Best CRM for small business of 2024

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The best CRM for small business makes it simple and easy for small, starter, and family-run businesses to set up and manage a contact platform for customers, staff, and suppliers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software’s primary goal is to help small businesses foster better relationships with customers. Simple enough. But with so many CRM platforms coming with countless tools and features, it can be hard to know which one meets your small business’ needs.

Our experts have spent hundreds of hours testing some of the best CRM software on the market. Now we have applied our experience and expertise to create this guide, helping you find the best CRM based on the unique needs of your small business.

Our top 3 best CRM for small business

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1. Best for most small businesses, in most cases: Salesforce

1. Best for most small businesses, in most cases: Salesforce

Salesforce is the go-to CRM for many small businesses and for good reason. The platform can't be beaten on its strong combination of ease-of-use, pricing, and extensive range of tools and features.

↪ Read our expert analysis of Salesforce

2. Best value for money: Freshsales

2. Best value for money: Freshsales

Most small businesses aim to make the most from their budget. With plan starting from just $7/mo, Freshsales offers users excellent value for money.

↪ Read our expert analysis of Freshsales


3. Easiest to use: Zoho CRM

3. Easiest to use: Zoho CRM

Those who work in small businesses often have a wear many hats and spin many plates. Zoho's intuitive CRM platform helps minimize the time spent on getting to grips with a new platform - freeing up time to focus on other valuable activities.

↪ Read our expert analysis of Zoho CRM

The best CRM for small business of 2024 in full:

Best overall

Website screenshot for Salesforce

(Image credit: Salesforce)
Best for most small businesses, in most cases

Specifications

Price: From $25 per user a month
Free plan: No
Trial: 30 days
Support: Email ticketing and phone

Reasons to buy

+
Balance between easy customization and built-in functionality
+
Works well with other Salesforce products

Reasons to avoid

-
Fairly expensive
-
Customer service contact options are limited
-
Professional services options are expensive

While Salesforce is perhaps best known as the market-leading CRM giant adept at managing the operations of enterprise-level businesses, it offers solutions for small businesses too. 

Providing an all-in-one solution to your sales, service, and marketing needs, Salesforce offers competitive plans for smaller businesses with its Small Business Pricing Solutions. The Essentials package provides both sales and customer service in one simple app for just $25 per user a month. This means smaller businesses can enjoy the power of market-leading CRM at a lower price.

Overall, the Salesforce interface is intuitive and sales-focused, but you can customize features like dashboards and reports to match your business needs and personalize your user experience. The CRM also boasts additional features to streamline your sales and business processes, including internal communication tools like on-screen calls, the easy creation of a client knowledge base, data export, email templates, and third-party tool integration with apps like Slack.

Find out more by reading our full Salesforce Service Cloud review.

Best value for money

Website screenshot for Freshsales

(Image credit: Freshworks)
Cheapest CRM for small business

Specifications

Price: $9 per user a month
Free plan: Yes
Trial: 21 days
Support: Phone and email (Mon–Fri)

Reasons to buy

+
Intuitive, customizable interface
+
Mobile app with voice note features
+
Advanced AI forecasting and insights

Reasons to avoid

-
Lead generation tools only available with Enterprise plan
-
Fewer third-party integrations than competitors

Freshsales provides a variety of tools that make it simple for small- and mid-sized businesses to support their clients, understand customer intent, and efficiently convert leads into sales. 

A combination of the Freshworks automation software, the Freshsales suite is all-in-one CRM software that unites sales and marketing. 

Utilizing the intelligent Freddy AI assistant, the Freshsales provides transparent insights into customer engagement, helping businesses discover leads, close deals, and nurture client relationships. The software also has an intuitive, user-friendly interface on both desktop and mobile, providing fast access to client records and communications. 

Third-party tools like Gmail and Outlook are also easily integrated, allowing you to create bulk email templates while monitoring both sent and received communications to prospective clients. Businesses can also utilize the built-in call feature to automatically update client records.

While the CRM is lacking lead generation tools like business card scanners, it provides customizable web forms to capture lead data from your business website—ideal for smaller businesses looking to grow their client base.

Read our full Freshsales review.

Best for ease-of-use

Website screenshot for Zoho CRM

(Image credit: Zoho)
Get to grips with your CRM fast

Specifications

Price: From $14 per user a month
Free plan: Yes
Trial: 15 days
Support: Email (Mon-Fri)

Reasons to buy

+
Workflow automation
+
Customization
+
Email marketing

Reasons to avoid

-
Steep learning curve
-
Limited customer support

Powerful cloud-based CRM software boasting excellent customer management and lead generation tools, Zoho CRM is well-equipped to assist in running a small business. 

While the platform is very easy to use, it doesn’t compromise on capability—the software features the ability to search social media and LinkedIn to capture new customer contacts, scan business cards, and provide automated workflows to assist sales teams. Alongside this, you can benefit from reporting, client contact and communication records, website visitor segmentation, and pipeline management. 

The main pro to the CRM, however, is the seamless integration with other Zoho tools, including the Zoho sales, marketing, and project management suite, Zoho Invoice, and Zoho Campaigns. Overall, Zoho CRM can be pricey, but with a solid free plan. 

Check out our full Zoho CRM review.

Best free

Website screenshot for Hubspot CRM

(Image credit: Hubspot)
A great CRM - for free!

Specifications

Price: From $45 for two users a month
Free plan: Yes
Trial : 14 days
Support: Live chat, phone, online meeting

Reasons to buy

+
Competitive free-forever plan
+
Simple to use and understand
+
Over 300 third-party app integrations

Reasons to avoid

-
Premium plans can become expensive
-
No telephone support with free plan

HubSpot is an ideal CRM solution for small businesses just starting out. While there are several paid plans, you can also get started free of charge with a lightweight yet powerful version of the CRM software. 

Users of the free HubSpot CRM can benefit from highly capable client database software to assist in managing and maintaining new leads, with dashboard reporting, company insights, deal tracking, and pipeline management—all of which are portrayed simply via the user-friendly interface. 

A wide range of free tools is also at your disposal to organize your customer journey, including email tracking and templates, on-screen calling, and contact management. Plus, you can enjoy integration from over 300 third-party apps like Slack, along with lead-generation software. 

If you fancy upgrading from the free plan, both the Sales and Marketing Hubs start at $45 a month for two users, with additional features like task automation notifications and conversation routing included. 

Read our full HubSpot CRM review.

Best for sales

Website screenshot for Monday.com

(Image credit: Monday)
A dedicated sales CRM for small business

Specifications

Price: From $10 per user per month
Free plan: No
Trial: 14 days
Support: Email, live chat and request a call

Reasons to buy

+
Well designed interface
+
Good feature set
+

Reasons to avoid

-
A little pricey
-
Some may be disappointed in features at higher price points

If you're a sales and marketing leader, Monday Sales CRM is the perfect CRM platform for you. It's easy to use and has lots of tools to help you manage your customer journey. Plus, you can customize the software to fit your needs. You can send and receive emails, take notes during meetings, and view all your communications on one timeline.  

The main feature is managing contacts, which helps you keep track of all your clients and potential clients in one place. Yes, in fact all of your clients as it is unlimited to the number of contacts that you can have so this is a solution that can certainly grow with your business. Plus, you get email support with templates that save you time by automatically filling out personalized emails. 

Automation is another great feature that businesses can take advantage of. It can help you create custom workflows to get rid of admin stuff and make communication easier, but you'll need a plan that's higher than the basic one. But if you don't upgrade to a higher plan, you'll only be able to do 250 activities a month.  

Monday CRM has four different plans. Each plan has to have at least 3 seats, so it's not great for solo businesses as you will have to pay for seats that are unused. There's no free trial, but you can try it for two weeks and get 18% off if you pay annually.

Read our full Monday Sales CRM review.

Best for Gmail

Website screenshot for Streak

(Image credit: Streak)

6. Streak CRM for Gmail

Best for existing Gmail and Google Workspace users

Specifications

Price: From $15 per user a month
Free plan: Yes
Trial: 14 days
Support: Email, with priority support for Enterprise plans

Reasons to buy

+
Built into Gmail 
+
Free plan available
+
Simple to import and export data

Reasons to avoid

-
Expensive for larger teams

For existing users of Gmail and Google Workspace, Streak is the simplest CRM to incorporate into the daily operations of your small business. It is built directly into Gmail, so you can work from your inbox and enjoy integration with other Google Workspace apps like Sheets, Docs, Drive, and Chat to help keep all your data accessible and in one place. 

Streak CRM allows you to track client emails, manage contacts, monitor leads, and keep on top of your sales funnel. You can capture leads directly from your contacts, track and share client interactions, easily import or export data, create custom pipelines, and set tasks and reminders, among other things.

With a forever-free plan offering basic CRM to individual professionals, Streak CRM is highly affordable for single professionals or small teams and businesses. However, it can get pricey if you’re working within a larger team.

Best for user experience

Website screenshot for Pipedrive

(Image credit: Pipedrive)
Reduce friction with an excellent user experience

Specifications

Pricing: From $10 per user monthly
Free plan: None
Trial: 14 days
Support: Live chat and email

Reasons to buy

+
Drag-and-drop deal pipelines
+
Customizable reporting dashboard
+
Supports workflow automations

Reasons to avoid

-
Very limited email marketing tools
-
No project management features

Pipedrive is a popular CRM tool that’s affordable and thus suitable for small businesses with limited budgets. There’s no free plan, which is a drawback, but there’s a 14-day free trial period that you can start without inputting card details.

Pipedrive boasts of being a CRM “designed by salespeople, for salespeople”. True to its claim, you can do many things with this CRM. To start, you can set up your sales pipeline with ease; you may build a new template or use an existing one. Afterward, you can add deals to the pipeline or import them from a CSV spreadsheet. After adding the deals, you can always monitor the progress up until the deal closes. 

You can set up automatic alerts and reminders on Pipedrive to keep you on top of the deals. If a deal closes, the platform will automatically update your sales forecast to reflect it. Like many modern tools, Pipedrive incorporates some aspects of artificial intelligence that lets users automate mundane sales tasks.

This CRM is good for collaboration, so you can set up accounts for your staff to work together to close sales deals. As the administrator, you can always monitor their progress and remind them if they’re falling behind. You can create web forms using Pipedrive and embed them on your website to gather leads. The platform provides form templates designed by professionals, which you can edit to fit your tastes.

Pipedrive gives you detailed reports on your activities or that of your staff. However, we observed a pattern of customer complaints of the reporting features lacking depth and needing improvement.

Read our full Pipedrive CRM review

Best for project management

Website screenshot for Insightly

(Image credit: Insightly)
Manage project seamlessly

Specifications

Pricing: From $29 per user per month
Free plan: Yes
Trial: 14 days
Support: Email and telephone (at extra cost)

Reasons to buy

+
Integrated project management tools
+
User-friendly interface
+
250+ app integrations available

Reasons to avoid

-
No live support options included with plans
-
Inbuilt telephony feature costs extra

Insightly is a CRM platform that lets you handle all your sales functions. You can create custom workflows for your sales deals and track them as you progress toward closing the deal. You can create or update records and generate tasks for other users within your organization to handle. 

You can send emails to your leads and customers right within Insightly because it has integrations with email clients. The platform tracks the delivery of your emails and reports back important data such as open and click-through rates.

As a business owner, you have a great deal of control over what your staff can do on this CRM. You can set special permissions and visibility levels for each user or according to role or department. For example, normal employees may not be able to view detailed sales reports, while executives can. 

Another good thing about Insightly is that you can use workflow automation to automate a lot of mundane sales tasks. For example, you can set it to send an automatic email once a lead reaches a specific stage of your deal. You can also automatically update your sales forecast after closing a deal. These are just some examples of how your sales team can save time to be put to better use elsewhere. Creating these workflow automations requires a bit of technical knowledge, but it’s not as complex as typical programming.

What customers mostly highlight about Insightly is its extensive integrations with third-party tools. The platform is second to none in this category. You can link your Insightly CRM profile with many other tools for additional functionality. For example, you can link it to your BambooHR account to sync employee records with corresponding user profiles on Insightly or link it to your Shopify account to automatically capture customer details from your online store and add them to Insightly.

The main drawback we observed is that Insightly charges extra money for phone support, unlike most rivals. Without paying, you’re stuck with email support, which is much slower than phone support. 

Read our full Insightly review.

Best for tracking

Website screenshot for Workbooks

(Image credit: Workbooks)
Boost sales with advanced tracking

Specifications

Pricing: From $30 per user per month
Free plan: Yes
Trial: 30 days
Support: Email and telephone

Reasons to buy

+
Involved and supportive onboarding
+
Low price for the number of features
+
Free consulting days available

Reasons to avoid

-
Free version limited to two users
-
No large third-party app marketplace

Workbooks is another good CRM for small businesses. It enables you to track sales and interact with customers within one platform. You can use it to record and keep track of sales activities and ensure that no part of them is overlooked. 

Workbooks is very good at contact management; you could use every interaction with your lead or customer to capture knowledge about them and map relationships. You can also segment customers according to different factors and interact with each segment better. 

This platform provides tools to track your business’s finances closely. For example, you can track all your suppliers and their prices and record every communication you make with them. You can also create supplier contracts within the dashboard and keep track of each one. Likewise, you can create professional sales quotes to send to clients and track their status are they're fulfilled.

The area where Workbooks shines most is in its reporting features. The platform makes it easy to generate detailed reports that give you great insight into your sales pipeline. For example, the reports can help you identify which market segments and products are giving you the highest revenue. You can also easily monitor which salespeople in your organization are hitting or missing their targets.

The main drawback with this platform is that it has limited integrations with third-party software, unlike a rival like Insightly. 

Read our full Workbooks review.


Best CRM for small business compared

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Our picks for the best CRM for small business, compared
CRM softwarePriceFree plan?Trial periodSupport
SalesforceFrom $25 per user a monthNo30 daysEmail, ticketing, and phone
Freshsales$15 per user a monthYes21 daysPhone and email (Mon-Fri)
Zoho CRMFrom $14 per user a monthYes15 daysEmail (Mon-Fri)
HubSpotFrom $45 for two users a monthYes14 daysLive chat, phone, online meeting
Streak CRM for GmailFrom $15 per user a monthYes14 daysEmail, with priority support for Enterprise plans

How to choose the best CRM for small business

Ultimately, choosing the best CRM for small business depends on your needs—does software with more cost-effective pricing take precedence, or are the higher levels of personalization and efficiency that often come with a pricier plan more important?

For instance, Salesforce would be better suited to businesses undeterred by the higher costs associated with the higher levels of customization on offer. It can also expand with your business, while less efficient CRM platforms like Hubspot may struggle to keep up with demand as your business grows. Those looking for an easily-integrable, simple, and affordable CRM solution may want to consider Streak instead.

Overall, ease of use is an important factor to consider. CRM software is something that will be incorporated into the daily operations of your business, so you’ll want something that you and your colleagues can hit the ground running with—there’s no point investing in a technical CRM if no-one can understand it. 

You’ll also want to consider the features most beneficial to your daily operations, like project management features, lead generation tools, and third-party app integration, as the focus of each CRM software can differ. 

How we test

When finding areas of focus for reviewing CRM software, we look at key components to determine the overall quality of the user experience. We examine aspects like pricing by examining the plans that are available, how many users these allow, and whether any other additional costs are involved. 

We also look at the software features that would make your work life easier; reporting, automation, client management, and AI integrations, and whether there is adequate customer support on-hand to assist with this.

Other important areas in our reviews are software usability and support; is the interface user-friendly and intuitive? If you were to get stuck, is immediate support available 24/7, or will responses take two to three working days? By examining aspects like this, we can determine the overall user experience of the software and make informed recommendations.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.  


FAQs

Why do small business need a CRM?

While determining the best CRM for small businesses will depend on individual priorities, the software options presented in this buying guide are all strong contenders for small businesses—though ultimately, the size of your small business will likely determine the best option. 

For instance, Streak CRM and HubSpot both offer free plans which would suit individual professionals or businesses just starting out, while Freshworks prides itself on being a good all-rounder for small- to mid-sized businesses. Zoho would provide an ideal CRM for existing users of the Zoho Suite, while Salesforce leads the way overall as the CRM industry giant.

What does a CRM do? 

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Contact / lead management

Storing prospect details to nurture relationships are at the core of a CRM system. Integrations with contact apps and social media accounts are a plus, maximizing lead information for sales teams.

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Deal management

When a sales opportunity is identified, deal management optimises team productivity, making a deal more likely. Deal management can include setting milestones, tasks, and deadlines.

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Workflow automation

Automation ensures critical tasks are done and you save time. For example, email templates can be scheduled to go out to prospects when they reach a certain stage in the sales funnel.

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Bulk emails

Bulk emails can initiate and advance relationships, saving a sales teams time. Most CRM solutions store and personalize email templates and can customize recipient groups.

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Call and email logs

Tracking customer communications in a centralized CRM platform removes the need to rely on human memory and ensures teams are equipped with the latest information on the relationship.

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Lead generation

A good CRM system helps you gather new leads in a cost-efficient way. This can include inputting business card data via mobile app and scraping the internet for specific customer profiles.

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Lead assignment

If you’ve got a growing sales team, being able to assign leads to staff members is key to ensuring the best person is on the case, thus increasing the chances of closing deals.

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Reporting and analytics

Customizing and exporting reports on your sales and marketing activities helps you learn from successful deals and focus your attention on high-likelihood prospects.

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Drag-and-drop sales pipeline

For manual changes to your pipeline activities, drag-and-drop Kanban-style boards are a quick and easy way to update the status of different deals.

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Third-party integration

Integrating with other business software increases the information you have on contacts and can add new features, such as email campaign management.

Further reading on CRM software

If you want to find out more about CRMs, read our features asking what is CRM software, and what is a CRM in real estate. We also discussed five reasons why you need a small business CRM, and seven changes to a CRM for business that drive customer growth. You might also find our other buying guides helpful, which look at the best CRM for real estate and the best free CRM software.

We've also listed the best productivity tools.

Get in touch

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Christian Rigg

Christian is a freelance writer and content project manager with 6+ years' experience writing and leading teams in finance and technology for some of the world's largest online publishers, including TechRadar and Tom's Guide.

With contributions from