Best CRM for Startups: The Top 8 Options for 2023

Customer relationship management (CRM) software for startups must meet some of the product demands common for brand-new businesses, including low-cost subscriptions and an easy-to-use interface. The best CRM options include critical features sought by startups, such as lead management, marketing automation, and customization features. We’ve reviewed dozens of products to identify the best CRMs for startups.

• Zoho CRM: Best startup CRM for small businesses overall
• Really Simple Systems: Great CRM for startup businesses that need customization for unique operational needs
• Agile CRM: Ideal for startups seeking a low-cost solution for sales, marketing, and support management
• Pipedrive: Robust sales CRM for startups that need tools for lead and deal management
• Insightly: Solid CRM system for startups seeking project management tools within the platform
• Close: Best CRM tools for startups aiming to use calling outreach for direct sales
• HubSpot: Ideal free CRM for startups looking for robust marketing features
• Streak: Best for startup businesses that want to integrate their CRM with Google Workspace

Best CRM for Startups Compared

*Based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for slightly higher rates.

Zoho CRM: Best for Leveraging Social Media Platforms

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Zoho CRM is a top pick for the best CRM for small businesses, helping firms manage leads, deals, and marketing campaigns. It has thousands of integration options, both third-party tools and software developed by Zoho. Zoho is a cheap CRM for startups, with a free plan for up to three users and paid options starting at $14 per user, monthly. It also has customization options for tailoring data fields, modules, pages, tabs, and layouts to your specific operation.

As many startups use social media to generate leads and develop relationships, they need look no further than Zoho CRM. Included in the Standard plan are integration capabilities with Facebook and Twitter. Once connected, users can generate leads from social media forms that automatically create data records and assign users to the CRM. Additionally, teams can converse with social media followers and track their social activity from CRM records.

Unfortunately, the customer support module and mass email capabilities are unavailable on the Free plan—product attributes especially useful for startups. Agile CRM is the best alternative product for sales, marketing, and help desk capabilities, all on the free plan for up to 10 users.

Zoho CRM Plan Summary

Zoho CRM Key Features

• Social selling: Teams can integrate with and use Facebook and Twitter to generate leads, connect with prospects, and track social media activity of CRM contacts.
• Inventory management module: Startups can organize and store product catalogs, vendor data, price books, and inventory counts, as well as create and manage quotes, sales orders, and invoices.
• Data management: Users can create and store lead, account, deal, and contact records, as well as track tasks, events, call logs, notes, and record tags.
• Marketing management: Ability to create and send email campaigns using premade email templates.

Zoho CRM Customer Support

Zoho’s tier-based support system includes email support for all plans as well as phone and live chat support on the paid plans either, 24/5 or 24/7, depending on the tier. There are also plenty of online resources for self-service, including product documentation, tours, tutorial videos, and webinars.

Want to learn more? Check out our in-depth Zoho CRM review with detailed insights into product features, overall usability, integration options, and best-for-use case scenarios.

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Really Simple Systems: Best for Product Customization

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Really Simple Systems offers startups excellent lead and pipeline management features for a minimal cost. Additionally, this CRM is well-known for its product usability in terms of setting up a new account, using the built-in features and navigating the interface from module to module. Its minimal use of menu tabs and buttons and the clean interface allow even the least experienced CRM users to easily use the platform.

Product customization is especially useful for startups, mainly when offering something unique or using innovative operational processes. Really Simple Systems is the best CRM for system customization. Most of the tailoring options are free, and new firms custom design everything, including data fields, drop-down lists, data tables, charts, and layouts on CRM pages.

However, Really Simple Systems does not allow email marketing or integration options until the paid plans. HubSpot CRM is the best alternative on this list that lets users access email marketing and automation features on the free plan.

Really Simple Systems Plan Summary

Really Simple Systems Key Features

• Simple product customization: Easy-to-operate interface for designing data fields, tables, lists, dashboards, pages, and reports to a startup’s unique needs.
• Lead management: Ability to store and monitor data on contacts, pipeline stages, and activity timelines. Also includes task and event tracking associated with records and the capability to link accounts with one another.
• Quotes and document storage: Users can create and store quotes, warranties, or other documents in the CRM within contact and company records.
• Marketing add-on: Through paid add-on or by subscribing to the paid plans, teams can create email templates and campaigns, personalize them based on CRM record data, and schedule deployment while tracking responses and opens.

Really Simple Systems Customer Support

Really Simple Systems free plan users have access to email and live chat support options along with an online customer portal, tutorials, and webinars. Professional and Enterprise plans get extended support via phone and a dedicated account manager. All support staff is available during standard business hours for North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Could Really Simple Systems be the product for you? Find out by reading our Really Simple Systems review to learn more about its features and integrations.

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Agile CRM: Best Affordable CRM for Managing Sales, Marketing & Support

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Agile CRM is an excellent, cost-friendly CRM solution for startup businesses thanks to its free plan available for up to 10 users and low-cost paid plans starting at $8.99 per user on a monthly basis. The system is relatively easy to use, especially for new users. It has features necessary to get a business off the ground, including lead management, email marketing, and deal tracking.

What makes this CRM system stand out is its all-in-one capabilities. While most CRMs on this list offer sales and marketing features, Agile CRM is one of the few that also includes modules for managing a help desk. These features are particularly useful for tech startups that sell new software and need to help users navigate it. Plus, most of the sales, marketing, and support features are available for free.

Since startups may be looking to integrate some of their other outside tools with their CRM, note that Agile CRM is relatively weak in this area. There’s a relatively low number of available integration options with external software, and the Free plan limits you to one integration or plugin. Zoho CRM is the best alternative for integrations—offering thousands of third-party and native options.

Agile CRM Plan Summary

Agile CRM Key Features

• Sales data customization: Users can customize contact and company profile properties and sales deal stages and milestones to meet their unique business needs.
• Marketing management: Teams can create and deploy mass email and text campaigns, store premade email templates, and design website elements such as landing pages and web forms.
• Lead, deal, and contact tracking: Ability to organize contact data, qualify leads using lead scoring, track tasks associated with lead or deal records, and connect with leads through direct email, phone, and a meeting scheduling portal.
• Help desk module: Free customer service features for collecting, tracking, and resolving service tickets, storing canned and premade customer responses, and reporting on support activity.

Agile CRM Customer Support

Agile CRM uses a tiered customer support system, offering 24/5 email support on all plans and phone support for paid plans from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time. Additionally, users can access self-service resources such as blogs, videos, infographics, setup guides, and onboarding system documentation.

Want to learn more about how Agile CRM supports startups and small businesses? Our Agile CRM review offers detailed insights on product features, integrations, system usability, and additional best-for scenarios.

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Pipedrive: Best for Lead & Deal Management

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM system that heavily prioritizes features for direct sales activities, such as prospecting, lead generation, qualification, and sending proposals. Users can create custom pipelines to track opportunities and become notified if a deal is “rotten” if it is sitting in the pipeline for too long. There are also lead management tools such as contact data organization, lead activity tracking, duplicate record detection, and a built-in meeting scheduler.

Startup businesses in industries with lengthy and complex sales processes, including software providers or business consultants, should consider investing in Pipedrive. The features are great for monitoring sales leads and deals and reporting on sales activities. There are also tools for creating and sending business proposals and collaborating with team members on larger opportunities that may require multiple reps.

Pipedrive, unfortunately, is one of the few CRMs on this list that does not offer a free-forever plan. Agile CRM and HubSpot CRM are the two best alternatives with free-forever plans for startups that prioritize a free plan option.

Pipedrive Plan Summary

Pipedrive Key Features

• AI Sales Assistant: AI tool within the CRM system that provides alerts to users on community updates, product feature suggestions, email tracking, activity reminders, and analytics and personalized tips to maximize sales performance.
• Smart Docs and document management: Teams can easily create, store, and send documents such as quotes or proposals while automating data entry for those documents using CRM lead and company data.
• Lead management: Users can store contact data and track activity and communications with leads in the CRM. There’s also the ability to assign leads to specific reps, identify and merge duplicate records, and engage leads through email and meeting scheduling tools.
• Deal and pipeline tracking: Ability to track pending sales opportunities in real time on customizable pipelines as well as be notified for potentially rotting deals in the pipeline.

Pipedrive Customer Support

Pipedrive offers 24/7 support through live chat and email on all plans. Additionally, their website, which supports over 19 languages, contains help center resources such as knowledge base articles, a community forum, and the Pipedrive Academy. Enterprise users receive additional service channels, including telephone support and custom CRM implementation assistance.

Check out our Pipedrive review to learn more about product pricing, usability, features, and third-party integrations to see if it’s right for your business.

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Insightly: Best for Project Management Features

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Insightly is a simple CRM system that helps startup businesses organize lead data, communicate with sales contacts, and track and qualify opportunities. There is a free plan for up to two users, and the CRM comes with many product customization options, including custom objects, fields, page layouts, and sales processes. It also has insight cards, which display additional information like organization or opportunity details on lead records you’re viewing.

Many new businesses have to manage numerous side projects or tasks, such as administrative work or content development, in addition to the day-to-day sales and marketing operations. Insightly has a built-in project management module available on the Free plan. Teams can assign and collaborate on project assignments, create workflows associated with projects, and track key milestones for projects.

One significant issue with Insightly is that the quote and product management features aren’t available until the Enterprise plan for $99 per user each month. Zoho CRM is the best alternative with those features in its inventory management module, available starting on the Professional plan for $23 per user each month.

Insightly Plan Summary

Insightly Key Features

• Project management module: Teams can oversee tasks and longer-term projects, create automated events and workflows within projects, and track key metrics and milestones associated with projects.
• Lead and contact management: Lead generation through web-to-lead capture, lead assignment and routing, and lead qualification features.
• Mass email: Ability to design and deploy mass email marketing campaigns to custom contact lists.
• Workflow automation: Task creation, data entry, record updates, and work assignment tasks can be automated for a more efficient pipeline and hands-free experience.

Insightly Customer Support

Insightly has tier-based support where Free plan users and above get access to the help center for self-service. The paid plans come with email support that has varying response times depending on the package. Additionally, there’s phone support during extended business hours (Pacific Time) for teams that enroll in the Premier Success plan.

For more information, check out our Insightly review to learn more about this CRM’s features, integrations, usability ratings, and customer reviews to see if it’s the best option for your business.

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Close: Best for Telephone Features

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Close is a sales-focused CRM that lets teams manage their leads, contacts, opportunities, pipelines, and sales-related activities. On top of being able to manage those types of data records and tasks, there are vast capabilities for monitoring and reporting, including the options to create email template performance, activity, sales funnel health, and automation performance reports.

Close comes with excellent lead communication features, including email, text, and most notably, a built-in phone. Users can place, receive, and forward calls, record conversations, automate call outreach schedules, and conduct call coaching through listening and whispering tools. Finally, there’s the advanced power dialer tool that auto-dials phone numbers for users based on a preset call list—enabling startup teams to make more calls in less time.

However, Close does not have a free plan, and the paid plans are fairly expensive compared to other CRMs on this list. Agile CRM is the best alternative in terms of cost-friendliness—offering a free plan for 10 users and paid plans starting at $8.99 per user on a monthly basis.

Close Plan Summary

Close Key Features

• Built-in phone system: Call center module letting teams place and receive calls, send and receive texts, and run call flows such as call forwarding, recording, and power dialing, which dials numbers for users based on a contact list.
• Email communications with reporting: Two-way email sync to send and receive emails, plus options to store email templates, schedule messages or follow-ups, and send bulk emails with automated sequences.
• Leads and opportunities: Users can store lead, contact, and opportunity records, run mass data imports or exports, track tasks associated with records, and view pipeline statuses.
• Custom activities with reports: Ability to create activities associated with a specific sales process, such as calls, emails, meetings, or deals closed, and generate activity performance reports.

Close Customer Support

All Close users have access to a self-service help center. Additionally, there’s email support available on all plans. Response times vary depending on the plan and service level agreement (SLA).

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HubSpot CRM: Best for Marketing Features

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.
**CRM Suite includes sales, marketing, customer service, content management system (CMS), and operations software. Individual modules can be purchased for lower monthly costs.

HubSpot created one of the most popular CRMs on the market. It’s most touted for the free plan available for unlimited users and the intuitive interface design that makes the system easy to operate and navigate. With HubSpot, startups get access to lead, contact, and deal management modules, solutions for document storage, payment processing capabilities, and tools for scheduling meetings and collecting signatures.

The best features of HubSpot, however, come on the marketing side. Startups that plan on building relationships through mass marketing and content should choose HubSpot. There’s mass email campaign design and deployment, digital ads management, and the option to create a blog page and receive search engine optimization (SEO) suggestions. Also, users can build landing pages, embed web forms, and host an on-demand video page.

While it offers excellent marketing features, HubSpot, even on the Free plan, gets expensive when startups start growing and need more advanced capabilities like a product library or e-signature features. Zoho CRM and Agile CRM are the two best options on this list in terms of scalable pricing options.

HubSpot CRM Plan Summary

HubSpot CRM Key Features

• Content development and management: Teams can manage and host an on-demand video library, create website blogs from the CRM, receive SEO recommendations, and develop content strategies.
• Marketing outreach: Ability to create and deploy mass email marketing campaigns with automated sequences as well as digital ads with audience retargeting options.
• Lead management: Users can organize lead data, run lead scoring calculations, track activity and outreach, and view pipeline or sales cycles statuses.
• Payment processing: Teams can collect payments through Automated Clearing House (ACH) or credit cards with the Stripe integration.

HubSpot Customer Support

HubSpot offers support through email and live chat from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Professional users get expanded access to phone support as well. Finally, HubSpot offers an array of online resources for self-service, including HubSpot Academy, a community page of product users, and an online library of tutorials and guides.

Want to see why sales and marketing teams choose HubSpot as their startup CRM? Read our HubSpot CRM review with insights into the product’s features and modular capabilities that help businesses grow.

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Streak: Best for Startups Using Google Workspace

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for a higher cost.

Streak is a CRM system built specifically to feel like a Google application—making the interface highly intuitive and easy to navigate. Due to that purpose, Streak integrates with numerous Google Workspace products, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, and Chat. The CRM platform offers customizable business processes to track activity associated with anything a startup wants to track, including sales pipelines, projects, and service deliverables.

Streak also lets teams store and organize contact data within the system. Users can enable contact enrichment to automatically keep the data up to date, and store associated information such as file attachments, tasks, call logs, and notes. There are also excellent email features for engaging with contacts on a one-to-one basis or through mass email marketing.

Streak is considered a great option for freelancers and solopreneurs. That said, the Free and Solo plan only supports one user—not ideal for multi-member or growing startups. HubSpot is the top alternative in terms of limitless user capacity—allowing unlimited users on the free-forever plan.

Streak Plan Summary

Streak Key Features

• Google Workspace integration: Teams can get more from their CRM by integrating with Google products like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, and Chat.
• Contact management: Ability to store contact data, track their pipeline statuses, enrich contact data, and share contact profiles and associated email history with other team members.
• Information tracking: Contextual information management, including file storage and attachment, call logging, tasks, and record notes.
• Email communications: Users can send direct or mass email messages to contacts, categorize email templates to share on the pipeline, and track opens and clicks on message links.

Streak Customer Support

The Free plan is limited to just self-service resources such as a knowledge base and blog. Paid plan users get access to live chat support, which then extends to live chat and email for Enterprise users.

Streak is popular and valuable for solopreneurs, startups, and freelance businesses. Find out if it’s right for your business by checking out our Streak review for detailed information on features, integrations, and pricing.

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How We Evaluated the Best Startup CRMs

To determine the best CRMs for startups, we considered attributes essential to new firms. For instance, a free plan and low-cost paid plans are appealing since many startups operate on a thin budget. Also, products containing important CRM features such as lead management and marketing automation are crucial to building customer relationships early on. Those features should also be easy to operate as startups contain users new to CRMs.

The tabs below offer insight into our evaluation process of the best CRM for startup businesses: