When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn The best sales CRM solutions have the potential to transform the way you do business. By giving you access to key information on existing and potential customers, letting you visualize and optimize your sales pipeline, and allowing you to streamline your workflows, CRMs can significantly shorten your sales cycle, improve customer retention, and maximize your profits.
In this guide, we’ve reviewed and compared the best sales CRM software, looking at their features, pros and cons, and pricing to help you find the best one for your needs.
Techopedia’s Top 10 CRM Systems for Sales
The 10 Best Sales CRM Systems
Here’s a rundown of the market’s best CRMs for sales:
- Salesforce — Best for tracking lead activity and sales automation.
- HubSpot — Best free sales CRM software.
- Monday Sales CRM — Best sales CRM software for ease of use.
- Pipedrive — Best budget sales CRM system for email marketing
- Zoho CRM — Best for maintaining an omnichannel presence.
- Freshsales — Best AI-powered sales CRM.
- Bonsai — All-in-one client management tool.
- Act! — Best for its advanced marketing automations.
- Maximizer — Best CRM software for analytics.
- Zendesk Sell — Best for trigger-based automations.
The Best Sales CRM Software Reviewed
Customer relationship management software is a long-term investment that you shouldn’t make lightly. Read our in-depth reviews to get a better understanding of what each provider offers and what their advantages are, so you can choose the sales CRM that has all the functionality you need that fits within your budget.
If you’re a small or medium-sized business, feel free to also take a look at our full guide to the best small business CRM software, which includes options for sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
1. Salesforce — Best for Lead Activity Tracking and Automation
| Best For | Starting Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Lead activity tracking, sales automations, analytics, and forecasting | From $25/user/month | 30-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Cloud, Slack, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, DocuSign, Dropbox |
Salesforce is easily one of the best CRMs. It offers a comprehensive, cloud-based sales CRM tool — the Sales Cloud — that lets organizations leverage the power of AI, real-time data, and CRM to grow their businesses and maximize their revenue.
The Sales Cloud provides you with a 360-degree view of every contact, giving your sales, marketing, and customer service teams all the information they need to personalize marketing messages, convert leads into customers, and provide an excellent customer experience.
When it comes to sales, the platform automatically tracks all lead activities, so you’ll know the instant a customer visits a particular page on your website, opens a marketing email, or clicks on one of your ads. This helps you identify sales opportunities, so your sales agents can engage the prospects at the right time with a personalized message or offer.
You can also leverage sales automation to optimize your workflows, visualize every step in your sales pipeline, automatically assign and track tasks, and set up email alerts and reminders for different stages in your sales process. This saves a ton of valuable time and helps your sales agents stay productive by letting them focus on sales rather than on admin tasks.
As a robust CRM – Salesforce lets you generate in-depth sales reports with actionable insights and leverage the power of AI to make accurate sales forecasts and data-backed business decisions based on key metrics.
Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing plans start at $25/user/month for their Starter plan, which includes account, contact, lead, and opportunity management, sales process automation, and Gmail/Outlook integration.
Pros 
- Extensively customizable
- Automatically tracks all lead activity
- Helps boost productivity through sales process automations
- Lets you generate in-depth reports with AI-powered insights
Cons
- Steep learning curve
2. HubSpot Sales Hub — Best Free Sales CRM
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Email and call tracking, sales coaching, account-based marketing | From $15/month | Free plan | iOS and Android | Zapier, WordPress, PandaDoc, AdRoll, Scribe, Wistia |
HubSpot Sales Hub is an excellent option for organizations that want to track all marketing emails and sales calls – and its free plan might make it the best sales CRM software for small business.
The platform automatically tracks all outgoing emails and sends real-time notifications whenever a lead opens an email. One thing to note is that it doesn’t track clicks, so it’ll be up to your agents to follow up with the leads and close the deals.
In addition to emails, Sales Hub tracks and records all calls your agents make. This helps you prioritize your daily sales calls, allows you to easily convert specific calls to opportunities, and lets you gauge the performance of individual sales agents.
You can also utilize Sales Hub to create sales enablement documentation, such as phone scripts and sales management tools and playbooks, and easily share documents with every member of your sales team.
Other key features include a live chat function that lets you connect with customers on your website, branded quotes, and account-based marketing that lets you identify and focus on high-value accounts in your pipeline.
HubSpot Sales Hub has different pricing plans for individuals/small teams and businesses, and enterprises. Besides the price, the plans differ in terms of access to features and the number of users allowed on each plan. The free plan arguably makes it the best sales CRM for small business, but others may want to look elsewhere for extra functionality.
Pros
- Free plan with CRM, sales, and marketing tools
- Email and call tracking
- Sales coaching with AI-powered insights
- Live Chat as a lead gen tool for your website
Cons
- No automations on the free plan
- Convoluted pricing plans
3. Monday Sales CRM — Best for Ease of Use
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Managing multiple sales pipelines, no-code sales automations, integrations | From $12/seat/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Gmail, Outlook, DocuSign, Mailchimp, Facebook, LinkedIn |
Monday Sales CRM is a simple, easy-to-use CRM that can easily be tailored to your specific workflows and sales processes and comes with a simple drag-and-drop UI.
You can use it to simultaneously manage multiple pipelines, add deal stages, prioritize tasks, and estimate deal close probability.
Monday’s strength comes from the fact that it centralizes all customer communications. You can integrate your business inbox with the platform to automatically track all email conversations and leverage professional email templates to craft engaging, personalized messages and move prospects further down your sales process funnel with ease.
Another key feature of Monday Sales CRM is its no-code automation, which lets you utilize simple if/then statements and set up triggers to automate tedious administrative tasks.
This includes everything from real-time notifications when an email gets opened to assigning leads to specific sales reps and creating reminders for upcoming activities and events. We’ve also previously reviewed Monday’s project management solution in detail.
Monday Sales CRM offers several pricing plans to choose from, starting with their Basic plan at $12/seat/month. This is for a minimum of three seats and includes unlimited pipelines, contacts, boards, unlimited free viewers, and iOS and Android apps.
Pros
- Simple and easy to use
- No-code sales automations with real-time notifications
- Professional email templates
- Native integrations with over 50 apps
Cons
- Limited number of automations on most plans
- Lead scoring and sales team goals with KPIs only available on the Enterprise plan
4. Pipedrive — Best Budget Sales CRM for Email Marketing
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Lead generation, contact history, email tracking | From $14/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Zoom, Slack, Gmail, Asana, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, DocuSign |
Pipedrive is a Kanban-based sales CRM software designed to help facilitate sales team collaboration and help you focus on the leads that are most likely to convert.
With Pipedrive, you can optimize every aspect of your business operations, starting with lead generation.
The platform enables you to create high-converting web forms and connect them to your website to reliably generate qualified leads. You can then segment, categorize, filter, and sort leads to create highly targeted mailing lists and personalize your email marketing messages to boost click-through rates and conversions.
Once a lead enters your sales pipeline, you’ll have complete visibility of all of their information, as well as access to a comprehensive contact history — including calls, emails, meetings, and relevant notes.
With Pipedrive, you can easily visualize your entire sales pipeline using Kanban boards. The boards can be tailored to your unique sales process with custom stages and fields.
Additionally, you can set smart reminders for all your sales processes to ensure you never miss a meeting or forget to send a follow-up email to a red-hot lead.
Pipedrive offers multiple pricing plans, starting with the Essential plan, which costs $14.90/user/month and includes lead, deal, calendar, and sales pipeline management, customer data import, and 300+ integrations.
Pros
- Fully customizable Kanban boards
- Lead generation and audience segmentation
- Comprehensive contact history
- Email open and click-through tracking
Cons
- Number of custom fields and automations limited on most plans
5. Zoho CRM — Best for Maintaining an Omnichannel Presence
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Customer journey orchestration, omnichannel presence, workflow automation | From $14 /user/month | 15-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, MailChimp, Slack, PandaDoc, RingCentral, Zoom |
Zoho CRM is an extremely feature-rich CRM software platform that helps you deepen customer relationships, deliver tailored experiences, maximize your team’s productivity, and streamline every aspect of your business with rich analytics.
With Zoho CRM, you can orchestrate every step of the customer journey, from initial contact to order fulfillment. You can also connect the platform with all of your communications channels and easily follow up with customers wherever they engage your business — via email, phone, live chat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
You’ll also have full information on each contact, including previous customer interactions across all touchpoints, their level of interest, job and title, preferences, and more. This lets you craft personalized marketing messages and tailor your approach to each potential customer, so you can reliably close more sales.
Zoho CRM also lets you automate your workflows with simple condition-based triggers and rules, so you can save time on task assignments, reviews, and post-email activities and ensure you never miss an opportunity or a deadline with real-time notifications and smart alerts.
Another key aspect of Zoho CRM is that it can be fully customized through Canvas — a CRM design studio. You’ll also have access to a developer platform that lets you build custom functions and make the CRM truly your own.
Zoho CRM’s annual pricing plans start at $14/user/month and include workflow automation, scoring rules, sales forecasting, email templates, reporting, and analytics.
Pros
- Highly customizable
- Enables omnichannel presence
- Provides in-depth information about each contact
- No-code workflow automations
- Rich sales analytics
Cons
- The sheer number of features can be overwhelming
- Requires decent technical knowledge and CRM experience
6. Freshsales — Best AI-Powered Sales CRM Software
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Contact profile enrichment, predictive lead scoring, workflow automations | From $9/user/month | 21-day free trial | iOS and Android | Freshdesk, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Zapier, Quickbooks, Xero |
Freshsales is modern sales CRM software that allows you to leverage AI to identify high-intent leads and close deals faster.
In addition to centralizing all customer data, Freshsales auto-enriches all prospect profiles with their publicly available information, giving your sales agents the relevant information they need to convert prospects into customers. You’ll be able to see their job title, the company they work for, interests, and full activity timeline.
Another key feature of Freshsales is the ability to create an incentive structure for your sales agents across multiple sales pipelines based on the number of deals they close and the sales processes they follow. This helps boost productivity and lets you accurately gauge your team’s performance.
In terms of workflow automations, Freshsales lets you to create rules for assigning leads, creating tasks, setting reminders, moving deals to different stages, and more. By automating administrative work, you’re saving a ton of valuable time and letting your sales agents focus on what they do best — closing the deals.
Freshsales pricing plans start with their Growth plan at just $9/user/month when billed annually.
Pros
- Comprehensive contact management
- AI-powered predictive lead scoring
- Workflow and sales sequence automations
- Role-based access and permissions
Cons
- Quotes, invoices, and contracts only available with a paid add-on
- Limited number of chatbot sessions on all pricing plans
7. Bonsai — All-in-One Client Management Tool
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Customer data centralization, project organization, subcontractor collaboration | From $21/month | 7-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, Trello, QuickBooks, Calendly, Zapier |
Bonsai is one of the best sales CRM software today and a great solution for organizations that need help managing multiple sales pipelines and projects.
In addition to helping you centralize all contact information, Bonsai also lets you neatly organize all projects with associated documents, contracts, payment info, tasks, and timesheets. Your clients can even get their own project views, so they can monitor project and sales progress and easily handle outstanding payments or review contracts.
Bonsai also features built-in project collaboration tools, allowing you to invite collaborators with a single click, assign tasks, share notes and documents, and track time spent on each task.
Another area where Bonsai excels is form templates. There are hundreds of professional templates in Bonsai’s library, covering everything from lead generation and client intake forms for specific industries to contract and invoicing templates.
Bonsai has three pricing plans. The cheapest is its Starter plan from $21/month which gives you access to all templates, unlimited clients and projects, task and time tracking, client CRM, forms and questionnaires, and up to five project collaborators.
Pros
- Offers a vast template library with industry-specific forms
- Streamlines communication and collaboration
- Lets you neatly organize all your projects
- Features built-in time tracking
Cons
- No marketing automations
- Geared toward service industries
8. Act! — Best Sales CRM Software for Advanced Automations
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Marketing automation, contact relationship history, email, and calendar integration | From $30/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Outlook, Google Contacts, Slack, Eventbrite, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter |
Act! is a great fit for organizations that do most of their selling via email and want to leverage marketing automations to turn more of their prospects into customers.
As a CRM and marketing automation platform, Act! gives you easy access to all contact information, centralizes calls, emails, notes, and activities, and lets you leverage that customer data and contact relationship history to craft highly personalized, engaging email marketing campaigns.
When it comes to sales process management, Act! lets you utilize out-of-the-box solutions or create your own fully custom sales pipeline with clearly defined deal stages and custom fields. You’ll also have smart filters at your disposal, which let you quickly assess your sales pipelines by product, territory, stage, agent, or region.
Another advantage of Act! CRM software is that it easily integrates with your business inbox and calendar, ensuring you never miss a sales opportunity or forget a key meeting, thanks to real-time notifications and reminders.
Act! has two pricing plans. The first is Act! Premium Cloud for $30/user/month and includes customer management, task and project management, relationship timelines, notifications, and alerts, email templates, and drip campaigns. The second is Premium Desktop and has the same functionality as Cloud, but is on-premise with self-managed security and advanced control.
Pros
- Email, call, and activity tracking
- A vast library of email templates
- Contact activity tracking with full relationship history
- Multi-pipeline project management with smart filters
Cons
- Outdated UI
- Expensive
9. Maximizer — Best Sales CRM Provider for Analytics
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Sales coaching, performance monitoring, customer retention | From $65/user/month | Demo | iOS and Android | Excel, Gmail, Outlook, MailChimp, QuickBooks, Zapier |
Maximizer CRM software is the best option for sales leaders who want more insights into their agents’ performance and unlock coaching opportunities to ensure they follow the best practices and close deals faster.
The platform also provides you with a full suite of productivity tools and enables you to easily create and share sales enablement documents with your team, including phone scripts, email templates, and sales process docs.
You’ll also have full visibility and control over each lead, prospect, and deal. This includes comprehensive contact profiles, full relationship history, activity tracking with real-time alerts, and relevant notes.
Maximizer also offers customer health analytics, which allows you to proactively reach out to “at risk” accounts and take action while they’re still listening to increase customer retention and maximize recurring revenue.
Maximizer’s Base Edition plan is $65/user/month and features sales pipeline management, lead, and opportunity management, 100Gb online storage, reporting, and analytics. Its Sales Leader Edition is $79/user/month and includes the features of the Base Edition as well as sales coaching and performance monitoring.
Pros
- Real-time sales agent performance monitoring
- Facilitates sales coaching
- Lead activity tracking and customer relationships history
- Customer health analytics
Cons
- Clunky, dated interface
- No free trial and no refunds
10. Zendesk Sell — Best for Trigger-Based Automations
| Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Email and call tracking, audience segmentation, workflow automations | From $19/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, PandaDoc, MailChimp, HubSpot, Xero |
Zendesk Sell is another robust CRM software platform that lets you customize your sales pipelines, centralize business communications, and enhance sales team productivity.
The platform offers built-in email and call tracking, ensuring that all customer interactions between leads and your sales team are logged. You can then leverage smart lists to segment your audience, as well as utilize a rich library of email templates to personalize your messages and boost click-through and conversion rates.
Zendesk Sell also lets you build trigger-based automations to reduce administrative work, automate your workflows and task assignments, and save valuable time so you can focus on your prospects and customers.
Zendesk Sell pricing plans start at $19/user/month. You’ll get up to two customizable sales pipelines, email and calendar integrations, task and appointment setting, and pre-built sales dashboards.
Pros
- Built-in email and call recording
- Rich library of email templates and phone scripts
- Full sales pipeline customization
- Advanced workflow automations
Cons
- Steep learning curve
The 10 Best Sales CRM Tools Compared
Here’s a quick reference table of the best sales CRM platforms on our list so you see how they compare head-to-head:
| CRM Software | Best For | Price | Free Version/Free Trial | Mobile Support | Integrations |
| Salesforce | Lead activity tracking, sales automations | From $25/user/month | 30-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Cloud, Slack, Quickbooks, Mailchimp, LinkedIn, DocuSign, Dropbox |
| HubSpot | Free sales CRM tools | From $15/month | Free plan | iOS and Android | Zapier, WordPress, PandaDoc, AdRoll, Scribe, Wistia |
| Monday Sales CRM | Ease of use | From $12/seat/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Gmail, Outlook, DocuSign, Mailchimp, Facebook, LinkedIn |
| Pipedrive | Email marketing | From $14/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Zoom, Slack, Gmail, Asana, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, DocuSign |
| Zoho CRM | Maintaining an omnichannel presence | From $14 /user/month | 15-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, MailChimp, Slack, PandaDoc, RingCentral, Zoom |
| Freshsales | AI sales processes | From $9/user/month | 21-day free trial | iOS and Android | Freshdesk, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Zapier, Quickbooks, Xero |
| Bonsai | All-in-one tool | From $21/month | 7-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, Trello, QuickBooks, Calendly, Zapier |
| Act! | Marketing automation | From $30/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Outlook, Google Contacts, Slack, Eventbrite, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter |
| Maximizer | Advanced analytics | From $65/user/month | Demo | iOS and Android | Excel, Gmail, Outlook, MailChimp, QuickBooks, Zapier |
| Zendesk Sell | Trigger-based automation | From $19/user/month | 14-day free trial | iOS and Android | Google, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Dropbox, PandaDoc, MailChimp, HubSpot, Xero |
The Benefits of Sales CRM Software
Put simply, sales CRM software gives you quick and easy access to all the customer data you need to convert leads and prospects into sales.
It also lets you visualize every step of your sales process, automate task assignments, monitor your team’s activities, and leverage marketing automations to increase your conversions. Here are the main benefits of implementing sales CRM software into your business:
With CRM software, your sales agents don’t have to comb through spreadsheets, lengthy email threads, or chats on other communications platforms to find the information they need on a particular lead. Since all of the contact data is in one place, they can easily find all the pertinent information they need to personalize the message and effectively close the deal.
The best sales CRM tools can be integrated with all your communications channels, including email, live chat, self-service portals, and social media. This lets you see every message exchanged between leads, prospects, and existing customers and your business, all in one place.
The best sales CRM tools should save you a ton of valuable time by allowing you to set up rules and triggers to automate the bulk of administrative work. Workflow automations can include everything from lead assignments and email open notifications to task reminders and deal status updates.
Organizations that use email marketing to drive sales can greatly benefit from the solutions that the best CRM software offer, such as audience segmentation, email tracking, and professionally created email templates.
The best sales CRM software takes the guesswork out of your business decisions by providing you with a wealth of real-time, actionable data. A CRM system lets you generate in-depth reports, monitor the performance of your sales team and individual sales agents, see your average close rate, and leverage that data to make smarter business decisions.
How We Review And Test CRM Software
We base our recommendations on first-hand testing. All the CRM Software products we feature, have been tested based on the following criteria:
- Ease of Use: We assess the CRM service’s overall UX across platforms. Some CRM services we’ve used have a learning curve, so we also factor in their online documentation.
- Functionality: We consider the depth of features on offer, including contact, lead, and pipeline management, marketing capabilities, and the depth of reporting on offer.
- Integrations: We assess the CRM platform’s ability to integrate with essential everyday tools like email marketing services, accounting software, and ERPs, for example.
- Security and Compliance: We look for features like data encryption, role-based access controls, GDPR compliance, and industry-specific regulations like HIPAA.
- Customization: We check for features like custom fields, workflows, and automation rules, to assess whether the platform can be tailored to specific needs and industries.
- Value for Money: We weigh the feature-to-price value on offer and consider whether the provider offers affordable scalability.
- Mobile Accessibility: To ensure sales reps and managers can use the CRM on the go, we test the mobile apps available and evaluate their functionality.
- Reputation: We don’t waste our time with tools that don’t have a good reputation. We note what other users have to say to ensure we offer full insight into the tools we feature.
How to Choose Sales CRM Software
While there are many excellent CRM management software solutions out there, not all of them are going to be the right fit for your business. Here are the key factors that will help you compare CRM options at your disposal and ensure you choose the right one:
The best sales CRM software are highly customizable and can be fine-tuned to perfectly fit your sales processes and workflows. You should look for a CRM that can be adapted to your business rather than having to tweak your sales processes around a rigid CRM.
Some CRMs offer an overwhelming amount of features, while others might lack the key functionalities you need. Carefully consider what you’re going to use the CRM for, so you don’t end up overpaying for something you won’t use or missing crucial features. You should consider what features you need and whether you need an industry-specific package, such as a construction CRM.
To future-proof your investment, it’s best to opt for a CRM that’s easy to scale, both in terms of functionality and the number of users.
If you don’t have previous experience with a CRM system, it’s best to opt for an intuitive one that’s easy to use. Complex CRMs offer more tools and customization options but require technical knowledge, experience, or intense training to fully utilize.
If you’re unsure whether a particular CRM is the best option for your business, you can always read reviews left by other users. This will give you a much better idea of how the software performs in practice and what its strong suits and drawbacks are.
