Top 10 Best CRM Software to Increase Your Productivity and Profitability

If you’re looking to improve business relationships, streamline processes, enhance customer retention and sales growth, you’ve come to the right place. In today’s post, we’ll explore the best 10 CRM software solutions

Last edited on July 30, 2024 by Mike

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CRM owners promise anything nowadays to get you to sign up for their CRM. You may be asking yourself, which are the top 10 CRM software available right now? Is there a cost-effective CRM out there that can cater for my business needs and that of my clients?

Well, that’s what we are going to be looking at today in this post.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Jump To Section

What is a CRM Software?

In essence, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a tool designed to help businesses manage and analyze customer and potential customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.

It helps companies streamline processes, build customer relationships, increase sales, improve customer service, and increase profitability.

What are the Key features of CRM Software?

Generally speaking, CRM software can be integrated into the following aspects of your business:

Contact Management: Storing and organizing customer information such as names, addresses, and contact details.
Sales Management: Tracking sales activities, managing pipelines, and forecasting sales.
Customer Support: Managing customer service requests, tickets, and interactions.
Marketing Automation: Automating marketing tasks such as email campaigns, lead generation, and customer segmentation.
Analytics and Reporting: Providing insights through data analysis and reporting on customer behaviors, sales performance, and marketing effectiveness.

What Should You Think About Before Choosing A CRM Software?

Selecting the right CRM software is crucial for businesses to improve customer interactions, streamline operations, and boost efficiency. As there are many different CRM options on the market today, finding the right software can be challenging.

During our research, we found that the following are the most important factors you should look for in the best CRM Software:

Business Needs and Goals: Understand your specific needs and goals, such as sales tracking, customer support, marketing automation, or analytics, to ensure the CRM aligns with your objectives.

Ease of Use: The best CRM should be user-friendly and easy to navigate, minimizing the learning curve for your team and encouraging adoption.

Scalability: Choose a CRM that can grow with your business, accommodating an increasing number of users, data, and additional features as needed.

Integration: Ensure the CRM can integrate seamlessly with your existing tools and software, such as email platforms, marketing automation systems, and accounting software.

Cost: Consider the total cost of ownership, including subscription fees, implementation costs, and potential expenses for training and support. Ensure it fits within your budget while providing the necessary features and benefits.

It’s not about one being better than another. It is about which CRM has the features your business needs and prioritizing aspects based on preferences and available resources, such as language, ease of use, or whether it’s free or paid.

Top 10 Best CRM Software

Now, let’s take a look at the best CRM solutions for companies and businesses.
In this post, we are going to go over the 10 top leaders in the CRM space. We will pay attention to business needs, integration features, ease of use, and price. Let’s get started.

1. Salesforce

The first CRM software on our list is Salesforce, a leading customer relationship management platform that provides a suite of tools and services designed to help businesses manage their sales, marketing, customer service, and other key business functions.

Salesforce has been around for quite a long time, having been founded in 1999. Their suite of products, called Customer 360, is very powerful. Just like Microsoft 365, you have email but also a bunch of other apps that you can use.

Though it is somewhat complex for some users, you get access to almost every feature you want in an all-in-one customer platform, divided into different modules depending on your company size and needs, from Service Cloud and Sales Cloud to Marketing Cloud.

The Service Cloud is for top-notch customer support and has a lot of AI features in it, which is quite cool. They also have Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud, and Analytics Cloud, each tailored to specific businesses and their needs.

Let’s now talk about a very important consideration which is price. Having a good budget matters, especially in the beginning, but you also don’t want to get trapped into a system that’s just going to milk you dry of every single extra cent in your business. So this is.

As a key player in the CRM world, Salesforce understand the unique needs of businesses, especially startups, and it’s not that expensive to get started. Their subscriptions plans range from $25 to $1250 per month per user.

There are other flexible pricing plans, for example, the lowest plan on their marketing cloud is $1250 a month or $15,000 annually. It also offers a 30-day free trial.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is another CRM with a ton of features primarily focusing on inbound marketing and automation. Their contact management tools help you understand your audience by organizing, segmenting, and turning potentials into paying customers.

Other features include landing pages, basic forms, live chat, chatbots, etc. They also have email marketing capabilities with a drag-and-drop editor that makes it super easy to craft professional-looking emails.

Hubspot’s CRM is completely free, with the free plan having 2000 monthly email sends, which is solid for somebody getting started. However, it is severely limited in what it can do; for example, their email deliverability can be a hit or miss. The free plan is just a tactic to get you using the software and eventually upgrading to a costly package or add-on.

Their subscription plans start from $50 for the starter plan to $5000 a month for all of the features that HubSpot provides on the Enterprise plan. So, while you could get a limited solution for a fairly good price, it still looks like you’re limited in terms of emails executions you can do every month and the numbers of contacts you can have.

They’re really just trying to push you up to that $1781 a month. But overall, HubSpot CRM is a robust and easy to use software which may work for many people.

3. Zoho

Next on our list is Zoho, another popular CRM solution designed for smaller companies with limited consulting budgets. Their main focus is on sales operations and automation.

Zoho has tons of apps that you can mix and match including Zoho Flex, where you decide where those apps go and with various configurations for your particular business.

There is also a plethora of other Zoho apps, from Zoho Survey to Zoho Meeting. It also integrates with a ton of major software like MailChimp, Dropbox, Xero RingCentral, SMS Magic, Eventbrite, Proposify, DocuSign, SalesIQ and more.

Other notable features include lead management, process Management, deal management, contact management, and workflow automations for automatic follow-ups and updates.

Zoho’s Canvas feature allows you to drag and drop the different apps and settings inside of Zoho so that the look and feel suits everyday usage.

Their AI feature, called Zia, can guide your teams by predicting business trends, suggesting the best times to contact customers, identifying sentiments in emails and support tickets—all super helpful stuff. Combine that with their social marketing, visitor tracking, project management, customer service help desk, etc., and it’s a pretty powerful combo.

Zoho’s pricing is one of the most transparent so far. You get to see what is included the software instead of being forced to sign up for a free trial and then receiving lots of marketing emails.

It offers a free plan mainly targeted at small teams, including web forms, email marketing templates, and access to its workflow automation tool. As a light user, the plan is little bit cheaper and don’t need absolutely every feature in the app.

The paid plans start at $20 per user per month on their standard plan, going all the way up to $65 on their unlimited plan depending on how many additional features you include.

Zoho has a whole system dedicated to white-labeling and reselling their software called Zoho Creator. This allows you to fully rebrand any app for your particular business, which you can then resell to people or just use for your business to make it look more legit. Starting at just $8 a month, Zoho Creator seems pretty affordable.

4. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell, previously known as Base CRM is designed for startups and smaller companies that need a cloud-native experience without extensive enterprise-grade capabilities.

The company started as a customer service solution but has branched out into more products, including a CRM that is very appealing to existing Zendesk customers due to its pre-baked integration.

Zendesk Sell features an intuitive interface, which makes it easy for sales representatives to manage their pipelines and track their progress. The software offers tools for contact and deal management, allowing users to keep track of their interactions and follow up effectively with leads.

The CRM can certainly work for a wide range of companies though not suitable for companies requiring advanced CRM features. Their cheapest plan, Zendesk Suite, starts at $55 per user per month and include up to two sales pipelines, call tracking and recording, and more.

5. Monday.com

If you’re a business owner looking for a solid, easy-to-use CRM with great project management features, workflows and HCM, then Monday.com is a strong software for you.

Monday.com’s interface and user experience is a compelling one. They make it really simple to use and navigate. You can automate repetitive tasks, manage your sales pipeline, set up notifications, and integrate it with other tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Gmail and more.

Monday may not be quite as in-depth as some of the other platforms we’ve seen, but for the price, it’s a pretty good value. Notably, it excels in its project management capabilities. You can create boards for different projects, assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, track progress, and get a visual overview of where everything stands.

You can also use it for managing leads, tracking customer interactions, and automating follow-ups, which cover most of what a small to medium-sized business would need.

Their pricing is based on your team size (number of seats), with their Basic plan starting at $36/month, Standard plan at $51/month and their Pro plan being $84/month.

6. Pipedrive

Pipedrive CRM is known for its sales pipeline management feature, where you can see all the active deals and follow their progress in real-time. Its user interface is attractive and streamlined, focusing mostly on sales.

They also offer lead generation and management, contact management, email tracking, workflow automation and email marketing tools. Pipedrive’s sales, reporting and analytics features provide detailed insights into your sales performance.

It integrates with a lot of other tools like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Zapier. Also, Smart Contact Data, an AI-powered sales assistant, provides you with valuable information about your contacts.

So, if you’re a business looking for a solid, easy-to-use CRM with great sales pipeline management features, Pipedrive is for you.

Subscription plans start at $12 per user per month for the Essential plan and go up to $79 per month. Each plan has a 14 Days Free Trial. No credit card required.

7. Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM is a robust cloud-based tool in the CRM space. The CRM is stands out with its lead management system. This feature tracks potential customers (leads) throughout their journey, from initial contact to conversion.

Sales automation is another key component of Freshworks CRM. It is designed to save time and boost efficiency by handling repetitive tasks automatically. This includes everything from sending follow-up emails and scheduling appointments to assigning tasks to team members.

With these tasks automated, sales teams can focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals.

Apart from lead management and sales automation, other features include contact management, deal management, email tracking, and workflow automation. They also have AI-powered features like Freddy AI, which helps with sales forecasting, lead scoring, and next best actions.

Freshworks CRM integrates with a lot of other tools like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Mailchimp, and Zapier. They also offer a unified customer record, which gives you a 360-degree view of your customers, combining data from various sources into a single view.

Freshworks CRM pricing is quite competitive. The Growth plan, tailored for startups costs $11 per month, their Pro plan, which is more comprehensive, starts at $47 per user per month while the Enterprise plan is $71 per user per month. There is a 21-days free trial.

8. Sugar CRM

Sugar CRM is a highly flexible and customizable CRM solution with widespread adoption among companies that prefer not to pay for licensing. It’s well-suited for companies seeking a tailored CRM experience that can integrate with other business tools and systems.

SugarCRM offers advanced automation features for sales, marketing, and customer support. These automation tools help streamline various tasks, increasing efficiency and productivity within the organization.

Integration capabilities is another strong feature of SugarCRM, as it seamlessly connects with a wide range of third-party applications and services.

However, it has a clunky interface, limited reporting capabilities, and higher development and maintenance costs. Cybersecurity is also said to be a concern with Sugar CRM.
As for pricing, Sugar CRM has a range of pricing plans starting with the Sugar Sell Professional plan at $49 per user/month (billed annually).

9. Insightly

Insightly is another great CRM solution that integrates customer relationship management and project management functionalities, allowing businesses to manage contacts, sales opportunities, and projects in one integrated platform.

With robust contact management capabilities, users can track interactions with customers and leads, enhancing their ability to nurture and convert leads.

Insightly also offers project management tools for efficient task management and project completion, as well as sales automation tools to streamline sales processes, reducing manual effort and allowing sales teams to focus on building relationships.

Its integration capabilities connect seamlessly with third-party applications and services, creating a cohesive ecosystem for overall operations. These include Google integrations, MailChimp, Microsoft integrations, Formstack Forms, PandaDoc and more.

Their robust reporting and analytics features provide valuable insights into customer data and business performance, enabling data-driven decisions and optimizing strategies.

Pricing tiers include Plus (29 per user/month), Professional (49 per user/month), Enterprise (99 per user/month), and Unlimited (129 per user/month).

10. Less Annoying CRM (LACRM)

Last but not least, let us look at a unique CRM that might not be so popular called Less Annoying CRM, designed specifically for small businesses.

It aims to provide a simple and easy-to-use platform for managing customer information, tracking leads, and maintaining relationships without the complexity and high costs associated with many other CRM systems.

One top feature of Less Annoying CRM is contact management, which allows businesses to organize and store customer information, notes, and activity history in a centralized location.

The calendar and tasks feature enables users to schedule appointments, set reminders, and manage tasks directly within the CRM whereas lead management tools help track leads and sales pipelines, monitoring progress and ensuring timely follow-ups with potential clients.

The software supports easy collaboration, allowing team members to share information and work together in real-time. It also integrates nicely with other tools like MailChimp or Agile Forms.

Less Annoying CRM keeps its pricing straightforward and affordable. They only offer one plan at a cost of $15 per user per month, with no hidden fees or long-term contracts.

Top 10 Best CRM Software Conclusion

There you have it, 10 of the best CRM software solutions, each with its unique strengths and capabilities. Basically, the best CRM for your business depends on your specific needs and budget. So take the time to evaluate your options and choose the right one for you.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive CRM with a lot of features and don’t mind spending a bit more, Salesforce and HubSpot are great options. If you’re looking for a more affordable CRM with a lot of flexibility, Zoho is a standout choice.

If you’re looking for a CRM with great project management features, Monday.com is a strong contender. Less Annoying CRM, Freshworks CRM and Pipedrive are also great options, especially if you’re looking for a more affordable CRM with solid sales pipeline management features.

Which of these platforms are you thinking of checking out? Share with us in the comments below. Also, remember to share this with someone who is looking to improve their business relationships, streamline processes, enhance customer retention or boost sales.