The 8 Best CRM for Small Businesses & How to Choose

One of the best ways to improve customer communications and relationships is by using customer relationship management (CRM) software. A CRM for small business help you deliver personalized customer service and improve customer satisfaction.

There are numerous CRM platforms available to businesses today, each with its own set of features, benefits, and pricing points. This guide will explore the best CRM systems for small businesses, so you can easily choose one that fits your needs.

What Is CRM Software for Small Businesses?

Before we can look at the best CRM for small businesses, it’s best to make sure you understand what this small business client management software does and how it can benefit your business.

To keep things simple, a CRM is a tool that:

• Stores and manages customer data
• Tracks customer interactions

The beauty of a CRM is its ability to store all of this information in a single, centralized location. You can use the software to view previous interactions, giving you context for every future conversation you have with a customer. That context prepares your employees, so they can deliver a more personalized experience, improving customer satisfaction, and encouraging customer loyalty.

Benefits of a CRM Software for Small Businesses

The following are some of the most important advantages you’ll get from customer relationship management software.

1. Improves Customer Relationships

As mentioned, the best CRM software improves customer relationships by providing context for every interaction. Every single team member can easily view data about the customer, highlighting their goals, pain points, past purchases, any complaints, and more.

There is no need to take extensive notes on each customer, nor to share those notes with other team members. These processes are useful, but they take up too much time and effort. Having this information handy makes any customer interactions much more positive for your clients. After all, they don’t have to explain their issues to each new employee they talk to. They will also feel that your team better understands them and appreciate personalized suggestions or solutions.

2. Keeps Your Team Connected with Customers. And Each Other

Because a CRM for small business stores all the information about a customer in one place, it keeps your team connected with your customers and with each other. Your team can use the CRM to add notes for each other about customers’ unique situations. The CRM also minimizes errors, thanks to the automated fields that reduce the need for additional notes.

As a result, your sales teams don’t have to directly reach out to each other with questions. They are already connected by the information in the CRM.

It also keeps your team connected to the customers, as the customers’ information is already there. Each team member doesn’t have to directly interact with the customer to know the relevant information as they are already connected by the CRM.

3. Provides Insights into Business Performance

The best CRM for small business will provide data in addition to organizing your customers’ information. At the individual level, the CRM will store customer data. At a larger level, it will give you overarching data and metrics about all of your customers.

You can use this data from your small business CRM tools for important decisions and customer communication. Use it to track sales activities and create sales forecasts. Study the numbers to find patterns in how and when customers contact you. The possibilities are limitless.

For example, do customers mostly call, send emails, or text customer support? What time of day are they most likely to reach out? Then, use those analytics to create your staff schedule.

Perhaps most importantly, the data and business insights you get from a CRM will be centralized. This helps prevent data silos, which reduce organizational productivity.

4. Improved Efficiency

Storing all customer information in a single, centralized location also improves efficiency. Your team doesn’t have to open several different programs just to get all of the relevant data for a particular client. There is no need to use different tools for marketing campaigns and then another for the sales funnel and yet another to view and analyze business data.

This streamlines daily processes, saving time. It also makes employee onboarding easier, as there are fewer programs to learn and master.

The improved efficiency is especially clear when you compare small business CRM software to workarounds like spreadsheets. There is more automation and less manual entry, along with additional features and integrations.

5. Automates Workflows

In addition to saving the need to switch between programs, the top CRM software can even provide marketing automation and automate outreach to customers, helping you save even more time. Some CRM platforms may allow you to automatically send emails to customers for lead engagement strategies. These tools can also automatically collect lead information for your sales team.

The exact automation abilities will depend on the software you choose. Some CRM tools even come with chatbots to automatically interact with customers who have service-related queries.  

6. Saves Costs

Given that a CRM for small business improves efficiency and offers automation, it should come as no surprise that it will also save time and money. That can reduce your operating costs, increasing your profit margins.

7. Allows You to Segment Your Customers

We mentioned that you can use your small business client management software to get valuable customer information like demographics. You can also use this data to segment your customers. Remember that segmenting your customers allows for more personalization and more targeted ads, increasing conversions.

But the segmentation options from a CRM go beyond demographics. You can segment customers based on:

• Preferred communication method
• Typical purchase frequency
• Type of product purchased  
• Typical cost of purchase
• Years as a customer
• Whether they’ve contacted support about complaints

The 8 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

To get you started in your search for a CRM, we’ve gathered the top options for small businesses. The following information should give you a good idea of which CRM best fits your needs and budget.

1. Podium

Podium’s an all-in-one lead conversion and communication platform for small businesses. It’s CRM capabilities include a shared Inbox for all communications with customers across a variety of channels including text, phone, webchat, and more. Podium also offers a variety of  CRM integrations such as HubSpot.

In addition to streamlined communication, use Podium for managing payments, gathering reviews, collecting feedback, and following up with customers in a matter of minutes. Podium’s CRM also makes it easy to communicate with context and send automated, personalized messages to your leads and customers that increase conversions, loyalty, and retention.  

2. Monday

Monday.com is a strong choice for teams. There is a free plan available with limited features or you can pay $60 a month for three years. The free plan is fairly feature-filled, allowing for 1,000 contacts and two team members. However, if your small business needs more than this, you’ll need a paid plan.

Paid plans come with unlimited contacts and viewers. They also include sales forecasting, integrations, automation, and sales analytics. You can also take advantage of unlimited customizable pipelines.

Monday.com is cloud-based, making it easy to collaborate even across different locations. You can use it to track project progress, including adding due dates, attaching files, and adding comments. It uses a Kanban-style board view of those tasks so you can quickly identify which tasks are falling behind.

Keep in mind that this software has a steeper learning curve than other CRM software on our list, so you will need additional training before using it. You will also need to set up at least three users for paid plans. On top of that, you can’t score leads without the Enterprise CRM, which few small businesses will need.

3. Capsule

Capsule is one of the CRMs for small business that incorporates project management features as well. The plans start at $18 per user per month and go up to $54. You’ll need a higher plan for automation, user roles, and advanced analytics. You can also add email marketing for $11 a month.

The user interface and dashboard are intuitive, so long employee training sessions are not necessary. On the Projects screen, you can choose from a list, calendar, or Kanban view. You can use your preferred project view to quickly organize and assign tasks as well as attach files for easier collaboration.

Capsule also includes detailed reports to help you spot productivity problems. Use this to see which tasks take the longest to complete or spot if a particular employee is falling behind or may need some help with their tasks.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a popular option for startups. It costs $20 per month, with a discounted price of $14 a month if you pay annually. That being said, plans can cost up to $65 per month but there is also a free option with minimal features.

This is one of the many CRMs that also includes sales process automation and pipeline management. You also get inventory management, advanced customization, custom dashboards, and scoring roles. There is even the ability to use Zoho Creator to create a mobile app for your business.

You can use Zoho to customize your process and create sales workflows. You also get access to reporting, along with numerous app integrations. However, if you opt for the free version, you are limited to just the Zoho apps, without any other integrations. You will also have to pay extra for Premium or Enterprise support.

5. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the best-known CRMs thanks to its comprehensive features. You will have to pay for this software annually, and the pricing starts at $25 per user per month. The most advanced plan costs $300 a month, plus any add-ons you choose.

As a comprehensive platform, Salesforce lets you manage leads and opportunities in addition to customers and contacts.

This software includes real-time alerts and an interactive dashboard. The major downside of Salesforce is its steep learning curve combined with its long setup time. As such, you will need to dedicate a fair amount of time to the initial set-up and training, and then include a fair amount of training time when onboarding new employees.

6. Pipedrive

For small businesses looking for a simple solution, Pipedrive is appealing. It starts at $14.90 per user per month, which you pay annually.

You get an intuitive visual interface that lets you manage contacts and leads. More expensive plans let you customize email templates and signatures. You can also track open rates for emails and clicks as well as schedule emails. Those higher plans also allow for two-way email sync and video call scheduling.

Conveniently, you get 24/7 support via chat and email. There are also more than 275 integrations so you can seamlessly work between different tools without compromising data accuracy. You’ll need the Enterprise solution to get phone support or the implementation program.    

However, a major drawback is that Pipedrive only offers security features for Enterprise plans. These plans include notifications about potential data leaks or loss as well as suspicious logins. Most small businesses will agree that this should be a standard feature, so you will need to invest in additional software for that feature.

The lack of a free plan is also a drawback, especially given the limited features that Pipedrive offers compared to the other CRMs on our list.

7. Insightly

Insightly stands out with its project management features. This software costs $29 to $99 for each user every month.

Project management features include the Gantt chart view for tracking projects and the sales pipeline. You can also use it to track time and expenses. Insightly also lets you create custom fields and import data from third-party applications. You can also set up reminders, so you don’t forget to send follow-up messages to leads.

Insightly also features project management, project delivery, data import, custom branding, advanced reporting, and automation rules. The lead management, assignment, and tracking features are also convenient. You can also create customized reports according to the metrics you’re tracking.

However, you will have to upgrade to a more expensive plan for those lead assignment features. You will also need a Professional or Enterprise plan to schedule outbound emails. That is on top of the fact that Insightly is already one of the more expensive CRM options.

8. Freshsales

Freshsales has a fair amount of lead management tools in addition to its CRM features. This software offers the choice of a free plan with minimal features or paid plans starting at $15 per user per month. The top plan costs $83 per user per month. You have to pay for these plans annually.

In terms of lead management, Freshsales has a built-in lead capture form. This makes it much easier to gather leads. From there, you can use the CRM to track leads through the pipeline and conversion process.

Other features include advanced reporting, multicurrency support, deal management, holiday routing, and business process workflows.

Just keep in mind that only paid plans offer certain features like call masking. You will also need to opt for a higher-paid plan if you want warm transfers. No matter the plan you choose, Freshsales always has file storage limits.

What Makes a Great CRM? How to Choose & 4 Features to Look For

With so many CRMs on the market today, how do you choose the right one for your business? Consider the functions built into the CRM as well as which ones are most important for your business.

Integrations

One of the most important features to look for is integration. These integrations let you seamlessly connect the other tools you use to your CRM. They also give you access to additional functionalities that a CRM platform may not be capable of on its own.

Podium, for example, offers more than 180 integrations with tools for data analysis, sales, workflow automation, ecommerce, and customer service management. You can use these for a variety of tasks, such as sending automated messages, syncing data between platforms, and creating automated workflows. These integrations let you do everything in a single app, saving the time needed to switch between software.

Lead Management

Lead management is crucial, as your leads will hopefully become customers in the future. As such, you need to include them in your CRM solution. As such, the best CRM software will let you gather information on leads just like you would with customers, including communications. Top software will also include lead generation in addition to lead management.

Usability

As you look at the CRMs mentioned above, you’ll notice that some of them are easy to use while others are a little more complicated. Small businesses will usually want to choose software that is easier to use with a smaller learning curve.

This will reduce the setup time as well as the time spent on initial training. That way, you can start taking advantage of the CRM’s features as soon as possible. Intuitive software also reduces onboarding time for new employees.

Cloud-Based Functionality

Cloud-based functionality ensures that you can access the CRM platform and its data from anywhere. This gives you the flexibility to check on your business even if you are away on a trip and makes data more accessible to employees working remotely.

All-in-One Communication & Growth Solutions for Small Businesses

With its all-in-one functionality and ease of use, Podium stands out from the other CRMs, providing more than just contact management. You will also find some truly innovative features.

For example, you can use the free Google Link Generator to get more reviews and more business for you. Or generate leads when you make your website a conversation starter with a chatbot or conversations with your teams.

You can even see Webchat in action on your site before committing to Podium. Or take advantage of the texting features to send one text that drives thousands in revenue. To save you time, there are 500 ready-to-use texting templates.

CRM for Small Business FAQs

Does Google have a free CRM?

Google doesn’t have its own free CRM, but the marketplace features multiple free CRMs that integrate with Google Workspace. This works with your existing Gmail account.

How much does a CRM cost for a small business?

The cost of a CRM for a small business will depend on the CRM itself. Small business owners will usually look at plans that are free or cost about $15 to $50 per user per month.

Can a CRM help a small business?

Yes, a CRM will help a small business stay organized, track customer relationships, personalize interactions, and improve the customer experience. Since most of these tools are scalable, they will continue to be useful as your small business grows.