Every small business wants to grow, evolving into a full-fledged enterprise and reaching global audiences. However, attracting more customers and scaling operations for an improved bottom line require the right investment in the right areas. Hence, an all-inclusive CRM is an important part of small businesses, providing customer visibility from every angle so that business owners can focus their resources in other core activities. CRM software is known for a variety of tools and features with a purpose to improve services by streamlining business processes.
Finding the best CRM software for your small business can be overwhelming. However, the trick is to take one step at a time and select the tool with the right set of features and capacity to scale. Start by understanding the reasons why you want a CRM and its benefits for your business model. Select the CRM solution that meets your specific business needs and it should be best when it comes to affordability, functionality, ease of use, and features. The right CRM should assist your business to manage current and potential customers while enabling real growth. In this blog, we have highlighted the 6 best CRM software that you can consider for your small business. Take a look:
HubSpot
HubSpot is a perfect CRM for small businesses with full-fledged inbound marketing tools to guide blogs toward search engine hits and ensure decent email marketing. If your business is just starting out, then it is a great solution to manage workflows for enhanced project management. It enables you to assign and track leads effectively, record customer interactions across multiple channels, and keep a close eye on the sales process. HubSpot CRM has an excellent interface to let you view the entire sales pipeline on your dashboard. For more data, you can view sales activities, contacts, performance, detailed reports, and more on a user or term basis. An expert marketer can easily turn emails into instant sales reps for an improved bottom line. Also, you have a range of free tools to organize your customer journeys, such as on-screen calling, email tracking, contact management, templates, and more.
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HubSpot seamlessly works with Microsoft Office and G Suite, so no matter what platform your business uses, you can run the CRM without much stress. Its integration with third-party apps, such as Slack, Google Sheets, Facebook Lead Ads, and more makes it easier to streamline tasks. On a less technical aspect, HubSpot allows you to check if clients opened your emails or not. The platform is compatible with Android and iOS devices with real-time notifications, scheduling, tracking, phone call, and other features. HubSpot offers several paid plans but you can get started with a free version, which is lightweight yet powerful. The users of the free plan can seek benefits from this highly capable client database software that assists in managing new leads. The paid packages come with more advanced features, including advanced automation, AI, reporting, etc.
What We Like
- Personalized email sequences for existing customers and new leads.
- Free plan accommodates an unlimited number of users
- Real-time notifications for lead behavior
- Easy interface so new users can navigate without hassle
- Custom filters to sort contacts
- Schedule tasks, emails, and create tickets
- Free marketing tools include website grader, email signature generation, blog idea generator, and marketing plan designer
Price
Hubspot CRM is free but Marketing Hub, Service Hub, and Sales Hub are available via four paid plans starting at $50/month, each with varying features and add-ons.
Freshsales (Freshworks)
Freshsales is now known as Freshworks, a popular CRM software used by thousands of sales teams. The platform offers everything that a salesperson requires to engage customers in conversations, attract quality leads, nurture customer relationships, and drive deals with AI-powered insights. It is quite easy to use Freshworks and offers a sales-oriented approach with several amazing features to maximize client interactions. The tool boasts a great dashboard that provides instant access to reports, contact management, phone calls, emails, and more. Going beyond an intuitive web-based interface, it also has a mobile app so you can increase sales wherever you are. Its built-in chat, email, phone, and telephony empower sales teams by automating sales processes and increasing their productivity and efficiency every day.
Leveraging Freddy AI assistant, Freshsales CRM provides insights into customer engagement, best deals, actions to take, sales forecasting to predict revenue while helping businesses nurture client relationships and discover leads. You can set up custom workflow automation to get a 360-degree customer view and all the important information from a single screen. Also, use native CPQ to generate and share quotes along with other important sales assets flawlessly. Although it has a limited number of integrations, you can still use third-party tools, such as Outlook and Gmail to create bulk email templates and monitor communications with prospective clients.
What We Like
- Sales team grouping and automatic lead assignments
- Lowest-priced plans include built-in phone and email tools
- Automatic contact profile updates
- AI-powered lead scoring to prioritize leads and boost sales
- Visual sales pipeline along with a drag and drop navigation
- Book appointments and connect via phone calls using the platform
Price: A Free Forever Startup plan and paid packages start at $15/user/month, billed annually.
Zoho
Zoho is a well-equipped CRM that boasts excellent lead generation and customer management tools. This cloud-based software is built meticulously, keeping all the elements in mind required to run small businesses. The platform is super easy to use and doesn’t compromise on capability. Its suite of features includes the ability to scan business cards, search social media to capture new customer contacts and automate workflows to assist sales teams. You get all the powerful sales and marketing features in one place with SaaS apps and online productivity tools.
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Zoho CRM helps small businesses market their brand, organize contacts, provide dedicated customer support, and manage sales. Users can also benefit from website visitor segmentation, reporting, pipeline management, client contact, and communication records. Another main advantage of using Zoho is its seamless integration with other Zoho tools, which include sales, project management suite, marketing, invoice, and Zoho campaigns. You can even connect this software with other marketing platforms that you use to capture leads via social media.
What We Like
- System customization capabilities
- Sales lead management to prioritize leads and convert them faster
- Automation capabilities for customer journey navigation, workflow task creation, and communicating with leads
- Multichannel contact management
- IT management for handling support tickets and monitoring websites
- Detailed analytics reports for data-driven decisions
- Team collaboration tools
Price: Zoho offers a free plan for up to 3 users but for more advanced features, go for paid plans that start at $14/month per user, billed annually.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a market-leading giant CRM field that is known for managing enterprise-level business operations. However, it is also trusted by small businesses too for its comprehensive CRM solutions. Utilize this platform to generate and capture leads through a personalized customer journey. You can also make the most of this intelligent marketing platform to drive sales via SMS messaging, emails, social media, and other digital advertising mediums. Salesforce interface is sales-focused and intuitive with customizable features, such as reports and dashboards to meet your business needs and offer an impactful user experience.
Salesforce has been around for years now, making a strong position in the market and among users. It includes tons of exclusive features with cutting-edge solutions to meet every specific requirement that you can possibly think of, be it commerce, team productivity, sales, customer service, marketing, engagement, and whatnot. It also offers additional features to streamline business and sales processes, such as data export, third-party integrations, internal communication, etc. With its all-in-one solution for marketing, sales, and services, Salesforce offers several competitive plans for small businesses so that they can enjoy the true power of a popular CRM in a true sense at a lower price.
What We Like
- Guided onboarding
- An inexpensive tool as compared to other CRMs with, dashboards, reporting, and support tools
- Enterprise-level security and continuous support
- Dashboard and report customization so that businesses see the metrics that they want
- Automatically track emails and meetings
- Mobile app so users can perform all the same functions of a web application
- Social media and email support
Price: Paid plans for small businesses start at $25/month per user, billed annually with a 14-day trial period.
Keap
Keap is a sales pipeline and contact management software that seriously focuses on helping small, home-run, and self-employed businesses and e-commerce operations. This powerful CRM and marketing platform has a simple goal- to assist clients to navigate through the noise and generate more sales. It starts by populating a comprehensive leads database and then keeping it organized. Keap has been catering to small and different types of businesses for over 20 years now and it’s still hard to find a substitute for the experience it offers. It uses automation tools to collect and convert more leads while creating more fans. One thing that makes this CRM tempting for small businesses is that it is incredibly easy to use even for the ones who are not so tech-savvy.
To gather contact details, you have to import contact lists from other CRMs, scan business cards, convert and create complicated spreadsheets, do a manual entry, and set up a custom form on the website page. Keap gets this job done by staying connected. It is committed to converting leads into happy and satisfied customers who not only return to your business but also show their happiness through referrals. In addition, its pre-written email templates save a lot of time while capturing new leads efficiently. You will get all the status updates and reminders regarding follow-up.
What We Like
- Send messages to new leads through an automated process
- User-friendly dashboard and UI
- Internal forms to gather crucial data about new leads
- Integrations for email providers, such as Gmail or Outlook
- Pre-written emails to save your time
- Email tracking to optimize your email campaigns
Price: Paid subscriptions start at $79/month with the Lite plan managing 500 contacts and 1 user.
Agile CRM
Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM tool that brings customer service, sales, contact management, and marketing in one dashboard. Also, the platform is hassle-free, making it easier to use for beginners as well. It is one of the best customer database solutions, offering 360-degree contact view, gamification, and project management to sales teams to inspire events, fun competition, timeline, calendar, and more. Furthermore, you get detailed reports that are quickly accessible so you can drill down and take a closer look at everything that’s happening.
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Agile CRM comes with single-page contact management, appointment scheduling, 1-click calling, and marketing tools that are important to generate and capture more leads. Also, it enables you to create landing pages, email newsletters, and send out emails. Making it even better and more effective are its services features, which include helpdesk, support ticketing, and more. The CRM offers deal tracking, voicemail automation, and appointment scheduling as well for sales.
What We Like
- Advanced lead tracking and reporting
- Single-page contact management
- Create and manage multi channel campaigns with a drag and drop interface
- Fully-integrated marketing automation
- Built-in live chat windows
Price: Apart from a limited free plan, it also offers paid plans that start at $9.99/month per user, billed annually.
Conclusion
To find the best CRM software for small businesses, you need to indulge in some detailed comparisons. In the process of selecting the right tool, you will surely learn and gain extensive knowledge about different types of software and what each of them can do for you, which will work in your favor. CRM solutions come with a plethora of advantages for small businesses, startups, and large corporations. They help in identifying the pain points, expanding the scope of the target audience, managing the sales process, automating marketing efforts, and more. So, go ahead and pick the best one with an all-in-one solution for stronger customer relationships.