6 Best Personal CRMs for Single Users 2019

A CRM helps professionals manage leads and opportunities, so nothing falls through the cracks even if there’s only one person using it. Choosing a CRM is a big decision, which is why we reviewed dozens of options, looking for intuitive and easy to use tools designed for solopreneurs, to determine the best personal CRM.

Top 6 Best Personal CRMs for Single Users 2019

How We Evaluated the Best Personal CRMs for Single Users

The best personal CRMS for solopreneurs are easy to use, have an array of integrations that allow you to track phone calls and emails, and have a great mobile app experience so you can track your opportunities no matter where you are. We’ve assessed six of the best personal CRMs according to their pricing model, ease of use, integrations, customer support features, mobile app, call tracking and logging, and customization.

We used the following criteria to evaluate the top six personal CRMs for single users:

• Pricing model: We’ve evaluated the price points for each CRM based on the needs of solopreneurs running their own business.
• Ease of use: Our considerations included how easy the CRM is to set up, maintain, and operate on a daily basis.
• Available integrations: We’ve looked at what other software small businesses use that can easily integrate with each CRM.
• Customer support: A great CRM has timely, multichannel customer support.
• Mobile app: We’ve evaluated the mobile app experience for each CRM to determine how easy it is to manage your pipeline on the go.
• Call tracking and logging: The best CRMs include the ability to easily track and log calls for every sales opportunity.
• Customization: We’ve explored the ability to customize contact fields, opportunity stages, pipelines, and the overall sales process.

Based on the criteria above, we’ve determined HubSpot CRM to be the best overall personal CRM for single users who want a CRM that’s powerful, free, and intuitive. It has a simple, easy-to-learn interface, allows you to see everything you need about a lead or customer in one place, and is free forever.

HubSpot: Best Overall Personal CRM for Single Users

HubSpot CRM is the only CRM that offers a free plan with advanced lead generation tools, and you can also add paid marketing, sales, and service hubs for an additional cost, starting at $50 per user, per month. It’s an excellent choice for small business owners seeking basic contact management capabilities because it’s incredibly easy to set up and use.

HubSpot CRM Pricing

HubSpot offers a free-forever plan for unlimited users. They also have sales and marketing hubs you can integrate into the CRM to add features such as call tracking, email sequences, workflow automation, email marketing, and ad management. Both hubs start at $50 per month for one user.

HubSpot CRM Core Features

HubSpot CRM’s core free features include contact management, contact website activity, companies, deals, tasks, activities, and live chat. You can also track emails, view a reporting dashboard, store and use email templates, and schedule meetings.

HubSpot CRM offers these central features:

Contact Management

Add a first and last name and email address, and HubSpot will automatically populate fields such as company information, LinkedIn, and revenue. Once you’ve created a contact, you can send emails, make phone calls, store attachments, and manage deals. One unique feature it offers that many others don’t include for free is website tracking, so you can tell which contacts have visited your website—giving you intel on who to hone in on and close more deals.

Live Chat

HubSpot’s free live chat features are easy to set up while giving you several channel options for communicating with prospects within the CRM. You can use a team email, set up a chat widget in minutes, or connect Facebook Messenger to start receiving conversations in your CRM inbox. While Freshsales offers a robust live chat feature with their Freshchat integration, it’s not included in their free plan and not quite as easy to set up for less tech-savvy solopreneurs.

You can choose business hours and elect to display your typical response time. If you aren’t available, you can choose to show an away message or hide the chat launcher. It took me less than five minutes to set up a chat widget on my test account, which is a great option for a solopreneur working on their own. You don’t have to be a tech expert to set up a quick, easy way to communicate with prospects and customers.

HubSpot CRM live chat widget

Integrations

HubSpot CRM offers an array of integrations for free. For example, if you use PandaDoc for generating proposals, you can integrate it into your CRM easily within HubSpot. You can also get HubSpot notifications and tasks sent via Slack. HubSpot integrates seamlessly with Gmail and Outlook email providers, so you can handle all your customer communications within the CRM. All in all, they offer over 300 integrations small businesses use every day.

Mobile App

The HubSpot CRM mobile app is quick to install and shows your contacts, deals, tasks, and a comprehensive activity feed. You can also manage your live chat and conversations, and scan in business cards to associate them with a deal instantly. While other CRMs such as Pipedrive and Salesflare have robust mobile apps, HubSpot is the only CRM that offers a business card scanner, call logging, and website chat monitoring on a free plan.

Reports & Analytics

HubSpot’s reports and analytics are collected in dashboards. You can create dashboards based on sales performance and deal forecasts. Each dashboard can hold 10 reports. If you want advanced analytics like productivity reports, a custom report builder, or more than one dashboard, you can add HubSpot’s Reporting Add-on for $200 per month. If advanced reporting is important for your business, consider Salesflare’s $35 per user, per month plan.

Phone & Email Functionality

HubSpot CRM allows you to create and measure email templates so you can track the performance of the best ones and use them again. You also receive notifications when prospects open an email or download an attachment. There is a built-in phone dialer that automatically logs calls, and you can choose to record the call if you want. However, you can only call numbers in the country you’re calling from.

What HubSpot CRM Is Missing

While HubSpot is an innovative platform that has a free-forever CRM with great basic functionality, you’re going to have to pay for more advanced features. For example, if you want to track more than 200 emails per month or store over five documents, you need to upgrade to the Starter plan, which is $50 per user, per month.

What Users Think About HubSpot CRM

Users say that HubSpot CRM is user-friendly, has excellent customer support, and includes great communication tools. Some users mentioned it has good reporting features. A few people commented that it’s not the best for sending mass emails or customizing contacts with more than one email address or organization. For more user reviews, visit our HubSpot CRM reviews page.

Where to Find HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a solid, free-forever choice for solopreneurs who may or may not add more CRM users in the future as they scale a small business. It’s perfect for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time setting up or learning how to use a CRM and want to hit the ground running with a simple, clean interface and superior customer support. Sign up today for a free account.

Visit HubSpot

Freshsales: Best Personal CRM With Built-in Phone

Freshsales CRM has a robust integrated calling system and lead scoring ability included in their free-forever startup plan—which is well-suited for businesses that focus on phone outreach. They offer four other plans with advanced customization features starting at $19 per user, per month. It’s a great choice for solopreneurs who want a built-in phone and the ability to customize their pipeline deals, contacts, and sales activities.

Freshsales CRM Pricing

Freshsales’ free plan is for unlimited users and paid plans cost from $19 to $65 per user, per month. Each plan can integrate with the Freshcaller in-app dialing for $1 per line, per month with a call rate from $0.016 cents to $0.022 per minute, making it a good choice for businesses that rely on telesales.

Freshsales CRM Tiered Features

Sprout

The Sprout plan is geared toward startups and includes basic features such as contact management—and lead scoring, which you don’t always find in free CRM versions. It has a basic mobile app that shows you your calendar and has a Gmail integration. It does not offer reporting, email conversations or templates, or built-in live chat. For an extra fee, you can add in the Freshcaller phone dialer widget to make and log phone calls.

This tier is right for people who want a basic plan that allows for free lead scoring, such as web forms prospects filled out or keywords. It’s also good for business owners who want the ability to add new features as their business grows. If you want a feature-rich phone system, Freshcaller is a great tool for optimizing your phone outreach efforts.

Blossom

The Blossom tier is $19 per user, per month. It adds email templates and tracking for up to 200 emails, bulk emails, and basic reporting features. It also includes automations with up to five intelligent workflows, and you can connect Freshsales CRM with a Freshchat account for live chat. Once you integrate, you can see the Freshchat chat widget in your CRM and interact with prospects who have reached out to you right in Freshsales.

This plan offers good email features and a robust chat integration with Freshchat. If you run a business that relies on interacting with customers and prospects via live chat and email, this may be a good choice for you. However, you can set up live chat in HubSpot without adding on an additional integration, for free.

Garden

The Garden plan is $35 dollars per user, per month, and builds on the Blossom plan by adding email tracking up to 500 emails, 15 intelligent workflows, a sales team inbox, and advanced reporting features, making it highly customizable and scalable for a growing business. It also allows for territories and lead assignment.

If you’re running a business by yourself, it’s likely that you don’t need the features in the Garden plan because they are catered more toward sales teams rather than solopreneurs. However, if you are planning to scale your business and add team members, this is definitely a plan to consider in the future.

Estate

The Estate plan is $65 per user, per month. It is Freshsales’ plan with all the bells and whistles. It adds a reports dashboard, advanced customization for contacts, deals, and leads, website visitor tracking, advanced lead scoring, and tracking for 1,000 emails per day, plus 40 intelligent workflows.

Like the Garden plan, this is another plan you probably wouldn’t consider if you’re flying solo. If you’re looking for advanced reporting and visitor tracking with web-to-lead capture, this is a good choice if you’re willing to pay the price and want robust, customizable reporting and workflows.

Freshsales CRM

What Freshsales CRM Is Missing

While Freshsales offers an array of integrations such as Freshcaller and Freshchat, it’s not as simple to navigate or set up as other free CRMs. They were not as quick to respond to customer support questions. Plus, you have to buy an expensive plan to get website tracking, while HubSpot offers it for free and Zoho includes it in a much less expensive plan.

What Users Think About Freshsales CRM

Users say they like the seamless integration of Freshsales to other Freshworks products and its lead scoring features. Some users noted they thought the reporting dashboard can be confusing and the custom reports could be better. For in-depth reviews, visit our Freshsales reviews page.

Where to Find Freshsales CRM

Freshsales is a comprehensive CRM that offers an array of customization options and feature-rich integrations to organize a small business sales process, making it a solid option for solopreneurs who want a customizable CRM with in-app dialing. Sign up for a free 21-day trial, no credit card required, by visiting their website today.

Visit Freshsales

Streak: Best Personal CRM With a Built-in Gmail Inbox Integration

Streak is a CRM that is built right into a user’s Gmail inbox, giving you the ability to manage deals, your sales pipeline, contacts, and emails in your Gmail inbox so you can truly see everything in one place. With a robust free version, it’s an excellent choice for solopreneurs who want basic functions in a CRM without having to hop from tab to tab to manage their pipeline.

Streak CRM Pricing

Streak has a free personal version and a Professional version—both of which integrate with G Suite. The Professional version is $59 per user, per month, and it includes the ability to add unlimited pipelines and offers basic API access.

Streak CRM Tiered Features

Free Plan

In both versions, Streak downloads as a Chrome extension and then integrates into your Gmail inbox. You can set up multiple custom pipelines for different use cases such as sales, support, partnerships, and so on. The Free plan also offers email tracking and scheduling, email snippets, and access to a mobile app so you can manage your pipeline on the go. However, it does not offer website tracking or live chat like many other free CRMs.

This plan is best for small business owners who need a basic CRM and use G Suite for most of their business operations. If you want a no-frills solution that offers unlimited pipelines and doesn’t cost anything—and you don’t have a need for reports—Streak’s free plan is a solid choice.

Professional Plan

The Professional plan costs $59 per user, per month. It has the ability to weave in over 900 integrations with Zapier, but they also have native integrations with Google Sheets and Hangouts. This plan expands on the free version by adding the capability to log calls and meeting notes, but there’s no in-app phone dialer. There is also a reporting feature and custom pipeline views.

This plan may work well for solopreneurs who want a Gmail-based CRM along with reporting features, as well as for those who don’t have the need for live chat or built-in calling. However, it has a higher price point than many free or low-cost CRMs that offer more advanced features. If your sales process is highly focused on sending and tracking emails, this could be a good choice for your business.

Pipeline image courtesy of Streak

What Streak CRM Is Missing

Streak has some great basic features that are easy to use within your Gmail inbox, but it doesn’t allow for built-in calling or live chat on any level. If you need those capabilities, try Freshsales CRM to manage your sales pipeline.

What Users Think About Streak CRM

Streak users comment that they like the G Suite integration, email snippet, and email tracking features. Other users mentioned it lacks robust contact management tools and automation capabilities. For in-depth Streak reviews, visit our Streak reviews page.

Where to Find Streak CRM

Streak connects directly to your Gmail account, so you don’t need to sign up or download separate CRM software, making it a great option for solopreneurs who need a basic CRM to run a small business. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Visit Streak

Zoho CRM: Best Personal CRM With Advanced Social Media Features

Zoho CRM offers a variety of modules like invoicing, so you don’t have to use a separate program like QuickBooks to manage your invoices with free plans to enterprise versions. It also has social media integrations letting you create custom lead generation filters based on comments, mentions, or engagements. Therefore, Zoho CRM is a great choice for those who want a comprehensive CRM with advanced social media capabilities.

Zoho CRM Pricing

Zoho CRM offers a free plan for up to three users, making it a good choice for single users who want basic contact management features. The paid versions offer more functionality, such as social media integrations, sales forecasting, custom fields, reporting, and dashboards, ranging from $18 to $30 per user, per month.

Zoho CRM Tiered Features

Free

Zoho CRM has a fairly extensive list of features included in their Free plan, such as live chat and visitor tracking. It’s a good choice for a solopreneur who doesn’t need custom reports or fields, forecasting, or lead scoring. Zoho Social also has a free tier that you can integrate into the CRM. However, if you want a free plan with lead scoring, consider the Freshsales Sprout plan.

For a free version, Zoho CRM offers features similar to HubSpot, but there’s a bit more work to get the integrations set up, especially if you’re on your own. However, it doesn’t include email marketing, so it’s best for small businesses that want to focus on tracking social media interactions.

Standard

The Standard plan costs $18 per user, per month and adds custom fields and reports, email tracking, sales forecasting, bulk emails, and lead scoring. It also includes a unique feature called Social Lite, which allows you to publish on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram right within the CRM, which is a feature I haven’t seen in other CRM options.

If you have the budget for a paid CRM, this is a great value for any small business. If you want access to robust email marketing, social media integrations, and sales forecasting, a phone dialer, and customizations all in one place, this is a great choice at an affordable price point.

Professional

At $30 per user, per month, the Professional plan is an affordable option for solopreneurs seeking a comprehensive solution. It adds on their unique SalesSignal feature, which automates lead scoring when prospects respond to surveys, open emails, or mention your business on social media—helping optimize your follow-up priorities.

This plan is a solid choice for a small business owner who wants robust CRM capabilities and advanced social listening and monitoring features. If you frequently drive new business with social media campaigns, Zoho’s social selling tools are a good fit.

SalesSignal image courtesy of Zoho.com

What Zoho CRM Is Missing

While Zoho has a phone dialer available via an integration, it’s not built in like HubSpot or Freshsales. Furthermore, although they advertise an interesting artificial intelligence feature called ZIA, it’s only included in their most expensive Enterprise plan, while Pipedrive includes their new artificial intelligence (AI) feature in a standard plan.

What Users Think About Zoho CRM

Zoho users say they like how comprehensive and customizable the CRM platform is. Some users say they don’t like how much it costs to add on certain features and some people said they have had a poor customer support experience. To read in-depth reviews, visit our Zoho CRM review page.

Where to Find Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a robust, affordable customer relationship management platform that offers advanced social listening and selling tools, and integrates with a variety of other Zoho products to fuel a small business. Sign up for the free version or start a 15-day free trial, no credit card required.

Visit Zoho CRM

Pipedrive: Best Personal CRM With a Visual Pipeline

Pipedrive plans are affordably priced; they start at $15 per user, per month and go up to $59 per user, per month. It is a user-friendly CRM that offers a highly visual, customizable pipeline allowing you to see all your deals at a glance. It also has an artificial intelligence (AI) sales assistant that helps you uncover information about deals and advanced reporting that makes it easy to run reports by product, thus making it an excellent choice for catalog-type businesses that prefer a visual pipeline.

Pipedrive CRM Pricing

There’s no free plan, but the Essential plan is a good choice for solopreneurs wanting a visual CRM at $15 per month. At $29 per month, the Advanced plan offers more automation features. The Professional plan is designed for managing teams rather than a single user.

Pipedrive CRM Tiered Features

Essential

The Essential plan is affordable at $15 per user, per month compared to other paid CRMs, offering basic contact management and a customizable pipeline and stages along with a new AI Sales Assistant. Their mobile app offers a unique “nearby” feature that shows the addresses of nearby contacts while you’re on the go. However, it doesn’t offer an email sync, opens, or clicks, or templates that you can use like in the free HubSpot plan.

It’s good for business owners who want an inexpensive, visual CRM. If you want a customizable pipeline and advanced reporting but don’t need email tracking, templates, or clicks, this is a nice option for solopreneurs.

Advanced

The Advanced plan is $29 per user, per month and includes email syncing, email templates and tracking, and smart contact data, which auto-populates your contact fields with relevant information to uncover important details about contacts automatically. However, free plans like Zoho CRM and HubSpot offer email templates, and many less expensive plans, such as Zoho CRM and Freshsales, include email tracking for under $20 per user, per month.

The Advanced plan is comparatively more expensive than other plans that offer similar or more advanced features. However, this is still a solid choice for business owners who want a highly visual CRM including email integrations and tracking that’s easy to set up and manage on a daily basis.

Dashboard image courtesy of Pipedrive

What Pipedrive CRM Is Missing

There are a few features Pipedrive seems to be missing, such as lead scoring and live chat. The Essential plan doesn’t let you sync with your email, which is included in many free CRM tools. The Professional plan has a built-in dialing feature, but it’s geared toward teams, so it’s not a great fit for solopreneurs.

What Users Think About Pipedrive CRM

Users who enjoy Pipedrive say it’s a great, visual, easy-to-use tool that helps them manage their time and priorities. Some people said the features included in the Advanced and Professional version don’t justify their price points compared to other CRMs. To read in-depth reviews, visit our Pipedrive reviews page.

Where to Find Pipedrive CRM

Pipedrive helps you simplify your sales process with a customizable, visual pipeline and a new AI Sales Assistant that helps you identify risks and provides sales tips to get you one step closer to winning each deal. Get started with a user-friendly CRM with a 14-day free trial today.

Visit Pipedrive

Salesflare: Best Personal CRM With Advanced Customer Insights

Salesflare is an intuitive CRM with time-saving features like automatic gathering of contact details and suggesting contacts you know at businesses so you know who to reach out to. It has one pricing plan of $35 per user, per month, so you know exactly what you get when you sign up. It’s a great CRM for solopreneurs who want smart lead generation features, which can help kick-start rapport-building and give you an edge over the competition.

Salesflare CRM Pricing

Salesflare doesn’t have a free plan or pricing tiers. They have one straightforward plan at $35 per user, per month. While you can’t customize a plan to fully suit your business needs, it’s straightforward and you know exactly what you’re getting when you sign up.

Salesflare CRM Core Features

Salesflare’s core free features include contact management, contact website activity, companies, deals, tasks, activities, and automated email campaigns. You can also track emails, phone calls, view sales insights, and log and schedule meetings.

Salesflare offers these central features:

Contact Management

When you store a new contact in Salesflare, it automatically populates information about the lead from their email signature, social profiles, and more. It also offers direct access to the contact’s social media profiles within the CRM, making it convenient to stay on top of what they are posting. From the contact page, you can send and track emails, make phone calls, store documents, and link people to specific opportunities.

One unique feature I haven’t seen in other CRMs is when you add a company as an opportunity, Salesflare will scan your address book to recommend someone you might know who works there, giving you an inside edge on who to prospect.

Integrations

Salesflare offers over 1,300 integrations through Zapier, such as Slack and Mailchimp. While they don’t have native built-in calling within the CRM, you can integrate voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) services such as Toky and RingCentral so you can make and log calls within Salesflare. They don’t offer a live chat feature, but you can easily integrate with chat apps such as Freshdesk and LiveChat. You can also connect a variety of business proposal software programs.

Mobile App

The Salesflare app is easy to install and instantly lets you know what your tasks and upcoming meetings are for the day. The mobile app offers a seamless user experience that allows you to do anything you’d do on a computer while you’re one the go. However, it does lack the ability to scan a business card like the HubSpot app or the “nearby” feature like the Pipedrive app.

Reports & Analytics

Salesflare offers robust sales insights with its reporting dashboard. You can see total revenue, your average sales cycle, the average value of a deal, your expected revenue versus your revenue goal, and more. You also have access to your top lead sources and top lost reasons, helping you to optimize your sales activities by analyzing what works best for your business.

Phone & Email Functionality

Salesflare works with Gmail, Office 365, and Exchange to bring all your communications into one place. You receive notifications when prospects open emails, click a link, or open attachments, but they don’t offer email templates like HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Streak’s free plans do. You can create mass email campaigns and send them to a custom list of prospects. You can log calls with a Zapier integration or connect your cell phone to track phone calls within the CRM.

Image courtesy of Salesflare

What Salesflare CRM Is Missing

Salesflare has a lot of capabilities for its price point, but it doesn’t have a free option, so if you don’t have a budget for a CRM, consider HubSpot or the Freshsales Sprout plan. It also doesn’t support email templates or live chat, so you’d have to consider integrations or another option if those are capabilities you need.

What Users Think About Salesflare CRM

Users say the Salesflare platform is intuitive and has an excellent user interface, and they like the plethora of integrations available. Some users say they would like to see more pricing tiers to cater to a variety of business types. To read in-depth reviews, visit our Salesflare reviews page.

Where to Find Salesflare CRM

Salesflare is an intelligent, intuitive CRM that helps business owners manage deals, opportunities, and follow-up tasks. It also provides rich sales insights and automatically collects prospect information to guide your outreach activities. Explore Salesflare with a 14-day free trial today.

Visit Salesflare

Bottom Line

Solopreneurs need software to manage their sales opportunities just as much as larger businesses with more team members. There’s no shortage of options available—the best CRM software for your company will depend on your budget and specific needs, such as email automation, live chat, and contact management features.

We recommend HubSpot CRM as the best personal CRM for a single user due it’s free-forever plan, broad range of capabilities, customer support, and ease of use. It’s free live chat widget, email tracking, templates, and robust mobile app make it an excellent choice for business owners who need one platform that can do it all. Sign up for a free HubSpot account today.

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