Top 10 Cloud CRM For Small Businesses

The buzzword of today’s business world- Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which everyone is talking about, everyone is well aware of the significant benefits that can be derived from it, yet only a few people know which CRM solution fits their business model the best!

In today’s contemporary IT world, things have changed. The term "software" has considerably shifted from its Earth-bound domain all the way to the Cloud. And the solution for your perfect match lies in the Cloud itself, and exactly where you should look for your CRM solution! IT Cloud services have witnessed a massive and impressive lift-off recently. According to the research, 57% of companies are migrating workload to the cloud and 42% of the companies have moved from On-Premise to the SaaS.

Small companies often contain fear or are skeptical about Cloud CRM and the security threats attached to it. However, it is important for the small companies to invest an amount of their effort dedicatedly for researching more about the suitable CRM solutions that can take their business to a new level. For helping you out, we have prepared this article encoding the benefits of possessing a cloud CRM as well as top 10 CRM for small businesses. So, let’s dive into it.

Benefits to be claimed by cloud CRM implementation

1.  Hassle & Hustle-free Installation: CRM is linked with its deep-rooted fear of convoluted installation process. This is no longer valid now, in fact, modern-day Cloud-based CRM is IT trouble-free, and you can be up and running in no time. No hard complexities regarding hardware installation, server and software maintenance, no dedicated IT personnel present onsite, no worries about data migration and upgrades- all this is provided remotely to you by the vendor.
2.  Ease of Use: Not only it enables and ensure that your customer data is always at your fingertips, but Cloud CRM is also pretty simple to use. To get your hands moving, you just need to make sure you have a robust Internet connection and a perfect device to work on, you can then simply log in with the access codes provided.
3.  Security is a Prime concern: Everyone cares about their data security, whether it is a small or a large company. Companies offering Cloud-based CRM services are very well-conscious about the security issues and they take it seriously. After all, it’s them who are responsible for protecting your confidential information.
   

   Not surprisingly, Security has been a major concern, but also information security levels at Cloud servicing companies are much more developed and sophisticated than those provided by an average Local IT room. They also arrange automatized backup and recovery policies if a breach occurs.

4. Flexible Integration: CRM’s longevity and effectiveness also depend on its compatibility with other third-party apps. If not, then why would anyone invest in such software that is unable to open your documents, merge with your contacts, or integrate with the email system currently in use? Almost all Cloud CRM for small businesses nowadays offer this feature of easy integration with other apps and software.
5. Cost Effective option: Cloud CRM for small businesses helps to convert huge capital-expense (CAPEX) costs into an easy operational expense (OPEX). Cloud vendor engrosses huge upfront investment in hardware and servers and offers a pay-as-you-go payment structure.
6.  Access Anytime, Anywhere: Both software and data reside in the cloud, thus making it convenient to use through mobile apps or other devices, eliminating geographical or time barriers. Accessing the CRM through user-friendly and intuitive mobile apps has arguably been one of the biggest advantages of Cloud-based CRM. Reports show that 65% of employees achieve their target when using Mobile CRM, whereas only 22% only achieve their sales target when mobile isn’t used.

Cloud CRM for small businesses has an ocean full of merits, you can extract it out of it if installed appropriately. In this article, we share the list of Top 10 Cloud CRM for small businesses so that you can get started!

1. ZOHO CRM:

ZOHO CRM has been one of the top choices in the category of Cloud CRM for small businesses. It has come out as a strong CRM that has been reviewed countless times and once again it didn’t fail to mesmerize and secured its place on our list of Top 10 Cloud CRM for small businesses. With its affordable pricing, approachable and intuitive user interface, and mighty and powerful reporting features.

Why ZOHO is one of the best cloud CRM for small businesses

ZOHO CRM has always made small businesses their priority realizing the importance of SMBs dominating the business world from owning a small bakery shop down the street to a unicorn startup.

• What attracts small businesses toward ZOHO CRM is its simple and straightforward installation and setup. Even if you don’t have an in-house technical support team, you don’t get messed up with complications. You get step-by-step guidance that helps you start with the basic setup and then adding on the extensions and integrations to make the system your very own.
• Every company has its unique requirements depending on the industry they belong to. ZOHO CRM recognizes this and gives you the freedom to deploy CRM in the way you want and change it as per the business landscape. You can create custom modules and fields, add multiple page layouts and conditional layouts, and put in Subforms that give you the solution to keep your primary form clutter free by facilitating the addition of multiple line items inside a secondary form.
• Everyone appreciates the product when curated and nurtured by your hands. Likewise, ZOHO CRM helps to bring your beautiful ideas to life by introducing its very own new feature, “Canvas” where you can generate multiple design variants. Canvas comes with a library of interesting templates crafted by in-house designers. It is effortlessly simple to use, with no coding rather just drag and drop items into place.
• Features like Blueprint, help you to capture even minute details of every stage of offline sales processes inside your CRM and execute them in an organized manner. Blueprint created by ZOHO CRM guides users through what actions should be taken at what time and set actions that have to be met to seal the deal.
• A conversational chatbot named “Zia”, is an AI companion within ZOHO that helps to manage your CRM intelligently. Zia learns the usage patterns of the team and then gives personalized automation suggestions. Zia also measures the efficiency of your workflows and avoids making mistakes.

2. Drip:

Drip is an ECRM (Ecommerce CRM), basically a CRM system combined with Drip marketing also known as Drip Campaign. Drip marketing Campaigns are the messages (sequences), that educate people about the brand and nurture them along their entire customer lifecycle. While Drip is supremely built for e-commerce sites, it can work equally well for other kinds of businesses as well. Hence, it gets the second best place in this list of top 10 best cloud CRM for small businesses.

What Drip Offers as one of the best cloud CRM for small businesses

• Drip has a very comprehensive yet easy-to-use email marketing platform. It helps you to spend less time “doing emails” and devote your precious time on building customer relationships that boost revenue. If you wish for a head-to-toe customized email template, flex your email design with Drip’s HTML Builder. Also, its compelling email segmentation and personalization help you get better engagement and escalate conversions to win over customers so that they keep coming back.
• Although you are proficient at designing emails, but you won’t know the rudiments of email marketing until you put them to evaluate. Thankfully, Drip comes with a feature of A/B testing that allows the marketer to launch two versions of the same content at one time and compare both. With this, you will get the idea about which version gathered more views, clicks, and revenue, and this way, you can make necessary alterations.
• This CRM offers easy list segmentation, conversion tracking, content customization, marketing automation, actionable reports, e-commerce user tracking, purchase intent marketing, and many more.
• Today’s generation is inclined towards using Facebook and Instagram; thus, marketers can sync Facebook and Instagram with Drip to organize robust marketing campaigns across these social media channels.
• Drip provides unique in-app assistance that is specifically designed for e-commerce and throws light on the marketing path to give you some clarity. It answers key planning questions such as the ROI of potential marketing strategies, how much time will a setup take, and what your projected revenue will be before you launch your next marketing strategy.
• Drip integrates with over more than 100 companies, like Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Zapier, etc. Here’s a full list of Third-party integrations of Drip.

How does Drip’s Pricing work?

It’s quite straightforward and a terrific value for money, there’s only one plan available and that is it! No tiers involved, no hidden costs, and all the features to explore. The cost depends on the number of email contacts you have on your email list. Of course, you are not allowed to send unlimited emails during your free trial. Other than that, you have the freedom to use all of Drip’s features.

• Automated workflows based on customer activities
• More than 90 third-app integrations including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce
• Email templates and Visual Builder

You can also start a 14-day free trial without any credit card requirements.

3. Freshsales:

Freshsales which was formerly known as Freshworks CRM, is a cloud CRM for small businesses. Full-fledged sales force automation solution for sales and marketing team that helps to attract, engage and delight leads and customers.Freshsales gives everything in a wholesome hassle-free package that includes highly intuitive UI and AI-based lead scoring features, a visual deal pipeline, and intelligent workflow automation.

It is based on Public Cloud Deployment Model and the solution cannot be hosted i.e., Private Cloud is not offered. Freshsales’ API belongs to the REST (Representational State Transfer) category. The REST API allows you to perform operations like read, modify, add, or delete data from your service desk.

Features of Freshsales:

• Customization: Freshsales provides multi-language customization, multi-currency customization, role and scope customization, territory customization, and renaming modules. The account admins can make alterations to their Freshsales instance via the admin settings options.
• Productivity: With features like Task Management, Sales Sequences, Auto Assignment Rules, Freshsales enables you to amplify your sales productivity. It helps you to manage leads minus the clutter by prioritizing follow-ups with data-backed insights. With the help of Internal Notifications, you can send notifications to internal team members when certain custom actions are completed including upgrades, cancellations and lead sign-ups.
• Communication: It helps you to foster and nurture strong customer relationships with multichannel communication. Email Integration is a feature that will assist you in sending effective outbound campaigns and accelerate sales performance. Since emails are the most preferred means of communication it can become cumbersome for a salesperson to toggle and tumble between inbox and CRM to send emails and receive responses. Level up your email management by connecting your email inbox with Freshsales two-way email sync where your calendar and prevailing conversations are automatically connected, and all incoming emails are mapped to respective contacts.
• With WhatsApp Business Integration, you can read and respond to your messages on WhatsApp from Freshsales Suite.
• A 360-degree view of customer data is provided. With Customer 360-degree view, businesses are able to see all key sales, marketing, and support information with a 360-degree customer lens on a unified page.
  • Summary Section: Gives you an overview of your contacts and deals. You can add fields and highlight cards to stir information that’s vital for your business.
  • Auto profile Enrichment: For every additional lead, Freshsales spontaneously pulls out data such as the prospect’s photo, social media information, company-related data, etc.
• Freddy AI can be your personal sales assistant. But what is Freddy AI? It is a conversational chatbot, that combines AI and analytics, to get actionable insights across the entire customer journey as it learns from your CRM data to display deals and recommendations in a Kanban view grouped by predictions. Freddy with its keen eye for details and specifics identifies patterns that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Don’t miss out on checking the Freshsales pricing list!

4. Thryv:

Thryv is an all-in-one Customer Relationship Management Solution for serious small businesses that wish to manage numerous channels and tasks in one place. It lets you not settle for an average CRM and gives you a big sigh of relief by bringing your favorite business apps all into one platform where you can view your messages, calendar, payments, and reviews in a quick glance.

Features that make Thryv one of the best cloud CRM for small business

• Thryv lets you not compromise when it comes to your data security. With its cutting-edge data encryption and customizable account, access gives you the power to control who sees what. It is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant and ensures document and data safety in the most secluded manner.
• Thryv caters its services to a variety of small industries that are often left aloof like Beauty Services, Non-Profit Services, Child Care Services, Real Estate Services, and many more. No matter what business you are in, there is a one-stop destination that fits your everyday business activities.
• Helps you create marketing campaigns in just a few clicks without any fuss. By using Thryv’s pre-prepared campaign templates (or you can also design your own custom templates), you can keep in touch with your engaged customers with promotions and compelling messages. Create them in advance and Thryv will send them when the time is right!
• With add-on feature like Reputation Management, you can initiate an assessment to check whether the customer experience you provide lives up to their expectations or not. You monitor what customers have to say about your services and have an in-depth analysis of your ranking against your competitor. For this, Thryv compares your business to four competitors to view how you rank online.
• Thryv also launched Google My Business Optimization to increase engagement, improve SMBs’ local ranking, conversion of potential leads into customers and ultimately lets you win. This add-on manages and reviews the GMB listing while conducting a multi-faceted optimization process.

Thryv is priced on a custom-proposal basis offering no free version to try and also no free trials can be considered its disadvantage.

5. ClickUp:

ClickUp is a cloud CRM suitable for all kinds of businesses, particularly small businesses and freelancers. Thus, without any doubt this CRM lands to become one of the best cloud CRM for small business. Founded in 2018, ClickUp was relatively a newcomer in project management software. But within no time, it has managed to become one of the most comprehensive, customizable and user-intuitive project management solutions with latest updates released monthly. With over 1000 native and third-app integrations, you have the capability to sync your apps with ClickUp and bring all your work into one place.

• Customizability has become the core feature of any CRM solution. ClickUp’s highly customizable task management implies that you will be able to build tasks to suit your specific business needs. It also helps you to break down complex and mind-numbing projects into chunks of subtasks so that you can visualize tasks and subtasks in multiple views and rearrange or edit them in bulk using Bulk Action Toolbar.
• You can organize and view your sales pipeline, and grow healthy customer relationships with lead tracking, data visualizations, email integration, and more – all in one place. With ClickUp’s 10+ flexible views such as lists, tables, or a Kanban board you can organize your accounts for quick data entry. It also becomes easier to manage everything from sales pipelines to customer orders.
• Freedom to create your own dashboard with over 50+ dashboard widgets for any business scenario and easily share it digitally within your Workspace or you can also display it in your office on a full-screen mode.
• Whiteboards- an interesting feature of ClickUp is built for un collaboration to bridge the gap between brainstorming ideas and getting work done. As Whiteboards are available on every plan, but the number of whiteboards you can create depends on your plan-
  • Free Version- 3 whiteboards
  • Unlimited- 10 whiteboards
  • Business, Business Plus and Enterprise- No limit

Even the Guests can use Whiteboards. You can view the pricing structure by clicking here.

6. Agile CRM:

Agile CRM is a cloud CRM for small businesses that focuses on integrating sales, marketing, customer service, social media marketing and other engagement opportunities to establish one centralized hub for your customer reports, marketing, and analytics. Agile CRM is tapping into the way companies conduct their business most efficiently.

Agile CRM strongly benefits freelancers and small to mid-sized companies. Agile CRM has emerged as a refreshing player in the CRM market. Agile CRM’s Enterprise edition has e-commerce sync with Shopify and Stripe.

Features offered by Agile CRM

• 360-degree Contact View: Agile CRM helps you to build detail-oriented contact profile and gives you the ability to access all that information from one single page. Regardless of your team member’s department, everyone has the access to view and update information on a contact’s page because you are working in the cloud CRM. With everyone updating information on contact’s page rather working in siloes, you are able to capture data and insights more quickly thus, slashing down the inefficient overlapping that occurs between two teams working in isolation.
• Deals: Agile CRM helps you to get ready to create multiple deals with custom milestones, get real-time metrics and forecast sales revenue using predictive analysis. You can design beautiful visual presentations that can be treat for your eyes with multiple views like list views and milestone views to gain unexpected insights into your sales processes and hence increase productivity.
• Telephony: With the help of this feature, not only you can make or receive calls but you can also record them and take notes later. It also includes enhanced caller ID, call forwarding and call scripts.
• Gamification: The software upgraded its features by offering Gamification tools, that help the sales team to compete, collaborate and stay focused to improve their numbers day-by-day by sales as a competition.
• Marketing Automation: Agile CRM’s marketing automation features help you to build automated marketing campaigns in minutes and capture more leads. Tools include Website Builder, Landing Pages, Form Builder, Content Planner, Email Marketing, and many more that facilitate you to grow and expand your small business.

Agile CRM offers discount for each level if you pay in advance for one or two years, there is a free forever version available for up to 10 users only which is generally ideal deal for small business and solopreneurs. For rest of the knowledge regarding pricing tiers, you the visit the site.

7. EngageBay:

An all-rounder and excellent Cloud CRM for small businesses, which has online marketing, sales and support solution including a free CRM component. EngageBay is beneficial for those small and medium businesses that are likely to need a little more additional help with their lead segmentation while also complementing every aspect of marketing, sales, and customer support workflows.

Considered an affordable alternative for HubSpot, EngageBay comes at a price that fits even in your most stringent budget. You can also compare its prices with that of HubSpot.

EngageBay classically divides its tools into three categories:

• Marketing Bay
• CRM & Sales Bay
• Support Bay

Features of EngageBay:

EngageBay Lead Scoring feature identifies your most qualified leads and tracks engagement. It automates your routine tasks and saves time for some more productive work. With EngageBay, there is no scope for error and you can know which are your hot leads so you can focus on them and drive your conversion rates.

• Marketing Bay: EngageBay includes a fully dedicated CRM where you can find leads, send emails and engage and nurture customer relationships. It also has sophisticated and cutting-edge software tools for marketing automation to track customer replies to emails. EngageBay helps marketers to enjoy the full power of multi-campaign multi-channel marketing. You have varieties of beautiful landing page templates to choose from or you can also create them from scratch.
• CRM & Sales Bay: EngageBay allows you to visualize your sales pipeline and track the status of every deal. Helps the sales reps to deliver perfectly on every call using EngageBay Call Scripts. These scripts not only enable them to nurture leads but also never fall short of words in a conversation. You have the ability to manage your end-to-end email communications with CRM Email Integration. Hassle-free switching between inboxes where you can setup two-way email communication with Gmail, Office365 or any other app you use. EngageBay Lead Scoring feature identifies your most qualified leads and tracks engagement. It automates your routine tasks and saves time for some more productive work. With EngageBay, there is no scope for error, and you can know which are your hot leads so you can focus on them and drive your conversion rates.
• Service Bay: Although you are conducting your business very smoothly, you must know how well your customers are enjoying your product or service, what are their grievances, and what support they require. EngageBay offers you several tools like Helpdesk Reporting Metrics, Free Live Chat Software, Canned Responses for Quick Service, Customer Service Support Groups and many others to provide your customers with spontaneous and personalized responses.
• To attract more web visitors and get them indulged, you can send triggered activated emails. How? You can create and store emails in EngageBay’s Email Autoresponder that you can use to create stir among your users when they take specific actions on your website. You just need to draft the emails, save them by detailing the trigger actions, and the system automatically does the rest consistently.

There are certain discounts offered if you purchase the plans yearly or biennially. You can also compare plans as per your business requirements and convenience. All in all, EngageBay offers you a lot of options to choose from as per your business needs, which makes it one of the best cloud CRM for small businesses to choose.

8. Creatio:

Founded on February 8, 2011, Creatio is a low-code solution for process management and customer relationship management (CRM). It comprises Studio Creatio (low-code platform), Sales Creatio(sales force automation), Marketing Creatio(marketing automation tool), and Service Creatio(customer service and helpdesk tool). Creatio has received humongous awards for its service and has been renowned as a Leader in three categories of the CRM market Leader awards:

• Enterprise CRM
• CRM for Mid-sized Companies
• Sales Force Automation

Creatio is a Cloud CRM that unites CRM features with BPM(Business Process Management) capabilities. It combines the low-code CRM’s modules such as service management, marketing automation, sales force automation, reporting and analytics, and contact management with BPM engine. Now, eager to know about its features? We are here to serve.

Features of Creatio:

• Sales Creatio: Creatio provides you with tools to manage your product sales cycle effectively and efficiently, from generating and nurturing leads to successfully closing deals. Using Creatio lead scoring tools, you can segregate between hot and cold leads and focus on the hottest leads and promising opportunities. Automate your B2B and B2C sales performance with the best built-in sales practices or create custom ones with the help of low-code tools. With wide Sales Creatio functionality, sales professionals can guide sales processes step-by-step through the most operative solutions to liberate the bottlenecks and get the most out of sales pipeline.
• Studio Creatio: Studio Creatio enables using a low-code platform to build custom applications for specific needs, enabling small, mid-sized and large enterprises to automate and accelerate their business performance. You get a maximum degree of freedom plus library of predefined widgets, templates and views to design your beautiful user interface which you can be proud of.
• Marketing Creatio: Marketing Creatio is a multi-channel marketing automation platform to improvise customer journeys and convert it from leads to revenue. Built on a low-code platform, Marketing Creatio impeccably synergizes with sales and service features and lets you automate multifaceted and complex business tasks without the involvement of any developer. With its efficient marketing automation tool, Creatio was also recognized as the leader of B2B Marketing Automation by Gartner Magic Quadrant. With the smart Marketing Creatio tool, users have the ability to streamline personalized communication across all channels to boost lead generation. You get holistic or say a 360-degree view of your customer’s data and thus you are able to construct more interactions with your clients.

Creatio has other interesting features as well which isn’t possible to elaborate such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) feature, Chatbots, ITSM, Contact Center, Process Design, etc. but altogether they help organizations to expand revenue opportunities and amplify profits through artificial intelligence and integrate the business processes that make you experience the best sales conducted every day.

Creatio is bound to take your CRM experience to a new level and help your business to gain the growth it deserves. Thus, if you are still confused about all the available choices you can undoubtedly go with Creatio as it certainly lives up to its title of one of the best cloud CRM for small businesses.

9. Salesmate:

Salesmate is a Cloud CRM software for those salespeople who wish to spend more time selling rather than learning to use apps and new processes. Great for startups and small businesses, and that’s why it is considered in the list of Top 10 Cloud CRM for small businesses. Salesmate truly proves to be your “Sales mate”  as you can easily login from any device and continue to perform your daily tasks. It supports proper UI on MacBook, Windows Machine, and they have native android and iOS apps.

Let us see what Salesmate has to offer us.

• You can now reach more prospects with a personalized touch. With the help of Prospect and Lead Management tool, you have got the opportunity to convert prospects into customers with targeted emails, calls, and follow-ups.
• Get a clear picture of your sales pipeline and determine the health of your business with Sales pipeline and Activity Tracking feature. Enhance your productivity and revenue by eliminating repetitive and redundant tasks with powerful Salesmate tools like Sales Sequences, Sales Automation, Activity Automation, and Lead Assignment.
• Everyone’s sales have their own nuances and flavors and that what makes them unique. Therefore, Salesmate rejects the idea that one size will not fit all customers and emerged with beautiful customization tools. Now you can create as many stages and pipelines as you like and automatic sales forecasting model within a few seconds. You can design custom layouts with up to 200 custom fields to acquire the information you want. There are also users who prefer simple and sober CRM software without too many customizations. For those who believe that “less is more”,  Salesmate lets you turn off the features you don’t require and keep you away from distractions helping you to stay focused and more productive.
• Salesmate also helps you engage leads with built-in phone system to manage multiple communication channels from a single place. Now you don’t have to rely on traditional calling systems that are expensive and unreachable. Its smart email campaigns will never let your email marketing strategy reach a dead end. You can derive range of benefits such as-
  • Personalized emails to build long lasting relationships.
  • Send Bulk emails and reach out to more prospects and leads
  • Email tracking
  • Real-time notifications of every important email conversation.

Salesmate is quite reliable and secure CRM that has served thousands of customers worldwide without compromising on security aspects. It offers four pricing tiers- Starter, Growth, Boost and Enterprise. They also offer a free trial of 15 days but no free version supported.

10. Close:

The very last entry in this list of top 10 cloud CRM for small businesses is Close.io. Close is a great Cloud CRM that boasts impressive sales automation and lead generation features without any technical hassle. Whether you run a lean startup or manage the marketing department of a medium-sized company, Close CRM can prove to be your perfect match.

If you are using a frustrating CRM that isn’t easy to use and tends to be tougher than a $2 steak, replace it with Close’s easy-to-use dashboard and lead management feature. Again, where Close stands out is its powerful feature-VOIP. Best calling features include:

• Automatic calling and recording feature help you to keep track of your sales processes
• Custom Voicemail feature
• Global calling feature lets you spread seamlessly over 200 countries.
• Outstanding audio quality that makes your team sound professional.

With its Email Marketing Feature, you can craft the ideal email campaigns and automate them without juggling between your CRM and autoresponder app. Want to crush your marketing and sales goals? Before that, have a grip over your sales number with Close’s best Reporting and Analytics feature. Easily track your sales team by various metrics to know how each member of the team is performing. Close also integrates well with huge list of third-party apps like Zapier, HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack, Facebook, Mailchimp, PandaDoc, 99Inbound, etc.

Close offers four different packages and tends to offer a discount of 15% if purchased annually. You can check the plans and decide whether it fits your budget.

Conclusion:

The swiftly changing digital environment has compelled even small business owners to manage customer relations via CRM software, and in today’s scenario, Cloud CRM is in massive demand. Choosing the right CRM can be overwhelming and the deployment model should not be taken lightly. Hope this article on “Top 10 Cloud CRM for Small Businesses” helped you in gaining some knowledge!