Freshsales is a customer relationship management (CRM) system that helps sales teams attract quality leads, engage with prospects, and nurture customer relationships. It features artificial intelligence (AI)-powered deal insights for revenue and sales forecasting. It is best for growing businesses looking for a scalable CRM and sales automation solution with a sophisticated built-in phone dialer.
Pros
- Easy to set up and use
- Offers a free plan for unlimited users
- All plans include a built-in phone dialer
Cons
- Per-user limit on file storage
- AI-powered insights are available only in more expensive tiers
- Free plan lacks crucial features like email marketing and file storage
Recommended For
- Solo users and small teams needing a free CRM: Freshsales offers a free plan that supports unlimited users. This plan includes a built-in phone and end-to-end sales tools.
- Startups using an account-based sales structure: Freshsales is one of our recommended CRMs for startups because of its free and scalable plans, as well as robust tools for lead management.
- Call centers: Freshsales is included in our list of the top CRM call center software because of its robust in-app caller that you can use on desktop and mobile.
Not Recommended For
- Project management teams: Freshsales has no built-in project management tools. If this is important for your business, consider using Insightly CRM or read our guide to the best project management software.
- Small teams seeking low-cost data enrichment tools: This provider’s auto-profile enrichment features are only available in the Enterprise plan at $69 per user, monthly. Pipedrive is a better option as it offers this feature at $24.90 per user, monthly.
Quick Look at Freshsales Pricing*
- Free: $0 for three users
- Growth: $9 per user, per month
- Pro: $39 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $59 per user, per month
Other Articles Featuring Freshsales
- Best CRM for freelancers: Freshsales’ free plan includes a built-in phone, as well as tools for appointment scheduling, account management, invoicing, and deal tracking. These features help freelancers and solopreneurs manage client records, deals, and communication.
- Best mobile CRM apps: Freshsales’ mobile app includes multichannel communication tools, deal management, and contact location via Google Maps.
- Best CRM for Mac: Freshsales integrates with Apple Business Chat, and its iOS app lets you update contact records, book Uber rides, and find directions on Google Maps.
*Based on annual pricing; monthly billing is available for higher rates.
In this Freshsales review, we gave this provider 5 out of 5 points for user reviews, as most of its existing customer reviews online are positive. The majority of the users like its easy-to-use interface, high customizability, and unified view of sales activities. They are also happy with the built-in phone system, which is offered across all plans.
Below are existing Freshsales CRM reviews from other popular review sites:
- Capterra: 4.5 out of 5 based on 578 reviews
- G2: 4.5 out of 5 based on 1,073 reviews
- Gartner: 4.5 out of 5 based on 226 reviews
Less favorable Freshsales reviews include those from users who find its pricing scheme to be more expensive than its competitors, like Pipedrive and HubSpot CRM. Free plan users also note that it is difficult to get a response from the Freshsales support team, but paid plan subscribers report prompt service.
Yes, we would definitely use Freshsales. We also gave it a perfect rating for expert score because of its impressive combination of a comprehensive free plan, great value for money, and quality of support. The free option offers deal management features, a built-in phone system, and a website chat widget, making it ideal for solopreneurs and small teams. Its paid plans are scalable and are well-suited for growing sales teams that need workflow automation, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered contact scoring, and email integration.
Freshsales Alternatives
After reading this Freshsales CRM review, and you’re still not sure if it is the right fit for your business needs, there are some alternatives you can consider. Check out the table below for an overview of the best Freshsales alternatives.
Software |  |  |  |  |  |
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Best For | Omnichannel selling approach | Advanced marketing | Ecommerce businesses | Google Workspace users | Lead management |
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*Based on annual billing on a per-month basis; monthly billing is also available for a higher price.
Curious to see how Freshsales stacks up against some of its major competitors? Check out the following articles:
- Pipedrive vs Freshsales: Price, Features & What’s Best
- Freshsales vs Salesforce: Which Is Better for You?
- 7 Best Account Management Software for 2023
We gave a perfect score for Freshsales pricing because of its free and affordable plans that support unlimited users, as well as the monthly and annual payment options. Fees range from $15 to $69 per user, monthly. The Free plan offers basic contact and account management, sales pipeline management, a built-in phone dialer, website integration, a mobile app, and 24/5 customer support. Paid options offer AI-powered insights, custom fields, sales dashboards, and two-way email sync. You can sign up for a 21-day free trial for the paid tiers.
Plans | Free | Growth | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Who Plan Is Best For | Beginners and startups looking to engage leads with built-in chat, email, and phone | Growing sales teams seeking to automate repetitive tasks to spend more time selling | Mid-sized businesses that need a tool for managing multiple sales teams | Large companies and enterprises looking for advanced customization |
Annual Price Range* ($/User/Month) | $0 three users | $9 | $39 | $59 |
File Storage | ✕ | 2GB per user | 5GB per user | 100GB per user |
Workflows | ✕ | 20 | 50 | 100 |
Personalized Bulk Emails (per User) | ✕ | 250 per day | 1,000 per day | 5,000 per day |
Reports & Dashboard | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Two-way Email Sync | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Deal Insights | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
Territory Management | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
24/5 Customer Support (Phone, Chat & Email) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ With a dedicated account manager |
*Pricing is based on annual billing on a per-user, monthly breakdown. Monthly billing is also available for a higher cost. Pricing is reflected at the time of this publication. We update pricing information regularly but encourage readers to check current pricing here.
Freshsales CRM Pricing Add-ons:
- Additional workflows: $5 per workflow
- Phone credits: Starts at $5
- CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote): $19 per user, monthly
- Freshbots (chatbots): $100 for an additional 1,000 bot sessions
If you want a CRM that integrates marketing automation and AI capabilities for your sales and marketing teams, subscribe to Freshsales Suite. This product also offers a free plan with unlimited users and three paid plans that range from $15 to $69 per user, monthly.
We gave Freshsales’ features a score of 5 because of the extensiveness of tools available to help sales agents manage and close deals. Some of its primary features include contact and account management, sales activities, automated workflows, and deal management. Each tier has a different level of capability for customization, automation, data administration, cloud telephony, communication, data security, and reporting.
Click on the headers below to learn more about Freshsales’ standout general features:
With Freshsales, you can create, manage, and track sales pipelines of various teams. Set deal probabilities and get sales revenue forecasts for each deal stage. In addition, the software allows you to set up your product catalog, define and track sales goals based on closed deals and revenue, and use Slack to communicate with your sales team about ongoing deals. Its CPQ add-on gives you editable templates for documents like contracts and quotes.
Here are some functionalities under Freshsales’ pipeline management feature:
- Multiple sales pipeline
- Product catalog with pricing structure, discounts, and taxes
- Deal stage probability and revenue forecast by deal stage
- Sales goals setting
- Collaborate with your team on deals via Slack
Customize your Freshsales account and settings to fit your business needs and requirements. The system allows you to create and track custom sales activities to monitor customer interactions, appointments, and performance. Other aspects you can customize are contact fields, contact lifecycle stages, business modules, roles and permissions, currencies, and language.
Here are some functionalities under Freshsales’ system customization feature:
- Custom sales activities
- Custom fields
- Custom modules
- Contact lifecycle stages
- Multicurrency and multilanguage
- Custom roles and access permissions
Freshsales custom sales activities based on sales process (Source: Freshsales)
Make data-driven sales decisions with the help of Freshsales’ visual reports and dashboards. It comes with report templates that you can customize and use to create sales reports. You can view revenue metrics to determine top-performing campaigns, sales reps, and territories. It also gives you a holistic view of your sales team’s activities. In addition, you can compare your month-on-month sales performance to predict the expected close date for your deals.
Here are some functionalities under Freshsales’ sales analytics feature:
- Visual reports and dashboards
- Customizable report templates
- Revenue analytics
- Sales activity reports
- Sales velocity reports
- Sales trend reports
Freshsales sales trends and pipeline breakdown (Source: Freshsales demo)
Freshsales has integration capabilities with many third-party applications, giving you the ability to synchronize all your customer data into the platform. These include its native integrations with other Freshworks products, and tools for email marketing, document management, and accounting.
Some of the most popular Freshsales integrations include:
- Freshdesk
- Freshmarketer
- Freshchat
- Freshcaller
- Mailchimp
- HubSpot CRM
- Zapier
- DocuSign
- QuickBooks
- PandaDoc
- Xero
Freshsales integrations (Source: Freshsales Marketplace)
Using the Freshsales Android or iOS app, manage your contacts, deals, accounts, and sales activities on the go. It enables you to send individual and bulk emails, add tasks and appointments, log calls and associate them with contacts, and hail an Uber ride to your onsite meetings. Using its Check-in feature, you can confirm your attendance at onsite meetings with prospects. There are also push notifications that remind you of upcoming tasks and meetings.
Here are some functionalities that you can access via the Freshsales mobile app:
- Contact, lead, deal, and sales activity management
- Check-in and check-out from customer’s location
- Send emails
- Tasks and appointments
- Key metrics
- Scan and upload documents using phone camera
- Voice notes
- Log and make calls
- Book Uber to a client appointment
- Offline access to CRM records
Download the Freshsales app for iOS or Android.
Freshsales mobile app preview (Source: App Store)
For this Freshsales review, this provider earned a score of 3.75 out of 5 for its specialized features. One of the areas that need improvement here is the lack of multiple sales pipelines in lower tiers. As this feature is crucial, we would like to see it across all plans. Meanwhile, some of the standout features that we like include customizations, automations, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and multiple sales pipeline management.
Click on the headers below to learn more about Freshsales’ standout advanced features:
Freshsales helps improve your team’s efficiency and productivity by automating routine manual tasks. It automatically assigns leads, contacts, and even chat conversations to the right salespeople based on relevant criteria like skill level and bandwidth. Its CRM automation features include sales sequences, web forms, email templates, workflows, and an activity timeline.
Here are some functionalities under Freshsales’ workflow automation feature:
- Auto-assignment rules
- Web forms to capture contact information and generate leads
- Route calls during holidays
- Auto-profile enrichment
- Automated repetitive tasks within your sales process
- Automated sales sequences and customer interaction
- Email templates
- Activity timeline displays all customer interactions with your business
Freshsales preset templates for workflow automation (Source: Freshsales)
Freshsales’ artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, called Freddy AI, enhances your productivity by offering smart suggestions for deal closure, upcoming meetings, and tasks. Use its custom bots to generate leads and send welcome messages to your visitors. Furthermore, it lets you know which contacts should be prioritized, predicts the likelihood of success of your deals, and gives you sales and revenue forecasts.
Below are some functionalities under Freshsales’ AI assistant feature:
- Suggested next action for deals
- Auto-detect duplicate entries in contacts and accounts
- Predictive contact scoring
- Calendar event suggestion
- Deal insights
- Out-of-office detection for contacts
- Lead generation bot
- Sales forecasting
When you subscribe to either the Pro or Enterprise plan, you get access to Freshsales’ territory management feature. This allows you to assign territories to sales reps, auto-assign leads in a round-robin manner, and set roles to define each rep’s access to CRM records. You can also assign phone numbers to reps and territories or transfer a call to another territory without dropping the call. Plus, you can pull out revenue metrics from your CRM by territory.
Below are some functionalities under Freshsales’ territory management feature:
- Define territory rules
- Round-robin lead assignment
- Assign phone numbers and transfer calls to territories
- Territory-wide sales reports
- Role-based access
Freshsales automatic lead assignment by sales territory (Source: Freshsales)
Freshsales earned a 4.5 out of 5 score for its support because it provides users with 24/5 customer support via phone, chat, email across all its plans. You can also use its knowledge base to find out how to use specific functions and learn about the best practices for the software. Around 30 topic categories contain various how-to articles, such as account management, deal and pipeline management, and phone settings.
In addition, Enterprise plan subscribers have access to a dedicated account manager. Dedicated account managers help you resolve issues with the software or relay your feedback to the Freshsales management.
Freshsales knowledge base topic categories (Source: Freshsales)
Ease of Use
Based on our Freshsales review and trial, we find this platform simple to use and implement for beginners and mid-level users. This is because of its intuitive interface that displays all the main menu selections. There are also automatic prompts that pop up to guide you through the implementation and customization processes. If you need additional guidance on how to use the system, you can refer to its knowledge base or schedule a complimentary onboarding session.
How We Evaluated Freshsales
To evaluate this program against other CRM systems, we test each system ourselves. We examined major factors that affect the decision of product users. These include pricing, general features, advanced or niche features, and the quality and availability of customer support. We also looked at Freshsales’ pros and cons, as well as up-to-date user reviews about this platform from credible sites.
Click through the tabs below for our Freshsales evaluation criteria:
20% of Overall Score
Cost is one of the main factors that affect a customer’s choice of a CRM system. We give a high score if a provider’s entry-level plan has a monthly cost of $30 per user or less. In addition, the platform gets more points for offering a free plan or free trial, scalable plans, as well as both monthly and annual pricing options.
25% of Overall Score
We looked at overall CRM system features we feel are essential to small businesses, such as reporting and analytics, customizable pipelines, and third-party integrations. We also checked if the provider offers a mobile-friendly interface or a mobile app for sales reps who are in the field.
20% of Overall Score
We examined the advanced features of the CRM software to gauge the value for money its subscribers can get. Some of these specialized features are deal management, client management, lead management, and pipeline reporting. We also considered whether these features were provided for free or for an additional fee.
15% of Overall Score
Support is crucial in operating any CRM platform, especially for small businesses or sales teams that don’t have the budget for in-house technical support staff. We checked if they offer 24-hour support and evaluated the types of support channels they offer. These include live chat, email ticketing, phone, and self-service tools.
10% of Overall Score
We scoured the most recent CRM software reviews on credible sites to determine the level of satisfaction of their subscribers. This helped us determine the features of the product that they appreciate most and the common issues they encounter when using it. In addition, we tested out the product and incorporated our expert opinion on its basic features, value for money, and ease of use.
10% of Overall Score
We tested out the platform and explored its features and capabilities to compare our own experience with that of the majority of users. Doing this also allowed us to experience the program firsthand and assess its usability and value for money.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Both Freshdesk and Freshsales are cloud-based platforms created by Freshworks, a software company based in Chennai, India. Freshdesk is an omnichannel customer service software that helps businesses improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Freshsales is a CRM and salesforce automation software for managing leads, customer engagement, and client relationships using a unified portal.
Freshsales can be used by various businesses—from startups to enterprise-level teams. It offers a free CRM plan and three paid subscription options that cater to varying business needs and sizes.
A Freshsales alternative like Zoho CRM is recommended for users who want document storage at no cost, as it offers 1GB in its free plan. Also, those who want a more robust free plan can consider HubSpot CRM, our best free CRM for small businesses. This is because Freshsales lacks some essential features in its Free plan, including email marketing.
Bottom Line
Freshsales is a powerful, scalable sales CRM filled with features for contact, account, sales pipeline, and deal management. Its standout feature is its built-in cloud phone, allowing you to make calls directly from within the app. It also has an AI-powered assistant that automates and enhances tasks like contact scoring, customer communication, and forecasting.
