Top 10 CRM Software For Small Business
Recent Studies show that companies with a fully utilized CRM system can increase their sales by 29% - Forbes
It is presumed that small businesses do not require CRM software which is absolutely false and the owner of every small business who is considering it to be true and a matter of fact, their mayday is near, and they are doomed to failure!
Earlier, you could have probably survived without a CRM solution but now times have changed and there is a dire need for customer relationship management (CRM) software, no matter what the scale of your business is. At the present moment, relationships with customers are more critical than it ever was, and if you are a small business then you are yet to mark an impression on the target audience!
Estimates show that since 2010, the CRM industry has shown growth of 600%, and by 2025, it is supposed to surpass an astounding $80 billion in revenue. These fast-growing numbers are proof that CRMs are the need of the hour and much needed by companies in every industry.
Small businesses often are fussy and anxious about pricing. You wish for something that doesn't eat up your budget and makes a hole in your pocket.
This article brings you the list of the Top 10 CRM for small businesses so that ad hoc decisions are avoided, and the best choices are hand-picked!
1. HubSpot: 
The very first CRM to gain the spot for top CRM for small business is HubSpot. Founded in 2006, HubSpot is an All-in-One platform to manage your countless business activities through its Inbound Marketing Strategy. Now, for those who don't know what Inbound Marketing Strategy refers to, it's a routine of attracting, engaging, and delighting your customers by designing valuable content and know-how to gain deep insights about your potential customers. When customers are satisfied, they turn out to be your true promoter and attract new prospects in order to create a self-sustaining loop.
For a small business to grow faster, CRM can prove to be the best possibility and HubSpot free CRM is a boon for small businesses to keep track of interactions with their customers from their very first contact to their most recent sale.
HubSpot enables small businesses to organize their sales efforts, track leads, and sell their products and services. The three tools of HubSpot that allows you to organize, trace and ameliorate relationships with leads and customers are:
- HubSpot: Marketing Hub- With this marketing tool, you can easily create and attract customers.
- HubSpot: Sales Hub- Sales will help you to persuade customers and convert awareness into revenue generation.
- HubSpot: Service Hub- With the Service tool, you aim to fulfill your customers' requests and keep them happy, most importantly improving your customer services and customer experiences.
Small Businesses can easily opt for the Starter Plan of HubSpot to make their product worthwhile and business successful. Here are the advantages and how you can make the most out of HubSpot by balancing CRM with Marketing Strategy:
- Helping you to systematize and track sales pipeline and conduct online business efficiently and optimally.
- Integration of CRM with a myriad of programs and platforms such as Dropbox, BigCommerce, etc.
- The Marketing Hub allows you to insert blogs, create Landing Page, and develop email templates.
- Designing Support Tickets
- In-built and instinctive user interface for email marketing, importing, and managing leads and customers.
If we look from price point of view, HubSpot Starter Plans are more accessible and it's definitely a catch! This is why it comes under Top CRM for small businesses.
2. Salesforce Essentials: 
The second position of the top 10 CRM for small business has been claimed by Salesforce. As per the reports, it is estimated that small businesses waste as much as 25 percent of their productivity by manually entering the data through the spreadsheet and which isn't helping them grow and prosper. The motive of Salesforce Essentials is to convince those small businesses to switch from spreadsheets to a robust platform that is utilized by most Fortune 500 companies.
Salesforce Essentials was founded in 2017 which is a small business-centric CRM solution. It is an affordable solution that is reasonably priced at $25 per month per user. Can you afford not to invest? Interestingly, Salesforce doesn't use the "One Size Fits All" approach and caters to all the unique needs of your business. The activities related to sales and marketing, customer service, tracking leads, categorizing hot and cold leads, generating data-driven reports, and many more which are the basic requirements of any small business to scale up are satisfied by the Salesforce Essentials CRM solution that makes it one of the most preferred 10 CRM for small business.
What makes Salesforce Essentials one of the Top CRM for small businesses?
Salesforce Essentials version turned out to be a groundbreaking solution for small businesses. Not only them, but even large organizations also find Essentials fits their needs better than expensive CRM software.
- Easy to learn with the user-friendly interface
- Customizable to your business needs so that when your business grows and expands, you can swiftly scale Essentials solution to adjust to your varying needs.
- Take care of basic yet comprehensive needs of small businesses such as:
- Opportunity Tracking
- Lead Management
- Custom Dashboards and data-driven reports
- Contact Management
- Mobile Access
- Email Marketing
- 360-degree Customer performance review
- Centralized data
- AI -backed tasks automation
- Salesforce Trailhead to help you keep learning as you grow
Salesforce Essentials version turned out to be a groundbreaking solution for small businesses. Not only them, but even large organizations also find Essentials fits their needs better than expensive CRM software.
3. Pipedrive: 
Named as FrontRunner for Small Business CRM software in 2021, by a Gartner company, Software Advice, Pipedrive CRM enables small-scale businesses to save valuable time and money and let Pipedrive optimize their operations and take your work to the next level. And it successfully does so, that is why it is one of the Top 10 CRM for small businesses.
The key features of Pipedrive are as follows:
Being one of the most recommended CRM systems for small businesses, Pipedrive has multiple Pros with of course few cons. Let us have a look.
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Pipedrive is lauded for its capacity to manage contacts and leads, and sales pipeline and many reviews were just about praising the telephony features like web-to-call and web-to-mobile tools. For small businesses that aim to attract leads and close deals, Pipedrive CRM is your solution!
4. Freshsales: 
Being the 4th among the top CRM for small business, Freshsales is one of the best choices for small business owners. Freshsales (formerly known as Freshworks CRM), launched on June 21, 2016, is one of the top CRM for small businesses competing against Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive which provides an improved way to manage contacts other than using mere spreadsheets. Freshsales is considered in the list of 10 CRM for small businesses and is thoughtfully organized for budding companies to capture and segment contacts, manage leads, interactions with customers over different communication channels, email scheduling, workflow automation, etc.
Some of the key features of Freshsales are as below:
- Organize your database with a unified view: Dive deep into the detailed information on contacts, accounts, leads, deals, and support tickets. Helps to spot purchasing patterns, segregate between hot and cold leads, manage sales pipeline, convert prospects into customers, and many more.
- Event Tracking: By using Freshsales for web, you can gain deeper insights into the behavioral activities of your website visitors and track user interactions.
- In-built Phone feature: Freshsales identified that sales reps spend most of the time calling their clients and end up juggling between tools to make a single call. Thus, they came up with the idea of an in-built phone feature.
- Affordable pricing plans and greater serviceability: The free plan of Freshsales is perfect for growing companies that need hassle-free CRM solutions. You can also check Freshsales Pricing plans by clicking here.
Freshsales is getting exciting day by day and encourages small businesses to compete with their competitors and change the way they conduct their business.
5. ZOHO CRM: 
ZOHO claims the 5th position in the list of top 10 CRM for small business. Launched in 2005, since then it has never looked back and with an average of 7500+ customers being added every year, ZOHO CRM offers a full-fledged customer relationship management (CRM) solution for all kinds of enterprises. Based on its free version of usage and some of its standout features, ZOHO CRM is one of our top recommended 10 CRM for small businesses. It offers the best of both worlds, i.e., it offers a complete set of features from invoice software to social media management platforms without forcing you to make a deep hole in your pocket. You can click on the link to grasp knowledge about the ZOHO CRM pricing structure.
Bigin, built on the ZOHO CRM platform is a pipeline-centric CRM built for SMBs, that helps in the digital transformation to ensure business continuity. ZOHO Bigin comes in handy for smaller businesses who wish to save a little extra and don't need all those features initially. Reasonably priced at $7 per user per month (as an Express Plan) ZOHO Bigin is one of the most affordable and moderate options in the entire industry. It also offers a free version with 500 records, a single pipeline with a built-in phone feature, and three workflows.
Why are the perks of using ZOHO CRM?
- General Features
- Lead management
- Contact management
- Deal management
- Sales forecasting and reporting
- Email marketing
- Opportunity management
- Email automation
- Advanced analytics and customizable dashboards
- Specialized Features
- Lead scoring and management
- Predictive tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant named Zia
- Social Media management
- Territory management
- Third-party Integrations include Google Workspace, Mailchimp, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter, Trello, PayPal, etc.
- Easy to setup and use just within 30 minutes, which is quite helpful for tenderfoot and novice users
- Mobile CRM solution, enabling to take your business anywhere you go.
With its greatest strengths placed aptly, ZOHO CRM lets users start with a lower plan and scale their plans as per their business.
6. monday.com:
On the 6th position of top CRM for small business list, we have monday.com. monday.com is a CRM software with organizational capabilities associated with project and tasks management platform that visualizes your work in Kanban-style boards and assists in tracking the progress of tasks, and meeting deadlines.
monday.com is a comprehensive functional sales CRM, in fact, it is considered one of the most customizable CRM in the market. With its easy, simple, and intuitive interface with tailor-made design, monday.com gives you autonomy and control over the customization of CRM as per your requirements.
monday.com pricing model is based on the number of users (minimum 3 users because you won't be able to start with just one user), and you can refer to its pricing plan. For the specific prices:
- Basic plan: Starts at $8 per user per month
- Standard plan: $10 per user per month
- Pro plan: $16 per user per month
monday.com can certainly be a great option as a CRM software due to its substantial customizability. The color-coordinated dashboards and interfaces with a mix and match of wide-ranging metrics are the prime product differentiator. Fulfilling all the basic business requirements that a small business might be longing for, monday.com is taking online security and privacy concept quite seriously. It is pretty obvious from its Security Page, that company data is placed safely.
7. Keap: 
Formerly known as Infusionsoft, Keap is a full-fledged sales and marketing management software, with built-in contact management and e-commerce tools, easy-to-use automation features, readily available email templates, and drag and drop automation builder tools making it one of the best picks for CRM for small businesses.
If you are the one who's a baby in this information technology and software industry and eyeing an all-in-one CRM solution that combines sales and marketing automation, Keap is your answer. You can choose this without any hesitance as the software has already gained 7th position in the list of top 10 CRM for small business.
Keap is recommended in the following scenarios:
- Businesses planning to set up their first CRM
- Small and medium enterprises
- E-commerce businesses enjoying Keap's multi-faceted invoicing, payment, and checkout features
- Companies searching for simple sales and marketing automation in one platform.
With 15+ features rolled into one, Keap has all qualities molded as per your business needs, thus, it is one of the preferred top CRM for small businesses!
Summary of features:
- Reporting and analytics
- Email marketing
- Building and personalizing emails
- Automated Email responses
- Manage email deliverability
- Sending outbound emails
- Lead management
- Data Quality check
- Lead segmentation
- Lead nurturing
- Lead integration
- Automated Alerts and tasks
- Campaign management
- Online marketing
- Enabling third-party integrations with Zapier, Shopify, etc. to give email marketers the access to creation of events and ads, enjoying popular services like Facebook Lead Ads, Calendly, and GoToWebinar.
- Keap tends to offer a robust coaching package to newer businesses to help with the creation of business plan.
Keap has two pricing editions, Pro and Max, and a free trial of Keap is also offered. Check out its pricing plans that align with your budget and needs.
8. Zendesk Sell: 
As the name suggests, Zendesk Sell is built around everyday sales activities and delivering you sales and marketing tools needed to scale business operations in the future.
It is a modern sales CRM solution designed to expand productivity and sales pipeline visibility for small businesses. Its native integration with Zendesk Customer Support provides enhanced and upgraded reflection into all customer interactions.
With no hidden fees and a quick set-up time, Zendesk Sell extraordinarily comprehensive tools aligns your team for flabbergasting success helping it to achieve a place in Top 10 CRM for small businesses!
Features:
- Sales Engagement tools
- Email integration
- Task Player
- Pipeline management
- Contact management
- Lead generation
- Mobile User support
- Workflow Automations
- Integrated communication channels
Additional Features include:
- Call and Text
- Smart List and Templates
- Sequences
- Power Dialer
- Bulk email outreach
- Sales Trigger
In order to check its pricing structure, you can visit the Zendesk Sell Pricing List and see what suits your organization the best!
9. Insightly: 
In the 9th position of top CRM for small business we have Insightly. With over more than 1.5 million users across the globe, Insightly is considered the world's most popular CRM software for Google and Office365 users. It is a highly customizable and unified customer relationship management (CRM) for emerging businesses across all industries. Insightly helps in building world-class customer experiences with its distinctive features and flexible pricing scheme.
Talking about the features, let us have a glance at distinguishing qualities that make Insightly one of the top CRM for small businesses.
- A holistic (360-degree) view of contacts
- Go Mobile with Insightly mobile app which is compatible with iPad/iPhone, Amazon Kindle HD, Google Nexus, and other handheld devices with similar OS.
- Integration of Insightly with all your external platforms via. Insightly AppConnect.
- Chatbot/Conversational AI
- Custom and Analytics dashboard
- Customer Contract Management
- Opportunities and Pipeline management
- Lead Management
- Customer Support Portal and Knowledge Base
- Bulk editing while using Big Data is a terrific addition
Keeping the needs and queries of small businesses in mind, Insightly CRM was created to help you with your company at each stage of its growth. Moreover, you can take advantage of the free trial and also check Insightly Price structure to get a firsthand experience!
10. Agile CRM: 
Our list of Top CRM for small businesses ends with Agile CRM. Agile CRM is a simple yet comprehensive CRM software offering all the basic features that small businesses and startups might be looking for. The features include sales and marketing automation, customer service automation tools, lead generation, project management, telephony, social media integrations, mobile app, reporting and analytics, and gamification tools.
Agile CRM Telephony feature facilitates one-click calling along with voicemail automation. Receive and make calls from your CRM dashboard and get real-time information about the caller on your dashboard, which is one of the many reasons why Agile CRM has claimed the 10th position in this list of top 10 CRM for small business. It's telephony feature includes:
- Outbound and Inbound calls
- Call notes and archives
- Call Scripts
- Call recording and playback
- Call reporting and automation
- Caller ID
- Personalized greetings
- Detailed call history
- Voicemail Drops
The Marketing automation tools of Agile CRM help to build marketing campaigns, create landing pages and attract leads. Permitting the delivery of these campaigns via mobile and social media channels, and automation of lead scoring and segmentation are the marketing tools of Agile CRM. Marketing Tools include:
- Email marketing
- Landing Pages
- Newsletters
- Lead generation
- Personalized video emails
- Form builder
- Email tracking
- Website Builder
Agile CRM Pricing comprises one free plan eligible for 10 users and three paid plans ranging from $8.99 to $47.99 per user per month. You can get complete pricing details from the official website. Agile CRM is truly capable of justifying its name "agile" which means to adapt and change quickly in an evolving environment as it always supports and lends a hand to its customers!
Bottom Line:
As we have reached the end segment of the article, we are competent enough to conclude that nearly all CRM software offers pretty much the same features with a little bit of difference in the niche market they cater. Like Insightly for project management, HubSpot for a free option, Pipedrive which specializes in pipeline management, and many others.
All CRMs have basic features like contact management, sales and marketing automation, lead management, opportunity management, .etc. which are a must because that's what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software does. But how effectively and effortlessly you present it in front of the small businesses keeping in mind the cost factor is super important and that's what will make them stand in the list of Top CRM for small businesses!
We do know that cost is the prime consideration for small businesses. Some other factors such as user-friendly interface, multiple third-party integrations, centralized database, customizability, scalability, easy to setup and use are also what small businesses look for. Thus, small business owners need to be patient and judicious at the same time when they shortlist the perfect fit CRM. The CRM software listed here may or may not be on your shortlist. You need to have a thorough knowledge of your requirements, and the total cost of ownership you can bear. It is advised to consume this knowledge with a grain of salt as there are many well-known CRMs in the market but some of the CRM work better based on the type of business you are running. As many of the deciding factors revolve around one's particular needs and various kinds of third-party software currently in use. Thanks for reading!
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