Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms are powerful tools for contemporary sales forces, no matter the business size. Most large companies use CRM software, but the applications are less common in small businesses, especially micro-businesses and start-ups. If your organization fits this description, you might be able to get away with a contact management app for a while, but you shouldn’t miss out on full CRM capabilities in the long term.
There is no shortage of CRMs built specifically for small businesses that can help you unlock your full sales potential without bewildering you with enterprise features or sticker shock. Check out our top picks, and then read on for our advice on how to choose the best one for your business.
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More About Our Picks
Best Overall
Bottom Line:
This pared down version of the behemoth Salesforce platform, offers a condensed set of features aimed exactly at what small businesses need from a CRM and support platform.
Pros
- Familiar and intuitive user interface
- Powerful capture of calendar and email for contact management
- Helps businesses organize CRM tasks
- Exceptional mobile apps
- Access to the Salesforce technology stack
Cons
- High starting price
- Limited reports
- Workflows might be confusing for new users
Why We Picked It
Salesforce rewrote the book on CRM when it debuted in 1999. Today, its Sales Cloud SaaS offering scales up to accommodate the needs of even the largest enterprises. Fortunately, its Essentials pricing tier offers a fine balance of features and price that shouldn’t break the bank for most SMBs.
Who It’s For
If you insist on a world-class CRM system backed by world-class support, Salesforce is for you. That’s especially true if you’re also looking for other kinds of marketing applications, many of which Salesforce has integrated into its platform. Moreover, Salesforce Sales Cloud is more than capable of growing with your business—just as long as you’re willing to pay the increased costs.
Best for Sales Pipelines
Bottom Line:
Bigin by Zoho CRM is a solid pipeline-based CRM solution for small business that is equally effective on PCs and on mobile devices.
Pros
- CRM rebuilt for mobile
- Integrates advanced CRM features into an affordable plan
- Built-in telephony options
- Rich integration options
- Customizable dashboards
- Helpful contextual data is easily available
Cons
- Some mobile integrations limited to iOS devices
- Interface might confuse traditional CRM users
Why We Picked It
Zoho offers a full-featured CRM package, but its separate Bigin offering is aimed at small businesses. It’s designed so that anyone can start managing contacts and sales pipelines right away, regardless of their past experience with CRM systems. It also offers a robust mobile app, so sales pros can easily access their tools on the go.
Who It’s For
If you’ve just started transitioning away from maintaining contacts in spreadsheets, and you aren’t ready for a major CRM system’s deep feature set, give Bigin by Zoho a look. It gives you useful tools without overwhelming your sales staff. Just be aware that if your organization starts to outgrow its capabilities, upgrading to the full Zoho CRM product won’t be as smooth as simply upgrading your license.
Best for Small Sales Teams
Bottom Line:
Capsule CRM tries to differentiate itself from a growing SMB market by adding innovation around analytics and collaboration, which combine to help ensure team members are on the same page.
Pros
- Reminds businesses to reach out to contacts they haven’t talked to in a while
- Outstanding note-taking and sharing functions
- A plethora of integrations with most-used SMB tools
Cons
- Could use more analytics options
- You need to dig deep to find some of the functionality
- Feature set might be limited for larger businesses
Why We Picked It
Capsule CRM is all about saving its users time, particularly in SMB environments. Its UI is elegant and clutter-free, and it can integrate with accounting systems, such as Freshbooks, Quickbooks, and Xero, making it easy to get up and running with your organization’s existing contacts. Although it lacks some of the competition’s features, we appreciate its more minimalist approach. Capsule CRM also has an outstanding self-help support website.
Who It’s For
Go for Capsule CRM if you want a system with a no-nonsense UI that’s designed around the idea that not all businesses work the same way. It integrates with many of the major business software packages, so it adapts to the way you work, rather than forcing you into new processes. Just don’t expect it to have the competition’s perks.
Best for Basic CRM Needs
Bottom Line:
Freshsales CRM offers a lightweight and simple solution for SMBs that want to get up and running quickly. Sensible pricing tiers, an AI assistant, and customization options make it even more appealing for folks who value ease of use.
Pros
- Freshsales simplifies the CRM process for small businesses.
- Extensive customization options.
- Proactive AI assistant
- Various integrations to extend functionality.
Cons
- No reports available in the free plan.
- Determining which is the best plan can be time consuming.
Why We Picked It
Freshsales is an outstanding entry-level CRM for early-stage businesses, but it also offers a reasonably deep feature set for people who already have some experience with CRM. It provides an AI assistant, integrations with other business software, and customization options for people who have specific workflows in mind.
Who It’s For
Companies that are just getting off the ground with CRM would do well to choose Freshsales. It has a low learning curve, and while it lacks bells and whistles, it’s robust enough to grow with you as you gain experience with the platform. However, it lacks the enterprise-ready upgrade path found in Salesforce and Zoho.
Best for Budget-Conscious Start-Ups
Bottom Line:
One of the most affordable CRM solutions we tested, Less Annoying offers a surprising amount of flexibility and performance providing some extra value for small business and startups.
Pros
- Newly redesigned interface is more intuitive
- Wide range of help and support options
- Great mobile website implementation
Cons
- Existing users will have a bit of a learning curve with new interface
- Basic reporting features
Why We Picked It
This entry prides itself on not annoying its customers—or not as much as the competition, anyway—but its most outstanding feature might be its price, which is among the lowest of all the products we tested. Although “less expensive” can sometimes mean “low value,” Less Annoying CRM has an ample feature set that’s worth your consideration.
Who It’s For
If you’re unsure how much budget you’re ready to commit to CRM, look this way. You’ll gain the contact management and business-process features you expect from a larger CRM vendor at a very affordable price, and hopefully, its ease of use and friendly UI won’t annoy you.
Affordable CRM for Small Businesses
Bottom Line:
Vtiger is a solid choice as an all-in-one CRM solution for small business, mainly because it’s loaded with a variety of tools, so it should make a broad swath of customers happy. However, its user interface is somewhat unique, and could present a steep learning curve for new users.
Pros
- Affordable and well-equipped small business CRM
- Email, calling, and note taking capability are easily accessible
- Responsive 24/7 support
- Superb proactive alert system helps generate sales activity
Cons
- Innovative but convoluted navigation and menu system
- There’s a tendency to have to open multiple tabs and pages
- Not ideal for businesses with multiple sales pipelines
Why We Picked It
For its price, Vtiger is a surprisingly full-featured CRM. In a single platform, it combines contact management, calendaring, email marketing, internal chat integration, and marketing automation. Once you get used to its unique interface, you’ll quickly and efficiently jump between multiple tasks.
Who It’s For
If you want a CRM for your small to midsize business, but don’t want to skimp on features, Vtiger might be up your alley. Its healthy collection of bundled functions should give you all the tools you need to get your salesforce up and running. That said, its UI is a little complex and idiosyncratic, which may mean a steeper learning curve than what you’ll find with competing CRMs.
Best for CRM and Pipeline Management
Bottom Line:
Monday.com helps teams manage their tasks and workflows. An attractive interface and high level of customization don’t make up for its confusing pricing, though.
Pros
- Modern UI
- Highly customizable
- Offers in-app automations
- Includes templates
Cons
- Unnecessarily confusing pricing and plans
- Inconsistent and Byzantine navigation options
- 14-day trial insufficient to learn the app
Why We Picked It
Although CRM isn’t Monday.com’s primary focus, it advertises a number of CRM features, all set within the context of a broader online collaboration platform. You can think of it as a general “work management” tool that’s designed to help teams stay on task and keep projects running smoothly, which overlaps with key CRM functions.
Who It’s For
Monday.com will never replace a full-featured CRM platform, but it doesn’t try to. Give it a look if your organization has grown past the stage of using spreadsheets to manage contacts, and could benefit from basic CRM capabilities (especially if you have pressing team-collaboration fish to fry).
Best for First Timers
Bottom Line:
Onpipeline can be an ideal first CRM for businesses moving their customer management from spreadsheets and into a more dynamic system that’s more tightly synched with other sales tools.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Simple data integration
- Aesthetically pleasing tabular views
Cons
- Only imports data from CSV files
- Difficult email syncing
- Map feature would greatly benefit from dedicated mobile apps
Why We Picked It
Onpipeline is simple and easy to use, and it’s priced accordingly. Its feature set is somewhat limited compared to the competition. Still, its UI is straightforward enough that you can get up to speed with it quickly, even if you don’t have previous experience with CRM systems.
Who It’s For
Even if you’ve never used CRM software before, you should have little trouble getting started with Onpipeline. It gives you all the essential features you need out of the box, and it won’t trouble you with a lot of complex setup and configuration. If your organization is rapidly growing, though, be mindful that it might take some effort to migrate your data to a more scalable system.
Best for Pipeline Organization
Bottom Line:
Pipeline CRM improves its small business-focused solution with advanced capabilities, chatbot creation for websites, and efficient reporting. But as we’ve seen with previous iterations, ease of use remains one of Pipedrive CRM’s best features.
Pros
- Offers an intuitive interface and deal-driven workflow
- Solid mobile apps plus call and email synchronization
- Helps SMBs keep on top of their CRM process
Cons
- Limited functionality for the price
- No separation between lists of new leads and contacts
Why We Picked It
Pipedrive might not be the most robust CRM in terms of features, but it shines in ease of use. It’s deal-oriented, and lets you visualize the entire sales process from start to finish, which can help eliminate second-guessing within teams. It has a pleasing UI, and is easy to set up and use, making it a good choice for small teams. It also includes a customizable chatbot that you can add to websites for lead generation.
Who It’s For
If your organization is strapped for time and personnel, you’ll appreciate how quickly you can get to work with Pipedrive. Its straightforward UI means you’ll spend less time wrangling the software and more time concentrating on your next sale. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for extensive customization options or third-party software integrations, you might look elsewhere.
Best for Solo Entrepreneurs and Freelancers
Bottom Line:
Behind its whimsical façade, HoneyBook presents a very comprehensive and easy-to-navigate CRM solution for small business.
Pros
- Friendly and user-focused CRM for entrepreneurs
- Easy onboarding service and great support
- Dynamic pipeline-focused system
- Integrates business management, invoicing, automation, and payments
- Versatile iOS and Android apps
Cons
- Costs more than other small business CRMs
- Might not suit larger businesses or teams
- Limited integrations
Why We Picked It
HoneyBook stands out from the crowd of CRM solutions with its unique, almost whimsical interface. Rather than being a standalone CRM product, it aims to be a comprehensive small business management system. As a result, it bundles lead and project tracking with invoicing, proposal creation, contracts, scheduling, online payments, and other useful features.
Who It’s For
Every business starts somewhere, and if you’re an entrepreneur with a team of up to around three people, HoneyBook may be just what you need. It’s not designed for experts or dedicated sales staff, but instead provides CRM capabilities alongside a host of other capabilities you’ll want for day-to-day operations. You’ll probably outgrow it someday, but it’s still a great jumping-off point for a burgeoning business.
(Credit: Salesforce)
What Is Small Business CRM Software?
If you’re an entrepreneur or small business with more than 50 customers, and you’re trying to emulate CRM functionality with a big spreadsheet, you’ve probably already realized this is an unwieldy task. CRM solutions are easier to use, and they do a lot more than just store customer and contact information.
CRMs have two important advantages over spreadsheet contact lists: First, they add internal features that directly handle other parts of your sales funnel, notably pipelining, scheduling, and even commission management, among other things. Second, and even more important, they integrate with other software.
Your spreadsheet just sits there, but a CRM platform can automatically move customer data back and forth between itself and other systems. Those can be essential synergies for managers trapped in the morass of running a business because they’re probably neglecting potential opportunities.
We can’t overstate the positive effect smart software integration can have on your sales process. Hooking your CRM into the rest of your software stack means the details of every customer interaction are there on demand. That can cover anything from lunch with a sales rep to things like website contact forms, phone calls, online chats, and social media mentions. A sales rep can pull that data into a purchase conversation or a help desk technician can use it to better understand the customer’s situation.
What Can a CRM Do for Your Business?
Think of a CRM as a sponge that can soak up all the information your company has about a specific customer. Then you can wring it out so that data flows everywhere you need it to go.
Organizations, particularly smaller ones, need to understand that these systems aren’t plug-and-play affairs. Getting the most out of your CRM takes a good deal of planning and integration work. Still, when it’s done right, the results can be game-changing.
When you use CRM to its full potential, it can gather all your company’s interactions with each customer and combine them with related data from such sources as accounting, inventory, marketing, and purchasing. That can help you maintain a complete sales pipeline that’s not only accurate, but able to quickly react to new opportunities. For example, if a help desk representative realizes a customer is ready for an upsell opportunity while addressing an unrelated support issue, that information doesn’t get lost in an email that the tech may or may not send. That data is automatically snatched from the tech’s trouble ticket, added to the customer’s CRM record, and then placed in the pipeline so the sales manager can parcel out the opportunity.
This kind of automation is possible because CRMs can move data in and out of business systems across multiple channels. Depending on how your sales department works, CRM data can show up in a dedicated app interface, in an email, in a Slack message, and on any device, especially mobile ones. Even more critical than fast dissemination is intake. That’s where you want to pay attention to a CRM solution’s automation capabilities.
Don’t discount automation’s importance. If your sales staff, help desk technicians, and accounting personnel must manually enter data on every customer, your CRM implementation will probably crash and burn. Even if they took the time to do it—and most won’t because it’s just too much work—the data would probably be inaccurate. At the very least, it would be inconsistent, because not every staff member will enter data in the same way or in the same quantity.
By automating data gathering in the CRM and every app with which you integrate it, you get the data you want and move it where you need it. You’re always looking to build a funnel—a wide mouth at one end that grabs as much data as it can. By the time the information reaches the other end, the funnel has parsed it into useful units aimed directly at the people who need it.
If you’re using your CRM right, it’s common to have CRM tendrils extending into email marketing, sales calls, meetings, invoice creation, contract management, and even automating various day-to-day tasks. Gathering data for business intelligence (BI) purposes is also important, though often more so to larger organizations with a bigger swath of customers to target.
The primary challenge for larger businesses is adapting CRM to the needs of extensive sales teams. Implementation and training aren’t as tricky, since these companies have large, dedicated IT staff and probably premium professional services help from their CRM vendor. On the other hand, small businesses face the challenge of adapting a CRM to help and not hinder their sales staffers, but they also have a steeper hill to climb when it comes to implementing and learning to use all the features a CRM can provide.
Over the last couple of years, however, CRM vendors have begun directly addressing the needs of small business buyers. Some have built brand-new products with new interfaces and features designed from the ground up with small and micro-business users in mind. Others have pared down their flagship products to make them easier to use while keeping an upgrade path easy for growing customers. We put ten top players in the small business CRM space through their paces in this roundup.
How CRMs Handle Customer Data
Getting back to our sponge analogy, the primary function of any CRM should be to soak up data. Whether it’s from documents, phone calls, social media chats, or anything else, you’re looking for a solution that can grab data from all the key channels you’re using to interact with customers. But gathering the data is only half the mission. Parsing and surfacing comprise the other half, and that’s where it can get tricky.
Once you’ve decided on your primary customer communication channels and made sure your CRM can grab data from them, you need to tell it what to do with that data. If you’re gathering phone calls and social media chats, keywords might become important, especially mentions of a specific product name. The same might go for a valued customer name or account number. You could match that against sentiment indicators, which should tell you the topic of any interaction and how the customer felt about it. It takes work, but smart data distribution is where CRMs shine if you integrate them correctly.
In an enterprise setting, this part is handled by a platform-specific developer or implementation staff. Setting up Salesforce in an enterprise, for example, means building an implementation team comprised of IT and sales staff, in partnership with several Salesforce experts. In a small business situation, that kind of manpower isn’t generally available, so it’s up to the CRM vendor to make configuring and customizing your CRM as easy as possible.
Unfortunately, that means you typically won’t get as flexible a solution as you would with an enterprise platform, but that’s why you’re evaluating your CRM before purchasing it. You’re looking to make sure it can grab the data you need to capture, analyze it for the information you need, and then route that to the people who need to know.
That routing function is less complex than the data gathering and parsing function, but it’s no less important. Your CRM can score top marks on gathering data and still fail miserably overall if it can’t get that information to the right people at the right time. Again, this becomes a customization process, but one that’s much more dependent on how your salespeople do their jobs, day-to-day. Just like with larger organizations, there’s no turnkey solution. This part will require meetings between you (the senior manager doing the buying), your IT staff, and your salespeople to detail how sales actually happen so you can then map your potential CRM’s notification features to those needs. Guesswork here can be fatal.
Maybe your sales happen primarily over the phone, in which case a detailed dashboard in a web browser might be your best alerting medium. What do your salespeople need to see there? How customizable are the CRM’s dashboards, and how are they customized? You also might make sales via a roving sales staff that visits each customer on-site. In that case, you’re looking for the best possible mobile interface, and you’d also like the ability to tweak that, too. Retail organizations will also need a mobile interface to run on larger devices like tablets and that incorporate different features, such as a point of sale (POS) system.
While all these features are mirrored in both enterprise and small business CRM offerings, how they’re implemented and how they work can vary hugely. You’ll need to decide between two basic approaches: established enterprise CRM players that now offer smaller, cheaper plans or smaller companies that have built a small business CRM solution from the ground up. Each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
Is a CRM Worth It for a Small Business?
Some big players are scaling down their enterprise CRM offerings because SMBs represent a huge market and these vendors have already saturated the enterprise space. Catering to smaller businesses just makes sense. But the general approach that large CRM players, like Salesforce, take towards the SMB market is to make some attempt to understand customer requirements and then scale their enterprise offerings down to meet those needs. Generally, they’re just highlighting what they feel are the best SMB features of their current offerings and the development work usually centers around making those capabilities easier to use.
Using this approach, enterprise CRM players set themselves up for two benefits. First, they make inroads into the long-term lucrative SMB market. And second, they’re able to develop an on-ramp to their flagship products as these customers grow. That’s even more valuable now that most CRM companies revamp these platforms into software hubs that let them sell additional sales and marketing software. These new tools plug into the CRM’s framework and customers use them via the same UI.
The best example is Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, the undisputed behemoth of the CRM space. To tap into SMB customers, the company has built Salesforce Essentials, which it’s billing as an all-new platform explicitly built to entice small businesses. But under the covers, this is the same technology as you’ll find in its enterprise offering, just with a reduced set of features and a more straightforward user interface.
When you sign up for this product, you still have access to Salesforce’s Lightning app development framework, the Einstein AI machine learning platform, and Salesforce’s well-known automation features. You’ve just got them in a smaller box. Salesforce has also merged sales and support functions into one interface. SMBs that need more features than the basic Essentials package offers can still tap into the rest of Salesforce’s technology stack though they might need to jump through some extra integration or customization hoops.
But Salesforce isn’t for everyone. Smaller CRM vendors compete by expanding their capabilities as much as possible while keeping the whole solution simple enough to entice SMBs. Some do this by adding AI and business intelligence, but most focus on building as many third-party software integrations as possible. For instance, Pipedrive CRM offers quick chatbots customers can drop into their sites, while Zendesk Sell plugs into the wider array of Zendesk help desk tools. Meanwhile, Freshsales CRM has also bumped up its integrations and tacked on workflow automation and better sales analytics.
Recommended by Our Editors
What are the considerations of a viable small business-focused CRM? Pricing is the first and most obvious starting point. These kinds of CRMs begin at $10 per user per month for the more basic solutions but can cost upwards of $50 per user per month for more comprehensive services.
As with any piece of software, it’s essential to take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, it’s difficult to determine how a particular CRM will work for you until you evaluate it in your organization with the people who’ll be using it every day. Solutions need to be easy to grasp by non-specialists. Training need not be in-person and lengthy, but there needs to be a healthy support library, an effective knowledge base that contains FAQs and articles, and a solid onboarding process, too.
Mapping out a growth path is important as well. While this sounds like you’re building an exit strategy even before you buy the product, knowing how this system will grow with your company is an important part of buying the right solution today. Work with sales leads to determine your present and future needs and investigate if your CRM solutions easily allow for more users, a larger contact base, the analytics you think you’ll need, as well as the digital marketing hooks you’ll eventually want to use.
Do CRMs Offer Third-Party Integrations?
Once you understand your most-wanted feature list, don’t simply abandon your small business CRM for a more expensive platform without first investigating feature alternatives. For example, if you’re looking for improved workflow automation, see how your current CRM works with Zapier, a popular and low-cost third-party automation and integration tool. Check your CRM’s integration and partner lists if you’re looking for integrated digital or email marketing. Even if the base CRM lacks integrated marketing features, opting for a low-cost partner integration may still be cheaper than paying for a larger CRM platform to get those capabilities.
One of the best ways to keep costs lower when adding new features is by opening the door to platforms from different vendors. Social media listening and selling, business analytics, marketing automation, and even lead management can all be handled by dedicated vendors who might be different than the ones providing your CRM. Making sure that your small business CRM can eventually establish data relationships with other apps, especially those that are low-cost and aimed at smaller companies, is critical if you want to get as much life from your purchase as possible. Vendors will have lists of the canned integrations they can offer immediately. If the service you want to integrate with is on that list, great. But if not, you may have to look at rolling your own.
You can opt to tie different web services together using the aforementioned Zapier, and you might not even need technical help to do it. Although Zapier is a dependable tool, its data exchange features are limited by its ease of use. Sit down and decide exactly what you need from a third-party integration, and only then decide whether you want to go DIY with Zapier or invest some money in a developer to build a more flexible integration.
The Best CRM Apps
One of the biggest differentiators attracting SMBs and entrepreneurs to CRM is the availability of easy yet effective mobile apps. These days, small businesses move around. They’re also increasingly distributed—even globally—and the devices used by sales staff can vary widely. So support is important not just for PCs but also for tablets and phones. While various software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors try to pass off mobile browser versions of their web apps as their solution for mobile device users, this kind of setup pales next to a bona fide mobile app.
While browser-based apps can access online databases and services, they do not interact directly with the built-in features that many mobile devices offer, including security, Near Field Communication (NFC) for mobile payments, and access to cameras and other sensors. As mobile devices become more powerful and approximate the computing capabilities of PCs, having a CRM solution that can run effectively on tablets, smartphones, or convertible 2-in-1 devices has a definite advantage for small business users.
Some solutions, including Editors’ Choice pick Bigin by Zoho CRM and Freshsales CRM, offer Android and iOS apps, but the iOS applications support more mobile integrations. Both Bigin and Salesforce Essentials (our Editors’ Choice pick for small business CRM) are mobile-first solutions that offer apps with all the necessary features and controls of their desktop counterparts. Bigin goes the extra mile to include Apple Watch integrations with a wearable widget that enables shortcuts. These include calling, scheduling a task, and creating events, all from the Apple Watch. Many of these are conveniences and not breakthrough features, but they do show Zoho’s initiative in making Bigin more personal to users, at least those who’ve invested in Apple’s ecosystem.
The Small Business CRM Players to Watch
We were pleasantly surprised at the many choices that small businesses have when it comes to attractive and versatile small business CRMs. In this roundup, we’ve included leading vendors with new products or plans aimed directly at SMBs. We’ve also covered the cream of new entrants that were designed from the ground up to be used by entrepreneurs and small shops. As a result, the solutions we tested run the gamut from reliable standalone systems focused purely on contact management and sales to apps that add basic CRM functionality to general business management tools.
There is no one-size-fits-all CRM. Although other vendors we tested may not have had all the features of our winning solutions, most offer easy-to-use designs, interesting feature sets, and new ways to customize the tools, especially around building your own workflows. Check out all the reviews in this roundup, and you might find that a smaller solution may work better for your organization.
For more on CRM, check out Contact Management Software May Be All the CRM Your Business Needs.
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