The customer is the king. To nurture your relationship with them and track all communications efficiently, you require specialized software called customer relationship management (CRM). CRM is a unified tool for storing your customers’ details and the interactions you have with them to strengthen your relationship. It replaces disparate tools like spreadsheets and databases and easily tracks their interaction points with your organization.
The growing importance of CRM has led to the emergence of many CRM platforms. As the decision-maker of your organization, choosing the best CRM software is not easy.
But we have done the work for you. Read on to learn the top CRM software platforms available today and their salient features to pick the one that best fits your organization.
What Is CRM Software?
CRM software is a centralized platform for storing, managing, and tracking customers’ data. This data-driven platform collates data from departments like sales, marketing, and customer service and organizes them into a cohesive repository. A centralized way of storing and managing data offers unparalleled insights into customer relationships and helps companies make the right decisions for improving and nurturing their client base.
Why Is CRM Software Important?
- Grow relationships through the entire customer lifecycle
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Increase sales
- Reduce costs
- Enhance efficiency
- Offer personalization
- Streamline coordination across departments.
- Gain cohesive insights
- Make data-driven decisions
- Supports real-time analysis
Now that you know the importance of CRM software, let’s look at ways to select the right fit for your organization.
What Are the Key Qualities to Look for When Choosing the Best CRM Software?
Some key aspects to look for when choosing CRM software are:
- Ease of use: Your selected CRM software should be easy to learn and use.
- Scalability: It should be scalable as your business grows.
- Features: The CRM software should have all the required features to increase efficiency
- Price: The price tag should be reasonable for your business.
- Integrations: Your chosen CRM must integrate well with your existing tech stack.
- Automation: The CRM must offer different workflow automation flows to help your sales and marketing teams nurture leads and close deals.
- Lead scoring: It must help prioritize leads to help teams focus on the leads that are most likely to become a sale.
- Personalization: The CRM platform must support personalization and customization.
- Omnichannel communication: Your CRM tool must support multiple communication channels to reach more customers.
- Real-time insights: It must provide real-time insights and information for quick decision-making.
- Analytics: The CRM platform must provide detailed analytics about the data to help create business strategies accordingly.
- Social media integration: It helps to have social media integration to track customer engagement across different socials.
- Good customer support: Another helpful feature is good customer and technical support from the CRM tool.
Based on the above features, we have come up with the best CRM software list.
What Are the Best CRM Software Options?
Every CRM platform is built differently, with some being suitable for certain industries or scenarios. Below are the best CRM software for different companies.
Zoho CRM – Comprehensive for Small Businesses
Zoho is one of the top CRM companies today and comes with many advanced features to help small businesses grow. It is a comprehensive platform that has everything you need to nurture leads, increase sales, and measure the performance of your sales teams. Plus, its automation capabilities save time and effort. The highlight of this tool is its drag-and-drop editor called Canvas, which enables each individual to create the user interface (UI) they want.
Key Features
- Captures leads and automates their scoring
- Tracks the state of every lead to decide the next steps
- Generates real-time insights
- Allows you to set up rules to assign and track responsibilities
- Makes it easy to define and implement a review process
- Enables the creation of customized customer journeys
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Extensive integrations ✅Useful automation ✅Mobile app | ❌Limited functionality on the free plan ❌AI features are available only on the highest plan. |
Pricing
Zoho CRM offers four plans, and their pricing per user are:
- Standard – $14
- Professional – $23
- Enterprise – $40
- Ultimate – $52
Zoho also offers a free plan, but it’s limited to three users and up to 5,000 records.
The Zoho CRM is one of the best CRM software, considering its ease of use and powerful features that include predictive intelligence, advanced segmentation, and omnichannel presence.
Salesforce – Highly Customizable for Enterprises
Salesforce is the most popular CRM software because of its customization options. Its extensive features and wide-arching control make it a good choice for large enterprises that need to manage millions of customers and leads. The highlight of this tool is its advanced automation that increases the efficiency of sales operations.
Key Features
- Helps build a complete picture of every customer for easy segmentation and to offer a personalized experience.
- Supports collaboration across the entire organization.
- An opportunity management feature to help decide the next move
- Forecasting and predictive tracking capabilities.
- Provides high levels of business intelligence to complete even the most complicated sales
- Manages leads and keeps track of their activities
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Extensive customization ✅Integrations with 1,000s of platforms. ✅Powerful reporting | ❌Expensive ❌High learning curve |
Pricing
Salesforce CRM has three plans:
- Starter – $25
- Professional – $80
- Enterprise – $165
Overall, Salesforce CRM is one of the most comprehensive choices for managing and nurturing millions of leads.
HubSpot – Best for Growing Businesses
HubSpot is another popular CRM that helps all companies, especially growing businesses, to track and nurture their leads.
It is suitable for any B2B or B2C company in any industry because of its features like sales automation, pipeline management, and more.
The highlight of this tool is its visual dashboard that provides a real-time view of the complete sales funnel. All this information can help you make data-driven decisions to close deals.
Key Features
- Comes with an intuitive interface for users of all technical backgrounds
- Integrates sales, marketing, and customer services to provide comprehensive views
- Highly flexible and robust and, hence, grows well with your organization
- Offers live chat options to increase customer satisfaction and experience
- Stores all contacts in a single database for easy search and retrieval
- Supports the creation of tasks and manages their deadlines
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Customizable dashboards ✅Integrates with Gmail and Outlook ✅Built-in analytics | ❌No customer support on the free plan. ❌Complex pricing tiers. |
Pricing
HubSpot offers separate plans for individuals and enterprises. The plan for individuals and small teams has Starter and Professional plans besides the free one.
The free plan is highly comprehensive and has all the foundational tools. Also, this plan includes all the free tools across sales, marketing, CRM, operational, service, and commerce.
For businesses and enterprises, HubSpot offers the Professional and Enterprise plans.
Overall, HubSpot’s free plan is good enough for small businesses that require limited automation. If you need more automation and other advanced features, you should sign up for the higher plans.
Pipedrive – Helps Sales Team Close Deals
Pipedrive is known for its sales-driven approach to CRM. Its deal pipeline view helps the sales team automatically track each deal and accordingly create personalized actions to convert leads into customers.
Also, its deal-tracking features track and organize calls and emails to nurture leads. Its GUI is easy to use and helps synchronize the user experience across devices.
Key Features
- Suggests the follow-up action for each lead
- Supports custom columns and filters
- Offers customizable email templates
- Projects the revenue of each strategy
- Generates a unified view of all scheduled demos
- Collates all available data of a contact into a single place
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Intuitive interface ✅Mobile app ✅Email synchronization across devices. | ❌Limited functionality beyond lead management ❌Does not separate new and existing leads |
Pricing
Pipedrive offers five plans (all prices are per user per month):
- Essential – $9.90
- Advanced – $19.90
- Professional – $39.90
- Power – $49.90
- Enterprise – $59.90
Overall, Pipedrive focuses heavily on the creation of pipelines so you can track the journey of every lead and offer personalized solutions for converting them into customers.
Bitrix24 – Flexible Lead Management Capabilities
Bitrix24 is a customer management software with flexible and customizable lead management capabilities.
It is available as a cloud service and as self-hosted software to generate leads and nurture them to turn leads into sales deals. Bitriz24 also supports the entire lifecycle, from lead generation to deal closing.
You can even automate lead tracking and create rules for assigning leads to specific agents.
Key Features
- Offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for managing leads
- Comes with more than 30 tools for sales and marketing
- Allows you to acquire leads through web forms and add them to the online CRM system.
- Runs marketing campaigns from the tool
- Streamlines workflows and sales funnels
- Supports customizable rules and triggers for moving leads down the sales pipeline
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Kanban user interface ✅Sends notifications of opportunities and activities. ✅Centralized management | ❌Limited social networking features ❌Basic features only. |
Pricing
Bitrix24 has a free plan that supports unlimited users. However, the storage limit is set to 5 GB. Other than the free plan, four other pricing tiers are available:
- Basic
- Standard
- Professional
- Enterprise.
Overall, Bitrix24 is a good choice to gather leads and take them through the sales pipeline,
Insightly – Agile for Startups
Insightly is a good choice for startups and growth-stage businesses because it is simple to use and helps to get started easily.
Its simple and intuitive UI makes it a good choice, even for sales personnel with little to no prior experience. Insightly’s simplified data import process makes it easy to get existing data into your system.
Plus, its built-in reporting engine and integration with Microsoft Power BI are other key advantages.
Key Features
- Offers a customizable landing page for each user that can be configured to have dashboards, to-do tasks, and more
- Supports the creation of new data objects, but only one at a time
- Allows you to import contacts through a CSV file, Excel, Google Workspace, or Microsoft Outlook
- Can add notes and files for each contact and send them to another member as a task or email
- Offers a separation between leads and contacts
- Comes with a wide range of email templates
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Smooth data import ✅Good email templates ✅Customizable | ❌Limited features ❌Can be pricey. |
Pricing
Insightly offers three plans:
- Plus
- Professional
- Enterprise
In all, Insightly is one of the easiest tools to use and can work best for a young sales team, startups, and growth-stage companies.
Freshsales – Budget-friendly for Small Sales Teams
Freshsales is one of the best CRM systems for small to midsize businesses that are looking for a budget-friendly way to manage their customers.
Its lightweight features help sales teams close deals quickly without feeling overwhelmed.
A simple user interface coupled with basic workflows makes it ideal for sales teams that want to get up and running quickly. Although it doesn’t have many advanced features, it presents a good value for money.
Key Features
- Supports 30 languages and multiple currencies
- Includes basic workflow automation and intelligence features for small sales teams
- Extends with other apps from the Freshworks family, like Freshcaller and Freshdesk
- Provides detailed analytics to measure overall customer success.
- Generates automatic alerts and notifications
- Comes with machine learning-based data deduplication for better contact management
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅A simple CRM for small businesses ✅Support for multiple languages and currencies ✅Lightweight | ❌No reports ❌Highly limited. |
Pricing
Freshsales offers three plans aside from the free plan. All plans are per user per month.
- Growth – $15
- Pro – $39
- Enterprise – $69
Overall, Freshsales is a simple and lightweight solution for SMBs and startups. Its sensible pricing options and ease of use make it appealing to small sales teams.
AgileCRM – Highly Affordable
AgileCRM is one of the most affordable CRM platforms for businesses looking to automate their sales and marketing without spending a ton of money.
It is specifically geared for small businesses planning to centrally manage all sales activities through a single pane.
At the same time, it automates the process and gives you the option to set workflows and triggers. Plus, it also suggests customer segmentation.
Key Features
- Has a centralized management that avoids data leaks and supports consistent messaging
- Comes with extensive integrations to fit into most tech stacks
- Has cloud-based SaaS that is fast and simple to use.
- Tracks the progress of each lead to help you make informed decisions
- Supports gamification to ramp up competition and boost collaboration
- Offers a single-page contact management.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Supports email marketing. ✅Automated sales pipeline. ✅Easy to use | ❌No reports ❌Only one integration in the Starter plan. |
Pricing
AgileCRM has a free plan that limits access to 10 users and just 50,000 contacts. Besides the free plan, there are three pricing tiers:
- Starter – $8.99
- Regular – $29.99
- Enterprise – $47.99
AgileCRM is a lean and affordable option for small and medium-sized companies looking to streamline lead management and sales.
Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM) – Easy to Use Platform
Zendesk Sell acquired Base CRM to become one of the most intuitive CRM platforms today.
It comes with a simple-to-use interface that provides all the insights you need in a single place.
Through a single pane, you can handle contacts, track leads, and get visibility into closed deals. Also, you can set up triggers to automate certain tasks and monitor employee performance.
Key Features
- Provides full visibility into the entire sales pipeline
- Offers personalized experience for your customers
- Enables you to accurately forecast and manage your pipeline in real time
- Comes with an intuitive app
- Highly comprehensive and offers everything in a single place
- Simple to set up and use
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Integrates with other Zendesk’s products ✅Generates reports ✅Easy onboarding | ❌ Limited pipelines ❌ Basic email editor |
Pricing
The pricing structure is for the entire Zendesk suite only.
Zendesk offers four plans (price is for five agents and is priced per month):
- Suite Team – $55
- Suite Growth – $89
- Suite Professional – $115
- Suite Enterprise – Custom
Zendesk Sell is a powerful tool with a simple interface and advanced reporting capabilities.
Really Simple CRM – Offers Good Customer Support
As the name implies, this is a simple CRM platform backed by outstanding customer support. It is ideal for small businesses that want to manage leads and convert them into sales without spending too much money.
Its simple user interface and excellent support are standout features. For example, as soon as you open the Welcome screen, there’s an introductory video and access to the customer support hub. Along every step, there’s a link to some form of documentation or support.
Key Features
- Tracks interactions to provide a snapshot of your lead management
- Combines sales, marketing, and customer support in a single tool
- Multiple self-service resources to find answers to questions
- Supports built-in email marketing
- Scales well with a growing team
- Integrates well with many popular tools
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅Intuitive interface ✅Reliable and bug-free ✅Simple to set up and use. | ❌ Limited lead management ❌ Not possible to track calls for individual contacts |
Pricing
The pricing is straightforward. Really Simple offers the following three paid plans:
- Starter – $21
- Professional – $43
- Enterprise – $64
Really Simple is one of the best CRM tools for SMBs that prioritize affordability and good customer support.
How to Choose the Right CRM Software for Your Business?
Below are some tips on how to choose the right CRM software for your business.
- Step 1: Identify your Goals
As a first step, know what pain point you’re trying to solve with a CRM. Are you looking to improve the efficiency of lead management, convert more leads to sales, or any other goal? Make sure to be specific and realistic for the best results.
- Step 2: List the Features
Based on your goals, list the features you need in a CRM software. These features may include the following:
- Track leads and their activities.
- Manage interactions
- Increase collaboration
- Generate reports
- Gain visibility and control
- Affordable pricing
Prioritize your list by starting with the must-haves, followed by good-to-have features.
- Step 3: Research and Select
Now that you know what features are must-haves, start your research and shortlist the programs that match your needs. You can even rank them based on the most important parameters to help with decision-making. In the process, involve all key stakeholders.
- Step 4: Understand the Implementation
This is an often overlooked aspect. But knowing the implementation and how well a tool will fit into your existing tech stack is key. Remember, you don’t want a tool that would require a lot of extra coding or technical changes.
- Step 5: Prepare for Training
Resistance to change is a common roadblock when it comes to adopting new software. Prepare a plan to understand and address user concerns. Also, create a training schedule to ensure that all users are familiar with the tool.
Additional Tips for Choosing CRM Software
Here are some additional tips for choosing CRM software and ensuring its smooth implementation.
- Get buy-in from all stakeholders: Make sure everyone in your business is on board with using CRM software.
- Try the demos: Before going all in, try the product demos and free trials to check if the shortlisted software programs fit with your organization’s goals.
- Check your processes: All CRM tools are created with certain processes. Check if they align with your CRM activities.
- Multi-device access: Do your sales executives travel? Do they need a mobile CRM app? Consider multi-device accessibility.
- Start small: Don’t try to implement all the features of CRM software at once. Start with the basics and add more features as needed.
- Train your employees: Make sure your employees are trained on how to use the chosen CRM software.
- Use CRM software consistently: The more you use the CRM software, the more benefit you will get from it.
Conclusion: Make CRM Work for You
Choosing the right CRM software is important for your business as it boosts your productivity, increases sales, and helps build lasting relationships with customers.
However, the key is to select the best CRM software that aligns with your goals and fits with your tech stack.
The platforms explored in this article offer diverse features to meet specific needs. Also, with stakeholder buy-in, product demos, and effective training, you can seamlessly integrate the selected CRM software for improved customer relationships and sustained growth.
