Open source customer relationship management (CRM) software gives businesses a source code to customize CRMs based on their desired look and functionality. While this deployment requires advanced technical knowledge, developing it ensures the CRM fulfills your modular needs across sales, marketing, and service operations and seamlessly integrates with your existing systems.
Based on our careful evaluation of several paid and free open source technologies, we have identified the seven best open source CRM software solutions.
- Vtiger: Best all-in-one open source CRM
- Odoo CRM: Best for ease of use
- OroCommerce: Best for ecommerce
- EspoCRM: Best for freelancers and startups
- CiviCRM: Best for nonprofit organizations
- X2CRM: Best for sales and marketing automation
- SuiteCRM: Best for activity and case management
Best Open Source CRM Software Compared
Provider | Free Plan | Our CRM Rating out of 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | $12 per user | ✔ 10 users | 4.86 |
 | $24.90 | ✔ Unlimited users | 4.76 |
 | $0 | ✔ | 4.48 |
 | $0 | ✔ Unlimited users | 4.47 |
 | $0 | ✔ Unlimited users | 4.39 |
 | Contact provider | Contact provider | 4.11 |
 | £100 (approx. $128) for unlimited users | ✔ | 3.89 |
Vtiger: Best All-in-one Open Source CRM
Pros
- It offers a free plan and scalable paid plans ($12 to $50 per user monthly).
- It has robust CRM tools for managing contacts, sales pipeline, and marketing processes.
- It has project and inventory management features like invoicing, payment tracking, and vendor management.
Cons
- Open source customization tools require additional costs (Booster Packs start at $9 per month).
- It lacks reporting or lead management features in the free plan.
- Lead scoring and dashboards are locked in with the Professional tier ($30 per user monthly).
- You need an all-in-one open source CRM: Vtiger is an open source customer relationship management (CRM) system that includes tools for contact management and engagement, internal collaboration, marketing, project management, sales pipeline, and sales enablement. This provider offers free open source CRM software for small businesses with a mobile app, help desk, and 3GB storage.
- You need project and inventory management tools: Vtiger is an open source customer relationship management software that offers free project management tools like Kanban boards, Gantt view, and task tracking. On the other hand, Vtiger’s inventory management features like invoicing and sales order tools are available in the basic plan, Growth for only $12 per user monthly.
- You need to customize CRM functions with less cost: While Vtiger offers separate costs for each module to customize your CRM, the amount can be expensive if you need more functionalities. For instance, adding 10 custom fields will cost $25, and three daily workflows will cost $15—a total of $40 on top of your base plan’s price, monthly.
- Alternative: EspoCRM is our top open source CRM that is free of charge. This is one of the best free open source CRM software that offers customization tools like a layout manager for changing detail and list views and an entity manager for creating custom fields and relationships. If you need more advanced tools, paid sales and advanced packs are available, with a license and upgrades included.
- You want access to free reporting and lead management tools: Vtiger doesn’t offer reporting and lead management features in the free plan. This drawback can affect teams that need to generate sales and other types of business reports from time to time.
Vtiger Pricing Plan & Overview*
Add-ons:
Booster Packs to customize Vtiger CRM Currently, the booster packs are available for all the editions of Vtiger: Vtiger Pilot, Vtiger Growth, Vtiger One Professional, and Vtiger One Enterprise. These add-on features are priced on a per-month basis only.
- Modules and Data Fields: $5 to $25 per additional field
- Workflows: $15 per additional process package
- Reports: $15 per additional report package
- Live Chat Agent: $7 per agent
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown of the plans. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
Vtiger is our best open source CRM for small businesses because of its robust customer relationship management features for lead generation, contact engagement, and project and inventory management. Its free plan, called One Pilot, is packed with CRM tools that you can modify based on your requirements. If you need to scale your CRM, you can add a booster pack to add more custom fields, workflows, scheduled reports, etc.
Odoo CRM: Best for Ease of Use
Pros
- It is designed as one easy-to-use database for multiple companies with an intuitive interface layout and drag-and-drop functionality on top of typical features of an open-source CRM.
- It has free and scalable plans with access to hundreds of business apps for project management, ecommerce, sales, etc.
- It has robust open source for its Community edition, including CRM, sales, websites, project management, and productivity tools.
Cons
- Mobile app is not available in the Community edition.
- Social marketing and marketing automation require a paid license.
- Most finance features like comprehensive accounting and AI invoicing are only available in the Enterprise edition.
- You want an easy-to-use open source CRM platform: Odoo CRM’s dashboard or user interface has an intuitive design for both mobile and desktop views, making onboarding easy. Because the tools are user-friendly, the provider earned high usability ratings on user reviews. Also, you can easily create tickets and add events or updates to them.
- You need an open source CRM with transparent pricing: Odoo offers a free plan called One App, allowing you to choose a specific app that already includes several features. For instance, the sales app has a quotation builder and quote templates. The Odoo Community has robust tools like CRM, sales, and human resources. Moreover, the paid plans are scalable, starting with the Standard plan at $24.90 per user monthly.
- You want an open source CRM software that is free to access on mobile devices: Odoo’s Community edition doesn’t include a mobile user interface, only desktop access. This is a downside for startups and small business owners needing to track sales performance metrics while on the go.
- Alternative: Vtiger’s free plan, called One Pilot, includes mobile app access for sending real-time notifications, scanning business cards, managing leads, storing voice notes, and more.
- You need low-cost social marketing and marketing automation tools: Odoo CRM offers social marketing and marketing automation features. However, these are only available in the Enterprise edition, which can be costly for some businesses.
- Alternative: EspoCRM and X2CRM offer sales and marketing automation tools. EspoCRM’s marketing automation capabilities include mass email marketing, target lists, and launching campaigns. On the other hand, X2CRM provides tools for split testing and web visitor tracking. It also has an X2Social module, which enables you to integrate and leverage social media for marketing purposes.
Odoo CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown of the plans. Monthly billing is available for a higher cost. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
Odoo CRM is our best open source CRM system with an excellent usability rating due to its simple, intuitive user interface. Its notable features include the drag-and-drop functionality, Kanban view of pipelines, and unified view of customer data and interactions for seamless project and contact management. Also, you can save time and effort with its special commands, like generating quotes and moving leads to another pipeline stage in just a couple of clicks.
OroCommerce: Best for Ecommerce
Pros
- Ecommerce features include advanced pricing, customer retention tools, workflow automation, and the OroCRM product already integrated into the system.
- It has free marketing capabilities for managing search engine optimization (SEO), creating landing pages, and more.
- Create unlimited custom workflows, like customer account registration, sales quote creation, checkout experience, and opportunity management for sales teams.
Cons
- It has no mobile app.
- It lacks AI integrations.
- It has complex configuration and outdated resources.
- You need a top open source CRM software for your ecommerce business: OroCommerce is the best CRM software for ecommerce businesses with customization tools. It has a modular design built for ecommerce, either for business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). Create unlimited custom workflows for account registration, quotes, checkout, and more for a seamless customer shopping experience.
- You want access to free marketing tools: OroCommerce is equipped with free marketing tools. You can manage your SEO, create custom landing pages, and launch your digital marketing campaigns using this free open source CRM. This can be useful if you run a marketing agency or are into freelancing.
- You need an open source CRM system with a mobile app: OroCommerce doesn’t have a mobile version. It only has a desktop version, which can be a downside for business owners and managers needing to track sales data while they are in the field like pharmaceutical sales managers.
- Alternative: Vtiger has a mobile app in its free plan. With mobile access, you can send and receive real-time notifications, check the activity page, manage contacts, and scan business cards while on the go.
- You want a customizable CRM with AI capabilities: While OroCommerce provides robust CRM features, it doesn’t have AI features.
- Alternative: Vtiger’s One AI plan includes generative AI capabilities at $50 per standard user. It also includes AI prompt builder, AI query analytics, and AI bot management, which assist sales, marketing, and customer service reps in automating their day-to-day activities. These AI features can save reps plenty of time, so they can focus on more important tasks.
OroCommerce Pricing Plan & Overview*
*While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
OroCommerce is a B2B ecommerce platform with a built-in CRM for multichannel customer engagement. If you have a growing retail business, OroCommerce is worth considering. You can leverage its advanced pricing engine to create customizable price calculation rules for promotions. Additionally, it offers multiwarehouse management for managing product inventory statuses across all your warehouses in a centralized system.
EspoCRM: Best for Freelancers and Startups
Pros
- It has account, contact, lead, and task management features and is ideal for freelancers and startups.
- It has robust sales, marketing, and other CRM tools for scalable business operations.
- It has robust collaboration and sales funnel management tools.
Cons
- Its product, order, and inventory management tools are expensive ($260 per year).
- Paid support costs $50 to $100 to get primarily assistance via email, voice call, and web.
- Integrations are limited to Mailchimp, Google, Outlook, and voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) providers like Twilio.
- You are a startup or freelancer needing a free, open source CRM for lead and task management: If you are a freelancer or startup business owner, EspoCRM is a great option. Find contact data and manage tasks by customizing the dashboard based on the features you want. For instance, you can change layouts to detail and list views, customize labels, and create custom fields and relationships for quick data access and management.
- You need other robust CRM features for free: EspoCRM offers free robust features like sales orders, invoices, and inventory management to automate sales processes. This open-source CRM can also be used for automating your email campaigns and other marketing strategies for seamless metric tracking like open and click rates. With these capabilities, you can launch campaigns quickly to generate more sales leads.
- You don’t want an expensive license fee: EspoCRM offers free access to its source code, but its advanced features are costly. If you need more advanced tools, packages can get expensive (see pricing below).
- Alternative: CiviCRM provides a $0 license fee. Alternatively, SuiteCRM has clear pricing plans, detailing the features of each plan on its website. The same is true for Vtiger and Odoo CRM. Read the terms and conditions of the CRM provider carefully before downloading the source code or buying a license to avoid unexpected charges.
- You need free or low-cost help and support from the CRM provider: EspoCRM offers free technical support from its developers and users. However, you must post your questions on EspoCRM’s community forum and wait for someone to give you an answer. While paid support is available for $50 to $100 for those who don’t want to wait for community support, solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and startups might find this costly.
- Alternative: OroCommerce provides its email address and phone numbers on its customer support page. Odoo CRM offers email, phone, and live chat support. Additionally, X2CRM provides phone and email support during business hours. Users can also enjoy these support services in the best CRM for startups and small businesses without paying extra, unlike EspoCRM.
EspoCRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
Add-ons:
- Sales Pack Includes features for products, sales (like quotes and invoices), purchases (like purchase and receipt orders), and inventory management. : $260 to $364 for a one-year license plus upgrades
- Advanced Pack Features for reports, workflows, and business process management included. : $395 to $553 for a two-year license plus upgrades
- Google integration: $190 for a one-year license plus upgrades
- Mailchimp integration: $190 for a one-year license plus upgrades
- Outlook integration: $240 for a one-year license plus upgrades
*Paid plans are based on monthly billing. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
EspoCRM is our top choice for freelancers and startups because of its easy-to-use account, contact, lead, and task management features. Plus, you can quickly access lead data on the user dashboard and customize the menu list and display options according to your preference. You can create labels for your freelancing projects and ensure you don’t miss following up with a client and subcontractors with its communication and collaboration tools.
CiviCRM: Best for Nonprofit Organizations
Pros
- It offers essential tools useful for nonprofit organizations like contact, event, and contribution management.
- Marketing features are available for fundraising and advocacy management.
- It has AI capabilities to summarize past interactions and provide suggestions on the next best actions.
Cons
- Its user interface is not intuitive.
- It requires a third-party hosting service.
- It is not ideal for users without a programming background because of complex setup and configuration.
- You are a nonprofit organization needing a robust CRM to manage contributions: CiviCRM enables users to process and track contributions, send gift acknowledgments, and report on their data using an intuitive workflow process. Users can collect and record contributions made via check, phone, and public web forms and tie them directly to donors’ contact records.
- You want a non-profit open source CRM with marketing tools: CiviCRM’s open-source license allows you to launch email marketing campaigns and other promotional activities. These capabilities can help you raise people’s awareness about your organization’s advocacies to raise more funds for worthy causes.
- You want user-friendly open source CRM: CiviCRM is feature-packed, which requires technical experience and a programming background. Hence, the features can be overwhelming for users who are new to using an open source CRM system. In user reviews, some users find the user interface unintuitive.
- Alternatives: Odoo CRM is our top open source CRM software that is very easy to use. It has a simple, intuitive interface, suitable for first-time open source CRM users.
- You prefer a self-hosted open source CRM: While CiviCRM is free, the provider uses third-party software to deliver its services. The company doesn’t own or control these third parties. Users must review the rules and policies of these third parties to ensure compliance with data privacy laws.
- Alternatives: EspoCRM has a self-hosted option if you want to have full control of your CRM. The provider offers a free plan and scalable paid plans starting with the Basic plan for $15 per user (minimum of three users).
CiviCRM Pricing & Overview*
CiviCRM
Cost:
- $0 per license
Key Features:
- Contact management
- Contribution management
- Event management
- Membership management
- Email marketing tools
- Reports
- Case management
- Advocacy campaign management
*CiviCRM is an open-source CRM that is free to download, use, and share.
Our Expert Opinion
CiviCRM is the best open-source CRM for nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups. Civic groups and nonprofits can use its robust and highly customizable donor management features for seamlessly tracking contributions, sending gift acknowledgments, and more. It also lets you create no-code forms and add customized data fields for donor records. If you have good programming skills, you can create a custom nonprofit org CRM for free with CiviCRM.
X2CRM: Best for Sales and Marketing Automation
Pros
- It has robust marketing automation tools including A/B testing, drip campaign builder, and web visitor tracking.
- It has pipeline reports, deal flow insight, and opportunity activity insight for sales.
- It has self-service web incident capture form, document sharing, and ticketing tools for support.
Cons
- You need to contact the provider to request a quote for premium editions.
- It requires high minimum system requirements and technical skill to set up.
- It can be difficult to determine which features are included in which modules.
- You need a robust marketing open source CRM: X2CRM is ideal if your business needs marketing tools such as split testing, a drip campaign builder, and web visitor tracking. You can automate your marketing tasks and save reps plenty of time and effort. Specifically, the Open Source X2CRM includes CRM, marketing automation, and workflow tools, providing highly customizable modules for growing businesses.
- You need automated, customizable tools for your sales team: If you want to create a CRM intended for your growing sales team, X2CRM can convert contacts to paying customers by triggering specific lead nurturing processes and scoring leads automatically. Pipeline management and data analytics are natively built into the system to boost lead generation performance and track and close more deals.
- You need an open technology and an ecommerce CRM: X2CRM has sales tools like deal flow insight and pipeline reports that can be used for ecommerce businesses. However, these features would need additional configuration for them to work as intended for online stores.
- Alternative: OroCommerce is our top recommendation for open source CRM for ecommerce businesses. If you sell a lot of products online, you’ll find OroCommerce helpful in increasing your monthly sales. It is equipped with an advanced pricing engine to customize product prices based on customer purchase history and warehouse management for managing product inventory.
- You want to use the easiest open source CRM possible: X2CRM requires high technical skill to set up. Before installing the open source code, you need to run the Requirements Checker Script to ensure your web server meets the minimum system requirements.
- Alternative: Odoo CRM has the highest usability rating in this list of top open source CRMs. If you are a newbie to open technologies, you’ll find this CRM easier to use than others because of its intuitive interface layout and features.
X2CRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
*X2CRM also offers hosted and on-premise deployment options. While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
X2CRM is a proactive, open source CRM platform known for its excellent sales and marketing automation features like email marketing, website visitor tracking, and social hub services. This CRM leverages cloud intelligence to run tasks smarter for lead generation, lead nurturing, and sales performance monitoring. If you’re looking for customizable sales and marketing tools and other integrated CRM features, X2CRM is a great option.
SuiteCRM: Best for Activity and Case Management
Pros
- It has calls, meetings, tasks, and notes modules for activity management.
- Use the case management modules and self-service portal to manage customer issues.
- Product and order management modules are ideal for businesses taking orders and managing deliveries.
Cons
- Expensive hosting plans start at £100 ($128) for unlimited users.
- It has limited integration; integrating into another system has a steep learning curve.
- It requires a lot of customization or complex configuration to tailor fit CRM to a specific business.
- You need to manage lead and customer activities and related issues: SuiteCRM is equipped with activity management modules that let you automate and record calls, tasks, notes, and meetings. Its case management modules enable you to manage all customer correspondence, track resolution times, and check case categories to better understand your customers’ problems.
- You need product and order management tools: Retail or other businesses that take orders across multiple channels like phone and social media will find SuiteCRM very helpful. SuiteCRM’s product module triggers system actions like creating a product record based on certain conditions like value, field, and date, creating automated workflows for product management.
- You want a cheaper hosted plan for your open source CRM: SuiteCRM’s starter plan costs £100 (approx. $128) for unlimited users, which can benefit growing companies and enterprises with several users. However, this CRM might not be practical if you’re the only one who will be using the system or even have one to two additional users.
- You want a more robust open source CRM for ecommerce: SuiteCRM has order processing, product listing, invoicing, and other helpful features for online businesses. However, this open CRM has limited integrations, and integrating it with existing systems requires complex configuration. Some users may find this inconvenient or added work.
- Alternative: OroCommerce is the best alternative, notable for its advanced pricing engine that you can use to adjust product prices and add discounts. Also, if you have multiple warehouses, this CRM is equipped with warehouse management tools to help you manage your product inventory status and monitor product quantities in each warehouse.
SuiteCRM Pricing Plan & Overview*
SuiteCRM
Cost:
- $0
Key Features:
- Account and lead management
- Opportunities
- Quotes
- Calendar
- Schedule call
- Schedule meeting
- Emails
- Document management
- Campaigns
- Projects
Suite-CRM Add-ons:
SuiteCRM Hosted: £100 to £600 ($129 to $775) per month for unlimited users
Support Services For support services like new installations, fully managed hosting, data migrations, troubleshooting, change requests and process optimization, performance audits, compliance, security audits, training sessions, and consultancy. : £3,000 to £7,500 ($3,879 to $9,052) one-time fee
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-month breakdown of the plans, excluding the value added tax (VAT). While we update pricing information regularly, we encourage our readers to check current pricing.
Our Expert Opinion
SuiteCRM is the best open source CRM for activity and case management because you can use its capabilities to track sales tasks and customer interactions. These modules help reps quickly access relevant data and automate workflows, such as creating triggers for customer follow-ups and case management resolution. Moreover, sales managers can use these features to track each pipeline’s progress and rep performance.
How We Evaluated the Best Open Source CRM Software
To determine the best CRMs for open source code, we looked at attributes relevant to custom designing a feature-rich CRM system, such as creating modules, customizing fields, and automating processes. Robust open source development should allow users to manage multiple business functions like sales, marketing, projects, and customer service.
Lastly, we evaluated general product characteristics such as price, ease of use, and customer support. Our evaluation process offers insights into the best open source CRM tools.
30% of Overall Score
We looked at overall features we feel are necessities in open source code, like modular functionality, data management, reporting, and automation customization, which are closely comparable to the features of the best customizable CRMs. CRM integration options, lead management, analytics tools, and a mobile CRM app were also evaluated. We also assessed sales and marketing features that could be essential to their unique operation.
10% of Overall Score
Pricing took into account free CRM plan availability and various scalable pricing options that a business could purchase affordably to customize its CRM system. We also looked at the option for a subscriber to either pay monthly or save by paying annually.
20% of Overall Score
We evaluated niche features specifically for the open source or customization tools. The specific advanced features we reviewed include customer portal, security, sales automation, calendar and email sync, and user permissions. These capabilities are essential for seamless and secure sales, marketing, and service task automation.
10% of Overall Score
The solutions were also evaluated on platform usability. This was analyzed in terms of the expertise required to set up an account, the ease of integrating with native or third-party CRM applications, and the skill needed to use the features. We also reviewed the overall intuitiveness of navigating the system’s interface as well as when customizing the open source code to the user’s needs.
15% of Overall Score
Extensive support and service help prevent poor user experiences that users may encounter while using and customizing any of these systems. Help and support were evaluated in terms of customer service hours and the availability of support via phone, live chat, and email. This is also a crucial consideration when evaluating the best CRM software for small businesses.
15% of Overall Score
In addition to firsthand experience with these software systems, we evaluated what users say about each product. These criteria consider how customers feel based on their reviews to gain insight into platform popularity, ease of use, and overall value for the price.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Open source customer relationship management (CRM) software can help businesses create customized systems to automate their sales, marketing, and service operations. Rather than relying on vendor-locked, function-limiting features of popular CRM providers, you can create a customized dashboard and configure features based on your business needs using an open source CRM.
First, you need to determine if the open source is compatible with your web server by running a script intended for this purpose. Once you have downloaded the open source CRM, you can enter customer data, product listings, and other relevant details about the accounts or deals. Next, you can configure the features or purchase add-on tools like inventory management or invoicing to improve business operations.
Yes. Small businesses can definitely benefit from using open source CRM software. You can save money and experience less hassle dealing with CRM providers that require setup fees, annual contracts, and recurring expenses for add-on features. Furthermore, scaling is a lot easier because open technologies let you configure functionalities according to your business needs.
Bottom Line
Open source CRM software systems provide companies with the freedom to customize their CRMs for seamless lead generation, ticketing, marketing, sales, and other operations. Instead of dealing with vendor-locked CRM programs, explore open technologies like Vtiger to make your CRM system more scalable, secure, and unique. Other open source CRM solutions and deployment options may better suit your budget, team size, and other requirements.
