Best CRM Software of 2024

Keeping track of customer needs in an organized way, at scale, can be daunting. CRM software helps your team understand your customers’ needs better by establishing individual client profiles for each of them and then tracking all interactions they have with your team members. It can also help to improve customer experience by providing sales and marketing teams with valuable information on your customers, increasing their ability to capture new leads, drive conversions and close deals.

The best CRM software will integrate with email marketing software and text message marketing software to automatically capture communications on these channels, reducing the need for a team member to perform manual data entry and ensuring communications records are comprehensive. Not all CRM systems are created equal and some are designed for specific purposes, from retail CRM solutions to customer support CRM systems. Knowing what you need a CRM system to do can help you make the best possible choice for your business.

CRM software is intended to simplify the process of creating client profiles and tracking interactions with them. This image shows the contact board of monday Sales CRM, complete with a contact’s company, title, and phone number, along with their priority, their company’s lead type, and the date of a next scheduled interaction with the client. (Source: Monday.com) 

There’s a lot to consider when choosing CRM software, including cost, features, setup and integrations. It can be a big job to research the best companies and determine which is the right choice for your business. You have a business to run, so we’ve done the research for you and chosen the best CRM software solutions for small business based on a range of factors, including cost, ease of use, sales and marketing features and available integrations with other business software. If you’re looking for a CRM software that will get the job done, our guide and reviews will help you find it.

Not sure if our best picks are the right fit for your CRM needs? Consider these alternatives we reviewed, which also offer reliable, effective customer relationship management services.

Zendesk

Zendesk offers unique native integration and customer services products to provide support through a full customer life cycle. Zendesk Sell maximizes collaboration across departments, allowing teams across sales, marketing and support to work together with the same centralized data and goals. This CRM provider unifies data from multiple customer touchpoints, preventing different departments from duplicated communications or missing context. Zendesk’s smart lists also help sales teams segment customers and filter leads, enabling marketing teams to monitor customer engagements and develop effective communications. Whether you are using the basic plan or an upper-level plan, you’ll be able to provide high-level customer support with all of the current and historical information you need at a glance. Read our full Zendesk review for more information.

Honeybook

HoneyBook is a cost-effective CRM that offers a wide range of tools that not only support lead generation and nurturing, but also existing client management functions. We liked that this platform includes invoicing and payment tools, giving businesses the option to forgo a separate invoicing platform. We also liked HoneyBook’s AI-powered automations, which make it easy to set up custom workflows and support your business’s unique sales funnel with the support of artificial intelligence. There’s no need for coding knowledge to do so, making HoneyBook a truly accessible tool for any entrepreneur or sales professional.

Zoho

Zoho CRM is designed to increase leads, accelerate sales and measure performance accurately with ease and efficiency. Zia, the AI-powered assistant, predicts leads and deals, identifies potential customers for conversion and helps large sales teams focus their efforts with user-friendly guidance. Zoho is also an appealing option for remote workforces with its gamification features that encourage friendly competition. Every lead, call and deal can be made into a trophy that generates a competitive and encouraging sales atmosphere, no matter where your team members are located. With Zoho, it’s also easy to build a custom and user-friendly platform with hundreds of available integrations and a flexible dashboard. Read our full Zoho review for more information.

Insightly

Offering a unique and highly useful relationship-linking feature, Insightly CRM gives customers extra control over their sales operations. For small teams without the ability to manage all the details of sales processes, Insightly offers a dynamic and easily customizable solution. Admins and reps can build their ideal personal dashboards to highlight particular contexts, metrics and workflows. While AI and predictive tools are available only with the most expensive plans, all of Insightly’s service plans allow you to create specific rules for common events that trigger actions within the sales process.

LessAnnoying

LessAnnoying CRM is an ideal tool for small businesses or startups who need basic, turnkey CRM functionality done well. LessAnnoying focuses on simplicity. The platform offers a simple interface and only one tier of plan. Even so, LessAnnoying features strong customer support. While barebones, LessAnnoying also comes with native integrations for some of the most popular third-party tools, including Google, MailChimp, and Microsoft Outlook. By focusing on simplicity, LessAnnoying does lack in some advanced features, customization options, and data tracking that more advanced teams may consider essential. However, for small businesses or start-ups, LessAnnoying provides a strong foundation built on-top of a simple, single plan offering.

Keap

With its user-friendly interface and simple setup, Keap is an appealing tool for businesses engaging with CRM software for the first time. Keap is designed to help its users learn quickly without assuming its customers are CRM experts. The all-in-one CRM platform stores all customer activity in a centralized space and automatically adds all customer interactions to grow your team’s ability to sell and offer support efficiently. Right from the dashboard, your team can text, email, book appointments, process purchases and add invoices with one click. To make building your business easier, Keap automates contact management intuitively from activities across multiple platforms. Truly designed to grow your business, Keap provides premade and customizable templates for new pipelines and helpful video guides explaining the software’s capabilities. Without any coding experience, you can trigger automated actions to help turn leads into sales. Read our full Keap review for more information.

Most CRM software is priced on a per user, per month basis. Many companies opt for annual billing to simplify the payment process and save money as most services reduce the monthly rate for clients who pay annually.

With that in mind, these are the general pricing tiers you can expect:

• $0: Free CRMs are worth considering for brand-new businesses and independent contractors who are getting started with this type of platform. Most free accounts include a very limited set of CRM features and user accounts. Ultimately, they can be a good way to learn how to organize customer outreach and begin using modern sales tools, but they’re not a long-term solution for most businesses.
• $10 to $15: Inexpensive CRM products are a great option for tiny businesses with modest needs, and many services charge only $10 to $15 per user, per month. Affordable systems like these don’t usually require much in-house tech support to implement. If you want a fast solution with minimal hassle, this price range is a great place to find one. Make sure the storage options meet your needs as low-cost CRM software usually caps the number of customer records you can store.
• $20 to $40: For additional features and a broader range of integrations with third-party systems, a CRM in the range of $20 to $40 per user, per month, will likely meet your needs. The majority of CRM software we reviewed falls into this price range because it’s designed to meet the needs of the SMB set. As you peruse options in this price range, check for limitations on the number of supported users and storage caps that could force you to upgrade to higher-priced plans.
• $50 to $75: Typically, CRM software that falls between $50 and $75 per user, per month, is intended for enterprise use. Such systems often include options to integrate with legacy systems and allow greater customization than other CRM software. As powerful as they are, systems like these are not necessary for most small businesses.
• $250 or more: High-end CRM systems often provide extensive training, customization and implementation services with the software. Another reason for the steep cost of these solutions is that they are not cloud services. Instead, they can be hosted locally, which is a boon for organizations with unique security needs.

When you seek a CRM program, it’s important to know what you need. Here are common features you’ll find in CRM systems so you can decide which ones would best serve your business’s needs.

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is the basis of how your system moves and the automatic actions within the software. For example, you could set the software to send a message automatically to a sales representative whenever a customer fills out a form on your website. This feature moves certain procedures and data along within your program, minimizing your workload and taking care of the tiny details of your team’s sales and marketing tasks.

Reporting

CRM reports break down your sales and marketing data to help you better understand and analyze leads, customers’ buying behaviors, the number of outbound calls your team makes and other important marketing metrics. Some CRM software offers more report types than others – with some allowing you to tailor your own reporting metrics ― and more ways to view the data, such as in bar graphs or pie charts.

Each CRM software provides reporting and insights differently, with some tools providing greater granularity or report customization features. In the above, a user navigates through a reporting dashboard example on Pipedrive, which displays a range of information visually, including data on revenue forecast, deals started by employee, and deals added by month. (Source: Pipedrive)

Customer Data Management

Understanding your customers is the first step in running a successful business. Customer data management tools allow you to organize data on customers clearly, helping you improve customer relationships.

Customization

Making your CRM your own will reduce the learning curve of using it and ensure it provides the information you need. When a program is customizable, you can pick the features you want and mold your contact fields, dashboard, reports, extensions and plugins to best support your needs and budget.

Third-Party Integrations

Third-party CRM integrations provide a wider range of tools to use within your system. You can connect your CRM to programs with features that the CRM may not have, such as your email marketing or accounting software. This saves you from entering data you already have in another program manually, flipping constantly between apps and spending money on additional tools for your CRM. [Related article: How CRMs Streamline Email Marketing]

Many CRM platforms come with third-party app integrations to extend their functionality and provide support to customers’ preferred tools. Pictured is a view of Zendesk’s app directory, which features integrations with a range of popular external tools. (Source: Zendesk)

Not all CRM software is created equal. This checklist will help you buy CRM software that suits your business and integrates seamlessly into your existing workflow.

1. Set a budget.

CRM costs range from free to upward of $1,000 per month, so it’s best to set your budget before you start shopping. It’s easier to narrow down your options by eliminating CRM software outside your price range before you drill down into feature sets and service plans.

2. Make a feature list.

The number of tools and functions in even the most basic CRM system can be overwhelming. For clarity, list the CRM features you must have and the features that would be nice to have but aren’t crucial. This is a good time to get feedback from other people in your company who will use the CRM. They may recommend features you hadn’t thought of or eliminate ones you thought they would need.

3. Gather referrals from businesses like yours.

In a crowded sales technology market, choosing the right CRM can be daunting.  Recommendations from people who understand the needs of your industry from the inside are invaluable.

4. Assess the current market.

The CRM space changes rapidly as technology improves, so high-profile solutions you’ve heard of in the past may no longer be the best choice. Small business advice websites and trade publications are the best way to see what’s currently popular ― and what’s not.

5. Read reviews.

As your list of CRM candidates grows, take the time to read any user reviews you come across. You’ll gain more insight as to how individual solutions perform in the real world than you will by reading about them on the vendors’ websites.

6. Test your top choices.

At this point, you’ll have a sense of which CRM software has the most potential, so take each one of these contenders for a test drive. Most companies offer free trials, so try as many as you can before spending money on a permanent solution. Sales reps are usually eager to answer any questions you have or show you a demo of their product but remember that it’s their job to present their CRM in the best light possible, so using the software yourself is the best way to test it.

7. Make your decision.

Once you’ve done your due diligence, it’s time to make a final selection. It may take a while to work through all these steps, but it’s time well spent on such an important investment.

A central location where your employees can log all customer communications and build marketing campaigns can benefit your business in multiple ways. A CRM offers your company the following abilities:

• Organize and maintain customer information: CRM software is ideal for companies that need to use up-to-date data to service their customers. This is the most basic yet essential benefit that CRM software can provide for your business.
• Forecast your sales process: CRM software allows you to predict your future sales based on past sales data. Sales reports and insights are key for companies to project future needs and costs.
• Streamline and scale your sales cycle: With the data you receive from CRM software, you can streamline your sales process and cut out unnecessary steps. You’ll see which types of communication work and which ones don’t. When you need to scale up your sales process, CRM software can help you with that too.
• Automate your workflow: CRM software automates data entry and administrative tasks, allowing your team to focus on building meaningful customer relationships. Workflow automation also minimizes the potential for human error.
• Build customer relationships: CRM software helps your team engage and build lasting connections with customers. Using the data stored in your CRM, your team can track customer information and cater their interactions to meet each customer’s unique needs and preferences.

In the coming years, the CRM industry is poised to see massive growth. According to Technavio’s newest report, the industry will grow at an accelerated rate at a compound annual growth rate of 13.43 percent and a 12.6 percent year-over-year growth rate between 2022 and 2027.

In 2024, CRMs will become more focused on self-service for customers. Examples of self-service will be seen in FAQs pages, help centers and secured customer profiles, where returns can be processed or orders can be tracked.

There will also be more integration with the Internet of Things (IoT) in the form of CRM connections to IoT feeds. The number of IoT-connected devices is expected to surpass 25.4 billion by 2030. By 2025, estimates suggest there will be 152,200 IoT devices connecting to the internet every minute. The developers who tap into these trends in a way that maintains or enhances user experience are poised for success in the next decade.

The emergence of natural language processing technologies like ChatGPT is showing promise in many business-focused technologies and CRM platforms are no exception. Companies like Salesforce have gone as far as partnering with ChatGPT maker OpenAI to bring more generative AI to its CRM’s functionality. The implementation of similar language processing tools across the category will allow savvy sales and marketing teams to reduce their repetitive tasks and communications, freeing them to focus on higher-value activities that drive revenue with efficiency.

The adoption of AI has improved customer relationships for businesses, enabling them to provide highly customized experiences that resonate with consumers. We expect more and more CRM platforms to find additional ways to utilize this growing technology. This can be for much more than just automating replies to customers. It can be used to help predict when sales may increase to spur customer interactions. In addition, automation and increased security will also be a focus for CRM providers in 2024.