A customer relationship management system allows companies to track and record all of their customers’ data, thus making it easier to improve their marketing campaigns and communications with customers via email, mailings or telemarketing. A CRM’s features will vary depending on the software you decide to use, but typically it will allow you to store information about your customers such as their contact information, sales history, purchase history and the times they purchased from your business.
Tools often used with customer relationship management systems include sales force automation tools that automate lead generation for salespeople, email marketing systems that collect information about subscribers and direct mail marketing tools that help maximize your postal campaigns.
HubSpot
Best free CRM software for its generous daily email send limit
It’s hard to argue with HubSpot’s free plan. Unlimited free users? One million free contacts? 2,000 bulk email sends? If you hadn’t already seen how steep HubSpot’s paid plans are, you’d wonder how it makes any money!Try HubSpot for free, now
Of course, on the free plan, you won’t be privy to HubSpot’s more developed features for businesses – that’s a given. But as contact management software with a few marketing features thrown in – including webforms, list segmentation, and basic ad management – HubSpot’s free version excels.
Sales teams too can benefit from live chat and conversational bots, while HubSpot’s drag-and-drop ticketing feature will make life easier for your customer service agents.
| Free users | Unlimited |
| Free contacts | 1,000,000 |
| Free storage | Unlimited |
| Free daily bulk email sends | 2,000 |
| Free support | Knowledge base, community forum |
To upgrade, HubSpot’s offerings for sales, marketing, or customer service teams each cost £33.60 per month for up to two users, based on the ‘Starter’ plan.
| Cost to upgrade | |
|---|---|
| Product | Starting price |
| Sales | £16.80 per user, per month |
| Marketing | £16.80 per user, per month |
| Service | £16.80 per user, per month |
Our only word of warning re HubSpot is to take care with the contact limit. Though you’re privy to up to one million contacts with the free version, if you choose to upgrade to HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, your contacts will automatically appear in both places.
And guess what? HubSpot’s rates are determined by none other than your contact limit – so, if you’re not careful, you could end up paying through the nose to store a heap of contacts that used to be free.
✔ Pros:
- When it comes to users, contacts, and data storage, it’s effectively limitless
- Slick UX (user experience) across all devices
- Superlative online customer review scores
X Cons:
- One of the more expensive free CRM software solutions to upgrade
- Extremely limited customer support (at least, until you become a paying customer!)
Freshworks CRM
Best free CRM software for its lack of limitations
Freshworks offers a free plan (aptly-named ‘FREE FOREVER’) across all its products, and for teams of all shapes and sizes. Like HubSpot, Freshworks CRM’s free product gives you unlimited users and unlimited contacts, as well as mobile CRM. Yet, unlike HubSpot’s free CRM, Freshworks CRM’s complimentary plan also provides you with unlimited records, as well as 24/7 email-based support. So how do each of Freshworks CRM’s free products break down?Try Freshworks CRM free for 21 days
| Free users | Unlimited |
| Free contacts | Unlimited |
| Free storage | Unlimited |
| Free daily bulk email sends | None |
| Free support | 24/5 phone and chat support, 24/7 email support |
Well, Sales Cloud (Freshworks’ offering for sales teams) offers all the basics in terms of lead, account, and deal management, as well as a visual pipeline builder. Crucially, it also adds lead scoring into the mix – a feature usually reserved for CRM software’s premium plans.
Marketing Cloud offers marketing teams a free solution for building emails, with web forms and limited CRO (conversion rate optimisation) tools thrown in. Likewise, Freshdesk offers customer service teams a free ticketing system for dealing with issues (plus a few basic reporting features), but not too much else.
You can also lump for Freshworks CRM’s ‘Customer-for-Life Cloud‘ plan. It’s a package that includes sales and marketing automation features, as well as chat and telephony, for an affordable price.
| Cost to upgrade | |
|---|---|
| Product | Starting price |
| Sales Cloud | £25 per user, per month |
| Marketing Cloud | £15 per month |
| Freshdesk | £11 per user, per month |
| Customer-for-Life Cloud | £25 per user, per month |
Upgrading scores you a wealth of benefits – most notably for marketing teams, who’ll get list segmentation and a drag-and-drop email builder to play with. Purchasing one of Freshworks CRM’s paid plans also allows you to integrate the CRM with a range of third-party applications – something the free version lacks.
✔ Pros:
- Unlimited users, contacts, and storage. Full stop.
- The interface is a genuine pleasure to use and navigate
- 21-day free trial available when you upgrade
X Cons:
- Free plan is hampered its lack of daily bulk email sends
Bitrix24
Benefits:
Based on number of users, Bitrix24 is one of the most popular free CRM in the world. Bitrix24 provides a cloud CRM solution that’s free for up to 12 users, with a cap on data storage of 5 GB. Features-wise, it provides largely the same range as paid plans, albeit scaled-down. Everything you need is there: pipeline management, lead management, sales tracking, reporting, task automation, and more.
The user interface helps make Bitrix24 easy to use (the Kanban view is especially good). There’s voice, email, chat, and video channel access in-app, and mobile apps for iOS and Android to ensure your team can clinch deals and defuse issues at critical moments.
Drawbacks:
While the UI looks nice, it’s sometimes a bit confusing to navigate through different modules. Customization possibilities may not be robust enough for complex and/or specialized business applications. The app can lag sometimes.
It should also be said that Bitrix24’s learning curve is firmly in the ‘moderate’ category.
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.
Learn More: Bitrix24
Streak
Benefits:
Streak provides a fully integrated Gmail CRM built into your inbox. Piggybacking off this familiar everyday software tool, the app makes CRM adoption easy for new users.
The free version of Streak, intended for personal use (i.e. freelancers and solo entrepreneurs), includes basic CRM tools and pretty comprehensive email features. Email templates allow you to personalize emails and send them out at high volume, a far more effective alternative to generic mass-blast email marketing.
To populate your mail lists, you can effortlessly pull contact information and data from Google Sheets using the Streak CRM Importer add-on, or import offline CSV files. This means it’s no longer necessary to fill in the blanks and email everyone one-by-one.
Email tracking gives you a heads up on who read your email, and where on earth they read it (thanks to a handy map view), as well as how many times. This is excellent for increasing visibility across your team, but particularly salesâ —when you know someone read your message and understand their behavior a bit more, you can move the sales process along by following up in a way that’s both well-timed and appropriate. You’ll be able to avoid repetitive email practices and nurture the correct customer relationships.
Call logs and meeting notes, meanwhile, help keep an easy-to-find record of your non-inbox interactions, organized chronologically and by type. You’ll also be able to manage leads and sales by creating any number of pipelines you might need (the free version provides for unlimited pipelines too). Keep in-app notes, centralize record-keeping, utilize data tracking on your contact correspondence, and find out if leads have or haven’t opened your emails.
Drawbacks:
Streak is a browser extension, which is inconvenient when it comes to changing devices, as it’ll be necessary to download the extension and log in again on every new device you access. Given that Streak is a lightweight CRM, it might not work for more 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.
Learn More: Streak
Zoho
Best free CRM software for user-friendliness
If there’s one thing Zoho can be relied upon to do, it’s provide simple, no-frills CRM at a low cost. And, though its free version was never going to break any new ground, it’s still a solid, dependable selection for (very) small teams.Free plan or free 15-day trial? You choose
| Free users | Three |
| Free contacts | Not specified |
| Free storage | 1GB (files), 10MB (data) |
| Free daily bulk email sends | None |
| Free support | Knowledge base, community forum, email, customer portal |
Zoho’s free CRM software includes all the lead and contact management stuff you’d expect. You’ll also get rudimentary filtering features and some level of customisation, plus workflow rules and standard reporting functionality.
The bad news is, that’s about all there is to Zoho’s free CRM. The good news is, it won’t cost you much to unlock the meaty features needed to grow your business.
| Cost to upgrade | |
|---|---|
| Product | Starting price |
| Sales/Marketing/Service | £10 per user, per month |
✔ Pros:
- Affordable
- Integrates natively with the other products in Zoho’s range of productivity tools and business software
- Simplistic user interface…
X Cons:
- …maybe a little too simplistic!
- No phone-based support
- Poor online customer approval ratings
Wait a second…
You’ve just finished exploring our top three selections for the best free CRM software in the UK. Now, why not get an even better idea of which one’s right for you, by taking advantage of our free quote-finding service?
Simply provide us with some details about your business’ specific requirements. We’ll then match you to one or more CRM suppliers that fit your needs, who’ll be in touch with you directly to provide more information and tailored quotes.
If you’re not quite at that stage of your journey yet, read on for the best of the rest.
Conclusion
Software is altering the manner small businesses interact with their clients, partners and associates. It is delivering the aptitudes to deliver speedy, coordinated, associate endorsed administrations. They can oversee their associations enabling them to offer their administrations consistently to the general population needing them.