CRM software for small businesses
Explore the top CRMs for small businesses, their benefits, and their features. Plus, learn how to choose the right CRM to maximize growth.
A comprehensive guide to CRM software for small business
Last updated November 20, 2024
Whether you know it or not, you’ve got a stake in CRM software. As a customer, you’ve already interacted with customer relationship management and decided which companies deliver the best experiences. While nearly all enterprise organizations use CRMs to provide first-rate service to millions of customers, CRM software for small businesses is just as valuable.
Implementing a CRM process into your workflow improves your business in a big way—no matter your customer base. This guide will answer some of your most pressing questions about the best CRM for small businesses and teach you how to leverage them for growth.
We recommend business owners read the whole piece, but you can also jump to a specific section below:
- What is small business CRM software?
- The best CRMs for small businesses
- Features you need in a CRM for small business
- Benefits of using a CRM tool
- How to choose the right small business CRM
- Frequently asked questions about small business CRMs
- Get innovative solutions with a modern CRM
What is small business CRM software?
Small business customer relationship management (CRM) software helps SMBs grow and maintain customer relationships through processes like sales and customer support. While there are hundreds of CRMs for companies of all sizes, small businesses don’t need all the features included in CRMs for enterprises.
Small business CRM software aims for simplicity and the elimination of human error. These solutions are scaled to operate with the resources you have on hand. They provide the features you need while still allowing you room to grow.
Why small businesses need a CRM platform
Many small businesses use spreadsheets, calendars, emails, and memory when managing customers. While these may serve you initially, a disorganized system will lead to lost information and customers. CRMs offer sales teams a way to manage day-to-day tasks, organize their time, and meet growing customer expectations. Additionally, they improve sales managers’ ability to forecast trends, manage their pipeline, and coach their teams.
Small businesses can operate with big-business efficiency through better access to data, improved organization, and a complete view of their customer journey from lead to conversion. CRMs alleviate some of the most common pain points:
- Low agent productivity
- Siloed teams and departments
- Information spread between different tabs, applications, or windows
- Lack of customer context
- Slow response times
- Overlapping functionality between deoptimized systems
- Lack of coordination on core processes
The best CRMs for small businesses
When looking for the best CRM for small businesses, you need to know what you’re buying. Thoroughly investigating features, add-ons, and pricing tiers is essential before you invest. Additionally, you’ll want to check for hidden costs and confirm implementation times. If you’re a small business, you don’t need months-long onboarding—you need to hit the ground running.
Your business is one of a kind, and you deserve the best CRM for 2023. Take a look at our CRM software guide for the top CRMs for small businesses, broken down by their features and price:
Software | Starting price (per user per month) | Free trial/plan | Key features |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Zendesk |
$19 |
| |
|
Drip |
$39 |
| |
|
Agile CRM |
$0 |
| |
|
Constant Contact |
$9.99 |
| |
|
HubSpot |
$50 |
Free tools available |
|
|
Salesforce |
$25 |
| |
|
ClickUp |
$0 |
| |
|
Sendinblue |
$0 |
| |
|
Keap |
$149 |
| |
|
Freshworks |
$0 |
| |
|
Zoho |
$14 |
| |
|
Pipedrive |
$14.90 |
| |
|
Less Annoying CRM |
$15 |
| |
|
Monday.com Sales CRM |
$0 |
|
1. Zendesk
Zendesk Sell is a powerful, modern sales CRM that maximizes productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for small businesses. It prioritizes usability and CRM best practices, ensuring high adoption among your team and return on investment. Additionally, businesses can seamlessly integrate with Zendesk Support out of the box to deliver a best-in-class customer experience. The result is an integrated CRM that delivers the productivity tools, automations, and advanced reports and analytics sales teams need as their business grows.
Zendesk Sell gives companies the resources and tools to create a seamless sales experience for prospects. Users can customize Sell to fit any sales process, unify key prospect and customer information, and align teams for success. The platform offers ease of use and flexibility, offering a host of apps and integrations to extend Sell’s functionality to fit your business needs. You can enjoy a fast setup, high adoption, and immediate ROI with a simple interface.
Additionally, Sell stays with your agents everywhere they go. With our mobile app, you can access the full functionality of Sell from your mobile device. Geolocation abilities further enhance your sales experience on the go.
Zendesk Sell boasts the right balance of powerful yet easy-to-use tools with solutions that help small businesses close more deals, faster. As a result, Zendesk is the top CRM for small businesses.
Features
- Pipeline management
- Reporting dashboards
- Email tracking and templates
- Lead tracking
- Advanced sales analytics
- Workflow automation
- Integrated communication channels
- Prospecting and lead generation tools
- Forecasting
- Mobile support
Price
- Team: $19 per user/month
- Growth: $55 per user/month
- Professional: $115 per user/month
- Enterprise: Contact sales
Free trial: 14 days
2. Drip
Drip focuses on lead management in the ecommerce world. It has cloud-based capabilities and a tagging system that lets users organize their contacts using any custom field. Drip bases its pricing on how many subscribers users have on their contact list.
Drip dashboards and analytics point to actionable segment insights. They generate personalized benchmarks and suggest business actions based on past performance results. Drip’s library of pre-built templates for emails, forms, and pop-ups functions with its visual builder. Together, they allow you to design and personalize a unique SMS for your business.
Features
- Workflow automation
- Contact management
- List segmentation
- A/B testing
- Analytics/ROI tracking
- Email templates
- Dashboard
- Tagging
Price
- $39/month for up to 3,000 contacts
- Add $10/month for every additional 500 contacts up to 7,000 contacts
- Scalable increase amounts per month after 7,000 contacts
Free trial: 14 days
3. Agile CRM
Agile CRM automates sales, marketing, and service in one location. It enables consistent messaging between your team members and protects against data leaks. Agents can integrate Agile with many third-party service providers, websites, and apps. Teams can also consolidate email, social media, billing, and comprehensive customer data in one location.
With its Telephony feature, you get one-click calling, call scripts, and voicemail automation. You can automate personalized SMS texts with custom follow-up emails, too. Agile tracks email performance, providing relevant metrics and data in real time. Agile also offers a cloud-based SaaS service that works on most mobile devices.
Features
- 360-degree contact view
- Project management
- Lead scoring
- Appointment scheduling
- Auto dialer
- Lead prospector
Price
- Free: $0 for up to 10 users
- Starter: $8.99 per user/month
- Regular: $29.99 per user/month
- Enterprise: $47.99 per user/month
Free trial: Free plan available
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email marketing provider that targets ecommerce brands. Users can create e-magazines, email coupons, and social media campaigns to bring in leads from different platforms. The software includes an AI-powered website builder with a content delivery network (CDN) for users to design ecommerce websites. Pricing depends on the number of contacts on a user’s email list.
Constant Contact uses one-on-one messaging tools and automated follow-ups so you have fewer manual administrative tasks. The database, behavioral tracking, and rules engine assist with gauging company performance and ROI. Constant Contact also pairs you with an onboarding specialist to assist with goal setting and platform training.
Features
- A/B testing
- Analytics/ROI tracking
- Image library
- Social marketing
- Contact database
- Segmentation
- Landing pages/web forms
- Dashboard
Price
- Core: $9.99/month (scalable based on the number of contacts)
- Plus: $45/month (scalable based on the number of contacts)
Free trial: Free demo available
5. HubSpot
HubSpot is a free CRM software with additional premium features purchasable at a scaling rate. Like most top CRMs, HubSpot markets itself as an easy-to-use platform where you can track and analyze sales activity in real time. View your sales pipeline data on a visual dashboard, including reports on sales activity, productivity, and individual performance.
HubSpot allows unlimited users, unlimited data, and up to 1 million contacts with no time limits or expiration dates. A meeting scheduler can automatically connect with your Google or Office 365 calendar and record meetings. HubSpot automatically adds meetings to your contacts database as potential customers schedule or request meetings.
Features
- Contact management
- Gmail and Outlook integrations
- App Marketplace integration
- Custom support form fields
- Email tracking and notifications
- Meeting scheduling
- Deal tracking
- Pipeline management
- Reporting dashboard
Price:
- Starter: $50/month
- Professional: $1,600/month
- Enterprise: $5,000/month
Free trial: Free plan available
6. Salesforce
Salesforce is an all-encompassing CRM solution with numerous integrations and additional software components. Salesforce provides an entire tech stack with different sales, service, marketing, commerce, and communications platforms. User-friendly features and high-speed automation make Salesforce one of the most popular options in the SaaS industry.
While plans start at $25 per user per month, most companies need to upgrade to the Professional plan ($75 per user per month) to take full advantage of the platform. Additionally, Salesforce works best with other Salesforce applications, so for any business with existing software, this might be an overly complex option.
Features
- Contact management
- Email integration
- Automated workflows
- Sales engagement
- Sales forecasting
- Pipeline management
- Sales insights
- Reporting and analytics
- Meeting scheduling
- Available support software
Price
- Essentials: $25 per user/month
- Professional: $75 per user/month
- Enterprise: $150 per user/month
- Unlimited: $300 per user/month
Free trial: 30 days
7. ClickUp
ClickUp is a task management CRM platform for small businesses. It offers native integrations with popular apps and includes a customizable dashboard. ClickUp has a free version that provides up to 100MB of storage and up to 100 automations a month.
ClickUp’s Everything View offers a bird’s-eye perspective on tasks across multiple levels of your organization so you can filter, sort, or save for later. You can segment teams and departments into spaces, group projects into folders, and place tasks on specific lists to organize your workflow. ClickUp also lets users automate tasks and enhance them with custom field data.
Features
- Billing and invoicing
- Campaign management
- Dashboard
- Performance metrics
- KPI monitoring
- Contact management
- Backlog management
- Marketing automation
Price
- Free: $0
- Unlimited: $5 per user/month
- Business: $12 per user/month
- Business Plus: $19 per user/month
- Enterprise: Request a quote
Free trial: Limited free version
8. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a cloud-based email marketing and automation tool that offers users pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop email creation options. Sendinblue utilizes AI to determine the best time to send out emails. Users can use different lists to organize their contacts, create tasks, and assign them to different members of their team.
With Sendinblue, you'll get a simplistic, limited free CRM software that requires no installation. You can load your company’s information immediately into the CRM upon purchase. Sendinblue also prices its packages according to how many emails users send out per month.
Features
- Marketing automation
- Landing pages/web forms
- A/B testing
- Analytics/ROI tracking
- Contact database
- Drip campaigns
- Subscriber management
- Segmentation
Price
- Free: $0 (up to 9,000 emails/month or 300 emails/day)
- Lite: $25/month (up to 100,000 emails/month with no daily sending limit)
- Premium: $65/month (up to 1 million emails/month with no daily sending limit)
- Enterprise: Request a quote
Free trial: Free subscription (up to 300 emails/day)
9. Keap
Keap is a sales and marketing CRM platform offering integrations with over 2,500 commonly used business apps. Keap appeals to users who prefer a straightforward interface and easy customization. It includes pre-written email templates and automation tools. Keap also has native payment processors, so you can send and receive payment directly in your CRM.
Keap automates daily work like text and email follow-up messages. Reminders automatically trigger when any potential client books an appointment. Finally, Keap captures lead information and preferences for lead qualification and assessment.
Features
- Contact management
- Segmentation
- B2B management
- Internal forms
- Email marketing
- Automation support
- Reminders
- Email sync (Google and Outlook)
Price
- Pro: $149/month for 1,500 contacts and two users
- Max: $199/month for 2,500 contacts and three users
- Max Classic: Request a quote
Free trial: 14 days
10. Freshworks
Freshworks offers AI-powered lead scoring and native integrations for third-party apps. The starting CRM solutions package includes basic features like contact management, web forms, website tracking, and a visual sales pipeline. Users can also pick and choose add-on features, such as conversion rate optimization and marketing contacts.
Freshworks captures visitor information with customizable web forms and tracks your site's page visits and other customer actions. AI-automated chatbots can interact with website visitors in real time, too. The activity timeline offers insight into sales and marketing trends and includes a predictive contact scoring system.
Features
- A/B testing
- Analytics/ROI tracking
- Campaign management
- Segmentation
- Website tracking
- Auto-responders
- Email marketing
- Pipeline management
Price
- Free: $0
- Growth: $15 per user/month
- Pro: $39 per user/month
- Enterprise: $69 per user/month
Free trial: Free version available with limited features
11. Zoho
Zoho is a cloud-based CRM system for small businesses that offers integrations with over 500 business apps. Zoho’s key features include pipeline and funnel visibility, marketing campaign management, and an AI-powered conversation assistant.
Zoho offers real-time notifications when customers interact with your business. It creates a base where you can reach customers over multiple channels, including phone, email, live chat, or social media. Zoho aims to track key performance indicators (KPIs), including current trends and forecasting predictions.
Features
- Dashboard
- Sales forecasting
- Reporting and analytics
- Segmentation
- Drip campaigns
- Performance metrics
- Website visitor tracking
Price
- Standard: $14 per user/month
- Professional: $23 per user/month
- Enterprise: $40 per user/month
- Ultimate: $52 per user/month
Free trial: 15 days
12. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a web-based lead management platform that you can access from any browser or mobile device. Designed with activity-based sales in mind, Pipedrive includes features like pipeline management, scheduling, and lead tracking.
Pipedrive’s LeadBooster add-on tool comes with a chat box, live chat, web forms, and prospector functions. Pipedrive’s Import2 Wizard tool lets you import or export business data between apps and Pipedrive. Thanks to the simple format, you can install and activate Pipedrive very quickly. The software also features suggestions on what actions to prioritize in your business.
Features
- Calendar/reminder system
- Churn management
- Campaign management
- Contact database
- Dashboard
- Prospecting tools
- Lead nurturing
- Interaction tracking
Price
- Essential: $14.90 per user/month
- Advanced: $24.90 per user/month
- Professional: $49.90 per user/month
- Enterprise: $99 per user/month
Free trial: 30 days
13. Less Annoying CRM
Less Annoying CRM prioritizes ease of use. From its single-tier approach to pricing and emphasis on customer support, this platform sets its sights on simplicity. However, usability doesn’t come at the expense of basic functionality or software management.
Less Annoying CRM offers the core features you’d expect. This platform organizes your contacts, calendar, and team members, and you can find notes, tasks, files, and pipeline information on one page. While this platform covers its bases like the other top CRMs for small businesses, you won’t find many advanced features.
Features
- Shared team calendars
- Notes on contact and company profiles
- Custom fields
- Centralized file storage
- Integration support
- Customizable pipelines
Price
- $15 per user/month
Free trial: 30 days
14. Monday.com Sales CRM
Although many CRMs focus on sales, monday.com emphasizes easy customization without development support. Specifically, monday.com allows users to configure their sales cycle and dashboard visibility. Users can edit deal stages, reach out to leads, and manage multiple pipelines. From pre- to post-sales stages, monday.com lets you craft your approach.
The platform offers automation support, interaction tracking, and email templates—everything an agent expects. While its post-sales features help with tracking and data analysis, monday.com offers less robust service features.
Features
- User-friendly customization features
- Automation for recurring tasks
- Unified customer communications
- Centralized analytics and data reports
- Email synch, tracking, and templates
- Performance and activity tracking
- Full sales pipeline visibility
- Lead tracking
Price
- Individual: $0 (up to two seats)
- Basic: $10/month
- Standard: $14/month
- Pro: $24/month
- Enterprise: Varies
Free trial: Free version available
What features do you need in a CRM system for a small business?
Although most platforms offer valuable features, not all CRMs suit small businesses. For the best return on investment, choose small business CRM software that offers:
- A complete customer view and centralized platform
- Accurate forecasting and out-of-the-box reporting
- Bulk email support and an automated power dialer
- Automated triggers and reminders
- Automatic activity tracking for calls, emails, and appointments
A complete customer view and centralized platform
Your CRM dashboard is a visual representation of all your business activities. It easily tracks goals, contacts, and metrics with charts, reports, graphs, and maps. It’s a one-stop shop for the most crucial and up-to-date CRM data, so you always have an eye on your business performance.
You can get the full context of where your customers are in the buyer’s journey and move the deal along with an integrated solution. Specifically, a CRM offers:
- Lead, contact, and account information in one centralized location
- Information on support tickets associated with leads, contacts, and accounts
- Integrations with third-party apps and APIs to find even more customer insights
- Customization options for the types of data displayed for better customer conversations
Note: A dashboard must be customizable and tailored to reflect your unique sales process because not everyone needs to see all their numbers at once. Employees should be able to pick and choose precisely what data they want to display on their personalized dashboard.
Accurate forecasting and out-of-the-box reporting
Small businesses should assess what works and what doesn’t about their sales process. Access to past data and smart CRM analytics enables teams to identify areas for improvement and forecast sales trends, saving you from end-of-quarter surprises and helping you manage your pipeline in real time.
Zendesk Sell gives you complete pipeline visibility to plan, track, manage, and analyze your sales process with out-of-the-box reporting. With our platform, you can:
- Uncover sales insights with accurate forecasting
- Keep agents on track to hit sales goals with custom performance dashboards
- Provide data-driven coaching with metrics on your pipeline, activities, and goals
- Track and manage each stage of the sales pipeline to optimize conversions
- Create customized views of your best leads with smart lists
Bulk email and an automated power dialer to streamline mass communication
Bulk email is a key feature of CRMs for small businesses, allowing you to send automated emails to leads and customers. Many CRMs also include pre-made templates so you can easily create messages and monitor success. Finally, third-party integrations can sync with popular email apps and ensure your messages come through.
An automated power dialer will help with telephone outreach by automatically adding phone numbers to an agent's queue and dialing them in sequence. In turn, your staff can cut out rote work and focus on more important tasks.
Automated triggers and reminders to help you focus on high-value deals
When you write down a task in your trusty spiral-bound planner, it won’t send out a reminder when that due date is approaching. Easy-to-use scheduling with automated triggers and notification features is like gifting every team member with a personal assistant who reminds them of important appointments.
Automatic activity tracking of calls, emails, and appointments to streamline account management
Collecting your pipeline data won’t do much for you without proper management. At its most basic, a CRM system helps manage your contact lists. Think of it as the ultimate address book—you’ll store phone numbers, emails, addresses, social media handles, notes from interactions, purchase histories, and demographic data. Standard and batch data management tools also allow you to:
- Automatically collect customer data from calls, emails, and appointments.
- Segment your contact lists into different groups to target customers with precision when running new promotions or announcing new products.
- Delete duplicate accounts and update old data as it becomes obsolete.
- Put up-to-date security in place so your customer information is safe from hackers and breaches.
- Leverage cloud-based CRM storage so anyone from your team can drop contacts into the list and prevent time-sensitive leads from wasting away in unshared spreadsheets.
Benefits of having a CRM tool for small businesses
Here are some ways using a sales-focused CRM for small businesses can provide significant benefits for your company.
Get pipeline and performance visibility to drive the right action
Sales management teams require a complete view of their sales pipeline and team performance. Using this data, managers can plan, track, and analyze their sales process. CRMs help them gather information about customers across multiple channels, including websites, social media, and phone interactions. With that data stored and accessible in one spot, everyone can serve customers’ needs and anticipate their wants.
Seeing how many customers are in each stage of the pipeline or funnel tells you whether you’re on track to meeting your goals. Additionally, bottlenecking within the process shows you where to direct your focus and adapt your sales CRM strategies. The best CRMs for small businesses will provide actionable data to drive your sales pipeline and sales funnel analysis.
Boost sales productivity while reducing costs
CRMs can optimize spending and costs, optimizing your ROI. After Standard Beverage began using Zendesk Sell, the company saw a 300 percent increase in customer accounts. CRMs can boost conversions and cut costs by:
- Automating repetitive tasks, freeing up your time to generate more sales
- Storing all your data in one easy-to-access spot
- Streamlining everyday workflow so your team has time and energy to pursue more leads, expand your services, and add exciting new products or promotions
- Increasing your understanding of your customer base so you can increase conversion rates and maintain longer relationships with your customers
- Identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities
- Gathering referrals from satisfied customers to attract new buyers
Deliver personalized sales experience to sell faster
Sales reps need the right tools to provide personalized sales experiences to every customer. In the Zendesk State of Sales report, 71 percent of sales experts said a sales team must be capable of personalizing sales conversations through digital channels. With data-driven customer insights, agents get context into the customer’s buying journey and close deals more quickly.
CRM software helps you build lasting relationships, even as your company grows. It can also reduce human error by automatically keeping customer interaction records and consolidating all that data in one place. With a cloud CRM, you have cloud-based storage capabilities, meaning that information is accessible no matter where your team operates.
Remove silos for a better customer experience and easy collaboration
Communication silos happen when people fail to share important information. CRM software reduces inefficient silo working by letting everyone share their data easily. By integrating support data with sales tools, your business will benefit from:
- More opportunities for enthusiastic collaboration
- Every member of your team seeing the big picture and how their job contributes to it
- Unified data and easier sharing
- Seamless customer experiences
How to choose the right small business CRM
Your CRM software for small business should meet your customer, sales app, and sales management requirements without weighing you down with extra tools. Since there are many types of CRM software, you’ll want to think carefully before choosing one. Talk with your team and consider everyone’s needs so you can build a CRM strategy. Here are some questions to consider when evaluating CRM software:
- How many customers do you currently serve?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- How do you typically interact with customers? In person, on social media, or over the phone?
- How are you currently bringing in leads, and how would you like to expand your reach?
- What repetitive tasks drag down productivity and gobble up team members’ time?
- What is everyone’s comfort level with using new software? Is one person comfortable taking the lead on training?
- What other apps do you currently use to conduct business?
- What are your plans for future growth?
Next, remember to ask CRM vendors the following to make sure their platform can serve your needs:
1. Does it have tools to boost productivity?
A sales CRM for small businesses should improve productivity. As teams expand and take on more customers, your business needs the right tools to stay ahead of growing demand. A great CRM can boost your productivity by:
- Automating tasks in your workflow
- Centralizing messaging and documentation
- Allowing your agents to connect and collaborate quickly
- Capturing and tracking sales leads
- Helping you better understand your customers
2. Is it scalable?
Managers and agents thrive when CRM tools for small businesses scale to their company’s needs and requirements. A CRM that works for your business in its early years but can’t grow with you isn’t the best investment. Instead, a scalable CRM will:
- Accommodate new hires as your business grows
- Adapt to changes in your sales process, prospects, and sales funnel best practices
- Offer integrations with a wide range of third-party platforms
- Allow teams to seamlessly coordinate as they expand and align goals
3. What is the TCO?
The total cost of ownership (TCO) should stay low from setup to ongoing maintenance. Your CRM’s TCO includes the platform’s purchase price and the cost of operation.
In addition to keeping costs low, a great CRM will offer a fast time to value. Platforms like Zendesk Sell ensure businesses can quickly adapt to customer expectations and stay relevant.
4. Does it have one platform for sales and support?
Most CRMs focus on either sales or support functions. While this emphasis can complement your profit model, small business CRMs should cover both. Using one platform for sales and support results in:
- A lower TCO than juggling two different CRMs
- The ability to track customers through the whole sales cycle
- Easier access to support data sales reps can use to convert leads
- Sales insights support agents can use to retain customers
Despite the benefits of aligning sales and marketing, the State of Sales Report shows only 35 percent of companies break down silos between teams. So, businesses that integrate will have an advantage.
5. Is it modern and easy to use?
Ease of use is vital for CRM management. Modern CRMs should deliver intuitive interfaces that organize your data in unified workspaces. Businesses also need insight into what functions work best at any stage of the sales cycle and across different channels.
With most CRMs, some complexity is inevitable. To work around that, small business CRM tools should provide support access. With accessible customer service tools, platforms like Zendesk Sell become faster and even easier to implement.
Frequently asked questions on small business CRMs
Picking the best CRM for your small business takes time and research. Even after covering your bases, you might still have a few questions. To help you along, we’ll answer some frequently asked questions about small business CRM software.
Get innovative SMB solutions with a modern CRM
Finding the best CRM software for your small business can take time. However, options like Zendesk Sell were created to put the customer first, as every client counts toward your success. Investing in one of the best CRMs for small businesses can help you improve internal operations and deliver the best possible service.
Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM designed to give growing businesses everything they need to accelerate revenue, even as they scale. Sign up for a free trial of our CRM and test drive one of the best sales management software for small businesses on the market today.
Try CRM software for your small business for free
Zendesk was created to put the customer first. Whether you’re buying for a small one-person operation or a large-scale enterprise business, you need a CRM that best fits your needs today and in the future. After all, every single customer counts towards your success. Why risk losing any of them?
We have more information about this. Have a look below.
There’s a lot more where this came from. Keep exploring the world of CRM for small businesses, global user processes, and sales customer service software.