Best CRM for Small Business: Top 10 Platforms (March 2024)

• You want free sales, marketing, and service modules: HubSpot CRM is one of the best free CRM software available on the CRM market. It allows unlimited users to access sales, marketing, service, and content management features. It also has unique and valuable capabilities on its free plan, like mass email, third-party integrations, ads management, and support ticketing.
• You need robust marketing features: HubSpot CRM is a marketing automation platform and CRM system hybrid, making it ideal for marketing agency businesses and teams that need high-level marketing features. The platform includes mass email, ads management, landing page builder tools, social media management, A/B testing, and the ability to host a blog and on-demand video library.
• You need an intuitive and easy CRM for small business teams: HubSpot CRM is a highly rated, simple CRM system, as users—even those new to the CRM world—can quickly figure out how to use its features. It uses a modern layout and intuitive navigation system, making it easy to go module-to-module and operate the tools.

• You need advanced reporting and analytics tools: HubSpot CRM offers basic reporting. If you wish to get a more in-depth analysis of data on lead generation and revenue, you’ll need additional integrations.
  • Alternatives: Freshsales offer data analysis as part of its reporting capabilities. Bigin by Zoho CRM is another solid choice for its customizable reports with CRM data insights.
• You want a free telephone system in your CRM: HubSpot CRM offers third-party telephone integrations and a built-in option. Those capabilities, however, require subscribing to a paid plan.
  • Alternative: Freshsales is the best CRM software for small business teams for offering a free, built-in telephone system.

• You are a solopreneur or freelancer needing a scalable CRM: Bigin is Zoho’s product built for small businesses, offering all the basics like contact data storage, pipeline management, direct and mass email, performance tracking, and workflow automation. Its simple feature arsenal pairs well with the free and affordable paid options. Its free plan for one user makes it stand out as a solid CRM for freelancers and solopreneurs.
• You’re looking for a free CRM with a built-in telephone system: In addition to being one of the best personal CRMs in the market for offering basic features, Bigin by Zoho CRM stands out for being one of the few products with a built-in phone system. Better yet, the telephone capabilities are available on the Free plan to a user for placing, receiving, and tracking phone calls from the CRM system.

• You want more sophisticated sales features: Because of the bare-bones focus, Bigin by Zoho CRM lacks advanced sales features like artificial intelligence (AI) analytics, proposal and invoice generation, and automated contact enrichment.
  • Alternatives: Freshsales and Pipedrive are powerhouse sales CRM tools for small business teams that offer more robust direct sales capabilities. You can also explore other similar alternatives in our guide to the best CRM for startups.
• You need omnichannel capabilities: Bigin by Zoho CRM is limited to communication outreach through telephone, email, and customer engagement on X (formerly Twitter). Therefore, it’s not ideal for mass marketing or using a more general approach to outreach campaigns.
  • Alternatives: Freshsales and HubSpot CRM are better alternatives with more communication options, including live chat, text, email, phone, and messaging app integrations.

• You use an omnichannel selling approach: Freshsales is one of our recommended low-cost CRMs for teams that want to market their brand and sell using a multichannel strategy. It allows users to engage prospects through direct and mass email, short message service (SMS) text, telephone, live chat, messaging app, and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
• You need free calling features in your CRM: Freshsales offers one of the best free-forever subscriptions available on the CRM market, as it already includes a built-in phone system. This capability is a major value add as users can place cold calls and follow-ups, receive incoming calls, and record, mask, and transfer calls to the queue, all from the CRM platform.
• You sell business-to-business (B2B): Freshsales is one of our favorite B2B CRM systems because it includes features specifically useful when selling to other organizations. It offers an account management module, a built-in cloud phone system, and deal tracking with insights and rotting indicators, among many others.

• You want to run more elaborate marketing campaigns from your CRM: Though it has omnichannel capabilities, Freshsales doesn’t let you create and deploy non-email campaigns, such as online ads, social media posts, or content marketing campaigns unless you subscribe to its native Freshmarketer tool.
  • Alternative: ActiveCampaign is also a good option for creating AI-powered content for email marketing.
• You need a built-in case and ticketing management tools: Freshworks, the developer of Freshsales, offers excellent customer service software for small business through its native Freshdesk tool. Unfortunately, that’s a separate product, and users cannot manage service tickets in the Freshsales CRM system.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM is a great alternative that offers a support ticket toolkit.

• You run a startup or project-based business: This platform is one of the best CRM small business teams can use for managing tasks and projects. Its tools for project management and delivery are available across all plans. Marketing agencies and software development companies can leverage its features for collaboration, workflow building, and milestone tracking to monitor the progress of their projects.
• You require a CRM with record-linking capabilities for referral marketing: Insightly CRM’s Plus plan allows you to link contact records to label business-to-business (B2B) relationships. This makes it easy for you to trace referrals and connections between your leads, customers, and companies in your CRM records.

• You’re looking for a CRM for revenue operations: A revenue operations team requires built-in customer service and advanced marketing features. With Insightly CRM, you’ll need to purchase these as add-on products starting at $29 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM is our top recommendation for users needing a unified CRM with comprehensive tools for marketing and service automation.
• You want a CRM with solid social media features: Insightly CRM does not have tools for social engagement, social profile enrichment, and social media management.
  • Alternatives: HubSpot CRM, Freshsales, and Capsule CRM are included in our list of the best social CRM solutions for small business. These providers allow you to generate leads and engage customers directly from within your CRM system.

• You want to use an AI-powered CRM for writing sales emails: Capsule CRM’s paid plans (starting at $18 per user, monthly) give you access to its artificial intelligence (AI) content assistant. With this tool, you can draft sales emails from your contact records and see recommendations on the right tone, topic, and even length of your message.
• You’re looking for a basic CRM for easy deal management: Capsule CRM offers basic CRM features that include contact management, deal management, and email marketing campaigns. It also has a simple interface that makes it easy for users to manage contacts, calendars, sales, and to-do lists.

• You want a CRM with email tracking features: Capsule CRM offers basic email marketing templates and features, but it does not have tools for email tracking.
  • Alternatives: HubSpot CRM tops our list of the best CRM for email marketing for its advanced emailing feature. Freshsales also has similar features and automated email sequences, starting with its Growth plan at $9 per user, monthly.
• You need a CRM with marketing and ecommerce capabilities: Capsule CRM lacks features for setting up marketing campaigns and putting them on auto-pilot. The same can be said for ecommerce features like inventory management, and billing process.
  • Alternatives: Bitrix24 offers a comprehensive set of ecommerce features, including an online store builder, built-in checkout process, and product catalogs. Alternatively, explore other options in our guide to the best ecommerce CRMs.

• You’re looking for a robust sales automation tool: Pipedrive is a top sales CRM small business teams prefer for its lead management software, deal tracking capabilities, sales collaboration features, and data management tools. Teams prioritizing direct outreach for growth benefit from features like business proposal management, deal rotting, and auto-contact enrichment.
• You submit many business proposals and bids: Another tremendous use case for Pipedrive involves its robust proposal features. It comes with auto-fillable templates that pull CRM data into sales documents for a quick generation process. There’s also a Smart Docs tool that allows users to auto-fill, send, and track sales quotes and proposals, which pairs nicely with the built-in e-signature capabilities.

• You need a free-forever plan: While it is an affordable CRM software for small business, Pipedrive does not offer a free plan for users to experience a risk-free test drive of the platform.
  • Alternatives: Bitrix24 and ClickUp both offer free-forever plans that support an unlimited number of users.
• You want low-cost email features: Pipedrive’s email sync tools for sending, receiving, and tracking emails from the CRM are not available until the Advanced plan for $29 per user, monthly.
  • Alternatives: Freshsales and HubSpot CRM offer solid email tools for free.

• You need a highly intuitive CRM system: monday.com sales CRM uses its spreadsheet format for easy data entry and management. Its simple and highly intuitive interface leaves little to no learning curve for navigation, workflow automation, and customization.
• You want to evaluate your database using multiple views: monday.com sales CRM provides you with various board viewing options, including Kanban, calendar, map, timeline, chart, and workload. You can use these views to check your sales pipeline progress, monitor tasks, or identify your customers’ current location.

• You are a small business looking for free lead scoring tools: You can use monday CRM for lead qualification and prioritization, but you’ll have to subscribe to the Enterprise plan at a custom price.
  • Alternative: Freshsales is a great option that offers lead scoring with its free plan for three users.
• You want to leverage AI for analytics: With monday CRM, you can only use AI features via third-party app integration.
  • Alternative: ActiveCampaign’s Professional plan ($49 per user, monthly) allows you to use AI for sentiment analysis and win probability. This helps you concentrate your nurturing efforts on deals that are most likely to close.

• You want to automate sales engagement and nurture campaigns: ActiveCampaign’s Professional plan ($49 per user, monthly) allows you to automate sales engagement and one-on-one emails. This platform uses data from customer touchpoints to determine the right time and channel for engagement, and when human touch is needed to close sales faster.
• You’re looking for a CRM with AI content generation tools: ActiveCampaign offers AI-powered email content generation tools across all plans. This makes it easier for sales reps to create personalized and engaging emails at every touchpoint, and then send them from Gmail.

• You want a free CRM with lead engagement tools: Unfortunately, ActiveCampaign does not offer free tools for engaging leads and prospects.
  • Alternative: Freshsales’ free plan for three users includes an AI chatbot builder that auto-engages website visitors and books meetings from the chat widget.
• You’re looking for a more advanced CRM system: ActiveCampaign’s sales CRM currently offers bare-bones features for managing leads, deals, and accounts. It does not have advanced CRM features like sales forecasting, bulk email, and sales quotes.
  • Alternatives: HubSpot CRM offers an amazing set of advanced CRM features with its free plan, like conversational bots, and customizable quotes. Pipedrive is also a great alternative with features like deal rotting indicators as well as an AI sales assistant starting at $14 per user, monthly.

• You’re looking for an ecommerce CRM: Bitrix24 is a popular option for ecommerce operations primarily because of its plethora of tools for online businesses. These features include inventory management, payment processing, shipping cost calculator, and storefront builder.
• You want a CRM with robust internal communication tools: An all-in-one solution for small business, Bitrix24 can contain business-related activities internally, including communications. Under its Free plan, users can use the chat system for one-on-one and group calls. Plus, you can use its native video conferencing tool with unlimited call duration.

• You prefer a simple CRM with a highly intuitive interface: One of the common issues with Bitrix24 is its saturated interface. For solo users and absolute beginners, the sheer multitude of features can be overwhelming and require a steep learning curve.
  • Alternatives: Bigin by Zoho CRM is our recommended small business CRM for solo users for its simplicity and ease of use. Meanwhile, consider monday CRM if you want an intuitive interface with a familiar navigation layout.
• You need to automate your email marketing campaign for free: To access Bitrix24’s email marketing tools, you’ll need to subscribe to the Standard plan for $99 users (up to 50 users). The price can be steep for small businesses on a budget.
  • Alternatives: HubSpot CRM takes the edge on email marketing automation at no cost. Capsule CRM is another option to look at for its AI assistance in crafting and optimizing emails.

• You need a free operational CRM system: ClickUp’s free plan supports an unlimited number of users and offers a robust set of tools for improving productivity. These include automations, task checklists, time tracking, file sharing, and work management dashboards.
• You prefer using a non-traditional CRM: ClickUp is a CRM alternative that allows you to manage work using tailor boards, work processes similar to a deal pipeline, and data records. It also offers a multi-view format for users who want to oversee various business functions, including marketing, service, and projects.

• You are well accustomed to traditional CRM systems: If you prefer using traditional CRMs, ClickUp may not be the right option for you. There’s a learning curve to work management software that requires you to create your own work boards and processes.
  • Alternatives: Freshsales, Pipedrive, and Bigin by Zoho CRM are among the best traditional operational CRMs to easily automate your business processes.
• You want a simple work management tool: ClickUp has a rather complex setup process and various modular options that make it difficult to learn and navigate, especially for beginners.
  • Alternative: monday CRM is highly recommended for usability.

All CRM solutions on our list offer free or affordable plans for small businesses. The CRMs that offer both affordable plans and a free-forever option include Freshsales, HubSpot CRM, Insightly CRM, Bigin by Zoho, monday CRM, and ClickUp.

Based on our evaluation, HubSpot CRM is the best overall small business CRM software. However, certain CRMs may be a better fit depending on feature and product attribute requirements. Freshsales, for example, offers the most advanced built-in phone with its free plan, while Bitrix24 has robust ecommerce tools at no cost.

Your small business CRM should include features that help your company stay organized and grow. At a minimum, it should have contact data storage, email and phone communication capabilities, pipeline tracking, and solid reporting tools. Additionally, you should be able to manage sales and marketing on the go through a mobile app and have the ability to customize your system’s data fields, pages, and modules to meet your operational needs.