Online stores benefit the most from customer relationship management (CRM) software with customer activity tracking, marketing campaigns, and order management features. The best CRM for a small ecommerce business offers affordable and simple features to store customer information, track inventory, run email campaigns, and process orders. After evaluating dozens of products, our picks for the best ecommerce CRM include:
- Best free ecommerce CRM: Bitrix24
- Best built-in inventory management: Zoho CRM Plus
- Best free Shopify integration: Freshmarketer
- Best for payment processing: HubSpot CRM
- Best selection of business apps: Odoo CRM
- Best built-in products catalog: Pipedrive
- Best for multi-view activity tracking: monday sales CRM
- Best for Shopify stock monitoring: Insightly CRM
Best Ecommerce CRM Software Compared
Provider | Free Plan? | Our CRM Rating out of 5 | |
---|---|---|---|
$49 for 5 users | ✓ Unlimited users | 4.64 | |
$57 per user | ✕ | 4.52 | |
$19 per user | ✓ Up to 10 users | 4.49 | |
$18 for 2 users | ✓ Unlimited users | 4.40 | |
$24.90 per user | ✓ Unlimited users, one app | 4.38 | |
$14.90 per user | ✕ | 4.29 | |
$12 for 3 users | ✕ | 4.25 | |
$29 per user | ✓ 2 users | 4.20 | |
Bitrix24: Best Free Ecommerce CRM
Pros
- Free plan accommodates unlimited users
- Extensive free ecommerce functionalities with order processing and inventory management
- Includes call center software with collaboration options
Cons
- Complex navigation and interface are not suited for first-time users
- Document storage in CRM records is not available for free
- Support is limited to live chat and email
- You are a solopreneur or small business needing a free ecommerce CRM: Bitrix24’s free plan supports unlimited users. In addition, it has an amazing set of ecommerce features that include product lists, order processing, coupons, self-service payments, a shipping cost calculator, and inventory management. All of these are features that influence how to choose a CRM for a small online business.
- You need telephony features for customer support: When you subscribe to a paid Bitrix24 plan, you can use its telephony features to call your customers from your CRM. You can also integrate your private branch exchange (PBX) system with it so you can keep your existing phone number.
- You prefer using a simple CRM: Bitrix24’s robust features make it hard to learn and navigate for beginners. Its interface also displays a lot of menu options.
- Alternative: Pipedrive and HubSpot CRM are our best recommendations for freelancers and teams that prefer a simple CRM. These providers are easy to use and navigate, even for beginners, making them one of the best simple CRMs.
- You need free in-app phone features: Bitrix24’s telephony features are not available in the free tier. Instead, you’ll have to subscribe to its Basic plan for $49 for up to five users per month.
- Alternative: HubSpot CRM’s free plan allows you to integrate it with a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) system like Aircall.
Bitrix24 Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-user monthly breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. Paid plans include a 15-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Bitrix24 Pricing Add-ons
Our Expert Opinion
Bitrix24 has the most robust set of free ecommerce tools from this list. You can use its website builder to create online stores, landing pages, and web forms at no cost. We love that it also offers special features not generally available with other free ecommerce CRM systems. These include payment processing, coupons, a shipping cost calculator, and inventory management.
Zoho CRM Plus: Best for Inventory Management
Pros
- All-in-one sales, marketing, service, and project management system
- Zoho-Shopify extension that syncs Shopify customers to Zoho records in the CRM
- Has an inventory management module for tracking orders, creating product books, and managing vendors
Cons
- No free plan and only one, expensive paid plan at $57 per user, monthly
- Requires a learning curve to figure out and operate
- Campaigns and social media management require a paid add-on
- 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 want an all-in-one ecommerce CRM: Zoho CRM Plus is built as a one-stop shop for sales, service, and marketing. Thus, it’s an excellent option for users wanting all business functionality in one place. It also connects with Shopify to sync customer data between both systems. You can get a built-in project management module for planning campaigns, product launches, or new product development processes.
- You need additional pricing options: Zoho CRM Plus is a specific CRM product built by Zoho to provide 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: Freshmarketer and Bitrix24 have 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. We find it tough to learn and navigate for beginner-level users, mainly due to its rich feature inclusion.
- Alternative: HubSpot CRM, monday sales CRM, and Pipedrive stand out as the top ecommerce CRM platforms for usability ratings.
Zoho CRM Plus Pricing Plan & Overview*
Zoho CRM Plus
Cost:
- $57 per user
Key Features:
- 10GB storage for up to 200 users; 30GB storage for more than 200 users
- 5GB (plus 1GB per user) of license file storage per org
- 100 Blueprints to create visual representations of business processes per org
- One Brand (10 social channels)
- 10 customer service channels
- Unlimited projects, tasks, subtasks, and milestones
- Over 250 survey templates
- Unlimited reports and dashboards
- More than 75 built-in visualizations (including charts, pivot tables, and tabular views)
- Zoho CRM (one user)
- Zoho Desk (one user)
- Zoho Analytics (5 million rows)
- Zoho Sales IQ (200,000 website visitors tracked per month)
- Zoho Survey (unlimited responses)
- Zoho Campaigns (5,000 marketing contacts)
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-user monthly breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. Paid plans include a 30-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Our Expert Opinion
Zoho CRM Plus is the best CRM for managing customers, running marketing campaigns, and managing inventory for your online business, all in a single system. Users can integrate it with ecommerce tools like Shopify and get access to essential tools for deploying campaigns, monitoring stock, processing orders, and tracking customer activity. While it only has one relatively expensive plan, its completeness makes it worth every dollar.
Freshmarketer: Best Free Shopify Integration
Pros
- Comes with simple menu navigation and operation features
- Excellent tools for creating and deploying marketing campaigns and automated customer journeys
- Direct integration with Shopify, including on the free plan
Cons
- Barebones free option in terms of features and data capacity
- Expensive after Growth plan; high leap from $19 to $149 per user, monthly
- Lacks built-in payment processing and inventory management tools
- You need 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. But it has free Shopify integration, letting 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 mostly meant for campaign management. It lets users create, send, automate, and track marketing campaigns via email, text, social media, Facebook ads, and WhatsApp. You can also design landing pages, track website activity, and engage web visitors through live chat or an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
- You want to manage payments and inventory 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 CRM 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 CRM for an online store: 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: Bitrix24’s free plan supports unlimited users and does not have a limit on product lists. It also has many ecommerce features like an online store builder, landing pages, inventory management, and a shipping cost calculator.
Freshmarketer Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. It comes with a 21-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Freshmarketer Pricing Add-ons
- Freshbots Additional chatbot sessions : $100 for 1,000 Freshbot sessions
- Marketing contacts: Starts at $100 per month for 5,000 additional contacts
- Conversion Rate Optimization Website visitor behavior analysis and site optimization for paid plan users : Starts at $219 per month for 10,000 monthly unique visitors (MUV)
- Messaging Agent Access to Agent Inbox to manage chat conversations across all channels in one place : Ranges from $15 to $69 per agent, monthly
- Dedicated IP Address For Enterprise plan only : $100 per month
Our Expert Opinion
Freshmarketer continues to make it to our list of the best CRM for ecommerce business thanks to its easy-to-use features, broad contact management tools, and robust marketing capabilities. Its free integration with Shopify makes it a solid option for online retailers. This integration allows users to track activity and automate campaigns from the CRM system based on Shopify activity.
HubSpot CRM: Best CRM With Payment Processing
Pros
- Includes built-in payment processing tools and integration with Stripe
- Free plan has mass marketing email, Facebook Messenger integration, and list segmentation
- Highly intuitive CRM that requires a minimum learning curve
Cons
- Paid plans get expensive after upgrading
- Products library unavailable until the Professional plan
- Does not have inventory management features
- You need payment processing capabilities: A clear edge of HubSpot CRM as an ecommerce solution is its tools that let users 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 prides itself on being one of the best simple CRMs in the market. It leverages a modern interface and intuitive features so users at any technical level can quickly learn and operate the system. Once comfortable, users 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. If you have a Shopify store, Insightly offers integration with an extended inventory tracking system.
- 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. Thus, it’s essential to have a cost-effective, scalable CRM for ecommerce to upgrade as the business needs expand. HubSpot, however, is relatively expensive on the paid plans once users need to upgrade past the Free option.
- Alternative: Bitrix24 stands out as the most scalable and affordable CRM for ecommerce, with paid plans that range from $49 per month (five users) to $399 per month (250 users). Its free plan for unlimited users allows you to build an ecommerce store with unlimited products.
HubSpot CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown of the Sales Hub plans for individuals and small teams. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
**CRM Suite includes sales, marketing, customer service, content management system (CMS), and operations software. Individual modules can be purchased for lower monthly costs.
Our Expert Opinion
First and foremost, we love HubSpot CRM’s product versatility. It gives options to subscribe to a sales-only CRM for lead and deal management, or a CRM Suite that adds marketing and customer service tools. It also stands out for its all-around product usability and robust free-forever plans. The most notable use for HubSpot CRM, however, is payment processing, where ecommerce teams can manage customer payments from the CRM system.
Odoo CRM: Best Selection of Business Apps
Pros
- Variety of ecommerce apps available, and you’ll only pay for those you use
- With inventory forecasting, stock tracing, and automatic stock replenishment
- Free open source CRM
Cons
- No phone support
- Steep learning curve may not fit absolute beginners
- Higher-tiered paid plans can get expensive
- You want access to multiple business apps in one space: Odoo CRM is a reputable open source CRM designed to tailor functionalities to specific business processes. It also offers modules for CRM, marketing, website, project management, sales, and many more. Ecommerce stores can save money by paying only for apps they choose under the Standard ($24.90 per user, monthly) or Custom plan ($37.40 per user, per month).
- You are looking for a CRM with a product management system: A strong feature of Odoo CRM is its inventory module that offers tools for inventory forecasting and stock replenishment. It also comes with stock tracing that allows businesses engaged in dropshipping and online retail to plan their supply orders ahead of time.
- You need an easy-to-use CRM: Odoo CRM’s user interface is not as straightforward as other providers in this list only because it’s an open source system that requires customization from the user’s end. Thus, beginners and those looking for intuitive solutions may find it challenging to operate.
- Alternative: HubSpot CRM is one of our top simple CRMs for its built-in automation and no-fuss interface layout.
- You want a simple, scalable pricing structure: You’ll find two pricing structures in Odoo: the basic plans and Success Packs. The basic plans come with subscriptions and require you to put the apps together, while the Success Packs provide direct consultation and customization but with a one-time, more expensive fee.
- Alternative: Check out Pipedrive if you’re looking for scalable paid plan options with complete feature transparency.
Odoo Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a monthly per-user breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. Odoo also offers Success Packs with one-time fees for implementation services and app customization. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Our Expert Opinion
Odoo is our top-recommended open source CRM for ecommerce teams wanting flexibility in terms of applications they can use in one platform. We love that you don’t have to break the bank to access key apps for inventory, marketing, and sales management with Odoo. Instead, you can pay for modules of your choice. This CRM is also ideal for dropshippers and those wanting warehouse management tools, as it offers attributes for product monitoring.
Pipedrive: Best Built-in Products Catalog
Pros
- Includes a built-in product catalog to track items you sell, their cost, price, description, ID numbers, and additional notes
- Solid contact data management tools with activity tracking, duplicate detection, and visual timelines
- Highly customizable system to tailor for ecommerce informational requirements
Cons
- No free plan
- Doesn’t have payment processing, inventory management, or more broad online marketing tools
- Workflow automation gets expensive
- 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 CRM for online retail. 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 for 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 HubSpot CRM 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: Bitrix24 offers some of the best ecommerce capabilities, like inventory management, at no cost. Freshmarketer is great as its free plan integrates with Shopify.
Pipedrive Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-user monthly breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. Paid plans include a 14-day free trial. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Pipedrive Pricing Add-ons
- Projects Project management tools; free in Power and Enterprise plans : Starts at $6.70 per user, monthly
- Campaigns Customizable email campaigns : Starts at $13.33 per company, monthly
- LeadBooster Lead generation tool set (chatbot, live chat, web forms, and appointment scheduler) : Starts at $32.50 per company, monthly
- Smart Docs Trackable quotes, proposals, and contracts; free with Professional, Power, and Enterprise plans : Starts at $32.50 per company, monthly
- Web Visitors Web tracking and lead ranking : Starts at $41 per company, monthly
Our Expert Opinion
Pipedrive’s products catalog is top-notch for tracking sold items and their details, including unit prices, category, tax rates, and any other custom field you want to add. This is particularly useful for monitoring customer activity and prior purchases to help offer promotional deals or recommendations. On top of that, Pipedrive has robust contact management and pipeline visualization tools, streamlining ecommerce sales from end to end.
monday sales CRM: Best for Multi-view Activity Tracking
Pros
- Solid dashboard reporting tools to track real-time key performance metrics
- Spreadsheet-style format for data entry and customizing boards
- Excellent no-code automation design tools for creating data management and email outreach workflows
Cons
- Misleading pricing; paid plans require a minimum number of users
- No free plan and has expensive lead scoring
- Lacks payment processing and an inventory management module
- 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 views 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 through its 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 update crucial data 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 CRM, and Bitrix24 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. It can’t process payments through the platform, nor can it monitor inventory stock and orders without creating data automation between third-party tools.
- Alternative: Different products can fulfill this particular need. HubSpot CRM is great for offering payment processing capabilities through built-in tools or Stripe integration. Zoho CRM Plus, however, has an entire inventory management module built into its CRM system.
monday sales CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a monthly per-user breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. There is a 14-day free trial for the paid plans. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Our Expert Opinion
monday sales CRM may not be a traditional CRM, but it is highly versatile—which can add a lot of value to a small business. Between its email tools, no-code automaton, and simple data management features, online retailers can use the CRM for data storage, task automation, and communications. Plus, the option to see real-time data in various visuals allows you to generate insight that drives appropriate decisions for your business.
Insightly CRM: Best for Tracking Shopify Stock Levels
Pros
- Shopify integration lets you sync customer data between systems and adjust inventory levels from Insightly’s project tools
- Includes built-in project management
- Robust contact management tools with relationship linking, data storage, and activity tracking, including from third-party tools
Cons
- No free plan
- Marketing and customer service modules require a separate product for an added cost
- Expensive for price books and products management
- You want to track Shopify inventory levels: Insightly CRM 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 need to manage product development projects: This is one of the best ecommerce platforms for businesses that produce and distribute their own product lines. Its built-in project management module allows all plan users to oversee long-term initiatives. These could include product development processes that let you set up automated queues. These attributes allow you to auto-create tasks and milestones for each new project.
- 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 CRM is not the best product for you.
- Alternative: Zoho CRM Plus is the best alternative, with an 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 CRM requires a paid native add-on for marketing and service features like marketing automation, journey-building tools, and ticketing.
- Alternative: HubSpot CRM is one of the best options for customer management at all stages of the sales funnel that includes sales, marketing, and service features in one platform.
Insightly CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-user monthly breakdown. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. Insightly offers a 14-day free trial on paid plans. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing here.
Insightly CRM Add-ons
Our Expert Opinion
Insightly CRM gives product development and design teams an edge in getting their product lines into the marketplace. It has one of the most intriguing Shopify integrations that lets you manage inventory from the projects module. We also like the system’s contact management system, which can synchronize records with Shopify so you can keep activity data up to date and segment customer lists.
How We Evaluated the Best CRM for Ecommerce
We determined the best CRM software for ecommerce by evaluating features relevant to managing a business that sells products online. For instance, payment processing through Stripe integration and inventory management tools are useful for handling some of the back-end operations. We also looked at marketing capabilities through mass email campaigns and social media integrations, plus typical software product attributes like price and customer support.
The tabs below offer insight into our evaluation process of the best CRM for small ecommerce business:
25% of Overall Score
General CRM features are tools and capabilities relevant to any CRM system, regardless of use case or industry vertical. Reporting tools, customizable data fields and pipelines, and a mobile app, for example, are all essential software features for a business. We also wanted to see expanded ecommerce CRM integrations with tools like Shopify.
20% of Overall Score
As many online retailers start on a tight budget, we considered pricing criteria, which looks at free plan availability and the various subscription options businesses could upgrade to as they grow. We also looked at the billing options for a subscriber to either pay monthly or save by paying annually. Finally, we looked at the costs specifically for access to ecommerce tools like email marketing, inventory management, and payment processing features.
20% of Overall Score
Niche and advanced features looked at capabilities specifically relevant to ecommerce companies. These included the capabilities of email marketing tools, reporting dashboards, collaboration tools, and social media integrations. We also wanted to see each CRM offer operational features like inventory management and payment processing, either built-in or through integration.
20% of Overall Score
Extensive customer support allows users to better understand their CRM and quickly product system or billing issues. This was evaluated in terms of service hour availability and multiple channel access to support lines via phone, live chat, and email. We also looked at self-service resources subscribers can access, like product tutorials, user forums, or training modules.
15% of Overall Score
In addition to firsthand experience with a CRM ecommerce software business owners would use, we evaluated what actual users say about each product based on online reviews from reputable sites like G2 and Capterra. These criteria consider how actual customers feel about gaining insight into perceived value for the price paid, ease of use when operating and navigating the CRM, and how much users like the CRM’s features.
Frequently Asked Questions
An ecommerce CRM is software that lets you develop customer relationships and manage an online storefront—ideally all in one interface. It is ideal for online retailers, wholesalers, and any other business selling products online, as it has 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 require but can greatly benefit from an ecommerce CRM. 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, provides more advanced features for tracking customer activity, managing projects, handling service requests, tracking inventory, and automating campaigns.
Based on our evaluation, Bitrix24 is the best ecommerce CRM because of its ease of use, tools designed primarily for ecommerce operations, and robust marketing features. Other similar providers that also compete well in this space are Zoho CRM Plus, Freshmarketer, and HubSpot CRM.
Bottom Line
Investing in ecommerce CRM software helps online storefronts track customers, deploy marketing campaigns, and manage inventory. The best CRM for your business will depend on your feature preferences and budget. However, if you want to explore ecommerce CRM tools without spending a fortune, Bitrix24 is your best option. Alternatively, go for other solutions like Zoho CRM Plus for built-in inventory management, and Freshmarketer for free Shopify integration.