There are numerous software’s available for startups to help them grow. Having a customer relationship management (CRM) software helps to keep track of your clients interactions across all communication channels.
You can instantly see whether visitors are returning or not, which allows you to optimize your marketing spends and target advertising effectively. These CRMs helps the startups save their time and improve productivity.
Really Simple Systems
Benefits:
Really Simple Systems (RSS) is an easy-to-use, yet effective marketing automation, sales and service platform designed specifically for B2B. They offer a free version of their software for up to two users, which includes many of the core features of the paid product, including sales automation and customer service. It gives you unlimited contacts and 100 MB of document storage.
RSS contact management updates info and related tasks in real-time for clients, vendors, and suppliers. This is very useful for coordinating remote teams.
Drawbacks:
RSS doesn’t offer a lot of third-party integrations. Customization features are somewhat limited, and may not accommodate niche businesses, nonprofits, or non-traditional CRM applications (then again, it is designed for B2B). While serviceable, the mobile app is not the most user-friendly one out there.
Pricing:
- Free version for up to two users.
- Starter plan is $14 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Professional plan is $30 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise plan is $46 per user/per month, billed annually.
Zoho CRM
- Open source:
- Upgrade price: n/a
- CRM emails: 4,500
- Number of users: 3
- Unlimited leads and contacts:
- Analytics and reports:
- Top features: scoring rules, workflows, email notifications, web forms, custom dashboard
Zoho started as a cloud-based CRM. However, over time, they have also added diversification to the picture. Nowadays, they offer an all-in-one suite to help you manage everything from invoicing to customer management.
Although it’s not an open source CRM, it can be easily integrated with other platforms via third party apps. For instance, you can use Zapier to connect to eCommerce platforms like Shopify, which is otherwise not possible.
If you want to use it for a small business, I’d suggest that you go with the Standard plan featuring custom reports and analytics in addition to lead scoring, webhooks, etc. It’s a good choice for startups or new businesses.
3. Insightly
- Open source:
- Upgrade price: $29 per user/month, billed annually
- CRM emails: 25,000
- Number of users: 2
- Unlimited leads and contacts:
- Analytics and reports:
- Top features: sales tracking, forever free plan, user friendly UI
Insightly is a smart, simplified addition to our list of the best free and open source CRM. This tool focuses on improving your workflow and organization, and getting you better leads. It is marketed as a budget-friendly option for closing more deals, and that’s exactly what this CRM is about.
The free version offers fast onboarding and a free lifetime plan. Additionally, the integrated tracking system is great, which is ideal for newbies. It helps to track everything from sales prospects to delivered projects via the same dashboard.
That said, compared to some of its competition, Insightly provides slightly less features in the paid versions. Other than that, it’s a good CRM for carefully tracking customer relationships, monitoring a sales pipeline, and getting more insights on your sales process overall.
Even the main dashboard alone will provide you with highly detailed stats on your sales and pipeline. With Insightly’s free version, you will get access to around 25,000 records, including contacts, leads, organizations, reports, projects, and more.
Overall, I’d say it’s a great choice for businesses that aren’t looking for a lot of features and functionality options, but simply want to get started with a CRM fast.
Trello
Benefits:
A non-traditional CRM option with a simple and effective Kanban-view project management app that can work as a lightweight CRM. Very low learning curve and easy to use across mobile and web apps. The free version, although limited, may be sufficient for small business team collaboration and simple business processes.
Drawbacks:
Kanban view can become confusing as the complexity of your project increases. Limited file attachment size in the free version can be an issue with video files, Powerpoints, heftier PDFs, etc.
Pricing:
- Free version available, with limited features.
- Business Class plan is $9.99 per user/per month billed annually, and $12.50 per user/per month billed monthly.
- Enterprise plan is $20.83 per user/per month billed annually (price variable, figure given for 100 users).
Airtable
Benefits:
Airtable is a non-traditional, lightweight CRM with pleasing aesthetics as one of its main selling points.
The workflow management database aims to re-invent spreadsheets, letting users quickly link and interpret data from different sets. Users can play with design to tailor data sorting to their needs via customization. It’s easy and straightforward to import and export data as a CSV as well.
Drawbacks:
Airtable is indeed a “lightweight” CRM, so for more complex task management (i.e. with sub-tasks), you may find the platform is not ideal.
Pricing:
- Free version provides essential features.
- Plus version is $10 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Pro version is $20 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise version pricing is in consultation with vendor.
Streak
Benefits:
Streak is a fully integrated Gmail CRM that lives in your inbox. Based in a familiar environment, the app streamlines CRM adoption for new users.
The free version of the app is mainly for personal use and includes basic CRM tools and full email features. The email templates feature is an excellent way of sending out a high volume of personalized emails. You can also manage leads and sales with unlimited pipelines. Make notes in-app for centralized record keeping, track data on your correspondence with contacts, and check whether leads have opened your emails or not.
Drawbacks:
Since Streak runs as a browser extension, every time you change devices, you’ll have to download it again. It’s a relatively lightweight CRM solution and may not be up to the task if you deal with relatively complex business processes.
Pricing:
- Personal version is free for individual users.
- Professional plan is $49 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise plan is $129 per user/per month, billed annually.
Bitrix24
Benefits:
The cloud version of Bitrix24 is free for up to 12 users and offers 5GB of data storage space. It has largely the same features as the paid version, albeit presented in a scaled-down form. All told, it’s a pretty generous gratis product offering.
The Bitrix24 CRM provides all the necessary features via a clean UI (with a particularly nice Kanban view), like pipeline management, reporting, and sales tracking. The app’s communication kit encompasses voice, chat, email, and video—so you can always reach a contact on the best channel.
Drawbacks:
Bitrix24’s UI doesn’t always offer the most intuitive navigation, and the app can slow down from time to time. There’s a moderate learning curve and the customizability features may not be sufficient for niche business applications.
Pricing:
- Free starter business tool suite for up to 12 users.
- CRM+ plan for up to 6 users is $55 per user/per month billed annually, and $69 per user/per month billed monthly.
- Project+ plan for up to 24 users is $55 per user/per month billed annually, and $69 per user/per month billed monthly.
- Standard plan for up to 50 users is $79 per user/per month billed annually, and $99 per user/per month
- Professional plan is $159 per user/per month billed annually, and $199 per user/per month for an unlimited number of users.
The prices above are for the cloud-based version. On-premise solutions are also available.
Insightly
Benefits:
Insightly’s free version is not very well advertised (hidden at the bottom of their pricing page), so consider this a semi-insider tip. The unpaid version features a clean user interface, with project, contact, and customer management and pipeline features to keep your sales process humming.
The software provides native integration with G Suite and Microsoft 365, as well as Mailchimp and many others. Training videos are available to explain features in a straightforward way, easing the learning curve.
Drawbacks:
Insightly’s free version is limited to up to two users. The free version also lacks a data backup system, sets daily caps for mass emailing, and limits how many custom fields can be added for each record. More useful lead assignment modules are only available in the paid plans.
Pricing:
- No-frills plan for up to 2 users is free.
- Plus is $29 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Professional is $49 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise is $99 per user/per month, billed annually.
A 14-day free trial is available for the Plus and Professional plans.
Apptivo
Benefits:
Apptivo provides a flexible suite of apps focused on customizability. Their starter version is free, and offers many of the core tools from their full kit and 500 MBs of storage. The number of users is capped at three.
The contact app allows you to import data from emails and websites, so you can populate your contact and lead data with minimal manual entry. Project management apps in the Apptivo universe offer individual and team organization, while the Cases app automates customer inquiries by turning emails into tickets with a service-level agreement.
Drawbacks:
The free version of Apptivo doesn’t support third-party integrations. Sometimes it runs a bit slow, and the user interface, while fit for its purposes, is not necessarily the most intuitive.
Pricing:
- Starter plan is free for up to three users.
- Premium plan is $8 per user/per month, billed annually.
- Ultimate plan is $20 per user/per month, billed annually.
Flowlu
Benefits:
Handle project management and build a knowledge base in one place. Create personalized invoices with CRM data auto-inserted into each invoice. Build web forms to generate leads and invite customers to upcoming surveys and events in-app. Free version for 2 users offers 1 TB of storage data.
Drawbacks:
Financial reporting features may not be deep enough, depending on your business. Task filter function is a bit clunky. Collaboration tools are not advanced.
Pricing:
- Free for up to two users.
- Team plan is $29 for all users/per month billed annually, and $39 for all users/per month billed monthly.
- Business plan is $59 for all users/per month billed annually, and $74 for all users/per month billed monthly.
- Professional plan is $119 for all users/per month billed annually, and $149 for all users/per month billed monthly.
- Enterprise plan is $239 for all users/per month billed annually, and $299 for all users/per month billed monthly.
Conclusion
Sales CRM is the best software for tracking your sales and progress, success ratio and other data regularly. Here we are discussed which CRM is good for small businesses and startups as well as top CRM features and reviews of CRM for startups.