CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management software. It’s a specific type of software used for customer interaction – mostly – but also other things. Want to learn about the best free crm software? Or about the best free crm for small business? Check out these crm software reviews and find your match!
The awesome thing about small business is that if you are working for it, it will never fail. But at the same time, every minuscule detail must be well-planned. Managing contact information of your clients can be very challenging because not all of them are equally important to you. Here in this article, I have made a list of free CRM software which you can install in your computer or web server and manage information about your clients in a professional way.
Freshworks CRM
At the top of our rating is Freshworks CRM, designed for small to midsize businesses. Freshworks CRM offers CRM and marketing tracking in its Forever Free plan. Freshworks CRM’s free plan includes access for unlimited users, contact management, and lead management through lead capture forms and website tracking. Users can leverage the built-in phone system and web chatbot to extend their customer communication touchpoints. As needs grow, businesses can upgrade to a paid program starting at $35 per user per month (billed monthly).
Freshsales
Benefits:
Freshsales is a full-fledged sales force automation solution for sales teams. It provides everything a salesperson needs to— attract quality leads, engage in contextual conversations, drive deals with AI-powered insights, and nurture customer relationships.
With built-in email, phone, chat, and telephony, Freshsales empowers sales teams with more time for selling by automating the sales process and increases efficiency and productivity in their daily activities. With Freddy AI, salespeople can get insights into the best deals to go after and what actions to take and predict revenue with sales forecasting. Businesses can take the next step forward towards powerful pipeline management with Freshsales. Also, the option to use native CPQ makes generating and sharing quotes and other vital sales assets hassle-free.
Drawbacks:
Like many vendors, some of the better features are reserved for premium packages. Among these for Freshworks CRM are time-based workflows, some chatbot tools and advanced metric reporting. But overall, the free and basic plans are a decent place to start, and you can always upgrade.
Pricing:
- There is a Free Forever Startup plan
- Growth plan is $15 per user/month billed annually
- Pro plan is $39 per user/month billed annually
- Enterprise plan is $69 per user/month billed annually
Agile CRM
Agile CRM integrates sales, marketing, and customer service in a single platform, making it easier for different teams to collaborate on deals and customer information. In addition, it is capable of managing unlimited tasks and deals. It also comes with a wide range of features, including lead scoring, email tracking, web engagement, landing page builder, and help desk tools.
Among the setbacks of Agile CRM’s free plan are its 10-user limit and 1,000-cap on saved contacts and companies. It also allows only one third-party integration, limiting your options to extend its capabilities. HubSpot CRM, on the other hand, allows you to integrate it with other apps from its Marketplace, supports an unlimited number of users, and can store up to a million contacts and companies. Bitrix24 also does the same and includes unlimited contacts.
Agile CRM Free Plan Features
Agile CRM’s sales dashboard (Source: Agile CRM)
- Sales automation features include custom data fields, lead scoring, appointment scheduling, custom deal milestones, and email tracking
- Unlimited deals, tasks, and documents
- Marketing features include email campaigns, website visitor tracking, contact level analytics, form builder, email templates, landing pages, and web-to-lead forms
- One campaign workflow and one automation rule
- Service tools include help desk, ticket labels, canned responses, and next recommended activities
- Basic reports on activities and performance
- One plugin or integration
- Access to email support
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Agile CRM’s paid plans include more extensive sales, marketing, and customer service tools like in-app calling, marketing automation, social monitoring, and a knowledge base. Aside from that, they have higher limits on campaign workflows, automation rules, and third-party integrations. Upgrading also gives you access to 24/5 phone support, a dedicated account manager, and onboarding services.
To further understand how this CRM provider can help improve your business, visit our Agile CRM review page.
Less Annoying CRM
Benefits:
Less Annoying CRM (aka LACRM) is designed as an all-inclusive CRM solution for small businesses. They offer a long 30-day free trial. After that, they have a single, low-cost paid plan.
LACRM handles task management, lead-to-sale, contact management, and follow-ups. Manage all your customer data, track your leads through sales pipelines. Stay on top of events and to-dos (in easy-to-use calendar and agenda formats). Makes a great real estate crm.
Emails written and received outside a CRM platform can be logged inside LACRM. The app provides every user with a unique email logging address. You can create a contact with whatever email provider you use.
Drawbacks:
There are minimal app integrations, which might be a significant limitation, depending on your needs. The app sends out notifications by SMS or email, but not in-app, which feels a bit retro.
Pricing:
- $15 per user/per month, billed monthly.
LACRM offers a risk-free, 30-day free trial for its only pricing plan.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM was built around HubSpot’s focus on customer and client engagement. Its free CRM plan provides the features needed to start tracking clients and prospect interactions as well as access to some of HubSpot’s marketing features. HubSpot’s free CRM tools include lead and contact tracking, ticketing systems to manage customer support, and marketing tools such as email templates and a website messenger tool.
As your needs grow, you can upgrade to add CRM and marketing tools with the HubSpot Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and more.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM offers sales force and marketing automation features, basic customization options, and standard reporting tools. This solution enables you to set workflow automation triggers and includes collaboration tools like team messaging, follow-up rules, status updates, and file sharing. You also get access to customer support via email during business hours.
While Zoho CRM is a good starting point for small businesses because it supports up to three users, other providers allow more users. Aside from that, you can only integrate it with other apps in the Zoho ecosystem. Try HubSpot CRM or Bitrix24 if you want a free CRM that supports an unlimited number of users and third-party app integrations.
Zoho CRM Free Plan Features
Zoho CRM’s lead management tab (Source: Zoho CRM)
- Lead, contact, account, and deal management
- CRM views, advanced filters, tasks, events, logs, and notes
- Page customization and tab renaming options
- Workflow rules automation
- Standard reports
- Marketing automation features include 10 email templates, email opt-out, and email authentication
- Web-to-lead and web-to-contact forms
- Collaboration tools include calendars, status updates, direct messaging, file attachments to feeds, and follow-up rules
- Website visitor tracking
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Access to knowledge base, community forum, 24/5 support via email and phone (for critical requests only)
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
Zoho CRM’s paid plans offer a wider range of features that include sales forecasting, multiple pipelines, custom reports, social data enrichment, marketing campaigns, and inventory management. Higher pricing tiers provide you with access to its AI-powered sales assistant. It also offers you access to paid priority support, starting at $114 per month.
Really Simple Systems
Benefits:
Really Simple Systems (RSS for short) doesn’t shy away from touting their marketing automation, sales and service platform as simple—but that doesn’t mean it lacks sophistication, it’s just really easy to use. This is especially handy for companies with distributed offices and remote workforces.
While they have paid-for versions, their free option is more than just a temporary trial offer for companies up to two users, so budding businesses and solo entrepreneurial ventures can use the CRM without watching the calendar. It allows for unlimited contacts and up to 100 MBs of document storage. The free version includes many of the core features including sales automation and customer service.
Free users will be able to access distinct management tools for both contacts, which updates in real time all relevant info and related tasks for contacts, vendors and suppliers; and leads, which aims to convert contacts into eventual sales. RSS also does reporting their own way, dividing up the action in two parts.
For one, there’s ‘Listing reports’ for quick stats on simple questions like, “how many hits did we get this month?” (you can formulate more complex questions too). Then there’s ‘Forecast reports’ which focus on expected sales numbers in a variety of time frames.
For small businesses in the B2B game, RSS makes moving into the CRM zone a snap.
Drawbacks:
Generating reports is probably more complex than it needs to be. Opportunities system can be a bit clunky to use. Email marketing could be better; the email templates are fairly basic.
Also, if you’re using Outlook, you can’t link tasks to trigger active reminders in your inbox.
Pricing:
- Free plan for up to 2 users.
- Starter plan is $14 per user/per month billed annually, and $15 per user/per month billed monthly.
- Professional plan is $30 per user/per month billed annually, and $33 per user/per month billed monthly.
- Enterprise plan is $46 per user/per month billed annually, and $50 per user/per month billed monthly.
Conclusion
One of the challenges faced by small business is the ability to effectively manage the business operations. A good customer relationship management software is essential to managing small businesses, regardless of whether you are trying to organize your team or your customers better.