4 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

Enter Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the software solutions to properly deal with it. As a small business owner, you need visibility into your sales pipeline to understand how customers move from one stage to another and what deals to prioritize. You must also deliver exceptional customer experiences to stand out from the competition. The right CRM software empowers your team to identify the most qualified leads, close deals faster, and build customer loyalty over time.

But choosing a CRM isn't that straightforward. Countless options are available to businesses of every shape and size. Most startups and SMEs also have limited resources and need to carefully justify their software purchases.

For these reasons, we are now breaking down the best CRM software for small businesses. We'll compare the pros and cons of the leading options and provide you with some helpful tips to make the perfect decision for your specific situation.

Read: How to Compare Software

What Makes the Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

Before jumping into the top CRMs, it's essential to level-set the criteria for an effective software tailored to small businesses.

At Softailed, we assess CRMs across various factors like pricing, interface usability, features, scalability, and more. However, the importance of each consideration varies based on business size and resources. For small businesses, a stellar CRM nails these non-negotiables:

Pricing

With tight budget constraints, small businesses need cost-effective software. The best CRM options should offer affordable pricing plans, ideally with a free version or trial period, so you can test things out first and start small. Watching out for add-ons and components that can ramp up recurring costs over time is equally as important. Every dollar counts for many small businesses, so the pricing model must suit lower budgets without drastically limiting its capabilities.

Ease of Use

Smaller teams often lack dedicated IT staff to support complex software. Similarly, sales reps and support agents have little time for extensive training. So simplicity and intuitiveness are preferred. We further prioritize CRMs with built-in guidance to accelerate onboarding.

The best CRM for lean teams has an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Think clean menus, visual dashboards, and straightforward navigation. Robust features are great, but useless if people struggle to access and apply them.

Features

Speaking of features, while price and ease of use are important, your team still needs robust CRM functionality. Must-have capabilities include:

• Contact management
• Pipeline management
• Sales forecasting & analytics
• Email integration & communication tools
• Reporting

Integrations

Time is of the essence when it comes to sales. Constantly switching between standalone tools wastes precious hours and fragments data. An ideal CRM centralizes all customer information and integrates with complementary software like:

• Email & calendar systems
• Ecommerce platforms
• Marketing automation
• Help desk & ticketing systems
• Accounting applications

These save time while enabling a single source of truth across critical business systems. As you evaluate your options, confirm which apps and tools the CRM integrates with out of the box.

4 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

Now that we've got that covered, let's explore the leading options on the market today that’ll make your small business thrive.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is practically synonymous with CRM software as the pioneer behind inbound marketing. What began as a suite of marketing applications has since expanded into full-stack tools. One encompassing sales, service, operations, and more.

A major perk of HubSpot's CRM platform is its seamless integration with sister HubSpot products. For example, leads generated via email campaigns in Marketing Hub automatically flow into contact records in CRM. No tedious exporting or importing across systems. This unified experience eliminates frustrating data silos. It empowers small teams to align across the customer journey.

Relative to other feature-rich CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot also has an intuitive interface. It's easier for non-technical users to navigate. Sales reps can access a holistic overview of relevant customer interactions happening across the business to drive smarter follow-ups.

Standout features of HubSpot CRM include a unified sales pipeline dashboard and contact insights. You can view historical interactions and activity with a contact all in one timeline. Email and calendar sync are also helpful, as they integrate with HubSpot activity logging.

Finally, HubSpot has no shortage of templates and playbooks. You can leverage them for emails, calls, presentations, contracts, etc.

Regarding pricing, HubSpot offers a free, cheap starter plan, and rather expensive professional and enterprise plans.

2. Brevo

You might know our next entry by its former name: SendinBlue. Now called Brevo, it balances generous free plans with paid offerings. If HubSpot's forever-free edition leaves you wanting more, Brevo CRM Suite warrants a look.

Brevo specializes in email marketing, sales, SMS capabilities, live chat widgets, and marketing automation. The platform tackles essential CRM capabilities like centralized contacts, pipeline management, and cross-channel communication tracking. It’s ideal for businesses looking for a permanently affordable solution that also covers other areas without being surprised by rapid price jumps.

On the marketing front, Brevo really shines. SMBs can create beautiful email campaigns, use dynamic content, and granular subscriber segmentation for optimal results. The free marketing plan supports up to 300 emails per day, while paid plans offer additional volume and automation features.

3. Pipeline CRM

Pipeline CRM proudly dubs itself "the CRM for salespeople by salespeople." That tells you everything you need to know. Unlike HubSpot, trying to be everything to everyone, Pipeline is laser-focused on supercharging sales team productivity.

First and foremost, Pipeline makes visualizing your pipeline simple with customizable tables and views. You can use filters to see open deals, stuck deals, proposals sent – whatever you need. The software also captures web leads and syncs calendar appointments to auto-log that activity in the pipeline.

Pipeline CRM lets you customize lead details, sales stages, and deal workflows to match reality. We'd also be remiss not to mention Pipeline's slick AI capabilities. Think automatic email templates, calendar meeting scheduling, and reminders on the next best actions to advance deals. That autonomous assistance means sales reps can focus on selling rather than managing data or follow-ups in the platform.

Plans start at $29 and go up to $59 per rep and month which makes it not super cheap to start with but also not as expensive if you grow your sales team or require more features. You can test drive the software risk-free for 14 days before committing.

4. Freshsales

Lastly, we can recommend Freshsales for small businesses which is developed by Freshworks. Similar to HubSpot and Brevo, they offer a variety of business services that easily integrate within their platform.

If Pipeline's AI capabilities caught your attention in the last section, you will love Freshsales and its AI assistant, Freddy. Rather than simply digitizing sales records, Freshsales leverages data-driven insights to optimize the lead-to-cash process.

For example, Freddy AI can evaluate your existing pipeline and closed deals. He can then determine optimal sales stages for conversion by scoring leads. Freddy might also pick out nuances in your customer journey, such as technical qualification or budget confirmation.

The AI also generates engagement recommendations to help sales reps focus on the hottest leads. By assessing customer intent signals from website visits to content downloads, Freddy highlights who's closest to a sale.

Another of Freshsale’s unique selling points is the intuitive management of sales stages via Kanban boards. Other capabilities include mobile access, contract templates, and omni-channel messaging support.

In terms of transparent pricing, Freshsales packages start free for up to 3 users. From there, paid plans range from $18-$83 per user and month with volume discounts available. For SMBs who value sales automation to work smarter, Freshworks brings the unique AI enhancements you could be looking for.

Choosing the Right CRM Software for You

As a small to medium enterprise (SME), your business requirements look much different than giant corporations. While the flashy features of expensive CRM systems appeal on the surface, bigger does not automatically mean a better fit. Don't get lured in by bells and whistles. Carefully evaluate what capabilities can solve immediate pains for your sales and customer management operation.

Overall, HubSpot remains at the top as the most comprehensive CRM solution with a great free version to begin with, an affordable starter plan, and the option to go all-in with anything you could ask for in a CRM when upgrading to the professional or even enterprise plan.

However, this is exactly when it becomes extremely expensive. It therefore makes sense to consider what your requirements are. If these are rather simple, Brevo may just be sufficient for you and if you have longer and more complex sales processes, Pipeline and Freshsales can also be good alternatives to make your work easier through AI.

In addition to your current requirements, you should also look at the future, because nothing is more annoying than having to change software, migrate data, and learn everything from scratch. Therefore, ask yourself where you see yourself and your company in the next 1-3 years from now, especially concerning the required features and related services of the providers.

Compare Your Options

Picking the right CRM isn't a one-size-fits-all. Cost, ease of use, capabilities, etc. – it all depends on your sales operation's unique needs and growth plans.

If you want to compare the providers we talked about in more detail, take a look at our CRM Comparison Tool. We have compiled the most important data for each provider in our database so that you can compare them side by side and add even more providers to your comparison.