A streamlined customer relationship management system replaces spreadsheets and email chains with a single, organized place to store records and track interactions. This can help sales and marketing employees prioritize leads, personalize messaging, and stay on top of follow-ups.
Find a CRM with the essential features that align with your business workflows. Compare the best ten CRM softwares using this easy-to-use comparison table.
1. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is customizable and adaptable to fit your company’s unique needs. The software includes a mobile app, unified sales and marketing workflows, and in-house email functionality. It’s also secure and easy to use, according to users who reviewed it.
The system’s AI assistant Zia observes sales patterns and creates personalized macro suggestions to automate routine tasks. It also analyzes when a customer usually opens emails, answers phone calls or visits the website to suggest the best time to contact them.
Zoho CRM offers several plan tiers that are suitable for small to midsize businesses and large enterprises. Its pricing is competitive with other CRM products and includes features like Phonebridge, which lets salespeople start calls from within the application. It also has a gamification tool called Motivator that turns key performance indicators into goals and competitions to foster motivation.
2. Freshsales
Freshsales is a CRM tool that comes with a wealth of features and offers a wide range of integrations on its paid plans. The company also offers a variety of pricing options, allowing small businesses and startups to start with the free plan before moving up to a more expensive package.
Users love the fact that the system offers an extensive feature set and is easy to use. However, it can be cumbersome to customize the software, requiring teams to navigate through different tabs in order to complete their customization.
The free version of Freshsales includes basic sales task automation tools, visual sales pipelines and call management functionality. It does not include Freddy AI, which is available on the Pro and Enterprise plans. The free plan also doesn’t offer smart webforms or website user tracking. The company offers a 21-day free trial for all of its plans.
3. Act!
One of the oldest CRM solutions on the market, Act! offers a robust suite of features that can address virtually any CRM-related need. Among the solution’s strengths are a robust contact management system, a customizable sales pipeline that aligns with specific business processes and advanced marketing automation tools.
Users will appreciate the fact that Act! does not charge per user for its marketing automation tools, as many competitors do. The platform also includes a basic email marketing suite, AMA Basic, which allows 2,500 email sends to an unlimited number of contacts each month.
Users in compliance-heavy industries will find the solution’s ability to host the software on-site an attractive feature, as it allows users to maintain full control of data security. However, the solution’s annual billing model may not appeal to businesses that need greater flexibility.
4. Insightly
As a CRM system, Insightly offers an attractive, customizable interface and useful automation features. It is also very affordable. Unlike Salesforce, which charges an arm and a leg, Insightly has a simple pricing model and a 14-day free trial.
While Insightly has many of the same features as Salesforce, it is much easier to use, reducing the learning curve and helping teams get up and running faster. Its scalable design allows users to customize their dashboards and adapt their workflows easily.
However, Insightly lacks advanced project management tools like a task pipeline and a visual project runway that can be tracked and managed with ease. This is one reason why it isn’t recommended for service-based businesses. It is possible to add project management capabilities through the Insightly professional or enterprise plan, which includes a low-code integration tool called AppConnect.
5. QuickBase
Designed for business users, Quickbase is a low-code development platform with an intuitive interface that simplifies application building and streamlines workflows. The platform features tools to centralize data and automate processes, empowering teams to solve critical business challenges.
Users can use QuickBase to create databases and tables to organize and manage information, define data fields, and establish relationships between tables. It also provides workflow automation capabilities that can eliminate manual data entry and speed up process execution.
However, some customers have raised concerns about the per-user pricing of the platform. It can be costly for small and mid-sized teams, particularly when they scale their team or portal with hundreds or even thousands of external stakeholders who need to input data or participate in a data workflow.
6. Keap
Keap is an all-in-one CRM solution that provides marketing, sales, contact management, and business automation tools. Users can create marketing emails and text templates, capture leads via forms on the business website or social media, and manage the sales pipeline with customizable workflow automations.
Keap can also be integrated with e-commerce solutions and third-party applications, such as a payment processor, to streamline processes. It also allows businesses to set up and track a sales pipeline, generate quotes that can be turned into invoices with a few clicks, and handle payments with ease.
However, some users report that the interface is less intuitive or outdated than other modern CRM platforms, and the pricing structure may be a concern for some. Hidden charges and billing issues have been reported by customers as well. Additionally, email deliverability may be a problem.
7. Copper
Copper is a CRM tool that offers a variety of features to help businesses increase productivity. The system has a customizable drag-and-drop pipeline that allows users to track progress for each individual sales deal. It also has a custom reporting feature that lets users choose from 14 different insights builder charts.
Copper has a streamlined user interface that makes it easy to use for new users. It also offers robust lead and pipeline management capabilities. The software has three paid tiers, with each offering a set of features. The starter tier, Basic, has a limited number of features and costs $9 per month when billed annually or $12 when billed monthly.
Copper was designed with Google Workspace in mind, so it integrates seamlessly with tools like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. It also has a Chrome extension that can be used to track email conversations and locate documents.
8. Sales Creatio
Creatio specializes in providing secured CRM solutions with quality features and functionalities for sales, marketing and customer service. It provides a composable architecture, intuitive interface and extensive customization capabilities to allow businesses to tailor the platform to their specific requirements.
The Opportunities section of Sales Creatio enables you to manage sales processes and track the performance of teams with advanced tools to estimate efficiency at each stage of the sales pipeline. The system also allows you to analyze the data and compare indicators by managers, accounts or industries.
The Documents section of the tool helps you manage commercial documents like regulations, meeting minutes and correspondence. It also enables you to form invoices and orders and control payments. The Products section maintains information about product prices and includes folders to consolidate records by different criteria. The system also offers a user-customizable product catalog and advanced search options.
9. Salesforce
The best CRM software should be easy to set up and use. Most vendors offer free trials, so you can test the programs out before investing in a permanent solution. Most entry-level systems include contact database and interaction tracking functionality, while premium products may also have advanced features.
Salesforce is ideal for sales and customer service teams at SMEs that want in-depth analytics and automation. Its high price point, however, might make it prohibitive for some small businesses.
One of its biggest draws is its low-code technology, which makes it possible to customize the platform with little coding knowledge. The company’s robust APIs allow users to access their data and integrate it with other applications. The system also enables collaboration across multiple channels and provides a single view of all interactions. This allows teams to track and communicate with clients effectively, even when they are on the go.
10. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a wide range of tools for marketing, sales and customer service in a single platform. Its free CRM software is easy to use and includes a contact management database, email tracking features, landing page creation, and streamlined document sharing. The platform’s paid versions (known as ‘Hubs’) offer more advanced tools including logic-based automation workflows and chatbots.
HubSpot’s flexible pricing model enables businesses to start with the minimum number of seats they need and add more as their business grows. The software also integrates with a wide range of third-party applications to support its functionality and enable smooth data flow. Other key features include security features, multi-tiered team access (with varying levels of editing privileges), call transcriptions and recording, and automated responses. Event-based content segmentation is available too, allowing marketers to personalise and surface relevant content to their contacts.