Free customer relationship management (CRM) software helps businesses manage relationships with customers and prospects, but typically includes limits on users or available features compared to paid options. We examined more than a dozen programs offering free plans with no time or user restrictions to identify the top six CRM options for small businesses and the overall best.
Top 6 Free CRM Options for 2020
Free CRM Software | Best For |
|---|---|
(Best Overall) Small businesses wanting a comprehensive, free CRM to manage activities | |
Teams wanting a free CRM with built-in chat functionality | |
Startups wanting a single platform to manage marketing, sales, and service activities | |
Organizations looking for a free tool that supports probability-based sales forecasting | |
Small businesses and solopreneurs needing a free CRM to manage sales activities and projects | |
Small teams in need of a CRM with invoicing and order management features |
Which Free CRM Software is Right for You?
How We Evaluated the Best CRM Software Options
CRM software enables businesses to better manage customer and prospect relationships by helping them organize sales initiatives and manage customer activities in one place. When considering the best free CRM for startups and small businesses, we looked for solutions that are easy to set up and to use, save time, have affordable upgrade options, and make it easier to build relationships.
Freshsales: Best Overall Free CRM for Small Businesses
Freshsales deal management
Freshsales’ free CRM offers key features to keep your contacts and deals organized. This includes lead scoring and unlimited users and contacts. What makes Freshsales different from the other free platforms covered here is that it offers email, live chat, and phone support, 24 hours a day, five days a week, which also helped Freshsales earn our number one spot for best CRM for small business.
Freshsales Pros | Freshsales Cons |
|---|---|
Intuitive drag-and-drop user interface | Does not include sales forecasting |
Gives you access to highly rated customer support | Pipeline tool less robust than found in paid version |
Supports lead scoring and automation | Lacks advanced reporting |
Freshsales Free Plan Limits
- Users: Unlimited
- Contacts: Unlimited
- Storage: None
Freshsales Free Plan Features
- Unlimited 24×5 support
- Lead scoring and insights
- Data import and export
- Role-based record access
- Mobile apps
- Task, appointment, and notes management
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Freshsales’ free plan has a lot going for it and can certainly help teams manage leads and contacts. However, its entry-level paid plan gives you quite a bang for your buck with the addition of custom fields, 1GB of storage, and a host of email management tools for only $12 per user, per month.
For more information on Freshsales pricing plans and features, see our Freshsales CRM reviews page.
HubSpot: Best Free CRM for Integrated Sales & Chat
HubSpot conversation management
HubSpot offers a user-friendly, free CRM for sales teams with tools that include contact management, live chat, conversational bots, and social media lead ads while also supporting an unlimited number of users. HubSpot gives users the option to build on its core free features with paid versions of additional products focused on marketing, sales, and service. This makes it stand out from its competitors if you want a free CRM designed for online or chat-centric sales.
HubSpot Pros | HubSpot Cons |
|---|---|
Includes robust functionality like highly rated live chat software | Limits the number of documents you can add per account |
Simple user interface that functions like Gmail | Does not include built-in calling functionality |
Features extensive tutorials and an online knowledgebase | Does not provide direct customer support |
HubSpot Free Plan Limits
- Users: Unlimited
- Contacts: 1 million contacts
- Storage: Five documents per user
HubSpot Free Plan Features
- Email tracking and integration (limit of 200)
- Integrated live chat software
- Custom support form fields
- Ad management support
- Deal tracking
- Reporting dashboard
- Pipeline management
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
HubSpot’s free plan offers several features that are hard to find in other no-cost CRMs on the market. However, the $40 per month Starter plan exponentially increases HubSpot’s power. For instance, email tracking and notifications are unlimited, email templates jump from five to 1,000, and document storage increases to a whopping 1,000 per user. Its biggest drawback is that the Starter plan only supports two users, so it’s best for solopreneurs and very small teams.
For more information about how HubSpot’s free CRM can help integrate your sales on online lead strategy, visit our HubSpot CRM reviews page.
Agile CRM: Best Free CRM for All-in-One Customer Management
Agile CRM analytics
Agile CRM offers an all-in-one platform for managing customer relationships. Within that platform, you can manage sales, marketing, and help desk activities. It’s free for up to 10 users and includes contact, deal, and task management. It also supports custom data fields, email integration, and lead scoring. This bundle of features makes it particularly well-suited for software or service companies looking to manage everything within a single platform.
Agile CRM Pros | Agile CRM Cons |
|---|---|
Simple setup | Limits the number of contacts you can manage based on number of users |
Features tools for sales, marketing, and customer service | Does not include email templates or web forms |
Supports two-way email integration and tracks opens and clicks | Limits integrations you can use |
Agile CRM Free Plan Limits
- Users: One to 10
- Contacts: 1,000
- Storage: Unlimited documents
Agile CRM Free Plan Features
- Unlimited deals
- Lead scoring
- Email tracking and integration
- Custom data fields
- Landing page builder
- Contact level analytics
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Agile CRM’s free plan is an entry-level turnkey solution for companies that want a single platform to encompass the activities of the sales, marketing, and customer service teams. For an upgrade that instantly benefits all three teams, consider the Starter plan with pricing from $8.99 per user, per month. It features support for 10,000 sales contacts, two-way email for the marketing department, and a knowledge base module for the support team.
To read more from existing customers about Agile’s free and paid plans, see our Agile CRM reviews article.
Really Simple Systems: Best Free CRM for Forecasting
Really Simple Systems Sales forecast summary
Really Simple Systems is a cloud-hosted CRM with the tools growing teams need to manage sales opportunities. Its free plan includes pipeline and task management, a products catalog, forecast reports, and free data storage. Of the featured CRMs, it is the only one that lets teams mark deals with a percentage probability without upgrading to a paid tier, making it the best for those who want to create weighted sales forecasts.
Really Simple System Pros | Really Simple System Cons |
|---|---|
Features weighted sales forecasting | Does not support email integration without a third-party tool |
Supports natural language search | Lacks marketing campaign management |
Included automated task reminders | Offers limited online training resources compared to other products |
Really Simple Systems Free Plan Limits
- Users: Two
- Contacts: Unlimited
- Records: 100
- Storage: 100MB
Really Simple Systems Free Plan Features
- 100 company records
- Weighted sales forecasting
- Custom reports, dashboards, pages, and forms
- Sales stages
- Pipeline management
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Really Simple Systems’ free plan is a superior option for teams needing solid sales forecasting tools. However, the Starter plan rings in at $14 per user, per month and includes tools to help you attain the goals you create based on forecast reports. Company records are bumped up to 1,000, document storage increases to 1GB, and email integration automatically captures emails to and from your contacts.
You can read more about how Really Simple Systems can help your team focus on the leads most likely to convert on our Really Simple Systems user reviews page.
Insightly: Best Free CRM for Project Management
Insightly dashboard
Insightly CRM’s free version features contact, lead, and project management along with helpful features such as the ability to add voice memos, add custom CRM fields, email templates, and web-to-lead forms. It can also help teams of one or two organize vendors as well as customer contacts. It is, therefore, best for businesses that want to build long-term relationships with their leads while managing projects.
Insightly Pros | Insightly Cons |
|---|---|
Allows you to link contacts, projects, and opportunities | The free plan is limited to two users |
Lets you add voice memos to records | Lacks robust reporting without paid upgrade |
Includes task management with push notifications | Does not sync with personal calendars |
Insightly Free Plan Limits
- Users: Two
- Contacts: Unlimited
- Records: 2,500
- Storage: 200MB
Insightly Free Plan Features
- Convert leads to opportunities
- Social media integration
- Project and task management tools
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Insightly’s free plan offers a solid set of project management tools with its CRM, but its two-user limit can severely restrict a company’s ability to use those tools to their full advantage. For $29 per user, per month, Insightly’s Plus plan removes the user limitations and adds opportunity management, highly configurable project processes, and built-in business intelligence dashboards with more than 40 different chart types.
For more information about how Insightly can help you sales and project teams keep tasks moving forward, see our Insightly reviews page.
Apptivo: Best Free CRM for Invoicing & Order Management
Apptivo lead management
Apptivo’s free CRM can empower up to three users with basic sales features as well as tools for handling invoicing, purchase orders, work orders, and help desk tasks. Additionally, it offers the ability to store a product catalog and to issue quotes. All of this makes Apptivo a great option for startups and solopreneurs who do not want to use separate accounting software to manage orders.
Apptivo Pros | Apptivo Cons |
|---|---|
Includes invoicing and ordering functionality | Allows only three users without paid upgrade |
Great customer support | Mobile app is only available with paid upgrade |
Supports product management | Does not include web-to-lead capture for free |
Apptivo Free Plan Limits
- Users: Three
- Contacts: Unlimited
- Storage: 500
Apptivo Free Plan Features
- Deal and opportunity management
- Invoicing and ordering tools
- Standard reporting
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Apptivo’s free plan is great for sales professionals who need invoice and ordering tools. However, an $8 per user, per month tier upgrade adds a slew of marketing features, important security permissions, and robust analytics that let you do more for your sales leads and customers. It also includes access to mobile apps to keep you connected to your CRM from anywhere.
To learn more about what other people are saying about Apptivo and how they have been able to implement it as a part of their business strategy, check out our Apptivo review article.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is CRM?
CRM software is a tool that helps businesses manage customer and prospect data in one place. CRMs make it easy for sales, service, and other teams to access key information to close deals or resolve service issues. It can be cloud-based or hosted locally.
What is your definition of a free CRM?
We define free as a functional, customer relationship management (CRM) software that you can use in your business without any associated costs. Free trials were not included in our review criteria.
Are there free CRMs for specific industries like real estate?
Yes, there are free CRMs for real estate. However, while most industry-specific CRMs offer some form of free trials, for the most part, only larger industries or niches like real estate offer free CRM options. That said, many types of CRM can be customized for industry-specific needs.
Bottom Line
The best free CRM is easy to use, comes with few restrictions, and is robust enough to help you achieve predefined goals. Whether you’re looking for a free CRM with marketing, sales, and service features, or one that is relatively simple that will keep you organized, one of the six providers featured is bound to meet your needs.
Camilla Barnes
Hi,
I work as a Consultant for eWay-CRM, an Outlook CRM. It is very intuitive since it looks like Outlook. We also have mobile and web app. Our eWay-CRM got excellent rating.
Customers usually need a contact management at first. Then they come up with new needs. Therefore it is necessary to have a complex CRM that is has mane functions available. It often depends on the size of your company. The more you grow, the more complex solutions you need.
We are always improving our system and trying to make our customers as happy as possible. Our system is very flexible since you can use all the modules or just those that you need.
At any time you can adjust the processes as you need. We have several modules as mentioned above. You can use all of them or just those that you need at the moment.
However you can use any of them at any he basic version of eWay-CRM is for free. Outlook CRM Software that will Help Boost your Sales | eWay-CRM
Best,
Camilla
Amanda Norman
Hi Camilla,
Thanks for visiting the site and suggesting eWay-CRM. If you are interested in having a software, such as eWay-CRM, added to our site, you can visit our Reviews Page. Just scroll to the bottom, fill out the form, and we’ll get back to you.
Thanks for reading!
Mandy, Moderator
Nina Bohush
Our team is a big fan of NetHunt CRM. We’ve been using it for 2 years already and it’s literally the most convenient and cheap CRM we’ve ever had. Our sales and marketing teams use it for organizing our customers base, follow-ups, bulk emails etc. It’s already synced with Google Suite, so the process of adoption was quite quick and hassle-free.
BTW, it’s free forever for teams of 1-2 people. And this is how we started testing it.
Amanda Norman
Hi Nina,
We’d love for you to leave a review based on your experience with NetHunt. Here’s the review page
We appreciate your time. Thanks for stopping by!
Mandy, Moderator
Scott
“less features” WHY IS PROPER GRAMMAR SO HARD? It’s “fewer features”. FEWER is used when you can count the thing being modified. LESS is used when it’s a continuous quantity. Sheesh.
Laura Handrick
Hi Scott,
Thanks for pointing that out. Being an Econ major myself, I’m annoyed with the misuse of less vs fewer also! We’ll correct on next go round! In fact we’ve just hired some editors who will begin looking at our 3000+ articles to make sure they’re in AP style. It’s all part of our growth and process improvement. Thanks for commenting!
Best! Laura, HR Writer, MAEd
Eric Stein
Have you tried FreeCRM.com? You get 100 users and 100,000 contacts, and it’s fully featured, sales, customer support, group calendaring, email campaigns, everything.
Ninelle
Best free full featured CRM is definitely Bitrix24. It has more features absolutely free of charge than Zoho, Insightly or anyone else.
Mark Sallows
Hi Ninelle.. thank you for your feedback, I agree Bitrix24 is also a good option and I included it in my top 5.
Bw
Mark
Dmitry Dolgikh
Bitrix 24 way too complicated and lack of logic. It demands too many efforts to perform simple tasks. I tried a lot of CRM engines, and for now I use free EspoCRM. Although I has to deploy in on my web-server, but it costs efforts. It’s simple, versatile and could be tuned to your needs.
Also, I don’t like when my data stored in someone’s server cloud. So, take a look if you wish to.