Payroll software solutions can be a way for a business to get a handle on the finances and keep the whole payroll process organized. While large, established companies will have a human resource team or entire departments that deal with payroll, for smaller businesses it makes sense to look into an alternative.
If you’re looking for a way to manage your payroll for less money but still have the advantages of a larger company, here are some of the best small business payroll software solutions available today.
Really Simple Systems
Really Simple Systems is an intuitive and straightforward CRM that ensures you have a great overview and easy control over your sales and marketing. It’s particularly suitable for the Australian market as it’s aimed at small and medium businesses like DNS, and those who operate B2B. And apart from being easy to use, it’s also easy to integrate with thousands of other business apps.
Another advantage of Really Simple Systems is the fact that it offers a high degree of customisation so you can basically choose and pay for exactly those features that your business needs, based on its size and industry. Really Simple Systems offers three price plans to choose from, but there is also a Free CRM option for two users and 100 company accounts.
The entry level Starter plan is perfect for sales tracking and small team collaboration, and features include unlimited contacts, 1,000 company records, 1GB of document storage and 5,000 API calls per month. With the Professional and Enterprise plans, you’ll get more space to store documents, more API calls and some really useful functionalities, such as user permission levels, email integration, lead management, database segmentation, campaign management, service level agreements and much more.
Looking at customer feedback, the real difference with Really Simple Systems is the a high level of customer support. The CRM includes pull out Help Drawers on each page with tutorial videos, tips for using the feature and links through to an extensive library of support resources. There are regular live webinars run to suit the Australian time zones, so there’s no fear of issues with time difference. In addition, Australian users will be happy to hear that Really Simple Systems has a sales and support office in Sydney that can be contacted by phone or email.
Price
- Free Version: Yes
- Starter: from AU$16 per user/month
- Professional: from AU$35 per user/month
- Enterprise: from AU$55 per user/month
Features
- Opportunity Management
- Lead Management
- Integrated Marketing Tool
- Custom settings
- Free customer support – Australian office
- Easy to use
Agile
Finally, Agile is one of the most robust CRM systems out there. It’s very versatile and offers a wide range of functionalities, from lead scoring to workflow automation to a landing page builder.
Nevertheless, it’s most famous for its marketing automation tools, especially the trigger-based email automation feature. This can help you create and execute successful email marketing campaigns. However, this feature does not come with a free plan, but instead with a standard one that costs $9.99 per user, per month.
One of the drawbacks of Agile is that it’s unnecessarily complex. This makes it too comprehensive and hard to work with, although most businesses don’t really need this level of complexity and this number of functionalities to manage their daily activities. Sometimes, less is simply more.
Price
- Free Version: Yes
- Starter: from $9.99 per user/month
- Regular: from $39.99 per user/month
- Enterprise: from $64.99 per user/month
Features
- Contact Management
- Lead Management
- Reporting
- Appointment Setting
Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android) Best free CRM with inexpensive upgrade options
As a free CRM, Vtiger is loaded with features many small businesses will find appealing: contact/deal management, support ticketing, email marketing, and a nice selection of reporting options, to name a few. It includes room for 10 users and up to 3,000 records. When you add the inexpensive upgrade paths—sales starting at $10/user or all-in-one starting at $30/user—Vtiger becomes a real bargain. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the free version and what you can expect when you upgrade.
The navigation is a little different from other CRMs. To access any of the app’s main functions, which Vtiger calls Modules, click on the hamburger at the top left. This displays a menu of all your apps with favorites at the top and the apps such as sales, marketing, and help desk underneath on the left side. If you hover over an app, all of its functions will display to the right for access. For example, for sales, you’ll see deals, email sequences, leaderboard, and others. Just click and go. It took me a bit to get used to it, but once I did, it made getting anywhere in the app speedy.
For contact records, you can calculate a Profile Score, which helps determine if a person falls within your ideal buyer profile. Under settings, you can assign numerical values for title, lead source, size of company, revenue, and industry. As long as these values are picked when creating a contact and company (e.g., using the title CEO gets 10 points), you’ll get a rating based on five stars appearing prominently at the top of a record. It gives your team some idea whether a contact is a good potential fit—but not how engaged they are like traditional lead scoring. In Vtiger’s paid plans, there’s another scoring system called Engagement Score, which tracks a contact’s engagement level with your email campaigns.
With the marketing module, you can build custom landing pages to capture contacts, segment those contacts into lists, and then send one-time emails. You get 1,000 email credits (one email = one credit) a month and can purchase additional send credits (e.g., 50,000 emails is $100) as needed.
I created a test campaign, and it was pretty smooth. You create your send list; set conditions for the list such as lead source, last contacted date, idle leads, and dozens more; and create your email using the email campaigns feature (which offers dozens of templates). Once you’re done, preview the email for desktop and mobile and then send yourself a test email before sending it to your list. Each campaign provides data for opens, clicks, bounces, and other metrics. Upgrading to paid plans provides significantly more email credits, campaign scheduling, and autoresponder campaigns that send emails based on triggers.
HubSpot CRM (Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android) Best free CRM for businesses wanting lots of integration options
If you use multiple apps within your company and want a CRM to integrate with them, there’s no better choice than HubSpot CRM. The mammoth App Marketplace has over 900 integrations available to various levels of HubSpot plans (e.g., Marketing Hub) with CRM free users able to choose from over 800 apps in categories such as eCommerce, analytics, events, finance, project management, and customer success. Not only that, but many of these third-party apps provide free editions, which allows greater accessibility for small businesses with limited resources. And the new, included Operations Hub provides additional data sync features for a select group of apps.
The CRM is forever free and includes unlimited users and room for up to one million contacts. Included are deal tracking, landing pages, live chat/chatbot, basic email marketing, and a ticketing feature for tracking service requests. All of these are designed to provide a taste of their meatier Sales, Marketing, and Service Hubs, which provide advanced features at tiered pricing.
For many, the CRM will be all that’s needed to track deals and manage relationships, especially if you’re integrating with other business apps in your stack. For example, a good first step is to connect your Outlook 365 or Gmail account, so you can email directly from a contact record, track conversations, and use the sales templates to quickly respond.
HubSpot makes managing relationships easy with a contact record showing all sales, ticketing, and website activity with a timeline of pages viewed if the tracking code is installed. It will also show activity from your integrations. For instance, if you use Mailchimp for email campaigns, the contact record will show sends, opens, clicks, and bounces. Similarly, an Eventbrite integration will show an event registration in the contact’s timeline.
Connecting apps was straightforward for the handful I connected, but if you get stuck, each app’s integration page has a setup guide and resources to help. Also note that not all of the integration features will be available to free CRM users because they require features from the advanced paid plans.
HubSpot’s Operations Hub was released in April 2021 as a way to provide easier and cleaner data syncing between the CRM and third-party apps. Currently, there are over 50 apps available for this new syncing feature. As a test, I connected my Zoho free account from the list of “data sync built by HubSpot” apps in the Marketplace. With a few clicks, both apps were connected. Then I chose how my contacts were to sync using the rule option (there are dozens of filters) for only the contacts where I was the owner. The contact fields that are matched between the two apps defaulted to 16—to get custom field options, you need to upgrade to a paid plan. Finally, I clicked the review button for a summary of the sync and then clicked save and sync to start the process. Within about 20 seconds, all my contacts were shared bi-directionally between the two apps. So my HubSpot contacts synced with Zoho and vice versa. Any contacts I added or changes I made in either app immediately appeared in the other. Check out HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Operations Hub for more details.
Zapier creates thousands of additional integration options for HubSpot. For example, you can automatically add new leads or email marketing contacts to HubSpot as contacts. Learn about five of the most popular ways to automate business operations in HubSpot.Copy new lead responses from Facebook Lead Ads to a HubSpot formUse this ZapCreate or update HubSpot contacts from new Mailchimp subscribersUse this ZapSee more HubSpot integrations powered by
HubSpot CRM Price: Free for unlimited users with free features from the Operations Hub included automatically; from $45/month/Hub if you add on the Marketing, Sales, or Service Hub. Operations Hub and CMS Hub plans start at $60/month and $23/month, respectively.
Streak (Gmail, iOS, Android) Best free CRM for Gmail users
Streak is one of the few free CRMs we could find that lives in your Gmail inbox, which means no separate app to log in to. If you’re a one-person operation wanting to manage contacts and deals from your inbox, Streak is worth a test drive.
Once you download their extension, you’ll see the orange icon in the top right corner of your inbox. Clicking on that will bring up your settings, help, integrations, and other options. One thing to note is that you can’t share your pipelines with others with the free plan (upgrade to the $49/month plan required), so this is ideally suited for one person.
Though it’s part of your Gmail, it does take a little getting used to because it doesn’t behave like other CRMs that have their own apps. It has a more Excel look and feel. That said, once you understand it, it’s nice to have one place to manage contacts, deals, and even projects. Contacts can be added from emails to leads and pipelines with a few clicks. Once added, all subsequent emails with that contact will be color-labeled as a lead and/or deal, and all details (tasks, notes, activity, etc.) appear in a right-hand column. To open up the contact’s full record, click on their email address in the column sidebar. Here you can see your full email history with the contact and add tasks, notes, and other activities.
To create a pipeline, click on the Pipelines plus sign directly under your Drafts folder. A Templates screen pops up, allowing you to pick a number of sales, support, HR, and other project-type pipelines, which can be customized with stages, stage colors, and fields (e.g., source, industry, priority).
One handy feature is email tracking. When a recipient opens your email, a pop-up will appear on your screen notifying you. Streak will then display the tracking history with that contact in the sidebar for any email thread, showing email views by date and location. A green eye icon indicates the email has been read, while an eye with a line through it indicates it hasn’t.
Conclusion
As a small business owner, you want to ensure face to face time with your clients. However, the internet has blurred the line between work and life, especially in regards to marketing and sales—two vital pieces of the puzzle when it comes to ensuring your small business succeeds. That’s why an essential part of any small business marketing plan needs to involve building your online presence so that social media presence becomes synonymous with your brand.