The 6 Best Shopify CRM Integration Options in 2022
Jess served on the founding team of a successful B2B startup and has used a wide range of sales and marketing tools over the course of her 15-year career. She uses her industry knowledge to deliver the best answers to your questions about sales tools and sales management.
Jill is a writer at Fit Small Business specializing on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
This article is part of a larger series on CRM.
Integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software with Shopify is a must as your ecommerce store grows. The best Shopify CRMs allow you to better understand purchasing behaviors, market more effectively, and communicate with customers from the CRM through email, social media, and phone. We compared dozens of providers to find the six best CRM-Shopify integration options based on cost, features, and ease of use.
Check out each of the six top Shopify-friendly CRM software platforms below and their best use cases:
- Mailchimp: Overall best Shopify CRM, and top choice for retailers who rely on email marketing
- Zendesk Sell: Great choice for teams wanting a CRM with omnichannel customer service tools
- Zoho CRM: Top option for businesses wanting social media management tools
- HubSpot CRM: Best Shopify CRM for teams wanting to build customized product sales workflows
- Agile CRM: Best CRM for Shopify businesses that need more robust marketing automation tools
- Metrilo CRM: Outstanding CRM for Shopify sellers wanting seamless access to ecommerce analytics
Best Shopify CRMs Compared at a Glance
Provider | Free Plan | Free Trial for Paid Plans | Starting Price for Paid Plans* | Ecommerce Analytics | Help & Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Yes (1 user) | ✘ | ✔ | $19 per user, per month | Email, live chat, and phone support |
 | ✘ | 30 days | $19 per user, per month | ✔ | 24/5 email, live chat, and phone support |
 | Yes (Up to 3 users) | 15 days | $14 per user, per month | ✔ | Self-help guides, community forum, webinars, and tier-based customer support via email (24/7), phone and live chat (24/5) |
 | Yes (Unlimited users) | 14 days (content management system, or CMS, and Operations Hubs only) | $45 per month, includes 2 users seats, $23 per month for each additional user | ✔ | Community, knowledge base, HubSpot Academy; extended tier-based support via email, chat, and phone (7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time, M-F) |
 | Yes (Up to 10 users) | ✘ | $9.99 per user, per month | ✔ | Email only on free plan and phone on paid plans; no live chat |
 | Yes (Unlimited users) | 14 days | $99 per month | ✔ | Live chat and email support |
*Based on annual billing
If this list of Shopify CRM isn’t quite aligned to your business needs, check out our guide to the best ecommerce CRM platforms or the best CRMs for small businesses.
Mailchimp: Best Overall Shopify CRM & Robust Email Marketing Tools
Mailchimp
Overall Score: 4.40
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Robust email marketing tools that can be tailored based on customer behavior
- All plans include free marketing and commerce tools
- Feature-packed free plan up to 2,000 contacts with helpful tools like customer behavior analytics and personalized product recommendations
What's Missing
- No sales and pipeline management tools
- Expensive to scale as costs quickly add up based on the number of subscribers
Pricing Summary*
- Free: Up to 2,000 contacts (limited features and templates)
- Essentials: Starts at $11 per month**
- Standard: Starts at $17 per month**
- Premium: Starts at $299 per month
- Websites and Commerce: From $0 to $29 per month
- Transactional Emails: Starts at $20 per month
*Based on monthly billing
**Starting price for 500 contacts
Our pick for the best Shopify CRM overall, Mailchimp is also one of the leading email marketing tools in the market. Through its easy integration with Shopify, you can market more effectively to prospects and customers using custom and prebuilt audience segments. Based on audience segmentation, you can send marketing emails like prospect offers, new subscriber welcomes, coupons and time-limited deals, order updates, and repeat buyer rewards.
Mailchimp’s email marketing tool is guided by its Customer Journey Builder, which helps users send relevant content based on customers’ actions and behavior. These are helpful when sending abandoned cart reminders to potential buyers or winning back inactive customers with promotional emails. It also allows you to create emails with personalized suggestions based on the purchase history of your customers with relevant product recommendations.
Since Mailchimp is not a traditional CRM, it does not offer deal and sales pipeline management tools. Another major setback is its pricing model—the cost adds up quickly as your subscribers, contacts, and emails increase. However, with effective email marketing, your return on investment may be well worth the expense.
If you want a CRM tool with fundamental CRM features, we recommend subscribing to Zoho CRM. Meanwhile, if you need a more affordable allocation for emails and contacts, your best option is HubSpot CRM.
Mailchimp Features
Mailchimp’s integration with Shopify helps users bring together their sales and marketing data all in a centralized platform. Check out some of its standout features below:
- Customer lifetime value: Historical data provides analysis of purchase behavior, which then allows you to create customer segments based on how likely they are to spend, so you can gain insights to reward VIPs or bring occasional buyers back.
- Contact profiles: Helps users understand their contacts on a deeper level by allowing them to check individual contact profiles and get insights from their actions—like whether they took advantage of past promotions, which devices they used, or what products they purchased.
- Subject line helper: An interactive tool that provides feedback on word and character count, as well as emoji and punctuations to use to help users draft catchy and effective email subject lines.
- Split testing: Allows you to test up to three email variations for a campaign, including elements like subject lines, images, layouts, and time and day of the week sent.
Mailchimp’s integration with Shopify lets users create interactive, professional-grade emails to customers, including product photos, price, and link to product page. (Source: Mailchimp)
Mailchimp’s customer journey builder is a workflow automation tool that triggers emails and actions based on the customer’s behavior. (Source: Mailchimp)
Mailchimp offers email marketing, basic contact management, surveys, and social posting functionalities. It provides a range of plans for small businesses that give them access to an extensive template library that makes it easy to create professional-looking email marketing emails for their business. Find out more by reading our article on how to use Mailchimp for email marketing.
Zendesk Sell: Best Shopify CRM for Omnichannel Customer Service Communication
Zendesk Sell
Overall Score: 4.36
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Communicate with customers through email, phone, and text from the CRM
- Detailed customer profiles include purchase history, web activity, and loyalty status
- Robust customer service analytics and reporting tools
What's Missing
- No free plan
- Lowest-priced plan lacks key features like lead scoring, task automation, and bulk emailing
Pricing Summary*
- Sell Team: $19 per user, per month
- Sell Professional: $49 per user, per month
- Sell Enterprise: $99 per user, per month
- Free trial: 30 days
*Only an annual contract is available
Zendesk Sell provides various omnichannel communication tools such as email, an in-app phone dialer, and SMS for convenient customer outreach. These tools are particularly useful for Shopify users who want to integrate their online store to a CRM system with channels that enable them to answer customer queries, facilitate requests, or address complaints while logging them in the CRM system.
Apart from allowing users to manage diverse communication channels, Zendesk Sell also has reporting capabilities that cover several areas, such as sales forecasting, goal tracking, email campaign performance, call analytics, and agent performance. As far as other Shopify CRM alternatives, Zendesk Sell does not offer a free plan—unlike HubSpot CRM and Zoho CRM.
Zendesk Sell also lacks the marketing tools users can get by subscribing to either Mailchimp or Agile CRM. Finally, sales features like lead scoring and workflow automations are lacking at the lowest tier, but you will find both in the free version of Zoho CRM.
Zendesk Sell Features
Zendesk Sell streamlines account and project management by automatically tracking all of your activities and logging them into the system. Some of our favorite functionalities include:
- Prospect list building: Build targeted lead lists using industry, company size, and role, and automate outreach to leads on your lists with its integrated communications tools.
- Lead scoring: Define scoring formulas, such as level of engagement or job titles, to quickly prioritize which leads are most likely to convert into paying customers.
- Easy customer data access: Access relevant customer Shopify data such as order information, billing, and shipping within Zendesk Sell.
- Task automation: Create triggers to set tasks automatically and assign them to specific agents based on their expertise or availability.
Zendesk Sell’s Shopify integration provides access to important customer data, such as order history and open tickets, from a single platform. (Source: Zendesk Sell)
Zendesk Sell enables businesses to manage and optimize their sales processes through its excellent lead management capabilities, mobile application, and communication tools. It also has an advanced mobile CRM application and a user-friendly interface. To learn more about its features and functionalities, read our Zendesk Sell review.
Zoho CRM: Best Shopify CRM With Social Media Management Tools
Zoho CRM
Overall Score: 4.34
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Communicate with customers over social media from the CRM platform
- Two-way data syncing of orders, inventory, and product lists
- Intuitive and easy to use; ideal for novice users
What's Missing
- Free plan is limited to 3 users
- Advanced analytics tools are only available in the top-tier plans
Pricing Summary*
- Free plan: Up to 3 users
- Standard: $14 per user, per month
- Professional: $23 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $40 per user, per month
- Ultimate: $52 per user, per month
- Free trial: 15 days
*Based on annual billing. Monthly subscriptions are also available at higher rates.
Zoho CRM is a robust, all-in-one CRM solution with extensive social media marketing tools. Through Shopify-CRM integration, Shopify sellers can communicate with customers via social media messaging channels from the CRM. They can also perform other social activities including monitoring customer feedback, brand mentions, and adding leads from social media straight into the CRM system.
Additionally, Zoho CRM’s Shopify integration lets users manage customer data in a unified platform. This includes two-way data synchronization on product quantity and inventory, as well as the processing of new orders, cancellations, and refunds.
However, Zoho CRM’s free plan is limited to only three users, and its advanced analytics features are locked into the more expensive pricing plans. For users who prefer unlimited user allocation in their free plan, HubSpot CRM is the best option. Meanwhile, those who want access to affordable plans with robust reporting and analytics tools should subscribe to Agile CRM.
Zoho CRM Features
Zoho CRM has a rich feature set that helps users with everything from lead generation to streamlining workflows and closing deals. Read our top feature picks from the platform:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) prediction tools: Zoho CRM’s AI tool, called Zia, can perform tasks such as scoring leads, giving task suggestions based on the status of activities, and suggesting workflows.
- Sales forecasting: Analyzes both your current and historical forecasting and performance data to recommend the most accurate targets for your business.
- CRM reports and analytics: Data-driven reports offer insights on a variety of metrics such as sales performance, trends, marketing campaigns, and activity reports.
- Mobile app: The Zoho CRM mobile app makes it easy to add prospect record notes, communicate with leads, and keep track of targets.
Zoho CRM’s integration with Shopify lets users see the details of orders made through the ecommerce platform, including customer name, order name, amount, and payment status. (Source: Zoho CRM)
Zoho CRM provides users with a centralized platform where they can manage sales force automation, workflows, CRM reports, inventory, and emails. It is also ideal for users with no technical background as it has an intuitive interface with simplified admin controls. To discover if this provider is the right choice for you, learn more in our Zoho CRM review.
HubSpot CRM: Best Shopify CRM for Custom Product Workflows
HubSpot CRM
Overall Score: 4.00
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Create multiple product workflows based on customer actions
- Feature-rich free plan that includes things like an in-app dialer and bulk email sending
- Provides users with a 1 million-contact allocation
What's Missing
- Free plan doesn’t offer email campaign performance insights
- Steep increases to access higher-tier plans
Pricing Summary*
- Free: Unlimited user allocation
- Starter Sales Plan: $45 per month for 2 user seats
- Professional Sales Plan: $450 per month for 5 user seats
- Enterprise Sales Plan: $1,200 per month for 10 user seats
- Free trial: 14 days
*Based on annual billing. Monthly subscriptions are also available at higher rates.
HubSpot CRM’s Shopify integration enables the creation of custom workflows by analyzing customers’ interactions with your site, products, and deals. For example, HubSpot CRM can customize a workflow when a customer scanned your online store but did not make a purchase. The system can trigger abandoned cart email nurturing, smart “calls to action” (CTAs) in content, and product-specific re-engagement ads.
In addition, once integrated, ecommerce reports will also be added to your account. This allows you to generate reports that track orders and customer engagement, such as average order value, best sellers, low-performing products, and abandoned carts.
However, HubSpot’s free plan lacks data-backed insights for email campaigns (unlike Mailchimp). Furthermore, higher-tier plans are relatively expensive, which makes it a drawback for small businesses that are steadily growing and startups planning to quickly scale. For more budget-friendly options across pricing plans, Zoho CRM is the best Shopify CRM integration.
HubSpot CRM Features
HubSpot CRM offers extensive sales tools to help users manage customer relationships more effectively, from prospecting and converting leads to closing sales and retaining relationships. Check out some of its best features below:
- Email marketing: Excellent email marketing tools for users who need to send professional-looking marketing emails to expand their customer base.
- Task management: Set up a series of follow-up tasks to better manage multiple clients and projects.
- Sales and lead prospecting: See when leads visit your website in real-time and determine which prospects are the most engaged so sales agents know who to prioritize.
- Live chat: Communicate with your Shopify store visitors in real time using live chat.
HubSpot CRM’s custom workflows automate next-best actions needed for different situations, including engagement for first-time customers, abandoned carts, and inactive customers. (Source: HubSpot CRM)
HubSpot is a free CRM that offers users a centralized, user-friendly interface to manage customer data, understand their behavior, and increase satisfaction and retention rates. It is a great Shopify CRM for those looking for solid CRM functionality, email marketing tools, and time-saving workflow automations. Check out our HubSpot CRM review to learn more about what it can do for your business.
Agile CRM: Best Shopify CRM for Marketing Automation
Agile CRM
Overall Score: 3.74
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Extensive marketing tools, such as multichannel marketing via email, text, social media, and landing pages
- Useful CRM analytics that includes customer behavior and website statistics
- Free plan for up to 10 users
What's Missing
- User reviews suggest support quality can be improved
- In-app dialer is only available in paid plans
Pricing Summary*
- Free: Supports up to 10 users
- Starter: $9.99 per user, per month
- Regular: $39.99 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $64.99 per user, per month
*Based on annual billing. Monthly subscriptions are also available at slightly higher rates.
Agile CRM features an extensive set of marketing automation tools to help Shopify ecommerce businesses increase sales and engage with customers. This is made easy with a drag-and-drop marketing campaign builder that lets you create multistep marketing workflows visually.
The platform also allows you to schedule auto-responders and follow-up messages based on time or contact actions, while its mobile marketing tool can be programmed to send personalized short message service (SMS) messages to prospects. In addition, the CRM-Shopify integration enables you to create coupons to boost sales and send surveys to collect feedback in order to improve your marketing results.
While Agile CRM is an ideal Shopify CRM for users who need extensive marketing automation tools, its free plan lacks an in-app dialer, and some users don’t find its support team reliable. Users who need access to an in-app dialer for free should check out HubSpot CRM, while those who want a more reliable customer support team should consider Zoho CRM.
Agile CRM Features
Agile CRM unifies your sales, marketing, and customer service tools in one platform, and is accessible via desktop and mobile. Some of the features we find most beneficial include:
- Contact-level analytics: Analyze customer interests and web engagement patterns, such as products deleted and pages visited, and turn them into real-time activity reports.
- Exit-intent pop-ups: Set web rules to trigger campaigns in response to store visitors in real time and for past behavior, like sending personalized and targeted messages to your visitors the moment they are about to abandon their cart.
- Task management: Use a drag-and-drop Kanban board project management tool to sort tasks based on priority, due date, owner, or status.
- Lead behavior tracking on social: Maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing automation campaigns by tracking the social behavior of leads and customers.
Agile CRM provides Shopify users with various marketing tools, such as a landing page builder and promotional pop-ups to reach customers in various ways. (Source: Agile CRM)
Agile CRM is ideal for Shopify users who need a CRM that offers a well-rounded view of customers and provides fundamental lead and deal management features. Integrated sales, marketing, and customer service tools help businesses make informed decisions by centralizing all data and interactions across the customer journey. Read our Agile CRM review to learn more about the pros and cons of using this software.
Metrilo: Best Shopify CRM for Ecommerce Analytics Access
Metrilo
Overall Score: 3.70
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- In-depth ecommerce analytics and advanced customer data
- All plans support an unlimited number of users
- Offers abandoned cart email campaigns and unlimited emails
What's Missing
- No free plan; can be budget prohibitive for startups and small businesses
- No mobile app
Pricing Summary*
- Essential: $99 per month
- Pro: $165 per month
- Premium: $249 per month
- Free trial: 14 days
*Based on annual billing. Monthly subscriptions are also available at slightly higher rates.
Metrilo is an ecommerce CRM. It has robust analytics tools to monitor and evaluate Shopify store performance by tracking marketing campaign performance, engagement metrics, and sales attribution. The CRM-Shopify integration allows Shopify sellers to monitor marketing channels, referrals, influencers, and coupon codes easily to better optimize their marketing spending and allocate budgets on channels that bring in the most revenue.
Metrilo’s ecommerce analytics tools provide a detailed overview of your store’s income sources, including revenue from new versus returning customers, social media leads, and country and city of purchases. Metrilo also offers product analysis reports so you know how your products perform in terms of views, purchases, and cart abandonment.
The most significant disadvantage of Metrilo is its pricing scheme. While larger teams can make it work because of its unlimited user allocation, it can be expensive for startups and small businesses that keep costs down with per-user subscriptions. For the best Shopify CRM for this, we recommend subscribing to either Zoho CRM or Agile CRM instead, where startups and small operations can even access higher tiers without breaking the bank.
Another drawback is its lack of a mobile app, which is crucial for users who don’t always have desktop access. Users who are on the go and need a reliable mobile app to access their CRM data should subscribe to Zoho CRM.
Metrilo Features
Metrilo is specifically designed as a CRM system for ecommerce store owners, which makes it an ideal Shopify CRM. It offers powerful tools to help you understand your customers’ buying behavior. Below are some tools that help users create better strategies to develop products and retain customers:
- Automated product bundle suggestions: Shows which products get ordered together or instead of one another to help you create high-performing product bundles.
- Rich customer profiles: Shows customers’ behavior, orders, money spent, and products bought, as well as basic contact information like name, address, and location.
- Customer segmentation: Segment users based on actions such as store site visits, interaction with specific products, coupons used, or total amount purchased.
- Customer retention analysis: Provides insights on which campaigns and products stimulate customer loyalty, and helps you better prepare for seasonal changes as well as cyclical ups and downs with accumulated year-on-year behavior data.
Metrilo provides processed data and insights to users so they don’t have to manually read the raw data reports to come up with potential opportunities for their business. (Source: Metrilo)
How We Evaluated the Best Shopify CRM
In other words, CRM platforms can store and analyze your customers’ shopping data and behavior, which gives you a data-backed basis for personalizing your marketing campaigns at every stage of the customer journey to make them more effective. The integration of your CRM with Shopify provides access to data-backed insights as to what your customers truly want.
Mailchimp is our top choice for ecommerce businesses looking for the best Shopify CRM. It’s the top option because of its no-frills contact management features, intuitive interface, behavior analysis, landing page builder, marketing automations, and multichannel support. In particular, its robust email marketing goes hand in hand with ecommerce selling success―and you can try Mailchimp for free, so there’s no risk.
The tabs below offer more insight into our evaluation process for selecting the best Shopify CRM integration options:
40%
Pricing
20%
General Features
15%
Ease of Use
15%
Support
10%
Expert Score
40% of Overall Score
Cost is always an important factor, so CRM pricing was the most heavily weighted when reviewing our top picks for Shopify sellers. We also considered the availability of a free plan, pricing of entry tiers, savings for annual prepayment, and whether or not monthly billing options are available.
20% of Overall Score
The quality of its integration with Shopify was one of our main deciding factors. We evaluated the overall set of features that come with CRM-Shopify integration, including customizable pipelines, reporting, and analytics. In addition, we looked at the availability of a mobile app and third-party integrations.
15% of Overall Score
User-friendliness and intuitiveness were two of our key considerations when looking into a software’s ease of use. This was analyzed in terms of the expertise needed to integrate it with Shopify, the skill required to operate the system, and the overall usability.
15% of Overall Score
Support is a critical part of running any CRM system, especially for small businesses that don’t have in-house technical support. We analyzed the types and availability of support offered by these providers through live chat, email, and phone.
10% of Overall Score
We looked through existing customer reviews on credible sites to measure the level of satisfaction current users have and any problems they typically encounter. We also added our thoughts and expert opinion on key features, value for money, and popularity.
*Percentages of overall score
