying members include social and SEO campaigns. If you want to improve your brand’s customer relationships and continue to bring in new ones simultaneously, an upgrade is worth considering. If you’d like to test these features out, you can always sign up for a 14-day free trial of HubSpot’s paid plans, all of which have a cheaper starting price per user than any of the other providers on this list.

The customer conversation page in HubSpot CRM made it easy for us to stay abreast of our funnel. Source: Tech.co testing

Who should use HubSpot

• Businesses that need a free plan – HubSpot CRM easily has the best free plan available across our research, with functionality for sales, marketing, and customer service.
• Growth-minded businesses – In addition to being great for small businesses, HubSpot offers some of the most robust enterprise-level solutions, making it great for businesses that plan to grow.
• Diversified businesses – HubSpot offers sales, marketing, customer service, commerce, and operations functionality, all in its free plan, so businesses with diverse needs will be right at home.

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot pricing is decidedly more complicated than other options on this list. It offers a range of “hubs” for different industries, like the Sales Hub and Marketing Hub, which each have their own set of uniquely priced plans.

Below, we’ve listed the Sales Hub pricing plans to get you started, but you’ll want to do a bit of research to be sure that this is what you’ll pay for your particular needs.

• Starter – $9 per user, per month
• Professional – $90 per user, per month
• Enterprise – $150 per user, per month

As we’ve mentioned, HubSpot does have a free forever plan with some serious functionality that can get you started at no cost. It does have some notable limitations, like no marketing automation, fewer email templates, and no 1-on-1 customer support options.

Check out our HubSpot pricing page for more information

Best Free and Simple CRM Software

Every single CRM on this list (except Pipedrive) offers a free forever plan that will allow you to enjoy basic features at no cost. However, these plans are often quite limited and can’t handle the load of your average business. Still, if you’re a small business that wants to get the ball rolling without worrying about your budget, there are lots of options to choose from.

Here are some of the best free CRMs that are also easy to use:

• HubSpot – This CRM offers the best free CRM across our research and it isn’t particularly close. The surprisingly impressive feature list beats out a lot of paid plans, honestly, and it’s interface is still simple enough for beginners to feel comfortable.
• Zoho CRM – This CRM is our top CRM for small businesses, mostly because it offers a robust free plan with lots of functionality, as well as an intuitive platform with excellent onboarding features.
• Freshsales – That’s right, our top pick for simple CRMs also offers a free plan, although there is a strict user maximum of three users. It’s also more functionally limited than HubSpot or Zoho CRM.

While free CRM platforms may sound appealing to businesses with limited budgets, they should typically be used more as an extended free trial rather than a long term solution. Free plans are quite limited, particularly for larger businesses, so you’ll likely have to opt for a paid plan eventually.

On top of that, for beginners, free plans typically offer limited customer support options, so if you run into any problems, you’ll be out of luck.

The contacts page on HubSpot’s free plan provides much of the same functionality as paid plans from other providers. Source: Tech.co testing

Choosing a Simple CRM Software

Landing on your ideal simple CRM system shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as you know what you’re looking for. Aside from prioritizing CRM general factors, there are some additional green flags to look out for, to ensure your chosen system is able to meet your needs.

Ease of use

Certain CRM software is a lot easier to use than others.

When shopping around for a simple CRM system, we recommend prioritizing options with intuitive interfaces, streamlined setup processes, and user-friendly mobile apps to help you manage customer relationships on the go. In our tests, we found that Freshsales’ simple layout and interface contributed to its ease of use.

The home dashboard for Freshsales Suite provided our team with an easy-to-navigate interface to monitor our business. Source: Tech.co testing

Pricing factors

With so many businesses still feeling the squeeze from the economic turbulence of the last few years, pricing will naturally make its way to the forefront of many companies’ decision-making processes.

It’s all about getting bang for your buck — especially when it comes to contact database sizes, which vary widely from plan to plan but also from provider to provider. If you are looking for an accessible pricing option, Freshsales impressed us most during testing.

Customizability 

Customizability is an incredibly important factor for some companies searching for the ideal CRM software. The manner of the customization is important too — again, another reason monday CRM excels. It’s easy to sculpt the software to do what you want to do without delving into the system settings or getting lost in menus.

Our researchers were impressed by monday CRM’s extensive customization options across the entire platform during testing.

Zoho CRM allowed us to customize our sales pipeline to match our needs. Source: Tech.co testing

Customer support

Customer support can make or break a provider — especially if usability is important to you. There’s a surprising gulf between providers in terms of what customer support options they offer, so we’d advise prioritizing systems that offer round-the-clock availability, and a range of channels for resolving queries.

We found Pipedrive’s 24/7 live support via both chat and phone to be particularly valuable in our tests.

Features

Choosing the right CRM software for your business will include assessing and comparing the features on offer. Some CRM software plans have better marketing features, while others focus on sales, so it’s critical for buyers to work out what essential capabilities they need first, and work backward from there.

Pipedrive’s extensive security features caught our eye during testing, making it a great option for businesses wanting to focus on privacy and security.

Integrations

Whether you’re trying to populate your platform with data from social media or want to automate some of your day-to-day operations, you will likely need some third-party integrations to ensure your system runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible. During our tests, we enjoyed being able to integrate Zoho CRM with a vast array of other business products on offer.

If you have specific needs, you should consider platforms that offer API integration too.

HubSpot offers a wide range of integrations with its platform. Source: Tech.co testing

How We Ranked the Most Simple CRM Systems