10 Best CRMs for Small Business 2023 Reviewed

The best CRM for small business can help your company grow in no time. While learning spreadsheets can help you get started, introducing customer relationship management software into your working environment will lead your company to a whole new level.

CRM software simplifies onboarding processes, improves employees’ communication, helps you organize tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and enables you to better track your projects. In short, when deployed effectively, it should unlock a huge amount of value. Here are the details of the best CRM for small business to help you grow your company.

The Best CRM Software for Small Businesses Ranked

If you’re not familiar with the CRM market, it may be challenging to pick the one that’s best for you. Many people would probably pick an expensive solution, presuming it would have all the features they need. One should remember, though, that the price doesn’t necessarily reflect quality or specific fit for your business.

Because of that, our team of experts has reviewed the online CRM market, looking for the best and most affordable solutions. Based on our research, we present you with a list of the 10 best CRM software products for small businesses, which excel with their comprehensive features, their pricing, and their ease of use.

1. MondayCRM — Automate business processes with one of the best CRMs today. Get real-time reports and prioritize your customers.
2. Salesforce — Industry-leading CRM with tools to grow your sales funnels and boost your reps’ productivity.
3. Pipedrive — Widely used service that helps businesses scale up – and it comes with a 14-day free trial.
4. HubSpot — Great solution for startups and small companies, with a wide range of features and a free subscription plan for life.
5. Act! — Award-winning tool with over 800,000 users, which offers iOS and Android apps and has a 14-day trial.
6. Bonsai — A top pick for freelancers who can save time by using contract and invoice templates.
7. Zoho — Create leads and contacts, call your clients, and send them emails directly from the platform. Over 250,000 users trust this AI-powered CRM system.
8. Freshsales — Sales-oriented tool that provides AI-powered forecasting insights and is used by over 60,000 companies like Klarna, Fiverr, Pearson, and Bridgestone. Comes with a freemium plan for up to 3 users.
9. Maximizer — Maximize your client reach and close more deals. Ideal for marketing, sales, and business intelligence teams.
10. Zendesk Sell — It’s so simple you can get employees on board in a few minutes. Customize your dashboard and get instant reports on your team’s progress.

Top Small Business CRM Reviews

Here you can learn more about our top 10 small business CRM solutions. We provide all the information you need to find the best product for your small business as we review each of the products in more detail below.

1. MondayCRM — The Overall Best CRM for Small Business

MondayCRM is the best CRM software for small business. This platform is great for teams in sales, marketing, project management, and dev ops.

Simplicity is key when it comes to MondayCRM. The platform looks neat and is well-organized. As a result, this CRM is great for beginners and less tech-savvy users. You can use it as a desktop app or access it through your Android or iOS device, with minimal differences between the desktop and mobile versions.

MondayCRM offers a huge number of features. Many of these come with the Standard plan, so you won’t have to upgrade, which is another plus. You can customize lead reports and add prospect statuses, for example.

The lead scoring feature, meanwhile, helps you prioritize potential customers, ensuring you allocate resources as effectively as possible. Monday also offers a huge number of templates that’ll help you fast-track your processes.

Thanks to its broad functionality and extensive task management tools, Monday.com is also among the best project management software tools currently on the market.

And thanks to Monday’s integrations, you can connect your CRM with other popular apps like Zoom, Google Calendar, Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, Linkedin, and many others to keep everything in one place and centralize your operations.

The comprehensive automation center helps businesses to speed up their work and complete tasks on time. You can create new events and set dates, and Monday will then provide you with detailed updates as and when relevant. We also rate Monday as the best CRM platform, overall.

Pricing

Monday’s most basic package is available for free. This plan is ideal if you work with one remote colleague. However, if more people are involved in your business, you can start with the Standard plan.

The price is $8 per user and includes 5GB storage, unlimited viewers, and prioritized customer support.

Pros 

• Multi-purposed CRM
• Supports Gmail, Zoom, Outlook, and others
• Automations feature
• iOS and Android apps

Cons

• Has no integrated chat feature

2. Salesforce — Best Sales CRM for Small Business 

As its name suggests, Salesforce is the best CRM for small business teams focused on sales, and it also has powerful tools for customer service, marketing, and analytics.

This platform is an industry leader and is the number-one choice for many well-known companies like American Express and Adidas. Today, cloud-based CRMs like Salesforce dominate the customer relationship management sector.

What’s more, Salesforce offers a huge range of add-ons and integrations that’ll help you build the platform into the center of your working environment.

Salesforce enables you to set tasks and priorities, manage leads, create new accounts, and drive contact management with everything logged on a calendar.

When creating new leads, you can add different pieces of information that’ll later help you close the deal, such as annual revenue and lead source and any other pertinent details your agents collect during the sales process.

Furthermore, you can set statuses and assign leads to your agents with one click. Salesforce allows you to call your leads directly from the platform, send them emails, or create new tasks and events for your agents.

Salesforce can help you organize your agents, plan ahead, estimate your pipeline value, and ensure you take advantage of every opportunity to close deals.

Pricing 

Salesforce has three main pricing plans – Growth, Pro, and Enterprise.

The first is the best for smaller sales teams and costs $25 per user. It’s slightly more expensive than CRM software Monday. However, it comes with some pretty useful features that other CRMs don’t have.

Pros

• Ideal for sales companies
• AI-generated reports
• Easy-to-use platform
• Available for a free trial

Cons

• Some add-ons come with a price tag

3. Pipedrive — Ideal for Smaller-Scale Sales Teams

Pipedrive is a simple-to-navigate CRM software product that is used by over 100,000 companies around the world.

This platform simplifies sales processes and is ideal for small to medium-scale companies.

Pipedrive is extremely easy to use and is designed with beginners in mind. This CRM software can help you close deals faster, find new leads, manage customer relationships, set goals, and track progress.

You’ll find it simple to navigate, and there’s plenty of help available from the moment you install the app on your computer or mobile phone. Right from the start, you can choose the level of support you’d like depending on your experience, and Pipedrive will help you make the most of its tools to work towards achieving your goals.

Leadbooster plays a vital role when it comes to boosting your conversion rates. This feature allows you to integrate a chatbot into your website and help you acquire more leads.

Pipedrive can help to make lead generation and sales processes more efficient and effective – and it’s a CRM small business teams will love.

Pricing

Pipedrive provides a fully customizable CRM tool for  $14.99 per user per month with its Essential subscription plan.

This includes features for leads and deals, the sales pipeline, and calendar management tools, as well as 24/7 support.

Pros

• Customizable platform
• Leadbooster feature
• 4 pricing plans
• Mobile CRM application

Cons

• Minor technical issues on mobile apps

4. HubSpot — Great Option for Small Business

HubSpot stands out with superb features and an enticing free-forever plan. It is packed with a number of useful tools that’ll be delivering value for your business in no time.

The company offers several toolsets, depending on your needs, with Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations, and CMS Hub packages on offer.

HubSpot has a few valuable features that are provided by default. For instance, you can use it to build a website and create blog posts to attract more customers.

The CRM comes with a comprehensive manual on using the platform to get more customers and grow your company, for example, via avenues like social media marketing to increase leads, boost sales, and enhance your customer service.

Pricing 

HubSpot offers a lifetime free plan for all users, regardless of their location. You can hence get a great CRM tool and website builder at no cost – a great option for companies that have just gotten started.

While a free plan offers a lot of opportunities for beginners, your company will likely outgrow it as you get more employees and clients on board. If you need to scale up, Hubspot offers Professional, Enterprise, and Custom plans, starting at $9 per user per month for two users, then jumping to $90 per user per month.

The Hubspot for Startups program, meanwhile, offers significant discounts on tools of up to 90% for eligible companies.

Pros

• A wide variety of products
• Website Builder
• Comprehensive manual
• Employee training

Cons

• Pricey Enterprise plan

5. Act! — Perfect for Email Marketing 

Act! is a top-rated CRM for small businesses. It is built with smaller marketing and sales teams in mind.

To be clear, Act! won’t knock you off your feet with astonishing looks and flashy banners. On the contrary, its rustic looks reminiscent of good-old 90s websites. More experienced business owners will appreciate pop-ups that look like the famous wizard pages, reminding you of times when everything was that simple.

Indeed, simplicity is Act! ‘s competitive advantage over other flashy counterparts. The platform looks straightforward yet highly functional.

You can create rich lead profiles to get a more personalized client approach. You can bind calls, notes, emails, and documents together and access everything from one place. Moreover, contrary to some other CRMs, you can access Act! both online and offline from your desktop computer or mobile phone.

There’s no doubt Act! can help you maintain and grow your client base. But this isn’t its only value. This CRM management software is great for scheduling tasks and automatizing working processes. You can import multiple email templates and create autoresponders to make your marketing campaign more efficient and get more time to deal with other relevant tasks.

Pricing

You can get two versions of Act! – desktop and cloud. The first costs $37.50/mo per user, while the other comes slightly cheaper – $30/mo per user.

You can get a 14-day free trial to see if it fits your goals and preferences. You don’t need to enter credit card details. All you need to do is register and enjoy the broad range of features this CRM offers.

Pros

• Email marketing features
• Marketing automation
• Desktop and cloud-based versions
• Available offline

Cons

• Outdated design

6. Bonsai — A Go-To Option for Freelancers 

Bonsai is the best CRM for small business and an excellent tool for all freelancers.

This CRM platform is ideal for keeping your client list clean and neat. On top of that, you can enter critical information and bond with your clients better.

Bonsai’s value doesn’t come down to creating your customer database. This small business CRM offers a few handy tools every freelancer needs.

For starters, you can use the Proposals feature to create a perfect job offer to potential clients. Choose a template you like the most and increase your chances of landing a more significant job.

Bonsai Contracts are created by top lawyers. Create your own contract and protect your business with legally binding documents. But that’s not all; you can create your time tracker (if you bill hourly rates), design invoices, and get paid for what you do.

Use the Tax tool to fill in your taxes and save money on overpricing accountants.

Pricing

Bonsai offers two types of subscriptions – monthly and yearly. If you opt for a yearly subscription, you’ll get 2 months for free. The price for the Starter package is only $17/m. For this price, you will get Client CRM, time-tracking, invoices, templates, forms, and questionnaire tools. To top it up, Bonsai offers up to 5 project collaborations entirely for free.

In all fairness, if you run a 10+ smaller-scale company, this CRM is probably not the best of choices. On the other hand, if you’re a freelancer who occasionally works with fellow independent contractors, Bonsai is just what you need to boost your business.

Pros

• Ideal for individual contractors
• Free project collaborations
• Contract and tax assistant
• Scheduling feature

Cons

• Expense tracking only works in the US and Canada

7. Zoho — Ideal for Small to Midsize Businesses 

Zoho is a cloud-based client management software trusted by over 250,000 businesses. As an integral part of Zoho Office Suite, this tool is simple to use and packed with tons of valuable features.

The interface is intuitive and well-packed. You can find all essential features in the navigation menu at the top of the page. From there, you can quickly access leads, contacts, deals, calls, reports, analytics, and more.

You can create detailed client records, send emails and set up blueprints. The blueprints feature is ideal for smaller-scale sales companies and ensures your agents strictly follow the sales process.

Zoho offers an AI companion, which distinguishes this CRM from the rest of the crowd. Like Siri or Alexa, Zia is an AI-powered assistant that can take notes, collect documents and even predict the outcome of sales. This powerful tool can significantly help you to get more leads and boost your sales numbers.

Pricing

You can pick between four pricing categories. The price of the Standard package is only $14/m per user, which puts Zoho among the most affordable CRMs of today. You can later go for more expensive subscriptions as your company grows.

You can register for free and get a 30-day trial at no cost to your budget. That way, you can see Zoho in action and choose the best solution for your company.

Pros

• A massive number of features
• Advanced pipeline management
• AI-powered assistant
• Affordable pricing plans

Cons

• AI is available on premium subscription plans

8. Freshsales — Strong Entry-Level Sales CRM

Freshsales, developed by Freshworks, is perhaps the best CRM for small businesses. The company has several other successful platforms under its belt, such as Freshservice, Freshmarketer, and Freshdesk.

Freshsales is ideal for entry-level users. The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate. On top of that, this is one of the few CRM tools that rely on AI to help you get the most out of this tool.

Creating new leads is straightforward. However, if you receive an email from someone outside your email list, Freshsales will automatically create a new contact and label it as a sales-qualified lead.

Like Zoho, Freshsales also offers a user-friendly AI assistant. Freddy takes your customer engagement history and uses it to predict whether a lead is a potential client.

Pricing 

Freshsales offers three subscription plans. Growth is an entry-level plan that comprises built-in chat, account management, sales sequences, and up to 2,000 sessions with Freddy.

Also, the Growth pricing plan is free for up to 3 users. If you’re starting a new business together with your two friends from your garage, this plan is ideal before your company becomes fresh like an apple to overtake the sales world.

Pros

• Sales-oriented CRM
• AI-powered forecasting insights
• 2,000 bot sessions with Freddy
• Built-in email, chat, and phone features

Cons

• No task reminders

9. Maximizer — Sales and Marketing Automation Tool 

Maximizer is great for sales acceleration and task automation. It helps you monitor sales processes by collecting various data on your leads. Such details are valuable as they help you identify strategies that work but also those that need further enhancement.

Maximizer offers tons of useful tools built to increase your prospect reach and boost closed sales percentages. For example, the Interactions Report option will provide you with a detailed task summary.

You can find information about a specific time frame, interactions, or users. The summary report will inform you about completed and not completed actions. Get the exact number of appointments your team made, a list of ongoing tasks, and even which communication channels your employees use to interact with clients.

Pricing 

Maximizer has two pricing plans. The base edition costs $55/m per user. While this may seem a bit expensive initially, remember you get premium tools at a reasonable price.

The base edition includes a database of up to 10,000 contacts, 100 Gb of storage and enhanced reports, and a customer relationship management dashboard.

Pros

• High-quality sales CRM
• Advanced analytics and reporting
• Simple to navigate platform
• Available in demo mode

Cons

• Mobile app design slightly different from the desktop version

10. Zendesk Sell — Easy-To-Use Drag-and-Drop Platform

Zendesk Sell is a popular sales and customer service CRM software. You can call your prospects, email them and take notes directly from the platform. Its lead database is neat and well-organized. Thus, you’ll find no trouble adding comments or changing lead statuses.

Zendesk Sell also does a wonderful job of creating new prospect profiles. Every time you receive an email, the best CRM for small business in sales or customer service niche will collect data from the email you received and create a new lead for you.

Zendesk dashboard will provide you with user-specific details. You can select a timeframe or target a particular group. The platform will provide you with a wide variety of details like the number of new deals, completed tasks, installments, revenue, or appointments.

Moreover, you can customize the view on your dashboard by simply dragging and dropping new entries based on previously established parameters.

Pricing

You can get Zendesk Sell for only $19/m per user. This will get you up to 2 customizable sales pipelines, a call tracking and recording feature, and email and calendar integrations.

You can get a 14-day free trial and schedule a demo before subscribing to any pricing plan.

Pros

• Drag-and-drop interface
• Advanced sales reports
• Forecasting and goal tracking
• Demo and 14-day free trial

Cons

• No phone support

Leading Small Business CRMs Compared

Here’s a detailed overview of the best CRM for small business. Check the table below for more information.

Does a Small Business Need a CRM?

Many small business owners struggle to realize the impact of customer relationship management on their company’s performance. Some think they’re satisfied with their tools, while others consider having a CRM platform a luxury affair.

However, if you have more than a handful of employees and a growing prospect base, then using tools like spreadsheets to keep everything under control is likely to be unrealistic.

CRM management tools improve employee communication, data collection, and customer satisfaction and increase closing opportunities. Here are the reasons why getting a CRM is the best decision you’ll ever make.

Improves Organization

Suppose you run a sales company and have 5 agents. You need one program to keep client data, another to organize and schedule calls, a third to evaluate your employees’ performance, one more to calculate the income, and so on. You got the point.

This is precisely where top CRM software kicks in. Simply put, a customer relationship platform binds all these programs together in one place. As a result, you don’t have to open five, six, or seven different apps to get the details you need. You can have all relevant pieces of information in one software.

You can connect your CRM with Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Google Docs, and many other valuable tools. As a result, you don’t have to waste time looking for lead information on potential clients.

Enhance Client Reach

The best CRM tools for small business can help you gather more data about each prospect. You can enter their personal details and contact information like emails and phone numbers. Also, you can collect and keep valuable business details about your clients, such as their company size, revenue, website, and number of employees.

All this data can help you improve your customer satisfaction and have more personal contact with them. Ultimately, your CRM will help you close more deals in the future.

Businesses of varied sizes find customer relationship help; there’s nothing wrong in seeking help if that’s what will bring you more profits in the future.

Schedule Tasks

Using customer relationship management tools goes beyond collecting client data. Your CRM is always there to remind you when important meetings approach. You can create new tasks, add time and date, and even create notes about a specific assignment. This way, you can organize your time better and never miss an important meeting with a valuable prospect.

Automate Processes

A small business CRM is packed with many useful features designed to make your life easier.

For example, tools like Freshsales CRM and Monday automatically extract data from clients’ emails. Accordingly, your CRM will create a potential prospect and add it to your client database.

Furthermore, you can use email templates for small businesses to drive sales or design your own and let your CRM tool send automated responses and welcome emails. You can set up your platform to send scheduled appointment invitations while you’re off from work or sleeping.

You can use your CRM to alert you or to perform an action once a specific condition (or set of conditions) is met. For instance, the platform can notify you if one of your employees fails to meet a particular task.

In that case, the CRM will send you a notification and automatically change the task status. This feature is handy to sales and customer service teams as it helps them meet deadlines.

Reports & Forecasting

The best CRM for small business is what every sales team needs. Most platforms are equipped with advanced reporting features.

Sales performance reports can give you a better insight into how your sales rep performed. You can also see how many deals your team closed and the total revenue your company generated.

Forecast reports can help you predict revenue over a specific period of time. Find out if your team is on the course to meet the company’s objective.

CRM allows you to get a more detailed insight into your client base. Get real-time reports about your strategy progress. Find out which tactic works the best and which areas need improvement.

Makes Internal Communication More Effective and Efficient

Customer relationship management software helps different departments to communicate better. Different sectors, especially those that typically have no links to each other, can share clients’ data remotely.

Moreover, you can add roles and dependencies to prevent data leakage. Finally, you can choose what team can access specific data and control the information flow between teams.

Protect Your Data

Many small businesses use various tools to perform complex actions, which is a common mistake. Mistakes can happen in such an environment, and you end up losing valuable data.

CRM keeps everything in one place. But, more importantly, customer relationship management tools are cloud-based, meaning you won’t lose your data if your office computer or mobile phone breaks down or gets lost. Thanks to CRM, you can access your client database anytime and anywhere.

How to Choose the Best Small Business CRM Software for You

Finding the best CRM for small business is challenging as many factors can affect your experience. Does it suit your niche? Is it difficult to comprehend? Can you afford it?

There are many questions, but luckily, we have all the answers you were looking for. Read on as you discover the best ways to choose the best software for small business management.

Choose A Niche CRM Tool

This part is pretty self-explanatory. Choosing the first customer relationship tool that pops up in your internet search is usually not the best idea. Also, many business owners fall into a common trap and opt for a cheap CRM, thinking the job is done. However, this is where the first problems usually start.

Before indulging in such an adventure as choosing the best software for a small business, you must conduct thorough research. Find out in which areas a particular CRM excels. Learn more about its features and services to make an educated decision.

Choosing a sales-oriented CRM tool while you run a marketing startup can turn out to be a trainwreck and a complete waste of your money. This is the main reason why many CRM strategies fail. Select a CRM tool that is most effective in your line of business, even if it costs you a few dollars more.

Know Your Goals

As mentioned before, CRMs are packed with different features and functionality that help businesses solve various problems. However, not all tools come with the same features, which is only natural. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need all these options.

Identify critical areas you wish to improve. Think about the goals you want to achieve. Once you do that, opt for a CRM specialized in that particular area. For example, you should look for a CRM customer service solution if you wish to improve your customer service processes.

Choose MondayCRM to increase productivity and profitability and grow your client base. Pick Freshsales if you run a small sales business with 3-5 employees.

Ease of Use

Simple CRM is the best CRM. Introducing a customer relationship management tool is a big change in every environment. Bear in mind not all your employees are tech-savvy. Also, there might be a few that’ll resist this change. It all comes with the territory.

You should offer your employees an easy CRM with a neat and intuitive interface. Implementation of a new working routine may demand some external help. In the end, it can affect your budget further.

Because of that, it is best to opt for a beginner-friendly platform and help your employees gain new habits faster. Also, finding a CRM with a quality training program is always a good decision.

Identify Key Features

The best CRM for small business will offer plenty of tools to improve your marketing campaigns, sales processes, and customer relations.

Third-party integrations are one of the most popular features. Most companies use tools such as Gmail, Outlook, or Google Docs. The best CRM will allow you to integrate your favorite tools with the platform.

Automations are pretty handy as they can save you from small repetitive work. Use CRM to send emails or generate fresh leads from inbound calls or newsletter sign-ups.

Use reports to identify critical areas that need improvement. Get detailed reports about your income and expenditure to improve budget management.

Mobile Compatibility

Time is money. Because of that, you need to make yourself available at any time. Carrying your business computer everywhere you go isn’t the most practical solution. As a result, you should look for CRMs that offer mobile apps. Complete tasks while on the move and resolve issues instantaneously.

Customer Support

No matter how straightforward your CRM is, some minor technical issues can occur. So, what happens if you click the wrong button and suddenly, everything shuts down?

In such a scenario, it is good to have someone to watch your back. For this reason, we advise you to pick a CRM that has the best customer support.

By that, we mean choosing a platform that offers multiple communication channels like live chat, email, and phone support. Also, make sure customer support is available 24/7, as you never know when the issue might arise.

Read Customer Reviews

Small business CRM reviews can give you a better insight into other peoples’ experiences. While it’s true that nowadays, anyone can write anything anonymously without any responsibility whatsoever, this type of research can help you learn more about common problems.

Find out what others consider challenging about using a specific CRM. Learn more about the product’s pros and cons. If anything, reading other people’s opinions will make you more cautious and prevent you from making the same mistakes.

What’s the Best Free CRM for Small Business?

If you just started your business, you might want to cut expenses. This is where free CRMs kick in as a perfect solution. Contrary to many opinions, implementing a customer relationship management tool does not have to affect your budget.

There are many free solutions, ideal for testing the tool’s abilities. It is a perfect opportunity to get used to various features at no cost.

However, this has its minor downside. Namely, freemium accounts typically come with certain restrictions. Hence, premium features like income, customer relationship management analytics, forecast, and advanced reports will be unavailable to you.

The Best Free CRM

Our analysts have found that HubSpot is the best free CRM software for startups and small businesses.

This platform is the best for companies in sales, marketing, customer service, and operations. Register with HubSpot and get website traffic analytics, shared inbox, reporting dashboard, and email marketing at no cost. You also can create blogs and landing pages entirely for free.

Besides HubSpot, there are several other free CRM tools worth looking into. MondayCRM offers 200+ templates, unlimited docs, and up to 3 boards in their free plan. The free subscription includes an iOS and Android CRM app for up to 2 users.

Finally, Zoho’s freemium plan can be useful for your small business. The Zoho free edition supports up to 3 users and comprises leads, documents, and mobile apps.

Small Business CRM FAQs