Every small business needs CRM or Customer Relationship Management. A CRM tool helps small businesses to boost sales, drive growth, and offer amazing customer experiences.
As a startup company, it is very essential to have organic traffic to stand a chance in the market and CRM tools help you with that. Some of the benefits of using CRM tools are as follows:
- It helps in organizing your contacts
- Generating reports for marketing strategies
- Saving time
- helps to earn more money
Picking up the right CRM tool can be tricky. You have to check the features that particular tool offers and ensure it meets your business strategies and requirements. Some of the factors that you need to check before finalizing the CRM tool are:
- Ease of Use
- Cost-Effective
- Customization Features
- Automation Features
- Customer Support
There are many CRM tools available now that provide amazing features that help in supporting your small business or startup. We have picked out the 7 best CRM tools for startups. Which are:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- FreshSales
- Zoho
- Monday
- ClickUp
- Agile CRM
In this blog, we will dig deeper into each tool to give you a better understanding. So without much lagging, let’s get into the topic of the best CRM for startups or small businesses.
1. Salesforce
One of the best CRM tools will be Salesforce. It has become a necessity to have business apps in meeting your target customers and maintaining a good relationship with them, Salesforce includes all the tools and services required to build apps.
Even though Salesforce is broad and extensive, you can easily learn. If you find it complex to grab, you can take up a Salesforce training course online and become a master within a few weeks.
Salesforce offers numerous benefits such as developing marketing campaigns and tracking, keeping customer issues on track, reporting features, visual dashboards, and a ton more.
Key Features of Salesforce:
- Salesforce CRM tool provides efficient and easy contact management by giving access to customer data and the previous history of customer interaction
- Another key feature of Salesforce is opportunity management by showing the customer’s behavior timelines and various stages of a particular deal.
- Offers access to up-to-date activities of contact with leading practices in the industry
- Helps in keeping track of email and assigning it to the right executive
- Maintaining accurate sales forecasts and helps in getting a precise view of your business
- Excellent data management
Pricing Plan:
- Free Trial
- Essentials: $25/month per user
- Professional: $75/month per user
- Enterprise: $150/month per user
- Unlimited: $300/month per user
User Experience :
I like the customizability the most. You have one database with all data of your leads, accounts, and opportunities. You can also customize the different views administrative or individual, and thus will be able to adjust the data to your role.
Salesforce will be always the best CRM application to grow our business because of its excellent features. Integration of third-party and add-on options it offers.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- With modern and innovative features, it helps businesses to be up-to-date
- Ease of use
- Amazing customer support
Cons
- At times automation fails and provides inaccurate data
2. HubSpot
Hubspot is one of the free CRM for startups that offers basic features. This easy customizable CRM tool helps in connecting everything for a company to give best-class customer experiences.
HubSpot is powered by a single CRM database which helps in keeping the same system record for different departments. The benefits of Hubspot CRM are numerous such as creating tags, scheduling calls, creating email templated, and much more.
Key Features of HubSpot:
- Great Email marketing platforms with amazing email automation features.
- Offers an excellent feature in managing workflows for improving project management
- Works in both G-suite and Microsoft Office making it easier to run business
- The paid version offers features such as artificial intelligence, advanced automation, and reporting.
- Offers one place to keep all valuable information about customers, partners, and leads
Pricing Plan:
Free Tool: Offers basic features such as marketing tool, sales tool, CMS tools, service tool, and operational tool.
CRM Suite:
- Professional: Starting from $1600 per month comprising advanced features and tools
- Enterprise: Starting from $4999.99 per month for the most powerful tools in marketing, sales, CMS, service, and operation
User Experience:
The ability to streamline marketing activities, all thanks to HubSpot! It has made it possible for me to interact with potential clients, respond to them promptly, and have quick access to all event details. It also provides numerous range of options, starting from workflow to sequence creation all the way to data analysis and also report creation necessary for business evaluation and improvement
Hubspot offers that are beyond the standard CRM aspects (prospect management, integrations, tracking, etc.), the workflows, and automation vastly to enhance the overall experience of the sales and the prospect’s receiving end.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- All tools in one place
- Can send up to 2000 mailers per month in the free version
- All the basic features in the free version
- Live chat support
Cons
- Payment for additional technical support
- Templates are hard to modify
3. FreshSales
FreshSales is another cloud-based CRM software that helps businesses in managing their interaction with potential and existing customers. Included features such as a one-click phone, sales management, event tracking, sales lead tracking, and many more.
The FreshSales platform helps the business in many ways such as creating and monitoring sales activities, synchronizing data, storing customer information, adding custom fields, and a ton more. It also runs chat campaigns with the motive to interact with customers.
Key Features of FreshSales
- Excellent user experience in designing the system using simple and effective integration models
- Includes a feature that makes it possible for multiple sets of pipeline systems.
- Managing customer contact information dynamically and segregating the details based on company, business, group or campaigns, etc.
- Automation in scanning and capturing customer information
- Includes feature for automation of workflows
- Provides bulk email facility
- Features such as auto dialing, scheduled dialing, and routing the calls
Pricing Plan:
Growth Plan: Cost around $15 which is perfect for small and fast-growing teams
Pro Plan: Cost around $39 perfect for large teams
Enterprise Plan: Cost around $69 perfect for enterprise
*Free trial is also available for each plan
User Experience:
Easy setup, intuitive interface, good Gmail integration, decent price. I called them once for help on a Saturday and the person who answered was very helpful.
Freshsales is very helpful for the user to know more tools to evaluate potential customers. Freshsales has excellent communication, which we highly recommend to handle sales opportunities.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Easy and simple to use
- Great scope of features
Cons
- The reporting system is not that good
4. Zoho
Another best CRM tool for startups is Zoho. Included great features that help the business to take control of its process and build a lasting relationship with customers. The customizable web-based platform makes it suitable for industries of all types and sizes.
Zia which is an AI-powered sales assistant in Zoho CRM helps the sales team and individual reps to detect anomalies before their occurrence, studying the patterns and also suggesting the best time to contact the prospects.
Key Features of Zoho
- Features such as automation of salesforce
- AI powers sales assistant Zia helps in workflow suggestions to help you save time
- Include features to analyze the patterns and trends of time-bound sales processes such as lead conversion time and sales process
- Zoho CRM quadrant analysis helps in organizing the information into matrices.
- Help you to get access to all Zoho CRM dashboards with Zoho CRM analytical app
Pricing Plan:
Standard Plan: Cost around $14 per month (free trials available)
Professional Plan: Charges $23 per month (free trials available)
Enterprise Plan: Cost $40 per month (free trials available)
Ultimate Plan: Cost $52 per month (free trials available)
User Experience:
It took a bit of time to get and run up Zoho, but their live chat, email support, and YouTube channel made the process very easy and simple. Overall, we are very pleased with ZOHO CRM which is the best all-in-one platform.
In my organization, we need access to our customers’ information, anywhere, so we think we should migrate everything to Cloud, and Zoho helped us do it quickly and easily.
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Easy to access even from cell phones
- Makes it easy to find customers and run the business process
Cons
- Limitations in Dashboard
5. Monday
Monday CRM is a perfect solution software tool for small business owners and sales managers. This is a no-code and customizable software that helps the managers and the sales teams to get control of the entire sales cycle.
It helps small business owners to reduce repetitive manual work and focus on building a good relationship with their customers. The two-way email integration features help in sending and receiving emails directly from Monday sales CRM. Tracking has never been easy with Monday sales CRM live notification to know whether the customer opened the sent email to keep the flow of communication.
Key Features of Monday CRM:
- Maintaining many sales activities in one centralized platform
- Includes a feature that enables no-code automation.
- Customizable no-code dashboards
- Features to manage contact information, track deal status and grow customer relationships with so much ease
- Two-way email integration with Gmail and Outlook
- Ready-made templates available
- Live notification for tracking
Pricing Plan:
Individual CRM: Free with up to 2 seats
Basic Plan: $10/seat/month
Standard Plan: $17/seat/month
Pro Plan: $30/seat/month
Enterprise Plan: Contact monday.com
User Experience:
The platform is strong and amazing, it provides enough automation to automate any workflow. The customer support is excellent, the folks are quick to respond and help you out with any particular requirements.
It allows you to invite others and share timelines with them. This platform made it very easy to stay organized and share progress with free viewers.
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Easy to use and visually pleasing interface
- Amazing CRM features to support your startup and small business
Cons
- Reporting is limited
6. ClickUp
If you are a small business owner, Clickup will make it easy for you to organize and grow customer relationships by making use of tracking, email, data visualization, and a ton more under one platform. This is an all-in-one productivity tool for any type of business.
ClickUp comprises all the features that make the workflow easy. There are numerous benefits of using ClickUp as a CRM tool such as saving time, boosting efficiency, easily growing customer relationships, and optimizing the business’s growth potential.
Key Features of ClickUp:
- Feature to choose 15+ multiple views
- Complete customizable platform
- Include features to streamline all communication in one platform
- Real-time Reporting
- Fully customizable templates
Pricing Plans:
Free plan: Good for personal use
Unlimited plan: Costs $5 per member per month ideal for small teams
Business Plan: Costs $12 per member per month ideal for mid-sized teams
Business Plus Plan: Cost $19 per member per month ideal for multiple teams
Enterprise: Contact ClickUp’s official website
User Experience:
It’s vividly easy and simple to use, even for non-tech-savvy users. This platform makes it even easier to project managers to have a complete look at all project statuses at all times.
I love ClickUp very much. It’s really remarkable to manage a project and collaborate with your team. It has a lot of features and the functionality is so simple to use, any non-tech person can use it without in need for vast knowledge of project management tools. They are very keen on understanding customer demand and they are updating on a regular basis to satisfy users.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Ease of use
- Time tracking of tasks and status updates
- Web and desktop apps available
Cons
- Minor bug issues
7. Agile CRM
Last but not least CRM platform is Agile which is built for small to mid-size companies. This tool helps to focus on marketing, social media, integrating sales, and many other engagement platforms.
Agile CRM tool helps in creating one centralized hub for marketing, analytics, and customer reports. A free version is available making it helpful for tiny businesses and startups who don’t have much to invest in CRM.
Key Features of Agile CRM
- Managing contact and also allows getting to know better your customers
- Include features for project management to prevent miscommunication
- Online scheduling features
- Features regarding deals to predict future revenues, automate follow-up, etc.
- Landing page builder and Social CRM feature
Pricing Plan:
Free plan: Ideal for 10 users
Starter Plan: Cost $14.99 per month per user
Regular Plan: Cost $49.99 per month per user
Enterprise Plan: Cost $79.99 per month per user
User Experience:
Agile has a very wide range of features that is impossible to find on other similarly priced products. It is reasonably priced for solopreneurs and provides a grown-up set of features for even small companies. The system is very configurable and offers user-defined fields for contact, company, and deal records – most other CRM solutions don’t.
Their customer support is great and the ability to send personalized bulk emails.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- User-friendly and easily customizable
- Helpful automated features
Cons
- Automation features are challenging to understand
- Lack of tutorial for advanced features
Winding Up
As a small business or a startup, it is very essential to have a lasting customer relationship to boost your sales. CRM software is a lifesaver to deal with that. The right choice of CRM tool helps your small business to stand in the crowd and also helps in improving sales. Take a deep understanding of each tool mentioned and choose the right one for your business.