Contact management software helps users organize contacts, track interactions, and record every touchpoint of a customer’s journey. As a primary feature of customer relationship management (CRM) software, contact management solutions also typically offer features like lead and deal management as well as automated emailing. We looked at a variety of CRMs to discover the top six and the best overall.
Top 6 Contact Management Software 2020
Contact Management Software | Best For |
|---|---|
(Best Overall) Basic contact management plus a robust and customizable CRM | |
Teams wanting a free contact management tool for lead generation | |
Managing contacts through a visual sales pipeline or sales funnel | |
Businesses that want contact management and advanced sales insights | |
Marketing strategies designed around social media engagement with contacts | |
Ecommerce-based companies looking for analytics based on contact’s website behavior | |
Last updated on 05/15/20 | |
How We Evaluated Contact Management Software
The best contact management and CRM software should provide a range of tools for adding, managing, and organizing contacts. It should also include features that use this data to improve sales activities, such as interaction analytics, automated workflows triggered by contact activities, and marketing campaign management.
The criteria we used to evaluate the best contact management software includes:
- Contact lists and segmentation
- Email tracking and templates
- Mobile access
- Reporting and analytics
- Added features, such as lead and opportunity management
- Price
- Ease of use
Based on these criteria and our research, we’ve chosen Freshsales as the best overall contact management software for its combination of contact management functionality and pricing options. It also includes powerful business-to-business (B2B) sales and relationship management tools that make it a good option for sales teams that want more than basic contact management.
Freshsales: Best Overall Contact Management Software
Freshsales, a full-featured CRM that offers contact management as well as lead and opportunity tracking, is one of the most customizable CRMs on the market. It also includes a built-in dialer with paid plans for calling contacts directly from the CRM. The flexible interface means you can display your contact details, recent activities, and open deals on a single screen, making it best for people who need an affordable and customizable CRM.
Freshsales Pros | Freshsales Cons |
|---|---|
Capture contact data from email, live chat, and web forms | Advanced customization only available with higher-level service plans |
Automated contact data entry | Automatic profile enrichment not available with free plan |
Bulk email track and send tools | Lacks deep insight into customers’ website activity and behavior |
Freshsales Pricing
- Free: Supports unlimited users and basic contact management
- Blossom: $12 per user, per month; includes lead, contact and deal management, and lead scoring
- Garden: $25 per user, per month; includes multiple sales pipelines, workflow automation, and advanced reports
- Estate: $49 per user, per month; includes advanced customization, smartforms, and auto-profile enrichment
- Free trial of paid plans: 21 days
Freshsales Features
- Unlimited records
- Two-way email sync with any provider
- Territories and lead assignments
- Automatic profile enrichment with social media information
- Custom sales activities, fields, and reports
Freshsales contact card (Source: Freshsales)
For more information about how Freshsales can help your team make the most of contact management, read our Freshsales reviews page.
HubSpot: Best Free Contact Manager With Lead Generation Tools
HubSpot CRM is a free contact management application with advanced functionality like smartform lead capture, a chat widget, and customer support ticketing, as well as email tracking and deal management. It can also be integrated with HubSpot’s Sales and Marketing Hubs for additional automation features. Overall, HubSpot is a powerful contact management software for businesses and individuals who want a free, yet full-featured contact tool.
HubSpot Pros | HubSpot Cons |
|---|---|
Supports unlimited users for free | Paid add-ons can be expensive |
Offline access to contacts | Free plan lacks marketing automation |
Store up to 1 million contacts | Limited customer support with free plan |
HubSpot Pricing
- Free: Includes contact management, deal management, and email marketing
- Sales Hub and Marketing Hub add-ons: $50 per month to $800 per month depending on the specific features added
HubSpot Features
- Lead scoring on profile information and website activity
- Profile auto-enrichment via social media integration
- Form-based lead capture
- Live chat integration
- Task and lead management tools
HubSpot’s contact management interface (Source: HubSpot)
To learn how sales teams maximize HubSpot’s free CRM features, visit our HubSpot CRM reviews page.
Pipedrive: Best Contact Manager With Visual Pipeline Management
Pipedrive CRM is a simple-to-use CRM that helps you manage and organize contacts and their associated deals using a highly intuitive pipeline management tool that’s included with all service plans. This makes it an ideal solution for businesses that want to manage their prospects through a visual, intuitive, and highly flexible sales pipeline model.
Pipedrive Pros | Pipedrive Cons |
|---|---|
Includes contact data enrichment via social media, including LinkedIn | Lacks a free plan |
24/7 customer support | Email marketing tools not available on entry-level plan |
Supports unlimited contacts and organizations | No lead-based routing |
Pipedrive Pricing
- Essential: $12.50 per user, per month; includes customizable pipelines, and contact and deal management
- Advanced: $24.90 per user, per month; includes workflow automation and contact data enrichment
- Professional: $49.90 per user, per month; includes web-based calling and customizable dashboards
- Free trial: 14 days
Pipedrive Features
- Email open and click tracking
- Emails linked to contacts and deals
- Contact and calendar sync with Google and Microsoft
- Customizable pipelines
- Deal management includes pipeline stage, history, and lead communications
Pipedrive’s contact management dashboard (Source: Pipedrive)
For more on how customizable visual pipelines can benefit your sales team, read our Pipedrive reviews page.
Zoho CRM: Best Contact Management Software With Advanced Insights
Zoho CRM allows you to manage your email and phone contacts as well as your social media connections with a free plan for up to three users. Paid plans include advanced features like Zia Voice, which gives you the ability to manage your contacts with voice commands, as well as insights about sales forecasting. That makes Zoho CRM the best for sales teams that want advanced insights into their contacts.
Zoho CRM Pros | Zoho CRM Cons |
|---|---|
Offers free plan | Free plan limited to three users |
Custom product pages available with all plans | Lacks LinkedIn data enrichment |
Integrates with G Suite and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) | No free built-in phone dialer |
Zoho Pricing
- Free: Includes core contact management, search filters, and email templates for up to three users
- Standard: $12 per user, per month; includes scoring rules, web forms, and custom dashboards
- Professional: $20 per user, per month; includes validation rules and inventory management
- Enterprise: $35 per user, per month; includes advanced customization and multi-user portals
- Free trial for paid plans: 14 days
Zoho Features
- Manage contacts with voice commands
- Workflow automation
- Team collaboration tools
- Mobile app locates nearby leads and contacts
- Web-to-lead capture
- Email tracking
Contact management in Zoho CRM (Source: Zoho CRM)
To learn more about this solution’s advanced insight capabilities, check out our Zoho CRM reviews page.
Nimble: Best Contact Manager for Social Media Marketers
Nimble is a contact manager with many of its features built around social media, including a social prospector tool as well as social profile matching and enrichment. This includes Twitter, AngelList, Facebook, and Instagram, giving it an edge over other CRMs on our list other for social media engagement. This feature alone makes Nimble ideal for companies that value social media in their sales processes.
Nimble Pros | Nimble Cons |
|---|---|
Robust social media integration | Lacks a free plan |
Contact search and segmentation | No advanced reporting |
Email tracking | No mass automated email campaigns |
Nimble Pricing
- Business: $19 per user, per month; includes access to all Nimble features
- Free trial: 14 days
Nimble Features
- Custom contact fields
- Unlimited pipelines
- Two-way email syncing
- Call logging
- Activity tracking
- Sales forecasting and reports
Contact management in Nimble (Source: Nimble)
For more information on socially enriched contact management, read our Nimble reviews page.
Metrilo: Best Contact Management Software for Ecommerce Businesses
Metrilo CRM is a website plugin for managing contacts and contact interactions that take place on your website. It automatically creates a visitor’s contact profile, including robust visitor behavior analytics such as time on site and average spend. These contact profiles can be used to create lists that are based on customer behavior, making it the best solution for ecommerce businesses and companies that track behavior on their website.
Metrilo Pros | Metrilo Cons |
|---|---|
Deep insight into customer behavior on website | Can be expensive for smaller teams |
Unlimited users | No lead generation features |
Customer segmentation by behavior and traits | Lacks dedicated mobile app |
Metrilo Pricing
- Essential: $119 per month; CRM tools and customer database are not available at this level
- Pro: $199 per month; includes ecommerce CRM tools such as customer database and profiles
- Free trial: 14 days
Metrilo Features
- Supports unlimited users
- Robust customer segmentation filters
- Customer lifetime metrics
- Marketing email automation tools
- Product performance reports
Managing contacts in Metrilo (Source: Metrilo)
To find out how Metrilo can enhance your team’s ecommerce efforts, visit our Metrilo reviews page.
Bottom Line
There are many types of CRM with contact management features available for your small business, but not all of them will be able to meet your specific needs. Therefore, it’s best to evaluate how you expect to leverage your contact list: for customer relationship management, email marketing, integration with other business productivity applications, or other reporting purposes.
Sales teams that want the most contact and customer relationship management bang for the buck should check out Freshsales. It features enriched customer profiles along with lead, account, contact, and deal management. Visit Freshsales today to sign up for a free account for unlimited users or a 21-day free trial of its paid plans.
Andrew Baker
Hi Jason,
Nice article.
You should really add contactzilla.com to your list of contact management software.
They help remote teams like Hawaii County manage their contacts and provide them with a single source of truth in disaster recovery periods. Pretty relevant in a time like now.
Best,
Andy
Amanda Norman
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for suggesting Contactzilla. We review and update buyer’s guides approximately once per year, so we’ll have another look before the next update.
You can also submit software suggestions to our reviews page. Just scroll to the bottom, fill out the form, and we’ll get back to you.
Thanks for stopping by!
Mandy, Moderator
Owen
are there any programs that allow contact with your customers via sms?
Jeremy Marsan
If you install the mobile app for any of the CRMs (Insightly, Zoho, Pipedrive) there’ll be a link to send an SMS to your contacts. Clicking this brings you out of the CRM to your regular texting app with the customer number pre-loaded.
If you want to send SMS from your desktop, I believe Zoho is the only program that can handle this. It requires an extension called SMS magic.
Rich Reeves
Great article, Gavin!
I recommend that you also check software/tools that can integrate CMS or CRM with phone systems. Tenfold is one of those tools. It can integrate Office 365 (https://www.tenfold.com/integrations/microsoft-office-365), Salesforce, Zendesk and other systems of record to different phone systems. Unifying these systems are crucial in making things more efficient and effective.
Gavin Graham
Thanks for the tip, Rich.
James
Nice article.
Maybe you could look at noCRM (http://www.nocrm.io.com) for your next review.
I use it to streamline my sales process and it always has a ‘to do next’, meaning I never forget to take action on a lead.
Gavin Graham
Hi James — thanks for the tip!
G
Jude
Thanks for the tips! Another one is GetResponse – it has marketing automation, email, and many other features.
Gavin Graham
Hi Jude,
Thanks for the tip! We’ll consider it for our next update of the guide.
G