As a small business, you're no longer in the early days of figuring out how things work. You have a healthy client base, your analytics are excellent, and now you're eager to scale. To do that, you need CRM software that's not too basic but not too pricey, a balance of helpful functionality and competitive pricing. Efficiency is the name of the game.
I realise you didn't start a business to search around for the right apps to help you expand. I'm taking some of the pressure off: I picked up over 140 programmes on the market, filtered out the pricey or cumbersome ones, and tested the worthwhile prospects to find the finest CRM software for small businesses.
The 11 top CRMs you'll read about here can help you ramp up your sales, streamline your operations, and keep an eye on the results. Let's make "closed won" the expression you'll hear most this year.
Looking for a free CRM to start your business? If you're not quite ready to pay for your CRM, you still have options. Check out the finest free CRM software, where you'll find plenty of selections to help you close your first clients.
The finest small business CRM software
- Vtiger for an all-in-one solution
- Flowlu for an inexpensive all-in-one solution
- Zoho CRM for scaling your business
- HubSpot for constructing a content-rich business website
- Capsule for organising projects
- Freshsales for a basic CRM for small business
- folk for easy, ultra-personalized emails
- Kommo for multi-channel sales
- Salesmate for phone and SMS outreach
- NetHunt for organising your Gmail mailboxes
- Zapier for designing your own automation-first CRM
What makes the best CRM for small business?
How we review and test apps
Our top apps roundups are produced by individuals who've spent much of their careers using, evaluating, and writing about software. Unless specifically mentioned, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we cherish the trust users put in us to deliver accurate appraisals of the categories and applications we review. For additional insights on our methodology, see the entire rundown of how we select apps to feature on the zousapps blog.
A CRM is one of the essential sales apps in your software stack. It holds all the data on leads and deals you're building for them, replete with a timeline of past and upcoming encounters. It helps you be productive by helping you know what to accomplish next and managing your sales team. And since all your data is centralised here, you may take a look at reports to uncover possibilities to improve.
But what's vital in customer relationship management software for small business, in particular? You don't want a product that's too basic, too focused on the CRM side of things—something that will limit you later on, necessitating a transition. At the same time, the subscription fee needs to meet your budget as you expand, starting at a fair enough point on the lowest plan, and keeping a reasonable scale for the advanced features that you obtain on the higher plans. Lastly, you need a solution that gives you visibility and control over your business operations, so your team can acquire the information they need.
With that in mind, here's what I looked for as I was testing the finest customer relationship management software for small business:
- User experience. I sought for small business CRM systems that you can set up fast, that give easy ways to obtain help content when you need it, and that are straightforward to use every day.
- Sales characteristics. As the center of your customer data and sales productivity, your CRM will help you keep track of contacts and activity, and monitor how your deals are moving ahead with a visible sales pipeline.
- Reporting and analytics. How do you improve if you can't measure how you're doing? Any decent CRM system for small business will provide a collection of reports to help you achieve just that.
- Integrations. A CRM that plays nice with your other apps is crucial. More integrations means more functionality you can access from your dashboard, more data travelling back and forth easily, and more chances for automation.
- Value for money. I was looking at the price you'll pay now—and as you grow. The maximum price on the lowest paid plan is $40 per user per month. I also excluded apps with a noticeable price increase toward the upper levels.
If any of my recommendations don't match these criteria nicely, I highlight it in my review to give you a heads-up. In several cases, the innovative ideas were intriguing enough to include, even if it was missing one or two conventional elements.
Out of the 140 CRM programmes I studied, I tested the 28 best fits. After signing up for each, I added my contacts, created deals, and moved them up the pipeline, logging imaginary phone calls and emails as I went. Then, I moved over to the reports section to see what insights were obtained. Finally, I examined the unique features of each app to determine if they were useful or just nice to put on the marketing page.
One final note: all pricing below correspond to monthly memberships, if offered. There are reductions for annual billing, so look to the pricing page of each app to receive the entire cost breakdown.
Integrating your CRM with other apps lets you get the most out of your investment. Learn how to get started with CRM integration and how to implement automation to help your staff be even more productive in your system.
The top CRMs for small businesses at a glance
| Best for | Standout feature | Pricing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vtiger | An all-in-one solution | Highly customizable modules | From $12/user/month |
| Flowlu | An affordable all-in-one solution | Invoicing and finance features | Free plan available; from $4.87/user/month |
| Zoho CRM | Scaling your business | Powerful AI and wide range of features | From $20/user/month |
| HubSpot | Building a content-rich business website | Content marketing workflows | Free plan available; from $30/user/month |
| Capsule | Managing projects | High visibility over tasks | From $21/user/month |
| Freshsales | A simple CRM | Part of a broader Freshworks suite | From $18/user/month |
| Kommo | Multi-channel sales | Supports multiple configurable pipelines | From $15/user/month |
| folk | Simple, ultra-personalized emails | Contact enrichment feature | From $24/user/month |
| Salesmate | Phone and SMS outreach | Customizable screen layouts | From $29/user/month |
| NetHunt | Managing your Gmail inbox | Supports chatting on multiple channels | From $30/user/month |
| Zapier | Building your own CRM | Automation-first mindset | Free plan available; from $19.99/month |
Best all-in-one CRM software for small businesses
Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android)
Vtiger pros:
- Each module is very customizable
- Two-tier pricing based on user access demands
Vtiger cons:
- Learning curve is a bit steep
Vtiger takes the crown as the best all-in-one CRM software for small enterprises. It'll keep all your contacts and deals structured, integrating inventory, marketing, help desk, project management, and paperwork into the mix.
You'd think the user interface would be a mess attempting to pack all this in. But Vtiger maintains things clean: there's a panel for every major feature set, with clear navigation at the top. If you need to move screens—say, you're looking at your inventory and want to get back to your sales pipeline—click the hamburger icon on the top-left. That will open a wide menu, letting you jump straight to where you want to be.
Another risk with all-in-ones is having certain features that are fantastic and others that are simply adequate. Vtiger impresses on this front—here are few examples:
- Adding a new contact brings up a brief form, so you can get it done fast between calls or emails. Later, you may open up the main contact page, where you can enter all the required material when you have time.
- The sales screen provides a visual pipeline to help you keep track of your deals. Clicking on a transaction allows you see the next task, along with all the specific details about the data associated to it.
- The help desk page keeps track of open issues submitted by your clients, a live chat button, and the opportunity of developing your own FAQ section to help your support personnel.
- The email marketing screen allows you design campaigns and autoresponders. You can design and save your templates with dynamic fields to personalize each message with the recipient's data.
- The projects tab enables you organize your projects, queue work inside, and assign them to anyone. It has its own activity stream where you may exchange messages or make updates. You can attach and link everything here to make this your sole source of truth.
- As for inventory, you can keep track of products and services, invoices and purchase orders, and even manage product-related taxes.
The best part? All these units are related. Just closed a deal? Click to convert it to a project. Want to add the most common products or services that a contact usually requests? You get the idea. In case there's a key function that Vtiger doesn't have, you can link it to Zapier to cover your use case. Here are some instances of how that works.
Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads as leads in Vtiger CRM
- Facebook Lead Ads, Vtiger CRM
- Facebook Lead Ads + Vtiger CRM
Create Vtiger CRM leads for new Mailchimp subscribers
- Mailchimp, Vtiger CRM
- Mailchimp plus Vtiger CRM
Vtiger price: One Growth starts at $12/user/month. When you grow, the higher plans offer two cost tiers based on user entitlements. For example, with the One Professional plan, customers with access to all modules will pay $30/user/month, while access to a single module costs $20 instead.
Best inexpensive all-in-one CRM software for small enterprises
Flowlu (Web, iOS, Android)
Flowlu pros:
- Includes invoicing and financing aspects
- Good match for teams that work with the Agile framework
Flowlu cons:
- Limited sales-focused reporting
Flowlu delivers decent power at a good price, as long as you have at least eight individuals working with you. With a sharp user interface and a complete onboarding job list, you can combine sales with projects, financial features, collaboration, client portals, and knowledge bases. It's an all-in-one CRM leaning toward the project management and business side of things.
When you log in every day, you'll receive a feed of recent communications. You can run a quick poll or type in announcements to get everyone on the same page. From there, the menu on the left side may lead you anywhere you need, with shortcuts to create new projects, deals, or contacts without having to click two or three times to get it done.
The contact and sales management features are all here. There's a filterable list view for all activities that you can use to organize your work or monitor how your team is progressing. Another aspect I enjoy is how you can build automations for each level of the sales pipeline: define the rules, and focus on your sales activities, not on admin.
As an all-in-one, Flowlu focuses on project management, letting you connect projects with the contacts you're constructing them for, and storing all the information in one place for simple access (with both waterfall and Agile approaches available).
Flowlu pricing: There's a free plan available. If you outgrow that, Flowlu's lowest plan (Team) starts at $39 for 8 users, bringing the cost to $4.87/user/month. The pricing is per fixed number of people, therefore that may be useful depending on your roster. If you ever go over 25 users, you may upgrade to the Enterprise plan ($249/month), unlocking all the features for a fixed charge, not a per-user rate like most of the competition.
Looking for another inexpensive all-in-one CRM with a different set of features? EngageBay is another fantastic alternative in terms of pricing, bringing marketing, live chat, and customer support along with the fundamental CRM functions.
Best CRM for scaling your small business
Zoho CRM (Web, iOS, Android)
Zoho CRM pros:
- Powerful AI (Zia)
- Wide range of features
Zoho CRM cons:
- User interface can be overly busy at times
When buying software for your organisation, you don't just examine the short-term. Sure, this app satisfies my needs now, but what happens when we increase or quadruple our client roster next year? Will it continue support me through the extra workload without siphoning away my hard-earned money?
Zoho CRM will undoubtedly support you without holding your wallet hostage. The free plan is good. The lowest plan is fair. When you graduate to the pricier levels, it keeps affordable considering the entire spectrum of capabilities you'll get: enhanced reporting, machine learning, and AI, to list the important ones.
The user interface isn't as appealing as some of the competition, but Zoho makes it up to you by delivering comprehensive capabilities. In addition to sales, it features email marketing and a corporate activity stream to promote communication between departments. There's support for developing self-service portals for your customers, help desk functionality, and automatic lead scoring too. As you can see, Zoho is near to all-in-one territory too.
If you wish to track your projects, you can set up a smooth link with Zoho Projects, letting you access your tasks from the CRM dashboard as you complete the configuration. And that's just one of the dozens of additional Zoho apps that the CRM interfaces with—and most of them provide either a generous free plan or accessible subscription plans. You can upgrade and downgrade as your budget rises or drops.
If there's a feature that the Zoho software suite doesn't offer, you can link Zoho CRM to Zapier, so it plays nice with all your other apps. Learn more about how to automate Zoho CRM, or try one of these pre-made procedures.
Create contacts in Zoho CRM from fresh leads from Facebook Lead Ads
- Facebook Lead Ads, Zoho CRM
- Facebook Lead Ads + Zoho CRM
Create Zoho CRM modules from new WooCommerce orders
- WooCommerce, Zoho CRM
- WooCommerce + Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM pricing: The lowest plan available, Standard, starts out at $20/user/month for basic features; Professional ($35/user/month) brings more automation and process management; Enterprise ($50/user/month) unlocks more data analytics and ways to customize the interface and functionality; Ultimate ($65/user/month) unchains Zia, Zoho CRM's resident AI model.
Best CRM for establishing a content-rich business website
HubSpot (Web, iOS, Android)
HubSpot pros:
- Advanced features accessible when you're ready to grow
- Plenty of help content
HubSpot cons:
- Complex pricing
HubSpot is a significant brand in the CRM sector. It's an all-in-one with functions covering sales, marketing, customer service, operations, and B2B commerce. But what sets it apart from other solutions on this list is that you can design your business website and manage your content marketing activities in the CMS Hub.
The process is simple even if you have zero web design knowledge, thanks to HubSpot's detailed user onboarding guidelines. Start by browsing layouts and templates to find the right fit. The next stage is picking whatever pages you want to implement—you'll be able to rapidly put in a Home page as well as About or Pricing pages, among others.
Once you upload all the material to your main website pages, you can head over to the blog section. Here, you may start generating material that fits your major keywords, so prospects can find you in online searches. It's a terrific time to explain in-depth about your business and how you handle your customer's problems, developing a relationship with your audience based on honesty and trust. And if you dislike writing first drafts, you can generate one with AI and edit it from there.
That's not the end of AI tools in HubSpot: hop over to ChatSpot, and access your CRM data from a chat interface. You can ask questions about your deals, easily add new contacts or tasks, and even ask to generate photographs. Even though the entry point is outside the main programme you're using, these platforms are connected in the backend. And if you want more of these connections to set up automation and data transfer, you may link HubSpot with Zapier. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot, or get started with one of these templates.
Add new HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp lists
- HubSpot, Mailchimp
- HubSpot + Mailchimp
Get Slack notifications for new HubSpot form submissions
Try it
- HubSpot + Slack
- HubSpot, Slack
HubSpot price: Generous free plan provided with unlimited contacts. HubSpot provides a decent entry-level plan starting at $30/user/month, offering all the basic functionality across most of its Hubs—be sure to click the For individuals & small teams link to view it. The pricing increases whenever you desire to unlock more in any Hub. It can get a bit complex (and pricy) as there are a lot of combinations, so be sure to spend some time examining the pricing page.
Best small business CRM for managing projects
Capsule (Web, iOS, Android)
Capsule pros:
- High visibility over every team's tasks
- User interface is really straightforward to understand and interact with
Capsule cons:
- Only ticket-based help available
Capsule in a nutshell: a solid CRM mixed with a dependable project management tool. Like any good productivity programmes, it knows that user experience is vital. It includes an easy user interface and a dashboard that keeps the overwhelm under control. This is vital because enhancing productivity is like all-you-can-eat dining discipline: if you flood your plate with food, you'll either overeat (get burned out) or waste it (leave stuff undone).
The Projects screen offers three views: calendar, Kanban, and list. You can enter everything you need to accomplish here, assign it to the relevant persons, and include all files needed to execute. Then, jump back to the dashboard and find all your chores organized there on a list on the right, ready to tackle. To the left of this list, you'll find the latest activity for you and your team—a stream of completed tasks, calls, and deal updates.
After a few weeks of getting things done, you can take a look at the reports to discover any productivity concerns. This report comes on top of the standard sales pipeline data that's common to practically every app in this category. Use these to identify which jobs take longer and who's having problems moving through projects—that person might require aid, advise, or an encouraging remark.
If there are more apps involved in getting your projects to 100%, you can link Capsule to Zapier to move all the critical data in and out. Here are a couple workflows to set up.
Import sales prospects from Google Sheets into Capsule CRM
- Google Sheets, Capsule CRM
- Google Sheets + Capsule CRM
Add fresh WooCommerce orders to Capsule CRM as new contacts
- WooCommerce, Capsule CRM
- WooCommerce plus Capsule CRM
Add new Freshsales CRM contacts to Google Contacts
Capsule pricing: The lowest package, Starter, is $21/user/month, and offers 30,000 contacts and all the main features. The Growth plan is the most competitive at $38/user/month, raising the contact limit and adding automation, advanced analytics, and user roles. The highest premium option, Advanced, costs $60/user/month, further boosting contact limits and storage, but not unlocking any large features of note within the software (though the continuous priority support is wonderful under that plan, if you need it). The Enterprise plan doesn't feel as competitive as others on the list, so depending on your size, it may make more sense to stay on the Teams plan before you have to switch to an enterprise-grade software package. If you need email marketing features in Capsule, you can subscribe for the add-on for $11/month (not on a per-user basis).
Best basic CRM for small business
Freshsales (Web, iOS, Android)
Freshsales pros:
- Part of the Freshworks software suite
- Robust AI characteristics for lead scoring and projections
Freshsales cons:
- Slow from time to time
All apps come with their own appearance, feel, navigation, and overall logic. Depending on how powerful they are, you may be willing to bear the rough sections or the severe learning curves. And then there are apps like Freshsales, which keeps the difficulty level low, but not so low that it strips itself of all of its usefulness.
When you finish the onboarding, you'll be prompted to add your leads, tasks, and appointments right away. Every page has its own What's this page about? link that opens assistance, in case you need to comprehend what's happening at every click. Freshsales also illustrates how you may harness these capabilities to help your business function effectively. And hey, if something ends up being too mysterious, you can jump on the phone with the Freshsales team, something that not all other options on this list offer on all plans.
If you're reading this article the old-school way—you know, top-to-bottom without skimming or skipping—you undoubtedly remember Zoho CRM's Zia and its AI capabilities. Freshsales offers a similar feature set, here called Freddy, a cute 3D dog that spends its days sniffing around your data: it identifies priority contacts that are more likely to be better fits for your business; it suggests when you should follow up with leads to keep the engagement trend going up; and it can be installed as a chatbot on your website to handle customer support and appointments.
With Freshsales, you'll be able to handle papers, keep track of products, and link telephone and chat—in addition to everything you'd expect from a CRM. If you want to increase that feature set, Freshworks has more software that expands the features of Freshsales, adding marketing and customer service. And if that's not enough, you can connect Freshsales with Zapier too.
Create leads in Freshsales CRM from Facebook Lead Ads submissions
- Facebook Lead Ads, Freshsales Classic
- Facebook Lead Ads + Freshsales Classic
Add new Freshsales CRM connections to Google connections
- Freshsales Classic, Google Contacts
- Freshsales Classic plus Google Contacts
Freshsales pricing: The Growth plan starts at $18/user/month, featuring sales features, telephone, chat, and AI contact score, to mention the more crucial ones. After that, the Pro plan pushes the price upward to $47/user/month, unlocking time-based workflows, AI deal insights, and next best action. Finally, the top tier (Enterprise) caps at $83/user/month, unlocking all the AI sales forecasting. This is pricier than Zoho CRM's top tier, for example, so if you require AI in your CRM, consider setting some time on your schedule to try both and discover which one works better for you.
Another option for pure simplicity of use is Pipedrive. The user interface is easy to understand at a glance, differentiating information well, and it contains plenty of easy-to-setup automation and timely notifications to assist your sales staff thrive.
Best small business CRM for simple, ultra-personalized emails
folk (Web)
folk pros:
- Supports numerous pipelines
- AI available for customisation
folk cons:
- No mobile apps
Heads up: folk has a different vibe when compared with others on this list. It doesn't do intricate sales processes or showy reporting with pie charts. It doesn't want you to think of your business connections as figures on a dashboard. Instead, it offers a straightforward solution to handle all your connections and send ultra-personalized emails to your lists at scale, replacing robotic templates with the unmistakable beauty of the human voice.
If you use Notion, you'll feel right at home. On the left side, you may click to start a search of your contacts database, see a breakdown of your emails, and access the settings. A little farther down, you can see all your contact lists. This is great for keeping track of many sorts of relationships: you may interact with clients on a typical sales funnel, but also with investors who have different relationship stages. If you need additional ideas, you can explore the template collection, as there are 50 various templates you can start with.
So what are these ultra-personalized emails? Click on a contact list and, in the top-right, click to construct a new dynamic email. As you write, type a forward slash to add any of the contact's data fields to the body of the email. You can add their name, company, or any other custom text field that you have for your contacts. Once done, you may evaluate your work to make sure that the static elements of the email align with the dynamic tags, then click to send to the entire list.
But you can't personalize a lot if you don't have data. That's why folk has a contact enrichment feature, automatically filling the gaps in contact information to offer you a more full view of who you're chatting to. It can find firms, job titles, and phone numbers, among other bits of information.
The simplicity, flexibility for many relationships, and customising features are sufficiently robust that they compensate for the lack of complex analytics and reporting. Think of people as more of a rank-and-file, close-quarters sales tool, not so much a manager-level, boardroom-dweller business software.
people is hanging out wherever you are: you can take it with you to Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Gmail by using the Chrome extension. That's a fantastic collection of integrations to start the party, but if you want to keep it going, you can link folk to Zapier and bring thousands of additional apps in too. Here are some instances.
Add members to folk groups from new Typeform entries
- Typeform, folk
- Typeform + folk
Add new Calendly gatherings participants to folk
Try it
- Calendly, folk
- Calendly + folk
Regarding pricing: The Standard plan starts at $24/user/month, offering 100 enrichments and 500 messages every month. The next and highest-paid plan, Premium, is $39/user/month and lifts the cap to 500 and 2,000, respectively. This kind of feature set and pricing seems a better fit if you sell high-ticket products or services with a long sales process.
Best small business CRM for multi-channel sales
Kommo (Web, iOS, Android)
- Kommo pros:
- Supports numerous customisable pipelines
- AI keyword detection to automate chats
Kommo cons:
- Limited task management tools
Instead than keeping to the standard emails and phone calls, Kommo enables your communications land in different platforms, so you can engage with people where they like to be. This includes Meta's major 3—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—Viber, Skype, Telegram, WeChat, and Apple Messages. To supplement this wide list, you can also send messages via SMS or to Slack channels.
As you link them, you'll see the chats line up in the Chats part of the app. You can talk 1-on-1 with any of your leads on this screen. If you want to deliver a marketing message to a lot of individuals at the same time, you can utilise Broadcasts to shoot it out and track performance. Your CRM changes with actions and signals as communicators come and go, saving you the time of having to retype information as you keep conversing.
With so many texts flowing around, you have to automate to stay sane. Kommo includes Salesbots, which help you build up automatic replies to new messages, warn a member of the team if a customer is left on viewed for more than five minutes, or set up actions based on keywords in the message. And these are just a few of the existing templates: you can browse others or make your own.
Most of the feature set is built around multi-channel sales. That's particularly obvious in the dashboard, where you'll see stats like median reply times and number of current conversations. For detailed sales reports, turn to the Stats tab to see screens that'll offer you win-loss analysis and call reports, among other important information.
If you love speaking with your leads but not the admin labour, you can link Kommo to Zapier to automate your CRM procedures. Here are some examples to get you started.
Create Kommo leads with contacts for new leads in TikTok Lead Generation
- TikTok Lead Generation, Kommo
- TikTok Lead Generation + Kommo
Create rows on Google Sheets spreadsheets for new Kommo leads
- Kommo, Google Sheets
- Kommo + Google Sheets
Kommo price: Free trial offered. Base starts at $15/user/month for uniting all your sales channels (including email) on the platform. Advanced goes for $25/user/month, offering salesbots and automation. The top tier Enterprise package is $45/user/month, and it unlocks lead scoring and boosts the caps on metered features.
Best small business CRM for working with phone and SMS
Salesmate (Web, iOS, Android)
Salesmate pros:
- AI chatbot assistant includes
- Customizable screen layouts
Salesmate cons:
- Call expenses might be better
Emails are the standard for a lot of CRM communication. But what about the good old phone call? Or that well-timed SMS? Salesmate offers the means to connect those channels to your CRM, developing features around them to make sure you get a lot out of these interactions.
The user design is engaging, topped off by a terrific onboarding sequence and handy mini-tutorials on each page. Salesmate explains itself well, so it won't take you a long time before you're on the phone with your next lead. It doesn't fully avoid emails; in fact, it rounds them up in a Team Inbox. You can route any emails you get at hello@yourbusiness.com to it and have your staff work through them together.
The good stuff starts happening when you connect the phone. You have to fill out a form and submit your organisation for evaluation before unlocking these capabilities (and remember that call charges apply on top of your usual subscription). Once you leap through those hurdles, though, you can start sending and receiving SMS messages immediately on the platform, having them attached to the activity log of each contact. You may also start calls from the dashboard or—I find this incredibly handy—from your sales pipeline's deal cards. And when you get an incoming call, that contact's website opens up on the screen so you may start the chat without hesitating.
Salesmate also interacts with Zapier to increase its possibilities even further. Here are some examples of how it can function with your other apps.
Create new Salesmate contacts to Google Contacts
- Salesmate, Google Contacts
- Salesmate plus Google Contacts
Create deals in Salesmate with new Gravity Forms submissions
- Gravity Forms, Salesmate
- Gravity Forms plus Salesmate
Overall, Salesmate is a well-rounded solution, with a specific interface to set up marketing automation, another for customer support chats, and a reporting area that enables you establish as many viewing angles over your data as you need. If you wind up consulting a handful of these reports numerous times a day, you can add them to your dashboard.
Salesmate pricing: Basic goes for $29/user/month, already offering built-in calls, messages, and workflow automation. The mid-tier, Pro at $49/user/month unlocks team management features and bespoke reports. One step further, Boost ($50/user/month) enables phone capabilities such as the Power Dialer (automatic voice calls) and Voicemail Drop (a form of reverse voicemail: if your contact doesn't pick up the phone, you can leave one pre-recorded message on their voicemail). And if you want to remove all constraints and get customised support from Salesmate, hop on the Enterprise plan (price on request).
Want to focus more on phone calls? Take a look at Ringy, a CRM that goes even deeper into the phone-calling realm, delivering local caller IDs dynamically based on the receiver's location, so your leads pick up the phone more often. It also has a fixed pricing per month, not per user, which could make more sense if your team is growing fast.
Best small business CRM for managing your Gmail inbox
NetHunt (Web, iOS, Android)
NetHunt pros:
- Connects to LinkedIn
- Supports conversing on several channels such as WhatsApp or Telegram
NetHunt cons:
- Steep price scaling from plan to plan
What if there was a CRM that you could utilise while you go about your day in Gmail? You know where this is going: it's NetHunt. And unlike most other CRMs for Gmail, NetHunt includes a separate dashboard you can access to make big-picture decisions and fine-tune the settings.
Getting started is easy: sign up with the Gmail account you're working with, and NetHunt quickly sorts itself out. You may then access it when on Gmail (be sure to install the browser extension first), or fire up the web app, which has a similar user interface as Gmail, so you won't be bothered by the seams. The online interface helps you monitor deals, update and create contacts, send email campaigns to your lists, and create processes to automate the tedious stuff.
There are simple reports accessible for user activity, pipeline, and time in stage. If you wish to take a dip in the business intelligence software sector, you can feed your data to Looker Studio via the available integration. This will let you develop interactive dashboards and reports that update in real-time, helping you maintain a finger on the pulse. Or you can link NetHunt to Zapier and bring thousands of other apps in.
Add fresh NetHunt CRM comments to Todoist as tasks
- NetHunt CRM, Todoist
- NetHunt CRM + Todoist
Create Mailchimp subscribers from new NetHunt CRM records
Try it
- NetHunt CRM, Mailchimp
- NetHunt CRM + Mailchimp
NetHunt pricing: NetHunt's pricing was revamped this year, introducing two more pricing categories, so you can scale without making your pocketbook uncomfortable. Basic starts at $30/user/month, giving all the basic CRM functionality in your Gmail account. As you advance up the tiers, you unlock integrations with additional communications channels, improved reports and automation. The price points are at $42, $60, $84 and $120, all on a per user per month basis.
Looking for a more cheap CRM for Gmail? Streak doesn't offer as many features as NetHunt, but it's simpler on the money to start with. It has a good free plan, so take it out for a spin if money is an issue. Or, if you're looking for a CRM for Outlook, eWay brings CRM functionalities to Outlook for PC. It's not very deep, especially in reporting or analytics, but if you're wanting to store everything in one Microsoft-focused spot, it could serve you very well.
The finest tool for constructing your own CRM
Zapier pros:
- Build a simple solution from scratch
- Automation-first mindset
Zapier cons:
- Lacks powerful CRM features
Zapier's product line is growing. Together, you can utilise Zaps, Interfaces, and Tables to construct custom apps to tackle business problems with an automation-first attitude.
With Zapier's Simple CRM template coupled to a set of Zapier Tables to keep your data, you may adjust it to match the particular needs of your sales activities. You can design screens to view data, include forms to record deal revisions, and add pages to edit contact details as needed.
Then, it's straightforward to change your data using step-by-step Zaps. You'll never have to input a single line of code if you don't want to. And, since you can connect to thousands of different business apps, you may choose the right tech stack to handle SMS, phone calls, or email marketing. Once they're integrated, you can trigger changes across all your apps from a button inside your Zapier Interfaces CRM.
Inspired? Learn more about Zapier Interfaces, or take a look at some of the actions you can conduct as you construct the right CRM for your team. And because you're reading this on the Zapier blog, go test it out for yourself for free to see if you agree with my judgement.
Send emails in Gmail for new form submissions made in Zapier Interfaces
- Zapier Interfaces, Gmail
- Zapier Interfaces + Gmail
Create Slack channel messages from new Zapier Interfaces form submissions
- Zapier Interfaces, Slack
- Zapier Interfaces + Slack
Create Google Calendar events for new Zapier Tables records
- Zapier Tables, Google Calendar
- Zapier Tables + Google Calendar
Create Records in Zapier Tables for New Typeform Entries
- Typeform, Zapier Tables
- Typeform + Zapier Tables
What is the best CRM software for small business?
You're running a little business now, but that doesn't mean you should settle for substandard software or burn your runway by joining the big guys and their pricey enterprise software club. If any of these options resonate to you, they're all free to test, so take your time researching the best one for you and your squad.
Or, if you need something more powerful, you can check out our selections for the top CRMs overall, which brings together the best of the best of the category, including tools you can trust to traverse the business stratosphere.
