The 10 Best CRMs for Small Business 2019

Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps businesses manage relationships with customers and prospects using sales pipelines and other organizational tools. We compared dozens of products to determine the 10 best CRMs for small businesses in terms of price, features, integrations, and reporting, arriving at the best overall option based on your small business needs.

Top 10 CRMs for Small Business 2019

Which CRM is Best for You?

How We Evaluated the Best CRM for Small Business

The best CRM for small business should be relatively inexpensive and provide a simple process for managing and tracking customers and prospects. Upgrade plans should allow companies to expand efficiently and include features such as process automation, system integrations, email marketing, customization, and advanced reporting.

Here are the criteria we used to evaluate the best CRM for small business:

• Price: Monthly user costs should not exceed about $80 per user, and we considered the overall features for the price to determine the best value. We also looked at providers that offer free plans and trials to get started.
• Contact management: Creating, editing, and searching for contacts should be simple and integrated with functions such as email, phone calls, and other tasks.
• Deal and opportunity management: Deal and pipeline creation should be customizable, visualize, and easy to manage.
• Workflow automation: These features automate functions such as the sales process, follow-up tasks, and other reminders.
• Reporting tools: Reporting tools track data such as sales, rep activities, and forecasting.
• System integrations: A good CRM will integrate with other software such as accounting, ecommerce, and marketing.
• Customization: Customization of items such as contact fields, opportunity fields, pipelines, and sales processes is typically standard with high-tiered plans.
• Customer satisfaction: CRMs should have mostly positive user reviews and multichannel customer support options.

Based on these criteria, we determined Freshsales is the best CRM for small businesses because it’s a fully featured and competitively priced solution that is easy to use and completely customizable. Freshsales also has great lead management capabilities and a built-in phone system, making it particularly best for field sales teams or consulting businesses with longer sales cycles.

Best Overall CRM for Small Business: Freshsales

Freshsales is a fully featured and customizable CRM offering contact and lead management designed for businesses with long sales cycles. It offers a basic free plan and three paid options from $12 to $49 per user, per month. You can even make calls or send emails without leaving the tool, and it is great for business-to-business (B2B) teams that want highly customizable CRM software or that have remote users.

Freshsales Pricing

Freshsales offers a free forever plan for unlimited users with basic contact management and a built-in phone system. Additional functionality, including deal management, bulk emailing, advanced analytics, and additional integrations with third-party apps, are available in its paid plans, which range from a competitive $12 per user, per month to $49 per user, per month.

Freshsales Tiered Features

Sprout

The Sprout plan is Freshsales’ free entry-level plan; it provides basic sales management functions such as lead, deal, and contact management. It also offers rules-based scoring to help you better prioritize lead follow-up (not often found in the other free plans we compared) and web-to-lead capture forms that can help speed up the data entry process. Its mobile version shows your calendar and appointments at a glance and will even summon an Uber for you.

Missing are the reporting and email marketing functions found in Agile CRM and Bitrix24’s free plans. While there is no limit on the number of users, the Sprout plan is best for teams looking for an affordable tool that can manage their contact relationship details, tasks, and appointments but don’t require more robust marketing, opportunity tracking, or reporting features.

Blossom

The Blossom plan costs $12 per user, per month, which is in line with the other entry-level paid plans we compared. In addition to helping you manage your contact relationships, this plan offers opportunity management, bulk emails with templates, and email tracking, making it a powerful alternative compared to CRMs like Salesforce that are designed for larger businesses. It also lets you dial contacts and log your phone call activities without a third-party integration.

The Blossom plan does not include custom reporting like what’s found in Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, and Bitrix24 at a similar price. Therefore, the Blossom plan is best for individuals or highly independent sales teams that want to track their calls or send mass emails.

Garden

The Garden plan provides the team management functionality the Blossom plan lacks for $25 per user, per month. This plan also automates the lead process by allowing lead assignment and automated routing, which is a feature only offered by Insightly and Zoho CRM. The Garden plan, however, does not allow you to create custom sales activities like you can do with the Estate plan, nor does it provide time-based workflows or include a dashboard.

However, it does include multiple sales pipelines, configurable dashboards, and lead assignment rules. For these reasons, the Garden plan is best for sales teams that have different teams (e.g., inside, outside, renewal) handling multiple leads that want the ability to see sales productivity to make data-driven decisions.

Estate

The Estate plan, which costs $49 per user, per month, includes dashboards as part of its reporting features and extends the tool’s contact relationship management and lead scoring functionality, such as giving you a way to trace and prioritize a lead based on a contact’s activities on your website. Users also have more ability to customize their sales processes than offered by the lower-tiered plans.

This makes it a good fit for sales teams that want to better use their website as part of their lead prioritization strategy. However, while these additional features are great, the plan can be expensive for small teams. Therefore, if you need a highly customizable sales process and don’t need features like call logging, voicemail recording, or website activity analytics, you may also want to consider Pipedrive.

Freshsales customer interface

What Freshsales Is Missing

Freshsales lacks the ability to issue quotes, manage orders, and invoice directly in the tool. Nor does it include pricing books, which is a feature Zoho CRM provides, or product statistics, like Pipedrive does. For this reason, Freshsales may not be the best choice for businesses that manage inventory (such as retail or distribution) or offer catalog-style pricing for products or services.

What Users Think About Freshsales

Freshsales users like the deals page and how Freshsales displays the entire sales process. They praise the customer service for technical support and how easy it is to customize the CRM. However, they give the tool lower marks for the quality of the standard reports, and have complained that the software can be slow depending on the internet connection. You can read more in-depth reviews on our Freshsales review page.

Where to Find Freshsales

Freshsales is the overall best CRM software for B2B businesses. It can also help you manage your relationships with very little setup time and without the need to employ someone with prior CRM knowledge. Freshsales offers a free forever plan, and paid plans start at $12 per user, per month. Be sure to also check out their 30-day free trial.

Visit Freshsales

Best CRM for Social Media Management: Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is an all-in-one small business CRM with sales management and a robust social media suite, which allows you to incorporate social media into your relationship management, tracking interactions, and publishing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. There’s a free plan and paid plans starting at $12 per user, per month. This makes it perfect for sales teams wanting an affordable way to prospect and connect with leads on social media sites.

Zoho CRM Pricing

Zoho CRM offers a free plan for up to three users that includes contact and opportunity management and social media connections. Additional sales and social functionality and customizations are offered through paid plans ranging between $12 per user, per month and $20 per user, per month, keeping it in line with other products we compared.

Zoho CRM Tiered Features

Free

Zoho CRM’s Free plan supports up to three users and includes lead and contact management like the other CRM products we compared. It also has unique activity tracking features, such as phone logging and social media connections, which are not available on many other free plans. The Free plan, however, lacks the ability to route leads to specific users, manage orders, or customize the interface.

It also lacks email marketing, unlike the free plans from Agile CRM and Bitrix24. Therefore, the Free plan is best for teams of three or less that require little customization but want to track their social media interactions. It is also best for teams that manage their quotes and orders through another accounting tool.

Standard

The Standard plan costs $12 per user, per month and allows users to add custom fields and create custom reports that can then be scheduled and delivered to users. It comes with Social Lite, a social media management suite allowing unlimited publishing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

It also allows you to send bulk emails, track website visitors, and forecast sales, which is a feature not found in any of the other plans at this price. Email insights provide real-time monitoring of email deliveries, bounces, and opens. The Standard plan is, therefore, best for sales teams that want more insights into a lead’s behavior as well as being able to track emails, social media, and visitor tracking.

Professional

The Professional plan offers product management functionality, like Pipedrive, but also offers purchase order and invoice management. It costs $20 per user, per month, keeping it in line with similar product pricing tiers. The Professional plan also includes access to Zoho CRM’s proprietary SalesSignals functionality, which automates lead scoring, helps you better prioritize lead follow-up, and lets you add up to 150 custom fields per module.

Its custom field offering and conditional follow-up rules that can be tied to CRM field updates make it great for teams looking for either a tool with a high degree of customization potential or workflow automation. The Professional plan is also best for those who would like to capture leads directly from social media.

Tracking social interactions in Zoho CRM

What Zoho CRM Is Missing

Zoho CRM’s included storage of 1GB per user is paltry; even though you can add additional storage at a cost, it can add up quickly. Pipedrive, by contrast, offers unlimited storage on all of their accounts. While users have the ability to customize contact and opportunity fields, it is not as easy to customize the sales pipeline process, nor does it include the project management capability of Zoho alternatives like Insightly.

What Users Think About Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM users report that the tool makes it easy to customize, track prospects, and set future tasks. They say data is easy to import from existing CRM software, making the switch less painful. However, they do say that technical support could be improved. Fixes and new features are slow to roll out and the user interface could be easier to navigate. For more user reviews, you can visit our Zoho CRM review page.

Where to Find Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM allows you to engage with your contacts on whatever channel works best for them. Its customization and extended integration make it a great solution for teams that depend on being able to adapt their sales techniques to match the next social media trend. Best of all, you can give Zoho a try for as long as you would like by signing up for a free account on their website.

Visit Zoho CRM

Best CRM for Visual Pipeline Management: Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a small business CRM designed to simplify the sales pipeline process. Pipedrive’s highly intuitive and easy-to-use pipeline management tool gives you the ability to see what is in your sales pipeline at a glance while helping to manage sales of standardized products and services. Starting at $12.50 per user, per month, Pipedrive is best for teams wanting a highly visual and user-friendly pipeline to manage sales.

Pipedrive Pricing

Pipedrive offers three tiered plans that range between $12.50 per user, per month and $49.17 per user, per month. This makes Pipedrive slightly more expensive than other products we compared, and there is no forever free plan. Pipedrive does offer a free trial, allowing you to test it out before you buy.

Pipedrive Tiered Features

Silver

The Silver plan costs $12.50 per user, per month and includes Pipedrive’s visual pipeline homepage as well as contact management and a configurable report. Like Freshsales, Pipedrive is easy to customize, even in its entry-level plan, giving you the option of creating a unique process to fit the needs of your business. It allows for unlimited storage and unlimited pipelines, a combo not found in any of the other CRM software we reviewed.

There is, however, no lead scoring like what’s found in Freshsales and Zoho CRM. As a result, the Silver plan is best for businesses looking for a way to better manage their leads as well as their contacts, but don’t require lead scoring. It is also best for those who want a software program that is tailored to their individual processes rather than being forced to adapt their process to the tool.

Gold

The Gold Plan adds email tracking capability to Pipedrive’s contact management platform as well as the meeting and task scheduler not found in the Silver plan. The Gold plan also provides account insights that can help you better focus your follow-up efforts on the leads who are most ready to buy. Unlike most of the CRMs we compared, Pipedrive also provides insights into your products, such as sales splits and average discount, helping you identify your best performers.

At $24.20 per user, per month, the Gold plan is best for teams that want to take advantage of Pipedrive’s visual pipeline with additional analytics. It is also best for those who want to better manage their sales tasks and efforts with its built-in scheduling tool.

Platinum

The Platinum plan offers the same features as the Gold plan but includes additional sales forecasting functionality and advanced reporting features for $49.17 per user, per month. The plan also lets you set specific permissions-based on roles, which is something only Freshsales also does out of the products we compared, giving you more control over what your team needs to do or see. It also comes with access to live phone support.

As the Platinum’s chief benefit over the less expensive plans is its additional analytics, role-based permissions, and support, it is best for hierarchical teams and those that have truly unique requirements for sales management. However, it is also the most expensive plan on our list.

Pipedrive contact interface

What Pipedrive Is Missing

Pipedrive lacks lead assignment and lead-based routing, which makes it a less viable alternative for account-based sales requiring multiple points of contacts. While leads can be prioritized based on time since last contact, it does not have lead scoring like what’s found in Freshsales and Zoho CRM, or project management as offered by Insightly. Pipedrive also lacks a mass marketing email feature like those found in other tools we compared.

What Users Think About Pipedrive

While Pipedrive may not be as feature-rich as some of the others, what it does, it does well. Users of the software like its user-friendly interface, available integrations with other third-party tools, and short learning curve. You can read more about Pipedrive and what other users are saying on our Pipedrive review page.

Where to Find Pipedrive

Pipedrive simplifies the sales process while giving you a means of managing your contact relationships. While other tools require several clicks to navigate deals and locate specific customer activities, Pipedrive organizes information in easy-to-digest visual homepages. Get started with Pipedrive’s easy-to-use, visual pipeline by trying it free.

Visit Pipedrive

Best Free, Full-featured CRM for Small Businesses: HubSpot

HubSpot is a free contact management application with 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 the Sales and Marketing Hubs for additional automation features. This makes it a great option for budget-conscious businesses of any size needing basic CRM software for contact and lead management.

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot is the best free CRM and supports an unlimited number of users. As your business grows, you can add additional sales and marketing functionality through the Sales Hub and Marketing Hub, which range from $50 per month to $800 per month depending on the specific features added.

HubSpot Features

HubSpot CRM’s best feature is its simplistic user interface, making it easy to learn. For very small businesses or first-time CRM users, HubSpot’s free plan is an ideal introduction to basic CRM features such as contact management and lead or deal tracking. The live chat and bots are a nice customer service and lead generation feature. And with over 200 integration options, it has one of the largest app ecosystems of those we reviewed.

HubSpot’s key features include:

Form-based Lead Capture

HubSpot CRM includes the ability to embed forms on your website and capture data entered into existing website forms using a tracking code. While this feature can be found in other CRMs, most do not offer them in their free versions. Contacts captured as leads can then be entered into automated marketing campaigns, making HubSpot an economical option for businesses that use landing pages to generate leads.

Contact Management

HubSpot CRM includes the ability to organize contacts by company and provides insights such as a newly added contact’s recent activity on your website. As a cloud-based CRM, HubSpot also auto-enriches profiles based on information it pulls from social profiles and information it knows about companies. HubSpot also scores leads based on both profile information and website activity, which is something other free options offer only in a limited manner.

Lead & Task Management

HubSpot CRM gives you the ability to schedule tasks for follow-up and allows you to create workflows to handle regular marketing tasks. Compared to other free plans available from options on this list, these tools are more intuitive in moving leads through the sales process. HubSpot also includes a free embeddable chat tool that allows you to use conversational bots to prequalify leads that engage on your website, similar to the FreshChat feature.

System Integrations

HubSpot CRM integrates with Gmail and Outlook, making it easy to add contacts to the CRM. It also automatically updates contacts with their social media handles. However, it does not automatically log social media interactions like Zoho CRM does, unless you pay for the Marketing Hub’s $200 per month Basic plan.

The Chrome email extension automatically pulls in company, contact, and activity data for contacts. HubSpot CRM also integrates with hundreds of other third-party products like Mailchimp, UberConference, and Slack. These integrations can greatly extend HubSpot’s functionality without requiring businesses to upgrade to the company’s Sales, Marketing, or Service Hub plans. However, these integrations may require additional paid subscriptions.

Customer Service & Ease of Use

HubSpot offers a comprehensive online knowledge base, including an extensive library of tutorials called “HubSpot Academy,” as well as an active community of users who offer support and answer people’s questions. However, it should be noted that email, live chat, and phone support are only available to users with a paid package. If you’re using their free package, support is limited to self-service options.

HubSpot contact interface

What HubSpot Is Missing

The main disadvantages of HubSpot CRM are that some features that you get with alternatives to HubSpot, such as workflow management and customer support, are only available if you subscribe to one of their paid packages. Also, if you decide to upgrade to their advanced package, pricing starts at $50 per user, per month. This puts it in the range of more robust CRMs with built-in marketing, project management, and other business applications.

What Users Think About HubSpot

HubSpot CRM users are highly complimentary of its ease of use but wish the product offered more reports and workflow automation. Some users complain that it doesn’t sync with Google and Outlook calendars, and that’s a fair criticism that HubSpot is evidently working on. You can read more on our HubSpot CRM review page.

Where to Find HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is a good option for businesses that need free software to help them manage their contacts but don’t want to spend a lot of time learning how to use the features of their CRM. You can get started using HubSpot CRM by visiting their website and signing up for your free forever account today.

Visit HubSpot

Best Small Business CRM With Enterprise-class Features: Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is a powerful, small business CRM with features like contact management, sales opportunities, mass emails, and customer service ticketing starting at $25 per user, per month. The Salesforce ecosystem offers an extensive suite of software, including support, marketing automation, ecommerce, and analytics apps, and it is especially suited to small businesses that need advanced features like territory-based lead assignment and reporting.

Salesforce Essentials Pricing

Salesforce Essentials is $25 per user, per month for up to 10 users, which includes both the Sales and Service modules. Salesforce also offers the Professional edition for $75 per user, per month, which includes advanced features like lead scoring, forecasting tools, and campaigns. Salesforce offers a 14-day free trial of the Essentials plan.

Salesforce Essentials Tiered Features

Salesforce Essentials

Sales Essentials is $25 per user, per month and includes contact management, sales pipelines, deal management, and mass email features for up to 10 users. Essentials is built on Salesforce’s Lightning platform, which is a much more intuitive and user-friendly interface than the Classic version. In addition, the Essentials plan includes the Service module, allowing small businesses to manage both the sales process as well as customer support cases.

Salesforce’s entry-level plan is more expensive than other options on the list. However, it includes a comprehensive set of advanced CRM features, including territory management and automated lead assignment. While Salesforce does not offer a free plan, Essentials is ideal for businesses that need a robust set of CRM features to manage sales leads across different geographic territories or industries.

Salesforce Professional

Salesforce Professional is $75 per user, per month, and offers more of the advanced software as a service (SaaS) features people associate with Salesforce. It is the SaaS CRM platform used by more businesses than any other option. Its advanced features include lead scoring, sales forecasting, and advanced reporting and permission features.

This plan includes more functionality than any of the other options we reviewed, though it is also the most expensive option we considered. As a result, the Professional plan is best for larger sales teams, especially those with territory or industry-specific sales reps or established B2B sales teams that manage high-level sales opportunities needing a reliable cloud-based application.

Salesforce sales opportunity interface

What Salesforce Essentials Is Missing

The Salesforce Essentials plan does not allow you to add more than 10 users to your account, requiring an expensive upgrade to the Professional Edition for larger teams. Salesforce Essentials also lacks rules-based lead scoring as well as product and invoicing features, both of which are found in other CRMs on this list.

What Users Think About Salesforce Essentials

Users give Essentials high marks for the Lightning user interface, saying it is far more intuitive than the legacy Salesforce Classic interface, and rate it highly for advanced features and customization options. However, users note that Salesforce often requires extensive setup and training, making it less accessible for teams without dedicated tech or administrative support. Visit our complete Salesforce review page for more user reviews.

Where to Find Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is a powerful CRM designed to provide small businesses with access to many of the cloud-based features of Salesforce, like territory-rules assignment and performance reporting, in a more affordable package. It is ideal for sales teams that want a small business CRM with enterprise-class features. Visit Salesforce to sign up for your 14-day trial today.

Visit Salesforce

Best CRM With Built-in Mobile Calling Features: Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell, formerly known as BaseCRM, is a fully-featured CRM that includes contact and deal management features as well as a great mobile app with built-in calling functionality, and has plans starting at $19 per user, per month. Zendesk Sell is also part of the overall Zendesk suite, which includes a help desk, chat, analytics, and IT management. The mobile app makes it the best choice for field sales teams that need built-in mobile calling and call recording.

Zendesk Sell Pricing

Zendesk Sell plans begin at a comparable $19 per user, per month, which includes contact management, deals, and a mobile CRM app featuring click-to-dial calling and call recording. Plans which include tools like bulk emailing, sales forecasting, and lead scoring are available at $49 per user, per month and $99 per user, per month.

Zendesk Sell Tiered Features

Team

The Team plan costs $19 per user, per month (up to three users) and includes contact management, deals, and one of the best mobile CRM apps of all the options we’ve looked at. It features built-in voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) calling and call recording. Other mobile CRM apps allow click-to-call but use the phone’s dialer and carrier services, whereas Zendesk Sell uses its own VoIP service.

Zendesk Sell is also a part of the overall Zendesk ecosystem of apps that include help desk, chat, knowledge base, and now a CRM. As a result, users are able to integrate their sales process and contacts within a robust suite of applications that help users manage the entire customer relationship. The Team plan specifically is ideal for small teams such as consultants or service-based businesses.

Professional

The Professional plan is $49 per user, per month, and includes advanced features like sales forecasting, sales goals, and advanced analytics. Zendesk Sell also includes email features like mass emailing and unlimited email templates. While the Professional plan is one of the more expensive options on this list, the user interface and setup are more intuitive and updated than many of its competitors, making it much easier to configure reporting and dashboards.

Zendesk acquired BaseCRM to specifically target larger business customers with a complete software as a service (SaaS), competing directly with both Salesforce and Zoho. The Professional plan is a good choice for larger teams that want in-app calling and a powerful and well-designed mobile app for their field sales reps, and want to integrate their entire customer relationship within one software ecosystem.

Enterprise

The Enterprise plan provides users with the ability to add additional sales pipelines, a product catalog, and lead and deal scoring for $99 per user, per month. It also includes the ability to create customized call scripts for sales reps to use as they interact with prospects and leads. The Enterprise plan offers some of the most advanced CRM options we looked at, and more directly competes with Salesforce Professional than the other CRMs on this list.

Field sales teams will find that the mobile app calling and call scripts are valuable tools for connecting with a large number of prospects, and the overall integration with Zendesk makes this a good fit for mid-sized and larger business-to-business (B2B) sales teams, especially if they currently use Zendesk software for other aspects of managing customer experiences.

What Zendesk Sell Is Missing

Zendesk Sell does not offer a free forever plan, and lacks additional features like bookkeeping, social media management, marketing automation, and productivity apps that are found in options like Zoho. It also lacks some of the more robust automation tools such as ongoing email campaigns, requiring third-party solutions instead.

What Users Think About Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell customers give it high praise for its intuitive interface and easy-to-use mobile app, especially the in-app calling and call recording features. Users also like the highly intuitive reporting and sales pipeline features. Some users give it negative marks because the software isn’t updated with new features as quickly as other options. However, that is likely to change now that it is a part of the Zendesk software family. Check out our review page for more information.

Where to Find Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a fully featured CRM beginning at $19 per user, per month, featuring customizable sales pipelines, contact management, and a powerful mobile CRM app. While Zendesk does not offer a free version of Sell, users can sign up for a 14-day free trial of any of the plans. Visit their website today to start your trial.

Visit Zendesk Sell

Best CRM With Powerful Built-in Marketing Automation: Agile CRM

Agile CRM includes a powerful built-in marketing automation platform that uses customized triggers to engage prospects via email, social, and text. These features give small businesses advanced marketing capabilities without spending on an additional platform. Monthly paid plans start at $9.99 per user, and there’s a feature-rich free plan. Agile CRM is ideal for companies that want a CRM with multichannel marketing automation capabilities.

Agile CRM Pricing

Manage up to 1,000 contacts, create email campaigns, and capture and score leads with Agile CRM’s free plan. The Starter plan adds marketing automation and social monitoring and increases contacts to 10,000 for $9.99 per user, per month. The Regular plan costs $39.99 per user, per month and includes SMS marketing.

Agile CRM Tiered Features

Free

The Free plan allows up to 10 users and includes contact and deal management, email tracking, and lead scoring. The platform’s email marketing with automation triggers is what makes it stand out from all the other CRMs, as none of the CRMs reviewed included this feature in their free plans. You can create and send emails for newsletters, onboarding, cart abandonment, and others.

The plan’s Achilles heel is its limit to one integration, which the company calls widgets. Those needing more than one third-party software connected in a free plan should look at Freshsales, Bitrix24, and HubSpot. Also, the limit for contacts is 1,000, whereas Bitrix24 allows unlimited contacts and HubSpot up to 1 million. This plan is ideal for startups with limited contacts that want to use a CRM with some email marketing capability.

Starter

The Starter plan costs $9.99 per user, per month, bumping contacts to 10,000. It includes marketing automation and social monitoring, and increases integrations to three. The drag-and-drop marketing automation function lets you create campaigns using “if/then” workflows based on actions taken. There’s also A/B email testing, a feature not found in any of the other CRMs.

With social monitoring, you can integrate up to three accounts and avoid using a third-party paid app to monitor social streams for keywords, post updates, and interact with customers and prospects. This plan is best for businesses that want marketing automation and social media management functionality integrated into a CRM.

Regular

This plan costs $29.99 per user, per month and includes 50,000 contacts. It lets you run 10 campaign workflows using 10 automation triggers, doubling the Standard plan’s limits. The other key difference is the addition of mobile marketing, which lets you create campaigns using SMS and text as the messaging channel. This feature, when incorporated into campaign workflows, is not found in any of the plans we reviewed (Bitrix24 only has bulk text marketing).

In addition, you can integrate over 50 third-party apps, such as RingCentral, Stripe, PayPal, and Shopify. The ability to market using so many channels makes this ideal for small businesses that want a powerful marketing automation platform built into their CRM.

Agile CRM customer activity history

What Agile CRM Is Missing

Unlike Zoho CRM and HubSpot, there is no ability to track website visitors. This can be valuable intelligence for sales, marketing, and service teams, and there’s no built-in live chat feature like what’s offered with Zoho CRM, Bitrix24, and HubSpot.

What Users Think About Agile CRM

The ability to manage sales, marketing, and service under one roof appeals to a lot of users. The Free version was noted for its 10-user capacity and as a great place to begin for startups. Visit our Agile CRM review page to learn more about the platform.

Where to Find Agile CRM

The features of Agile CRM, including its multichannel marketing automation platform (email, social, text), make it a contact management system that will appeal to sales, marketing, and service teams. Start a free 14-day trial by visiting their website.

Visit Agile CRM

Best Low-cost, All-in-One CRM: Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a CRM with a free tier that includes all of the basic features needed to run a small business, including contact and project management, invoicing, help desk, telephony, and live chat. Paid plans start at $69 per month for six users ($11.50 per user), with many additional features such as email and text marketing, CRM automations, and unlimited pipelines. Therefore, it is best for small businesses that want an inexpensive, all-in-one CRM.

Bitrix24 Pricing

All three Bitrix24 plans include unlimited contacts, integrated telephony, live chat, social integration, and leads from forms. The free plan allows for up to 12 users, the Plus tier costs $69 per month for six users, and the Standard is $99 per month for up to 50 users with customization and automation features.

Bitrix24 Tiered Features

Free

This plan is free for up to 12 users and includes contact management, integrated phone system, live chat, project management, and invoicing. Its social media function connects Facebook, Instagram, and Slack, among others, letting you manage all of your social interactions from the dashboard. You can have unlimited contacts, which makes this plan stand out from all the other free plans—and even some of the paid plans.

You can create an online store with 100 stock keeping units (SKUs) and process unlimited orders, a feature not found in any of the other free plans we reviewed. However, missing from this version is the email marketing functionality found in their paid plans and also included in Agile CRM’s free plan. This makes it ideal for small businesses that want a free, feature-rich CRM but don’t have an immediate need for built-in email marketing.

Plus

The Plus plan adds CRM automation with triggers, bulk email, and SMS and text sends, unlimited call recording, and voice broadcasting, which lets you deliver prerecorded phone messages with an auto-dialer. This feature is not found in any of the other CRMs we reviewed.

There’s a document builder that allows you to create and share documents with your team, prospects, and customers. At $69 per month for up to six users, this plan is one of the least expensive per user, all-in-one CRMs we reviewed. This makes it ideal for teams of at least six that want to manage multiple business tasks within their CRM.

Standard

The Standard plan costs $99 per month and allows for up to 50 users, which makes it by far the least expensive per user CRM we reviewed. Many of the main features found in the other two plans are bulked up. For example, you can create 10 online stores with up to 5,000 products and send 50,000 monthly marketing emails.

Configure the live chat messenger to send an automated reply or immediately respond from the chat window. For new contacts, leads will automatically be created and an existing contact’s conversation will be added to their record. All of the varied business applications combine to make this plan incredibly inexpensive for businesses with 10 or more users.

Bitrix24 contact history interface

What Bitrix24 Is Missing

The free plan is missing the email marketing functions found in Agile CRM. The user interface—though not missing anything—can feel busy (if not overwhelming) because of its multiple business functions. As a result, it doesn’t feel as ordered and user-friendly as most of the other CRMs.

What Users Think About Bitrix24

Users like the platform’s many business application uses, citing the free version as a great place to start because it includes many of the same features as the paid plans. Some, however, complained about the user interface, saying there’s a steep learning curve to using the software. You can also read more about customer thoughts on our Bitrix24 review page.

Where to Find Bitrix24

Bitrix24 includes a lot of features such as telephony, contact management, social integrations, marketing automation, and live chat. On a per-user basis, this all-in-one CRM is the most affordable option of those we reviewed. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial.

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Best CRM for Project Management: Insightly

Insightly is a competitively priced small business CRM with powerful project management functionality and sales pipeline customization options. Monthly plans start at $29 per user and there’s a free starter plan. It also includes tools to help you manage vendors, prospects, and customers and has numerous custom reporting options. Therefore, Insightly is a great solution for businesses looking for CRM software that can help them manage both sales and projects.

Insightly Pricing

Insightly’s basic core features, including project management, pipeline tracking, custom CRM fields, and contact management, are free for up to two users. Monthly paid plans cost between $29 (Plus) and $49 (Professional) per user and include lead assignment routing, email tracking, and customizable sales processes. The two paid plans also have extensive, customizable reporting options.

Insightly Tiered Features

Free

Insightly provides two users access to core functionality such as contact records, task, opportunity, and project management, which is a feature not found in the majority of other CRMs we compared. It also offers relationship tracking, voice notes, and bulk email campaigns, a feature not found in the free plans of Freshsales, Zoho CRM, and HubSpot.

However, unlike free plans from Bitrix24, Agile CRM, and HubSpot, this plan does not include email tracking, which delivers notifications on emails opened and clicked. The Free plan is, therefore, best for solopreneurs or teams of two that manage projects as well as sales. It is also best for users who want to use another program’s calendar tools for managing their appointments.

Plus

At $29 per user, per month, Insightly’s Plus plan allows users to manage contact relationships after the deal is closed by linking a contact with any one of multiple, customizable project pipelines. In addition, users can add and manage 100,000 records and send 2,500 bulk emails a month. Like Freshsales, leads resulting from those contacts and marketing messages are then tracked and managed through a sales pipeline process.

The Plus plan does not include marketing automation and social media management like those found in similarly priced plans from Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, and Bitrix24. It also doesn’t include lead scoring like what’s found in Freshsales, Zoho CRM, and Agile CRM. For this reason, it is best for solopreneurs, highly independent sales representatives, and those who don’t need marketing automation built in.

Professional

The Professional plan costs $49 per user, per month. It lets you customize your dashboard, which is a feature not offered by many of the CRM software we compared. But its many customized reporting options are where it really stands out among the others. Reporting options include tasks, contacts, leads, opportunities, organization, and others. Each of these has customizable fields to slice down as specifically as you’d want to go.

Dashboards can be created for categories such as lead sources, activities, forecast dates, pipeline, and stages, with several dozen ways to present and share the data using various visual options. It is, however, missing the marketing automation, lead scoring, and social management found in other top CRMs like Freshsales, Zoho CRM, and Agile CRM. This plan is best for teams that want dashboard and reporting customization for sales and projects.

What Insightly Is Missing

While you can manage your projects within Insightly, the tool does not offer product statistics like those found in Pipedrive or a means for managing quotes and orders like Zoho CRM provides, unless you upgrade to an enterprise-level plan. As mentioned, it’s also missing the marketing automation, lead scoring, and social media management found in Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, and Bitrix24.

What Users Think About Insightly

We use Insightly ourselves and appreciate the ease with which contacts can be added to the database directly from a native email client as well as its ability to manage projects in our pipeline. Other users appreciate the ease with which fields can be added and reports can be created. However, use of the tool does require more clicks to navigate to specific record information than in other CRMs. You can read more about Insightly on our Insightly review page.

Where to Find Insightly

You can use Insightly to coordinate internal tasks and vendor relationships and the activities needed to close a sale. Insightly knows that relationships continue well beyond a deal’s close, which is why their project management functionality is such a benefit. Even better, they give you a chance to try out their Professional plan for free for 14 days. Give it a try today.

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Best CRM That Integrates Directly Into Gmail Inbox: Streak

Streak CRM resides in your Gmail account’s inbox, where you can create and manage contacts, deals, pipelines, and communications. There is a free plan and monthly paid plans starting at $49 per user. Because of these capabilities, this platform is best for solopreneurs or small businesses that want to manage contacts and deals directly from Gmail.

Streak Pricing

Streak’s free plan includes two users, integrates with G Suite, and has unlimited pipelines. It also includes email scheduling and tracking, a mobile app, and tasks. A monthly Professional plan costs $49 per user and includes permissions, call logs, email filtering, and reporting. They offer a free 14-day trial that integrates with Gmail in seconds.

Streak Tiered Features

Free

Streak integrates with Gmail as an extension populating within the side navigation list of your inbox, where all pipelines and leads are found. Settings, updates, and integrations are found in a drop-down menu at the top right. Visually, the pipelines are color-coded by pipeline or project stage. This is the only free version to allow unlimited pipelines.

Within pipelines, there are templates for support ticket tracking, job applications, event bookings, project management, and other business uses. However, unlike free plans from Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, Bitrix24, and HubSpot, this plan does not include reporting. Therefore, the free plan is ideal for individuals who want to work entirely from their Gmail and don’t need the ability to create reports.

Using Streak inside Gmail

Professional

The Professional plan costs $49 per user, per month and adds integrations, reporting, and email support. Other features include call logs, leads by source, and meeting notes, which can be timed and followed up on easily. Integrations are limited to Google Sheets and Hangouts plus the limited capability of Zapier. This puts it at a disadvantage compared to all of the other CRMs at this price that offer dozens of integrations.

Streak pipeline view

Pipeline reporting is highly customizable with filters that can pull in a variety of data such as deal amounts, close rate, interactions, time in each stage, and others. Though you can send mass emails, there is no marketing automation feature, unlike Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, and Bitrix24. Therefore, this plan is for teams that need multiple pipeline management with highly customized reporting options, but that don’t need marketing functions built in.

What Streak Is Missing

Because Streak lives in Gmail, it doesn’t have marketing automation features as offered by Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Vtiger, and Agile CRM. There’s also no inbound or outbound call feature option that’s also found in these CRMs.

What Users Think About Streak

Users like that their CRM lives in Gmail, especially sales reps who spend lots of time working out of their email. The multiple pipeline feature is also appreciated by users. A few users, however, found the import and export feature to be “clunky.” To read in-depth reviews, visit our Streak user review page.

Where to Find Streak

Because Streak is literally an extension of your Gmail account, it eliminates the need to have a separate app or cloud-based software. Its multiple pipeline capability and Excel-like feel make it a familiar option for both individual users and small teams. Sign up for a free trial.

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Bottom Line

Small business CRM software is essential for managing contacts and the sales process. Most vendors also bundle other business applications such as marketing, project management, and service features into their plans. The best CRM software for your small business will depend largely on the number of users, use needs, and budget.

We recommend Freshsales as the best CRM for small businesses overall due to its affordability and features like 360-degree customer insights, activity tracking, and appointment and lead management capability. Its suite of additional business applications also make it attractive as a do-it-all platform for growing companies. Visit Freshsales and sign up for their risk-free, 30-day free trial.

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