Best CRM for Small Business: Top 10 Platforms (2023)

• You want free sales, marketing, and service modules: The most notable attribute of HubSpot is that it’s by far the best free CRM software available on the CRM market. It allows unlimited users to access sales, marketing, service, and content management features. HubSpot CRM 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 is a marketing automation platform and CRM system hybrid. This makes it a great option 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 CRM system for small business teams: HubSpot is a highly rated simple CRM system as users, even those new to the CRM world, can figure out quickly how to use the features. It uses a modern color scheme and intuitive navigation system, making it easy to go module-to-module and operate the tools.

• You need scalable, cost-friendly paid plans: While it has an excellent free plan, users ready to upgrade to the paid plans will need to look elsewhere for affordable options as the CRM Suite is quite expensive.
  • Alternative: Freshsales, EngageBay, and Bigin by Zoho CRM are the best free CRM options with affordable paid plans.
• You want a free telephone system in your CRM: HubSpot does offer third-party telephone integrations and a built-in option. Those capabilities, however, require subscribing to a paid plan.
  • Alternative: Freshsales is the best CRM for small business teams for offering a free, built-in telephone system.

• 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. There’s also contact scoring, appointment scheduling, and document generation for quotes, proposals, and invoices.
• You use an omnichannel selling approach: Freshsales is one of our recommended 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 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: HubSpot CRM is the best alternative for complete marketing and content management capabilities, including blog and video hosting, ads management, and the ability to publish posts on social media. EngageBay is also great for managing campaigns across multiple channels, including website, mobile, social media, call center, and email.
• 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 and EngageBay can handle customer support operations in the CRM system.

• You are a freelancer needing the basics: Bigin is Zoho’s product built for small businesses to get 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 need a free built-in telephone system: In addition to being a solid personal CRM for offering basic features, Bigin stands out for being one of a few products with a built-in phone system. Better yet, the telephone capabilities are available on the Free plan for a user to place, receive, and track phone calls from the CRM system.

• You want more sophisticated sales features: Because of the bare-bones focus, Bigin lacks advanced sales features like artificial intelligence (AI) analytics, proposal and invoice generation, and automated contact enrichment.
  • Alternative: Freshsales and Pipedrive are powerhouse CRMs with more robust direct sales capabilities.
• You need omnichannel capabilities: Bigin is limited to communication outreach through telephone, email, and customer engagement on Twitter. Therefore, it’s not ideal for mass marketing or using a more general approach to outreach campaigns.
  • Alternative: Freshsales and EngageBay are better alternatives with more communication options, including live chat, text, email, phone, and messaging app integrations.

• You’re looking for a robust sales automation tool: Pipedrive is a sales CRM in that its value comes from the 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, auto-contact enrichment, team comments and mentions, and a built-in meeting scheduler.
• 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 you 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’s not necessarily an expensive system, Pipedrive does not offer a free plan for users to experience a risk-free test drive of the platform.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM, Freshsales, and Bitrix24 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 $49.90 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: Freshsales and HubSpot CRM offer solid email tools for free.

• You’re seeking a CRM to manage your retail business or online store: All Bitrix24 users can access its robust set of ecommerce features. These include tools for building an online store as well as those for managing products, orders, payments, coupons, and inventories.
• You need free project management tools: Bitrix24 has a free-forever plan that supports unlimited users and offers project management tools. These include a project Kanban board that lets you manage unlimited projects with subtasks. You can also use these tools to manage your deliverables after closing a deal.
• You are looking for a CRM with accounting tools: This platform’s free tier includes features that accounting firms use, such as project management tools and product and service catalogs. Paid plans allow you to generate an unlimited number of invoices, while its Standard plan lets you create an unlimited number of quotes.

• You are looking for a simple CRM system: Bitrix24 offers robust CRM capabilities and customization options, making its interface difficult to set up and navigate.
  • Alternative: Really Simple Systems and Freshsales both offer a simple interface that is easy to use, even for beginners.
• You seek a free solution for client document storage: While Bitrix24 allows all users to store unlimited signed documents, you need a paid plan to create CRM document templates. These include files used in CRM deals, such as invoices, quotes, and shipping manifests.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM’s free plan lets you store up to five sales documents per account. You can also share these documents with your prospects and get insight into the recipients’ engagement with your file.

• You need a free, all-in-one sales, service, and marketing platform: EngageBay is an all-in-one solution for managing sales, marketing, and customer service activity. It includes numerous data storage, task management, automation, and communication capabilities. Many of these features allow teams to oversee deals and leads in the sales pipeline, email and content marketing campaigns, and service tickets at no cost.
• You want omnichannel capabilities in your CRM: A great attribute of EngageBay is its multi-channel focus for outreach, marketing, and support. Users can engage leads and customers via email, live chat, video message, social media, and short message service (SMS) text. There are options to integrate with popular voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) telephone systems like RingCentral, Twilio, JustCall, and CallHippo.

• You need a simple CRM system: While it’s cost-effective to invest in EngageBay, the platform isn’t the best-suited CRM for startups or teams new to operating a CRM tool. Users find the features tough to use and report difficulties in setting up a new system.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM and Really Simple Systems are our favorite CRMs for product ease of use.
• You send out a lot of sales proposals: While EngageBay does offer proposal generation and management capabilities, those features are not available until the Growth plan for $45.99 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: Freshsales includes quote and proposal generation tools on its Growth plan, which is $15 per user, per month. Pipedrive is another good option with highly sophisticated proposal generation tools, which start at $24.90 per user, monthly.

• You’re looking for a true Google CRM: Copper CRM is one of our top choices for a Google CRM because of its seamless integration with Google Workspace. It has an intuitive Chrome extension that lets you access and view your CRM data from within Gmail or Calendar apps.
• You want a CRM with robust collaboration tools: Copper CRM offers excellent tools for productivity and team collaboration. You can tag and mention colleagues in tasks or records, as well as log activities to monitor lead engagement.

• You are looking for a free CRM for your small sales team: Copper does not offer a free plan, and its packages start at $23 per user, monthly, which could be a bit pricey for small teams.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM, Bitrix24, Freshsales, and ClickUp offer free plans for unlimited users. Other providers in this list with free options are Bigin by Zoho CRM and Really Simple Systems.
• You need an ecommerce CRM to manage your online store: Copper CRM does not have the features, like product catalogs and order processing, necessary for managing ecommerce stores. Its marketing features do not come in until its Professional plan, which costs $59 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: Bitrix24 is our top-recommended ecommerce CRM as it has a free plan that offers a robust set of ecommerce tools. These include an online store builder, product catalogs, order processing, and inventory management tools.

• You only need a simple contact database: Really Simple Systems is a great option if all you need is a digital Rolodex for contact and company data. It’s also an ideal contact management system that stores unlimited records for free. In addition to data and document storage, users can monitor pipeline statuses, track tasks and events, and link records to one another to indicate connections or hierarchical relationships.
• You want complete system customization: Besides affordability, usability, and great contact data management features, Really Simple Systems is an excellent customizable CRM. Teams can tailor data fields, dashboards, reports, automations, and pages to meet operational needs. The customization is easy for those who store specific information on their leads or use a unique sales process.

• You want marketing tools included in your small business CRM: Really Simple Systems’ default plan is entirely for sales functions. The provider requires users to purchase an additional add-on for marketing capabilities such as email design tools, campaign scheduling, template storage, and drip automation. These cost either $25 or $50 per month, depending on the add-on.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM is the best option that matches Really Simple System’s usability ratings but includes marketing capabilities in its main CRM product.
• You need a robust mobile CRM application: Currently, Really Simple Systems is limited to just offering a mobile-responsive web application and not an actual mobile application. It should be noted, however, that the provider has announced that a mobile CRM app is currently in development for release later this year.
  • Alternative: Freshsales, HubSpot CRM, and Pipedrive are our favorite providers that have a mobile CRM app with robust features.

• 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 used to traditional CRM systems: ClickUp may not be the right option if you are used to traditional CRMs. It would take a while to acclimate to a work management software that requires you to create your own boards and processes.
  • Alternative: Freshsales, Pipedrive, and Bitrix24 are the best traditional operational CRMs that let you automate your business processes with ease.
• You’re looking for a simple work management tool: Unfortunately, ClickUp has a complex setup process and has various modular options, making it difficult to learn and navigate.
  • Alternative: Really Simple Systems lives up to its name with its straightforward and highly intuitive interface that is easy to learn and use. Other options that are also recommended for usability are Freshsales and Pipedrive.

• You’re seeking a powerful Facebook Messenger CRM: Kommo allows users to engage with customers on Facebook from within the CRM. They can also deploy a live sales chatbot and manage all conversation channels (including Messenger, email, phone, and text) from a single place.
• You need a CRM for managing Facebook Ads: Kommo integrates seamlessly with Facebook Ads and lets you build and deploy ad campaigns on Facebook. This integration also allows you to auto-target leads based on their stage in the sales process.

• You want a CRM with free Facebook integration: While Kommo’s entry-level plan is not necessarily expensive at $15 per user, per month, it does not offer a free tier.
  • Alternative: HubSpot CRM has a free plan that offers Facebook Messenger integration. It also allows you to auto-generate leads from Facebook Ads campaigns.
• You’re looking for a CRM with more affordable AI chatbot tools: Kommo’s advanced chatbot features come with a price tag of $25 per user, monthly. Its AI-powered bot in Facebook Messenger is available with its Enterprise plan at $45 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: Freshsales Free plan allows you to add an AI chatbot for Messenger.

All CRM solutions on our list offer free or affordable plans for small businesses. The CRMs, however, that offer both affordable plans and a free-forever option include Freshsales, Bigin by Zoho, Really Simple Systems, EngageBay, and Agile CRM.

Based on our evaluation, HubSpot CRM is the best overall small business CRM software—tied with Freshsales, which we considered the best CRM with built-in phone features. That said, however, certain CRMs may be a better fit depending on feature and product attribute requirements. Really Simple Systems, for example, is a great simple contact database, while Mailchimp CRM is an excellent email marketing solution.

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.