Customer Relationship Management software can strengthen the foundation of your business. It helps you ditch manual effort and time-consuming processes so you can focus on core business operations.
However, choosing the right CRM software for your company can feel overwhelming—you’ll have to start by assessing your business model and look for a solution that offers the best in terms of affordability, ease of use, and other key features, including functionality that will benefit your core business operations.
While businesses may require different CRM software programs depending on their requirements, your company is likely to benefit from a CRM solution that helps manage your potential and existing clients and foster growth.
Here are 9 of the best CRMs for small business owners should consider investing in:
1. Freshsales
Freshsales is a part of a larger suite of tools called Freshworks. It’s particularly popular among small to mid-sized business owners because of its forever-free and affordable paid plans.
This CRM software comes with AI-powered lead scoring on all paid plans, automation tools, and contact leads via chat, phone, and email. You can also customize reports and dashboards for a more interactive experience. However, keep in mind that while you can benefit from the free plan in the short term, you can’t expect to get insights from it in the long run because reports aren’t included in the free plan. This is why Freshsales is one of the best CRMs for small business.
With Freshsales’ high-tier plans, you can get AI-powered sales insights. However, a few drawbacks of this CRM software that you should be aware of are that it provides few integrations, and customer support is only available on weekdays.
2. Salesforce
Salesforce is also one the best CRMs for small business which can help automate and streamline your business processes to improve sales productivity and efficiency. It offers contact, opportunity, and quote management solutions. But perhaps the most attractive feature of Salesforce CRM is that it lets you customize features like reports and dashboards to personalize user experience.
This market-leading CRM giant is ahead of the game; it’s one of the best CRM software programs to invest in if you’ve got the budget since it can be a bit on the expensive side. While it’s great at managing enterprise-level business operations, small business owners can also benefit from the solutions it offers.
If you want to see if this CRM software is best suited to your needs without investing in it, consider downloading the free trial version. And if you have any queries regarding implementation or integration, you can always call their representatives, who are available to answer your questions.
3. Zoho CRM
Supporting an enterprise of over 250,000 businesses of all sizes in almost 180 countries, Zoho CRM is a full-scale solution that helps build customer relationships, convert more leads and boost revenue.
The sales force automation features of Zoho CRM include customer and contact data, opportunity, workflow, quote and order, territory and channel, and partnership management. It also helps you with lead management and email marketing.
You can also get customizable reports, pipeline visualization, and forecasting options to get ahead of the competition. Zoho CRM’s recently announced Canvas feature helps users create a personalized experience. Considering all these features that Zoho provides we can say that it can definitely be counted in top 10 best CRMs for small business.
You can start with a standard package costing $14 and move up to professional and enterprise plans. Zoho CRM also offers a free trial, so you can see if the program is ideal for your business operations.
4. Pipedrive
Designed with activity-based sales in mind, Pipedrive is a CRM software that stores and updates lead information in a visual pipeline. This makes it easier for small business owners to navigate the influx of queries, referrals, and meeting requests. With the help of Pipedrive’s automated features, you can track progress in real-time and keep track of prospects.
Some attractive features of Pipedrive include automated workflows and finances with the help of AI and app integrations and Pipedrive syncs, allowing you to run your business from anywhere in the world. This CRM software can sync with your favorite apps so you can schedule meetings with your clients through Google Calendar, send them reminders through email, and set reminders for yourself.
The essential package starts at $12.50 dollars and offers calendar, lead, deal, and pipeline management. You can also choose essential plan+ for $24.90 or a professional package for $49.90. Pipedrive also offers a free 14-day trial, so you can see if the software works for you without investing in it first. With such low price, Pipedrive carefully considers the needs of the small scale firms and therefore makes it one of the best CRMs for small business from cost view point.
6. HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best CRM software programs to invest in if you run a small business and have a sales team. This software can help you attract visitors, convert leads and retain customers.
While the platform offers several paid plans to choose from, you can also go with a free version of the CRM software to see how it works for you company. Some attractive features of HubSpot include dashboard reporting, pipeline management, deal tracking and managing and maintaining new leads.
You also get many free tools such as email tracking and templates, contact management and on-screen tracking to personalize your user experience. However, you can also upgrade to have the HubSpot marketing software that’s actually inbound marketing software program as it uses SEO-optimized content like white papers, blogs, articles, e-books, videos and infographics to boost your organic reach. Hence, if you think traditional marketing methods that use paid advertising or outbound sales aren’t working for you, HubSpot is a great tool to invest in.
Although HubSpot is an expensive tool, what make it one of the best CRMs for small business is its easy to use software.
7. Zendesk Sell
Any experience business owner can tell you that you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach with your customer relationship management and expect it to work wonders for your business; the team at Zendesk has gone the extra mile to create a software that streamlines everyday tasks to reduce the burden on your team.
This is also why it was recently listed as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant CRM for customer engagement. Designed for ease of use and flexibility, Zendesk Sell is a cloud-based platform that helps manage and retain happy customers.
Some of its attractive features include a customizable sales dashboard, lead tracking, email automation, customer segmentation, sales management, pipeline and sales tracker, forecasting, mobile user support, and contact management.
As a small business owner, you may be skeptical about investing a lot of money buying a CRM software program without trying it out first. This is why the creators of Zendesk offer a free trial of 14 days for you to see if the software program is a good fit for business. Considering all of these features, you really have to put Zendesk in top 10 best CRMs for small business.
8. Drip
If you run a small e-commerce venture, Drip is the ideal CRM solution to get. Its cloud-based capabilities and tagging system help you stay ahead of the competition by streamlining workflow and organizing contacts using any custom field.
This CRM software offers contact management, list segmentation, dashboards, A/B testing, analytics/ROI tracking, tagging and email templates. You can start with a free 14-day trial and, if you like the experience, move up to the lowest pricing tier of $19/per month for 1-500 subscribers as Drip bases its pricing on the number of subscribers customers have on their list.
9. Streak
If you use Gmail or Google workspace for communication and other core business operations, Streak is one of the best CRM software programs to streamline daily tasks. This cloud-based sales email tracking tool is described by vendors as “CRM in your inbox.”
With this CRM tool, you can track client emails, monitor leads, manage contacts and keep a check on your sales funnel. Streak is a great software program to capture leads directly from your contacts; you can work from your inbox and enjoy the benefits of AI integration with Google Workspace apps like Drive, Docs, Sheet and Chat.
You can either get a forever-free plan that offers basic CRM or a solo basic plan that starts at $15 per month. This seems like the ideal pricing model for small businesses. However, as you expand, you can upgrade to the Premium Pro plan starting at $49.
9. Capsule
As a small business owner, you’d want to achieve more by doing less. Capsule is a CRM software program specially designed to streamline small business operations. Easy to use and navigate, this CRM tool helps you be in complete control of your sales. This makes Capsule a great choice and therefore we have included it in this list of best CRMs for small business.
It’ll remind you to track opportunities in the sales pipeline and provide reporting tools that’ll help you identify individuals and activities performing well and the areas that need more focus.
Its prominent features include customer data and contact management. You can also track orders, quotes and interactions with this tool. Capsule’s customer service and support features include case, call and help desk management.
With its marketing automation tools, you can enjoy the benefits of lead management and email marketing. Other features include reporting, billing and invoicing and task management. You can also customize the software to enjoy a more personalized user experience.
But perhaps the best part about using Capsule is that it grows as your business expands. It’s flexible enough to suit any new process and as more people use the software, you can restrict access to sensitive information with its advanced tools.
You can get a free trial version to see how the software performs for your business and move up to their professional plan starting at $18 per month.
Conclusion
Now that you have a list of all the best CRMs for small business, it’s easy to determine the overall quality of the user experience they offer, considering their key components. You can consider pricing, AI integration, efficiency, automation, reporting, client management, and customer service to see which of these CRM software programs would be best suited to your business needs.