10 Best Ecommerce CRM Software for Small Business in 2023

• You need a free integration with Shopify: Freshmarketer’s Free plan is pretty bare-bones in terms of capabilities—limiting you to 100 contacts, 200 emails, and one customer segment. It is, however, one of the few products with a free Shopify integration. This lets you track contact activity and segment lists based on Shopify events like abandoned carts or first-time visits.
• You want complete ecommerce marketing tools: Freshmarketer is a marketing automation platform that’s mostly meant for campaign management. It lets users create, send, automate, and track marketing campaigns via email, text, social media, Facebook ads, and WhatsApp. There are also tools for designing landing pages, tracking website activity, and engaging web visitors through live chat or an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.

• You want to manage ecommerce operations from your CRM: Freshmarketer, unfortunately, is only a good product for managing marketing campaigns, storing customer data, and tracking activity. It doesn’t offer built-in features for processing payments or managing inventory.
  • Alternative: HubSpot is a great alternative for built-in payment processing tools, while Zoho CRM Plus lets you handle inventory management, projects, and marketing in one system.
• You need a more robust free ecommerce CRM software: While Freshmarketer has a free-forever option, it’s designed more for a temporary use case as it limits you to 100 contacts, one list, 200 emails, and basic contact data storage tools.
  • Alternative: EngageBay comes with the best overall free marketing tools and Agile CRM is a solid alternative with free comprehensive customer service tools to handle support tickets in the CRM.

• You need payment processing capabilities: In both the HubSpot Sales Hub and CRM Suite, which adds marketing and service tools to the sales CRM, users have the ability to collect and track digital payments. One option is through built-in processing, which allows invoice payments through an automated clearing house (ACH). There’s also direct integration with Stripe for handling credit payments.
• You want a minimal learning curve for your ecommerce CRM: HubSpot is notorious for its simple CRM usability. It leverages a modern interface and intuitive features so users at any technical level can quickly figure out and operate the system. Once comfortable, ecommerce teams can create and deploy marketing campaigns, integrate with ecommerce tools like Shopify, and automate customer journeys from one system.

• You need inventory tracking features: Inventory tracking tools let you monitor product lines and stock to ensure you are always at optimal levels. HubSpot is limited to hosting a products library that lets you view all the items your retailer sells.
  • Alternative: We recommend Zoho CRM Plus as the best tool for inventory management, product tracking, order processing, and vendor management.
• You want a more scalable solution: Ecommerce businesses are unique in that they can quickly grow their operation after just one or a few successful campaigns. That said, it’s essential to have a scalable CRM for ecommerce that’s cost-effective to update when users need more data capacity and advanced features. HubSpot is relatively expensive on the paid plans once users need to upgrade past the Free option.
  • Alternative: EngageBay stands out as the most scalable and affordable CRM for ecommerce that also has a free plan.

• You want to track ecommerce activity on numerous views: monday Sales CRM lets you store unlimited items, like customer records, and view them on any type of board view, like table, Kanban, Gantt, and timeline. Users can also create dashboards to meet any need, as long as the data is stored in the CRM. This lets you apply reporting to ecommerce activity to track orders, customers, and revenue on one CRM dashboard.
• You need a highly intuitive CRM system: monday Sales CRM is acclaimed for product usability as it uses a spreadsheet format, like Excel, for data entry and management. It also has no-code automation features where users can use premade workflows and select triggers, actions, and data records to design automatons. This lets you put crucial data updates and drip email nurturing tasks on autopilot.

• You need a free CRM for ecommerce: monday Sales CRM, unfortunately, no longer offers a free-forever plan to test drive the features for a long period of time.
  • Alternative: Freshmarketer, HubSpot, and EngageBay are all excellent CRM options with free ecommerce tools.
• You want more operational ecommerce tools in your CRM: monday Sales CRM is relatively limited in that online retailers can only use it for email marketing and storing customer information. They can’t process payments through the platform, nor can they monitor inventory stock and orders without creating data automations between third-party tools.
  • Alternative: Different products can fulfill this particular need. HubSpot is great for offering payment processing capabilities through built-in tools or the Stripe integration. Zoho CRM Plus, however, has an entire inventory management module built into its CRM system.

• You need a built-in products catalog: While Pipedrive is mostly known as a sales CRM system with advanced lead and deal management tools, it does offer one specific tool vital to an online retailer: a products catalog. This allows teams to create a custom list of product offerings with descriptions, tax rates, price, cost, ID numbers, and notes, in which purchases for specific products can be tracked in contact records.
• You want robust contact management features: Pipedrive is one of the top overall contact management software products for those who need advanced data management tools in their ecommerce CRM. Teams can auto-enrich their customer profiles with online data, detect duplicate records, monitor purchase and engagement activity, attach relevant files, and view customer locations on Google Maps within a contact record.

• You need more expanded ecommerce tools: Pipedrive is ideal if you need the products catalog, contact storage, activity tracking, or email marketing features. Inventory management, payment processing, direct Shopify integration, and expanded marketing tools like online ads management are not available in this CRM.
  • Alternative: Zoho CRM Plus gives the most comprehensive operations CRM with inventory management, while EngageBay has some of the most expansive yet cost-friendly marketing capabilities.
• You want a free ecommerce platform: While it’s not necessarily an expensive option, Pipedrive does not offer a free-forever plan.
  • Alternative: EngageBay and HubSpot have some of the best free marketing features, while Freshsales is great as its free plan integrates with Shopify.

• You need omnichannel marketing tools: EngageBay is one of the most complete commerce CRM systems primarily for its marketing capabilities. The free plan comes with mass email options, list segmentation, lead scoring, stored email templates, and live chat communication channels. There’s also a social suite for monitoring feeds on Facebook and Instagram and creating posts, plus a landing page designer.
• You want to integrate your CRM with ecommerce tools: EngageBay’s free-forever plan also has CRM integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce to synchronize purchase and activity data between systems. This allows users to automate marketing campaigns based on ecommerce information. The CRM integrates with Stripe to sync payment data and manage payments in one system.

• You need more affordable marketing automation: The main downside for EngageBay is that workflow and marketing automation to deploy or retarget drip campaigns is not available until the Growth plan for $42.49 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: HubSpot starts offering automated email steps beginning on its free-forever plan.
• You require a more intuitive ecommerce CRM: EngageBay performs poorly in product usability in terms of interface navigation and operating the built-in tools. It’s also inconvenient that most third-party integrations require a connection tool such as Zapier.
  • Alternative: Freshmarketer is a great alternative with comparable marketing functionality to EngageBay but with far more intuitive features.

• You want to oversee ecommerce operations: Capsule CRM stands out for offering a wide range of accounting software integrations like QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, and FreshBooks, as well as inventory management tools like Cin7 and Dear Systems. These make Capsule a great option for managing back-end ecommerce operations through data sync capabilities with bookkeeping, payments, and supplier information.
• You need built-in project management features: Capsule is one of the few CRM systems that come with built-in project management capabilities. As an ecommerce business may find itself engaging in long-term content production, product development, or rebranding initiatives, a project management module is useful for teams to monitor progress, track milestones and tasks, and collaborate with team members.

• You need more contact capacity for free: While Capsule CRM has a decent free-forever option that includes email marketing, activity tracking, and project management, it’s limited in data storage to 250 contacts.
  • Alternative: HubSpot’s free plan allows for up to 1 million stored CRM contacts.
• You want more affordable automation tools: Capsule, unfortunately, is not a relatively affordable CRM. Most notably, the workflow automation features for putting email nurturing and sales tasks on auto-pilot do not start until the Professional plan for $36 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: monday Sales CRM has the most cost-friendly automation features that start at $14 per user, monthly.

• You want an all-in-one ecommerce CRM: Zoho CRM Plus is a product built specifically as an all-in-one sales, service, and marketing platform. It also integrates with Shopify to synchronize customer data between both systems and offers a built-in project management module for planning campaigns, product launches, or new product development processes.
• You need built-in inventory management: Zoho CRM Plus, in addition to its many modules and integration options, has built-in inventory management. This feature is especially useful for ecommerce as you can manage orders, vendors, product lines, and inventory stock in the same interface you’re deploying your marketing campaigns and sales outreach.

• You need additional pricing options: Zoho CRM Plus is a specific CRM product built by Zoho to give all the native interactions, like Zoho Desk, Projects, Analytics, and Campaigns, in one system. That said, it only comes with one pricing option, which is $57 per user, monthly.
  • Alternative: EngageBay, Freshmarketer, and Agile CRM are all great options with free-forever plans and a range of subscription options that give teams flexibility based on their needs.
• You want a more intuitive platform: An issue with all Zoho applications, including the CRM Plus app, is usability. Users find the interface clunky and tough to navigate at times.
  • Alternative: HubSpot and monday Sales CRM stand out as the top ecommerce CRM options for usability ratings.

• You need to manage product development projects: Many ecommerce businesses produce and distribute their own product lines. If that’s your situation, then Insightly is one of the best ecommerce CRM platforms for you. Included is a built-in project management module to oversee long-term initiatives such as a product development process that lets you set up automated queues—auto-creating tasks and milestones for each new project.
• You want to track Shopify inventory levels: Insightly stands out as having one of the best Shopify integrations. Like other CRMs, it can synchronize customer data between systems and create highly targeted segmented campaigns. Plus, teams can use the integration to manage inventory by adjusting stock levels in their Insightly project management module, which syncs with Shopify.

• You want true and affordable inventory management support: Some teams may not like the idea of using a project management system as an alternative to monitoring inventory levels or tracking products on an expensive Enterprise plan. In both cases, Insightly is not the best product for you.
  • Alternative: Zoho CRM Plus is the best alternative that also has project management but its own separate inventory management module for overseeing products, vendors, and sales orders.
• You need expanded customer management features: Ecommerce is heavily customer-driven, where you need to create properly targeted marketing campaigns and manage customer service requests. Unfortunately, Insightly requires a paid native add-on for marketing and service features like marketing automation, journey-building tools, and ticketing.
  • Alternative: EngageBay and HubSpot are the two best options for customer management at all stages of the sales funnel that include sales, marketing, and service features in one platform.

• You need free customer service tools: Agile CRM has sales, marketing, and service tools for online retailers that need all customer management capabilities. Nearly all the customer service features are available for free. This lets ecommerce companies manage tickets for billing, delivery, or product issues. They can group them, label them, assign tickets to other users, and send canned responses in one click at no cost.
• You want affordable lead scoring: Lead scoring is great for ecommerce as it lets you identify top customers based on profiles or engagement activity. Agile CRM is unique in that its scoring tools are available on the Free plan. It pairs nicely with email tracking, which lets you quantify future purchases and interest based on campaign opens, clicks, and other events in the marketing journey.

• You need ecommerce operations features: While you can assist customers and track inquiries using Agile CRM, there are no expanded operations features such as inventory management, product tracking, or vendor data storage.
  • Alternative: Zoho CRM Plus is the best all-in-one system for overseeing sales, service, marketing, and the operational components of ecommerce, like inventory management, in a single platform.
• You need many free third-party integrations, including Shopify: Agile CRM’s free plan only allows up to one integration or plugin. Additionally, the Shopify connection, which helps you automate marketing engagement based on Shopify activity and two-way sync customer data records, is not available for free.
  • Alternative: HubSpot lets you connect multiple integrations to its CRM at once for free, including Shopify and other ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Square, Magento, and BigCommerce.

• You need robust marketing automation tools: ActiveCampaign has solid, easy-to-use tools for creating automated customer journeys. Users can develop mass campaigns using templates or drag-and-drop design tools and deploy their emails to various customer segments. They can also create trigger automations based on abandoned carts, product views, or email clicks, as well as based on optimal send times.
• You want to use an omnichannel outreach approach: In addition to advanced email marketing features, ActiveCampaign lets you deploy brand messaging and promotional offers via text, Facebook, and online web pages. There’s also live chat communication for teams to engage leads directly on a website.

• You need free marketing capabilities: ActiveCampaign is an advanced marketing automation platform that, unfortunately, does not have a free plan or cost-friendly paid plans.
  • Alternative: EngageBay is the most comparable CRM to ActiveCampaign in terms of marketing functionality but with far more affordable pricing options, including a free plan.
• You want more affordable ecommerce integrations: While ActiveCampaign can integrate with all ecommerce tools like Shopify, BigCommerce, Square, and Magento, those apps are not accessible until the Plus plan for $49 per month.
  • Alternative: Freshmarketer offers its ecommerce integrations beginning on the free-forever plan.

An ecommerce CRM is software that lets you develop customer relationships and manage an online storefront—ideally all in one interface. It’s beneficial for online retailers, wholesalers, and any other business selling products online with tools such as customer tracking, email marketing, social media management, inventory monitoring, and payment and order processing.

Online retailers and ecommerce businesses don’t necessarily need, but can greatly benefit from, an ecommerce CRM. Many ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce give you the basics to create an online store, market to customers, and handle orders. A CRM, however, gives more advanced features for tracking customer activity, managing projects, handling service requests, tracking inventory, and automating campaigns. Many also integrate with the ecommerce platforms so you can sync customer data between both systems.