Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
- Highly affordable
- Intuitive interface
- Supports payment collection
- Integrates with other Zoho software and third-party tools
- VoIP capabilities
- No AI features
- Lacks a dedicated app for Windows
Bigin, the smaller sibling of Zoho CRM, targets start-ups and SMBs. As such, it sets aside some of the advanced capabilities of Zoho’s full-featured offering in favor of ease of use. But it still puts all the CRM features a growing business needs in one place, even including basic voice over IP (VoIP) capabilities. Bigin also integrates with other Zoho software and many third-party apps, making it simple to implement into your workflow.
If you don’t have much experience with CRM and don’t want a complex UI, a huge menu of features, or a commensurately steep learning curve, Bigin by Zoho is an excellent choice. And when your needs grow, Zoho makes it easy to upgrade to its full-featured CRM product.
Learn More
Bigin by Zoho CRM Review
- Affordable, feature-rich CRM
- Many customization options
- Minimal setup
- User-friendly interface
- Few third-party integrations
- Adopters should still anticipate a slight learning curve
Salesforce rewrote the book on CRM when it debuted in 1999, and today it’s widely considered the industry leader. Salesforce Starter is the company’s entry-level tier, aimed squarely at SMBs. It does a great job of walking new customers through the setup and training process while providing the robust functionality and customization the Salesforce platform is known for. Although its predecessor, Salesforce Essentials, was limited to small teams, Starter supports up to 325 users per instance. And when you’re ready to grow beyond that, Salesforce is more than ready to accommodate you.
If you insist on a world-class CRM system backed by world-class support, Salesforce is for you. Salesforce Starter is your SMB-friendly onramp to the Salesforce platform and ecosystem. However, it has a few drawbacks. For example, it has limited third-party software integrations and reporting capabilities. It’s true that Salesforce scales to meet the needs of any business; just prepare yourself for the price tag.
Learn More
Salesforce Starter Review
- One affordable plan
- Plenty of support and help options
- Looks great on mobile
- Limited reporting capabilities
- No way to add dedicated leads
This entry prides itself on not annoying its customers—or not as much as the competition, anyway—but its most outstanding feature might be its price, which is among the lowest of all the products we tested. Although “less expensive” can sometimes mean “low value,” Less Annoying CRM has an ample feature set that’s worth your consideration.
If you’re unsure how much budget you’re ready to commit to CRM, look this way. You’ll gain the contact management and business-process features you expect from a larger CRM vendor at a very affordable price, and hopefully, its ease of use and friendly UI won’t annoy you.
Learn More
Less Annoying CRM Review
- Modern user interface
- Customizable
- Offers in-app automations
- Includes templates
- Confusing pricing and plans
- Inconsistent and Byzantine navigation options
- Free plan isn’t designed for serious business use
Although CRM features aren’t Monday.com’s focus, it still provides all the basics. It primarily helps teams run projects effectively, a task that overlaps with key CRM functions. Highlights of the experience include a modern user interface and customizable workflow automations. Just keep in mind that you need to deal with Monday.com’s confusing pricing structure.
Monday.com won’t replace a full-featured CRM platform, but it doesn’t try to. Give it a look if your organization wants to move past the stage of using spreadsheets to manage contacts and could benefit from basic CRM capabilities (especially if you’re also looking for a workflow management tool).
Learn More
Monday.com Review
- Works with more than 400 integrations
- Excellent video tutorials
- Straightforward interface
- No Kanban view for Contacts section
- Few options for customizing analytics displays
- Limited customer support for lower-tier plans
SMBs should appreciate how easy Pipedrive makes it to get started. The CRM integrates with over 400 third-party software packages, so it’s easy to align with your existing workflows. You can further customize your experience with add-ons for tasks such as managing projects and issuing digital contracts. Pipedrive also features an AI assistant that can help you nurture leads and generate emails. Best of all, it offers an extensive library of self-guided training videos.
Pipedrive’s no-nonsense approach is ideal for companies looking to adopt CRM with as little friction as possible. Its AI features can be helpful for keeping track of leads, particularly for small teams and new hires. Just be aware of its slightly high costs and that you might need to spend some time tailoring it exactly to your needs.
Learn More
Pipedrive CRM Review
Best for Basic CRM Needs
Freshsales CRM
- Affordable base plan
- Intuitive interface
- Excellent onboarding support
- Lots of integrations
- Base plan lets you create just one sales pipeline
- Other CRMs offer more advanced features
Freshsales specializes in ease of use. Interface elements (including reporting and analytics dashboards) are both intuitive and attractive. Creating a new account takes just minutes, and the setup process lets you specify the type of business you run. Freshsales’ AI assistant, called Freddy, can analyze your contact profiles and make suggestions about how to close deals. Support and help resources are plentiful, too.
If you’re looking for a CRM that’s simple to set up and use, check out Freshsales. It offers a good mix of features without being overwhelming. The service’s base plan is very affordable for small teams, though pricing becomes less attractive beyond that.
Learn More
Freshsales CRM Review
Get Our Best Stories!
All the Latest Tech, Tested by Our Experts
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
The Best Small Business CRM Software for 2025
Compare Specs
Buying Guide: The Best Small Business CRM Software for 2025
What Is Small Business CRM Software?
If you’re trying to manage your customer contacts as an entrepreneur or part of a small business with more than 50 customers in a spreadsheet, you’ve probably already realized this is an unwieldy task. CRM systems take the pain out of this all-important function.
CRMs have two important advantages over simple contact lists or databases. First, they add internal features that directly handle other parts of your sales funnel, notably commission management, pipelining, and scheduling.
Second, and even more important, they help move customer data back and forth between systems. Hooking your CRM into the rest of your software stack means the details of every customer interaction are available on demand. That can include anything from lunch with a sales rep to form submissions, online chats, phone calls, and social media mentions. A sales rep can pull that data into a purchase conversation, while a help desk technician can use it to better understand the customer’s situation.
How Much Do Small Business CRMs Cost?
These types of CRMs can start at less than $10 per user per month and scale to upward of $50 per user per month. As with any subscription software, you should take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, it’s difficult to determine how well a particular CRM works until you start using it.
Your best bet is to look for a solution that is easy for non-specialists to grasp; you likely don’t have time (or budget) for lengthy, in-person training. You should also search for a product that includes FAQs, a knowledge base, and other support articles. User forums can also often be an effective support resource.
What Can a CRM Do for Your Small Business?
A CRM can gather all your company’s interactions with each customer and combine them with related data from sources such as accounting, inventory, marketing, and purchasing. This can help you maintain an accurate sales pipeline that can react quickly to new opportunities.
For example, if a help desk representative realizes a customer is ready for an upsell opportunity while addressing an unrelated support issue, that information doesn’t get lost in an email. A CRM can automatically snatch that data from the ticket, add it to a record, and place the details in the pipeline so a sales manager can parcel out the opportunity.
Salesforce Starter (Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)
Depending on how your sales department works, CRM data can appear in an app interface, an email, a Slack message, and on any device, especially mobile ones. Even more critical than fast dissemination is intake. That’s where you want to pay attention to a CRM’s automation capabilities.
By automating data gathering in the CRM and every app you connect, you get the data where you need it. Think of your sales pipeline as a funnel with a wide mouth at one end that grabs as much data as possible. By the time the information reaches the other end, the funnel has parsed it into useful units for the people who need it.
Smaller businesses’ primary challenge is deploying and integrating CRM systems with existing ones. This often requires significant effort from trained IT staff, who are likely to be in short supply or nonexistent at very small organizations.
Over the last couple of years, however, CRM vendors have begun directly addressing the needs of small business buyers. Some offer custom products with interfaces and features that target these audiences. Others pare down their flagship products to make them easier to use, all the while maintaining an easy upgrade path for growing customers.
How Do CRMs Handle Customer Data?
The primary function of any CRM should be to gather data. Whether from documents, phone calls, social media chats, or anything else, your solution should be able to grab information from all the key channels you use to interact with customers.
For example, if you’re gathering phone calls and social media chats, keywords might become important, especially mentions of a specific product name. The same might be true for a valued customer name or account number. You could match that against sentiment indicators, which should tell you the topic of any interaction and how the customer felt about it. It takes work, but intelligent data distribution is where CRMs can shine.
That routing function is less complex than the data gathering and parsing function, but it’s no less important. Your CRM can score top marks on gathering data and still fail overall if it can’t get that information to the right people at the right time. Customizing this process depends on how your salespeople do their jobs, meaning there’s no turnkey solution. To map your CRM’s notification features correctly, you need to ask your staff how sales actually happen.
Is a CRM Worth It for a Small Business?
SMBs represent a huge market. In fact, according to data from the US Small Business Administration, 99.9% of all businesses in the US qualify as small. That’s why some big CRM players are reacting accordingly.
For example, Salesforce, a behemoth in the CRM space, has developed an entry-level Salesforce Starter product. It uses the same platform as the company’s enterprise offering, just with a reduced set of features and a more straightforward interface.
However, even Salesforce’s most basic offering might be complex for some customers. Smaller CRM vendors compete by intentionally keeping the solution simple. Some do this by adding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, but most focus on building as many third-party software integrations as possible. For instance, Pipedrive CRM offers quick chatbots customers can drop into their sites, while Zendesk Sell plugs into the broader array of Zendesk help desk tools. Meanwhile, Freshsales CRM continues to develop integrations and focus on workflow automation and better sales analytics.
Recommended by Our Editors
It’s important to look to the future, too. Knowing how a CRM will grow with your company is vital. Work with sales leads to determine your present and future needs and investigate whether your CRM solution easily supports advanced analytics, digital marketing hooks, more users, and a larger contact base.
Make the Most of Third-Party Integrations
Small business CRMs might not come with all the capabilities of enterprise CRM platforms, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a unified system for your salespeople. Ensuring that your small business CRM can establish data relationships with other apps, especially those that are low-cost and target smaller companies, is critical if you want to get as much life from your purchase as possible.
Check your CRM’s integration and partner lists to see your options. Dedicated vendors can handle business analytics, email marketing, marketing automation, lead management, and even social media listening and selling. Opting for a low-cost partner integration might still be cheaper than paying for a larger CRM platform that includes those capabilities.
Less Annoying CRM (Credit: Less Annoying CRM/PCMag)
Another way to connect business systems is with Zapier, a popular and low-cost third-party automation and integration tool. It can help you tie various web services together into automated workflows. Although Zapier is dependable, its ease of use limits its data exchange features. Determine what you need from a third-party integration, and then decide whether you want to go DIY with Zapier or invest some money in a custom solution.
Take Advantage of Mobile CRM Apps
One of the most important aspects of SMB CRMs is the availability of effective mobile apps. These days, small businesses move around or have employees in many places. The devices that sales staff use can also vary widely. As such, it’s important that your CRM supports not just PCs but also tablets and phones.
Although some vendors try to sell mobile browser versions of their web apps as a solution for mobile device users, this kind of setup pales in comparison with a dedicated mobile app. Browser-based apps can access online databases and services. But they don’t interact directly with the features many mobile devices offer, including access to cameras and other sensors, near-field communication (NFC) for mobile payments, and security.
The mobile-first Bigin and Salesforce Starter offer apps with all the necessary features and controls of their desktop counterparts.
Oliver Rist contributed to this story.
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *