6 Best Lead Management Software for Small Business

Lead management software, also commonly known as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, lets users generate, qualify, nurture, and track progress on potential customers. Lead management features specifically focus on organizing leads or sales opportunities, getting them through the sales process, and converting them into closed deals. We evaluated dozens of CRM systems to identify the best lead management software for small businesses.

• Pipedrive: Best overall; great for sales teams looking for intelligent lead management capabilities to improve productivity
• Zendesk Sell: Excellent lead tracking software for small business teams looking to automate prospecting activities
• HubSpot CRM: Solid lead management tool for small businesses seeking a free-forever option
• Freshsales: Great CRM for sales teams managing complex pipelines and large-scale deals
• Agile CRM: Best CRM option for growing businesses looking for low-cost, scalable lead management features
• Bitrix24: Ideal software with lead management features for teams looking to generate leads from their website

Best Lead Management Software Compared

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

Take our quiz to find out which lead management software works best for you.

Pipedrive: Best Lead Management System Overall

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

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM system that, by default, offers excellent features for tracking leads, engaging them, and helping teams remain productive during the sales process. Subscribing to the CRM isn’t all that expensive, and Pipedrive offers numerous pricing options to meet any business’ growth and feature needs. The interface is user-friendly and the lead management tools, including duplicate record merge, pipeline and activity tracking, email communications, and meeting scheduling, are easy to operate.

The biggest standout lead management features are the intelligent Smart Contact Data and Smart Docs. Smart Contact Data enables users to automatically keep lead records up to date with insights by pulling information from online resources such as LinkedIn profiles. Furthermore, Smart Docs helps sales teams quickly assemble and deploy proposals to get high-quality leads through the pipeline by auto-populating their data into relevant fields on a quote, contract, or proposal document. Businesses can even acquire their signatures digitally through the CRM.

Unfortunately, lead nurturing, something commonly done through email to maintain brand relationships, is relatively expensive as it isn’t available until the Advanced plan for $24.90 per user, monthly. HubSpot is by far the best alternative for nurturing, offering email tools for free.

Pipedrive Plan Summary

Pipedrive Key Features

• Smart lead management: Users can use contact data in the CRM and auto-populate documents such as proposals or quotes for fast deployment. Additionally, Smart Contact Data gives insights on potential buyers using information found online and on LinkedIn.
• Meeting scheduling: Tool for letting leads view a sales rep’s availability, schedule a meeting or video call, then notify the rep and sync the event to their calendar.
• Lead data tracking: Teams can store and organize lead data, merge duplicate records, and monitor activities, communications, or deal progress surrounding that lead.
• Email nurturing: Ability to create and store email templates in the CRM system and auto-deploy mass emailing campaigns to generate or nurture leads.

Pipedrive Customer Support

Pipedrive has some of the best customer support in the industry, available through live chat and email on a 24/7 basis. Additionally, users can access resources on Pipedrive’s website like a help center, blog, user tutorials, a community forum, and an academy dedicated to enhancing CRM and sales skills.

Want more insights? Check out our comprehensive Pipedrive review for details on features and best-for circumstances to see if it’s the right solution for your sales needs.

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Zendesk Sell: Best for Lead Prospecting

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

Zendesk Sell offers sales teams easy-to-use features and functionality for storing lead data, managing appointments and sales tasks, and communicating with prospects through phone, email, and text messages. This CRM software also monitors duplicate records to keep the organization’s database clean and automatically distribute leads and score their sales-closing potential—ensuring no opportunity falls through the cracks.

Prospecting is a critical aspect of the lead management process. Before attempting to generate or qualify a potential customer, tons of research must go into finding the ideal lead that fits your demographic, industry, or company size requirements. Zendesk Sell offers numerous prospecting tools, such as prospecting credits, which create new profiles based on customer traits. There’s also a geolocation feature on the mobile app that finds local leads for you and the technology company stack feature that monitors software products used by your lead.

Zendesk Sell does not have any free-forever plan option, which is ideal for startup businesses or growing ones looking for basic CRM functionality at no cost. Both Freshsales and HubSpot are popular CRM products with excellent lead management features and free-forever subscriptions that support an unlimited number of users.

Zendesk Sell Plan Summary

Zendesk Sell Key Features

• Prospecting and enrichment credits: Businesses get monthly credits for enriching and updating current lead profiles with online information as well as creating brand-new profiles.
• Advanced lead prospecting: Teams can find potential leads using the geolocation feature on the mobile app, track company hierarchy relationships for parent/child company relationships, and monitor the technology stack a lead company is using.
• Communications nurturing: Users can engage with leads using mass email or texting and calling.
• Lead scoring: Sales team members can use custom formulas to see which leads are the hottest and warrant the most attention.

Zendesk Sell Customer Support

Zendesk Sell offers users customer support through live chat and email during standard business hours for product-related issues. There’s also a help center full of product articles for setting up the CRM software and operating all of its features.

Learn more about Zendesk Sell and how it can help your business manage lead and prospecting activities by checking out our in-depth Zendesk Sell review.

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HubSpot CRM: Best Free Lead Management CRM

*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.

Rapidly growing in popularity, HubSpot offers sales and marketing teams easy-to-use tools and modules for generating leads, qualifying opportunities, managing tasks, initiating campaigns, and closing deals. Users can purchase one of many suite packages, including sales, marketing, customer service, content management system, or operations, or bundle them into one solution.

HubSpot is the best free sales lead software not only because its free plan is available to unlimited users, but also because some of the essential lead management features are accessible to free users. For instance, teams can track lead data, website activity, and pipeline status, schedule meetings with prospects, and easily create custom quotes to facilitate the sales process. Additionally, HubSpot comes with free, powerful nurturing capabilities like automated email campaigns with email templates and custom contact lists.

HubSpot, while an excellent free lead management system, gets expensive on the paid plans. Agile CRM and Freshsales are robust lead-tracking CRM alternatives with free plan options and cost-friendly paid plans.

HubSpot CRM Plan Summary

HubSpot CRM Key Features

• Lead scoring: Customizable criteria that assign points to contacts and leads based on activity or customer characteristics—allowing reps to prioritize sales opportunities.
• Contact activity and prospects tools: Users can get information on who is visiting their website as well as view specific activity, page visits, and form submissions of CRM contacts.
• Quotes and signatures: Teams can create customizable quotes and proposals and send them out for digital signatures.
• Email nurturing: Ability to design and deploy automated email campaigns to leads and segmented contact lists.

HubSpot Customer Support

HubSpot users have access to phone, email, and live chat support from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time. There are also self-service options through online resources like HubSpot Academy, a community forum page, and a library of product tutorials and user guides.

Is HubSpot the right CRM platform for you? Check out our HubSpot CRM review to learn more ways HubSpot can help your business distribute marketing campaigns and complete sales activities.

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Freshsales: Best for Lead Pipeline Tracking

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

Freshsales is the sales-focused software product by Freshworks for managing contact data, organizing sales tasks, and communicating with leads. There is a free plan for unlimited users, which includes contact, account, and deal management as well as its popular built-in telephone for placing and receiving phone calls from the CRM.

A huge component of lead management is tracking their progress on the sales pipeline—something particularly important for businesses working with high-value deals. Freshsales has excellent pipeline tracking capabilities that include visual deal management on Kanban boards and the rotten deal tool that indicates if an opportunity is falling through the cracks. Users can also collaborate on deals and update one another through Slack, and managers can assign entire sales teams to extremely large deals.

Being able to create and send quotes and contracts from the CRM are invaluable capabilities for managing a lead and getting them through the pipeline. Sadly, Freshsales requires an add-on for that feature at an additional $19 per user, per month. HubSpot is the best alternative with free quote customization tools.

Freshsales Plan Summary

Freshsales Key Features

• Lead tracking: Users can view contact and lead profiles and view interactions, timeline activities, and deal status.
• Bulk email: Teams can create and send mass email campaigns with automated sales sequences that send a series of scheduled emails for nurturing.
• Pipeline management: Ability to manage multiple deal pipelines, visually track deals, collaborate on deals in Slack, and assign entire sales rep teams to deals.
• Built-in phone: Teams can place and receive calls from the CRM, log or record call notes, and transfer calls to other reps.

Freshsales Customer Support

Freshsales has 24-hour support on live chat, email, and phone, Monday through Friday. All users also have access to self-service options through a blog, system tours, product tutorials, and documentation, and Enterprise users get additional support through a dedicated account manager.

Want to learn more? Read our Freshsales review for additional information on features, pricing, and overall system usability.

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Agile CRM: Best for Low-cost Lead Management Solutions

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

Agile CRM is an all-in-one sales, marketing, and customer service management platform. It lets businesses organize all lead and customer engagement activities using a single interface at a low or zero cost. For lead management activities, Agile CRM is equipped with end-to-end solutions for prospecting, generating, qualifying, nurturing, and finalizing leads.

This system includes web-to-lead forms that generate lead profiles based on website submissions, lead scoring for quantifying sales opportunities, and communication tools like a two-way phone and email system to connect with leads for nurturing purposes. Agile CRM also has contact-level analytics that offer full-profile views on their data and activity, including interactions with your website to see who is most interested. All of these features are available for free or at a low-cost, no more than $29.99 per user, monthly.

Telephonic capabilities, either built into the CRM or through integrations, are extremely useful for lead management as users can nurture or qualify new leads and log their information from one interface. Agile CRM, unfortunately, doesn’t have this capability until the Regular plan. Freshsales is the best option for a built-in telephone that is available for free.

Agile CRM Plan Summary

Agile CRM Key Features

• Contact analytics: Users can view full lead profiles, which include their contact information, activity timelines, and interactions with your website.
• Lead scoring: Free lead qualification features that assign points to leads and contacts based on their activity and pre-established lead characteristics.
• Lead task management: Users can create tasks, manage documents, and schedule meetings associated with specific leads.
• Phone and email nurturing: Sales teams can engage with leads in the pipeline through email communications or by integrating with voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) tools like Twilio and RingCentral.

Agile CRM Customer Support

Agile CRM users have access to a tiered customer support system that includes 24/5 email support for all plans, and phone support during standard business hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) for paid users. Additionally, there’s online resources, including blogs, videos, infographics, setup guides, and onboarding assistance.

Check out our Agile CRM review to see how its integrated sales, marketing, and customer support modules help businesses manage all aspects of their operations.

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Bitrix24: Best for Web-to-Lead Generation

*Pricing based on annual billing, reflecting a 20% discount compared to monthly pricing. Monthly and quarterly billing are available for a higher cost.

Bitrix24 has robust capabilities, including a CRM, ecommerce management, marketing, human resource management, and project management module all in one system. The provider offers a free plan for unlimited users, which comes with lead management capabilities such as pipeline tracking, activity monitoring, and video conferencing to meet with or qualify leads.

Lead management activities can’t take place until the lead itself is generated. Bitrix24 gives teams robust solutions to generating leads and their data from one of their most valuable assets—their website. Available for free, teams can build and host web landing pages, embed customizable forms, and automatically generate new lead profiles through web submissions. Additionally, they can track the performance of each webform to make needed adjustments.

Both by us and user reviews, Bitrix24 scores poorly in the system usability category—particularly when it comes to setting up customizing the system for the first time. Pipedrive and HubSpot stand out as the top CRMs for all-around usability in terms of setting up, operating, and navigating the CRM.

Bitrix24 Plan Summary

Bitrix24 Key Features

• Contact center: Users can engage with contacts and leads for generation or nurturing through a built-in telephone, email, live chat, or social media channels.
• Website lead generation: Users can create and host web pages using site templates and webforms on the site to automatically generate lead records from form submissions.
• Lead conversions: Ability to one-click convert lead record to contact, deals, and companies, then click-to-convert deals to quotes or invoices.
• Client profile view: Full 360-view of individual leads with general contact information, tasks, activity, and associated data such as deal status, invoices, orders, and quotes.

Bitrix24 Customer Support

Live chat and email support are available on all plans from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. for Universal Standard Time business hours. Additionally, users can access online tools such as help desk and online training options.

Check out our detailed Bitrix24 review for more information on the platform’s features, integrations, pricing, usability, and best-for scenarios to see if it’s right for you.

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How We Evaluated the Best Lead Management Systems

To determine the best lead management systems, we considered CRMs with features for handling lead generation, qualification, and nurturing activities. Lead scoring, for example, is a tool that lets reps quantify opportunities based on the lead’s profile and their expressed interest. Alternatively, automated email marketing and phone features allow teams to nurture leads through the sales pipeline. We also looked into typical attributes such as price, general CRM features, ease of use, and customer support.

We found Pipedrive to be the best lead management CRM. It’s easy to navigate and operate, comes with excellent 24/7 customer support, and has multiple scalable pricing options available starting at just $14.90 per user on a monthly basis. For lead management, teams can track lead data, including activity and deal status, engage them through email, and easily schedule meetings. Pipedrive also comes with Smart Contact Data, a feature for auto-enriching lead information from online sources, and Smart Docs for auto-inserting contact information on custom documents.

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The tabs below offer insight into our evaluation process of the best CRM for lead management: