Whether you are just starting, already have a business, or are already managing a huge enterprise, if you’re not using a CRM software, or customer relationship manager yet, then chances are your competitors are already miles ahead of you.
Choosing the best CRM software is both a challenging and easy task. It’s easy because you simply pick the best one out there that is compatible with your business needs. It’s challenging because there are a lot of promising ones that offer a wide variety of features (which you may or may not need) and picking just one can be a complicated task.
In this article, we’ve gathered the best names out there in the field of customer relationship management. Some of these names have been around for quite a while and have already established a name for themselves. We wanted to come up with a list to help you narrow down your search and make picking one a relatively easy task.
Table of Contents
Before we discuss the meat of this article, let’s briefly talk about a Customer Relationship Manager, or CRM, software.
A CRM software automates and manages the customer life cycle of an organization. Life cycle refers to the journey of a customer from being just a “lead” until they “buy”.
You can liken a CRM to an oracle. It stores all records about the client, your interactions with them, what you talked about, and so on, and then these data are turned into actionable analytics to give you a clear picture of who your clients are.
It is usually utilized by sales teams, sales agents, and other related industries to maintain contact with customers and to quickly respond to their needs.
To make an objective comparison among the CRM software in this list, we considered the following criteria: features, integrations, sales capabilities, presence of marketing tools, pricing, and degree of support.
Here are our picks for the best CRM software to try:
Best CRM for Start-Ups
If you’re a startup with employees who have to juggle multiple roles, then Monday.com is perfect for you. This platform offers the necessary flexibility to let users jump from one role to another quickly and at a low cost.
Free for two users; paid services start at $8 per seat, per month
A simple yet powerful modern-day CRM for small businesses
Salesflare is an affordable and simple CRM that brings together sales, and support. Their goal is to allow you to stop worrying about managing your data and start managing your customers. With automatic logging of meetings and phone calls and an automatic organization of documents and other files that you and your team exchange with customers, you can reduce time spent on data entry by more than 70%.
Top CRM System for Pipeline Management
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that fully takes advantage of the benefits of AI to manage repetitive tasks; thus, your leads and sales performance are managed well. Pipedrive is responsible for overseeing $24 billion worth of deals within their platform and is serving more than 90,000 customers worldwide.
Starts at $12.50 per month
Align sales and marketing strategies with Freshworks CRM
Freshworks CRM, formerly known as Freshsales, acts as a single source of truth for your business combining sales, customer support, and marketing automation. Their platform focuses on the customer journey – from attracting, nurturing, and managing leads to converting leads into paying customers.
Simple All-In-One CRM Software for Sales, Marketing, and & Customer Service
Agile CRM is another effective and popular customer relationship manager that many businesses use to automate their sales, marketing, and customer service all in one place. Trusted by more than 15,000 customers, Agile CRM is affordable, mobile-ready, fast, and most importantly simple to use.
All-In-One CRM Software for Marketing, Sales, and & Customer Support
EngageBay is another leading provider in CRM software, trusted by more than 28,000 customers across the world to simplify marketing, sales, and support all within one platform. Because marketing, sales, and support are all included within EngageBay, pricing is very affordable for those just starting out, or those looking to grow.
Free for up to 15 users; paid plans start at $14.99 per user, per month for All-In-One
Best Simple CRM
Nimble is a great, no-nonsense CRM software tool that allows users to work within either G Suite inbox or Office 365. It allows you to manage your leads, access company and customer-related reports and analysis, and monitor current and existing deals within your workflow with ease.
Starts at $19 per month (for annual plan) or $25 per month if billed monthly
Best CRM System for Businesses
Salesforce is a ubiquitous name when we talk about CRS systems. They have more than a million users around the globe. Based on the cloud, Salesforce is compatible with all business departments, whether they pertain to sales, customer service, marketing, analytics, or customer experience.
Starts at $25 per month
A Reliable CRM System for Small Businesses
Zoho CRM allows you to have a comprehensive view of your business, monitor sales numbers and marketing insights, and eventually increase your conversion rates. With thousands of customers located all over the world, Zoho CRM is among the top CRM software choice for business owners.
Standard plan starts at $12 per month
Reliable CRM System Provider for Enterprises
SugarCRM is one of the leading names in CRM systems, with more than 50,000 companies engaged in sales and marketing tasks. The platform, which is available in nine different languages, has been downloaded millions of times.
Probably the best feature of SugarCRM is it being open-sourced. This feature technically allows you to create a product of your own, or you can just simply tweak a few of its existing features to your benefit.
Offers a 7-day free trial; paid service starts at $52 per user per month
Best for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Tired of using clunky, highly expensive, and complicated CRM software? Copper might be a good alternative. Copper allows users to form multiple pipelines and to create integrations to G Suite. Boasting an improved user experience and G Suite integration, Copper seeks to be the CRM of choice for small- and medium-sized businesses who seek to manage leads and foster customer relationships.
Starts at $25 per month
Top CRM System for Furnishing Crucial Analysis and Reports
Insightly is one of the relatively new CRM platforms but make no mistake, this platform can still help you build a long and strong partnership with your clients.
Starts at $29 per month; free plan accommodates two users
Best CRM overall
Hubspot CRM is a feature-packed marketing suite. HubSpot CRM is perfect for those who are in sales because of its amazing features and time-saving tools. It’s also an attractive option for marketing teams whose aim is to capture, monitor, and increase the number of leads in their database.
What’s great is that this software is offered for free with the option to pay for additional premium features. The software is already great in itself, and the add-ons are for those who would like to have a comprehensive experience of Hubspot CRM.
Starts at $40/month
Best CRM for Sales Teams
Accelerate your sales process and improve your chances of closing deals with Sales Hub Enterprise, a comprehensive yet easy-to-use CRM that has built-in sales engagement tools, price–quote functionality, and sales analytics for growing teams.
Starts at $50 per month for paid services; the free version is workable and does not expire
Intelligent business applications that empower your organization
Dynamics365 is a powerful CRM system and business application software suite developed by Microsoft to develop an all-in-one solution for all areas of your business including sales, marketing, service, finance, operations, commerce, and HR. Dynamics365 is trusted by global businesses big and small – including many Fortunate 500 organizations.
For a complete list of pricing visit Dynamics 365 Pricing.
A great CRM tool should be able to help you generate leads from various pipeline activities, such as inbound calls, sales calls, email sign-ups, and so on. Furthermore, you should be able to configure such a tool so that it will take less time for you to follow up your leads.
Your nurture should also be able to help you improve your relationship with your leads throughout the whole sales process: from being just a lead to closure of the sale.
A smart CRM system should also have built-in marketing tools to have a well-streamlined sales process. Embedded email pipelines, databases for contacts management, and social media integrations are handy tools that can make the task of marketing and sales fully aligned and seamless.
CRM systems that allow integrations for other crucial business software such as marketing automation tools, advertising software, data visualization tools, and more are preferable.
Nowadays, data is king. However, all those data can sometimes be overwhelming and useless if they’re not arranged in an order where they can tell a story. Pick a CRM system that has reporting capabilities (most of them already have one anyway). If your system can allow you to come up with live and dynamic reports, then that’s much better.
A robust CRM system would be a letdown if its use is restricted to desktops or laptops. Your team is after all often on the move, so a CRM system that can be accessed across multiple devices, such as iPads or even mobile phones, would be a huge advantage in terms of efficiency and convenience.
Although having all the data you need for your business is important to attain success, guarding these data with your life is equally important. File storage and platform security are paramount when selecting a CRM system.
Most of the CRM systems nowadays offer the same type of features in their packages. Nevertheless, what’s important is the influence of these features on your user experience. How convenient is this CRM system to use your current system? Are its features made available so that you can fully take advantage of it? Can you see your team use the same CRM system in a long-term scenario?
A great CRM software allows you to do the following:
Your CRM system should be able to help you streamline customer information in such a way that it helps you generate valuable insights. Ideally, with your CRM’s help, you should be able to get to know your customers in a deep level.
Given that you are in a position to know what your customers need (before they probably know it themselves), an opportunity is established for you to either introduce your other products or offer a better package (if one’s available) that suits their needs well.
Having a CRM system in large organizations allows multiple departments to work together to give their customers the best experience. It allows these departments to come up with ingenious, holistic solutions in such a way that their customers will feel that they have been really taken cared of.
The heart of any CRM system is really to reduce wastage both in terms of time and opportunity. A great CRM system will make everything seamless to reduce the guesswork in each customer interaction and to take everything into account. There’s less room for manually doing things, thereby lessening the chances of human error.
Spending on a CRM system might cost you in a short-term scenario, but its benefits carry on for a long time. Not only it will lessen your overall workload but also you can ideally see improvements both in customer interaction and experience.
With an access to data, your employees should feel empowered to work with a goal in mind. Gone are the days when they have to do a lot of trial and error to know what their customers like. With a CRM system in place, all they have to do is take ownership. They already have the data in front of them, all they need to do is to make use of these data to their advantage.
Dozens of CRM systems are out in the market today, and each of them are as powerful, comprehensive, and feature-rich as the next one.
What’s more important for you as a business owner is not what they offer but whether what they offer fits what your business needs. You see, each of these featured CRMs has a key feature that fits well with the kind of business that you have.
Do not sacrifice functionality just because you are attracted to a CRM that’s budget friendly. That will defeat your purpose of getting a CRM software in the first place. Similarly, don’t get the most expensive one when the simple, even a free one, will suffice.
Last updated on by Joshua Holdeman
Nice post thank you so much!
Thanks for sharing this useful information! Hope that you will continue with the kind of stuff you are doing.