17 Best CRM Software of 2024 (Compared and Reviewed)

• Opportunity Management – You can close more deals by identifying the perfect opportunities with the ‘opportunity management’ module.
• Contact Management – With this module, you can track parameters like customer history, communications, and social media mentions.
• Sales Performance Management – Set sales goals and update targets for the best sales performance.
• Visual Workflow – You can drag, drop, share, and track files and updates using this.
• First Feed Feature – This feature lets you see what you want to see (based on your settings).

User Experience:

A visual dashboard gives you all the information and numbers you need to see at a glance while still providing the ability to dive deeply into the details with just a few clicks.

Salesforce’s interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate.

The layout is clean and organized, making it simple to find what you’re looking for.

You can use various apps on tablets, mobile phones, and even smart watches, making it easy to stay connected to your data no matter where you are.

Salesforce offers a variety of products; therefore, the prices may vary. However, the subscription plans start at $25 per user per month, and the most expensive plan costs $1,250 per user per month (both billed annually). You can also get in touch with them for a customized plan.

What I Like/Dislike About Salesforce:

Like:

• 24/7 customer support is available via phone, email, and tickets.
• High-level automation and personalization (provide great social experience).
• 30-day free trial period.
• Cloud-hosted (faster and inexpensive).
• Compatible with Linux, Windows, Mac, and Android.
• Open API (therefore highly customizable).
• Offer enterprise territory sales management, a sales CRM, and management of social networks.
• Multi-language and multi-currency customer support.
• Wide range of email templates to choose from.
• In-built Einstein Lead Scoring.
• Lead management with sales force automation tools and business intelligence.
• Compatible with all devices, including mobile phones.
• Provides partner communities.
• In-built process builder and lead generation tools.
• Many third-party integrations (LeadExec, Ambassador, Zuora, and Zendesk, among others).
• Mass emailing option to help you save time and effort.

Dislike:

• Companies who want on-premise deployment can’t use this.
• Live chat support isn’t available.

Product Updates

• Appointment Bundling makes it easy to schedule multiple appointments with leads and contacts in a single day.
• More intelligent data and analytics mean you can trust your data more than ever and make confident decisions.

• Lead Management – Provides solutions to convert prospective leads into customers.
• Deal Management – Gives you a thorough picture of where the deal is in the sales funnel. It also helps you manage and organize every step in the funnel and maximize your chances of conversion.
• Tracking and Lead Scoring – With an in-built AI feature, you can rank and score leads and identify the ones most likely to make a purchase.
• Auto Lead Assignment – The CRM allows handpicked leads to select salespeople automatically.
• Smartforms (web-to-lead) – When a person fills up the web form on your website, they automatically become a lead and are added to your database.

User Experience:

If you want to see your whole customer journey mapped out in front of you, then Freshworks CRM is a great option.

With the ability to see every customer interaction with your company, you can quickly resolve any issues they may have.

You can also see all the various integrations that happen along the journey, making it easy to track down any problems.

Freshworks CRM offers four plans, starting from $0 to $69 per user per month (when billed annually).

What I Like/Dislike About Freshworks CRM:

Like:

• Provides high-level automation and intelligent workflows.
• Extensive range of integrations, including MailChimp, Zapier, Calendar, Piesync, Segment, and more.
• RESTful APIs help you read, modify, add, and delete data from the help desk.
• Behavior-based lead segmentation.
• Advanced lead scoring based on characteristics and behavior.
• Sends out personalized welcome and voicemail messages.
• GDPR-compliant.
• 21-day free trial period.
• Excellent customer support via phone and email.
• Known as one of the best mobile CRMs with a mobile app.
• Event tracking (tracks previous communication to plan the future approach).
• Highly flexible.

Dislike:

• Some more features might be helpful, including salary slips, income tax proof submissions, and opportunities
• Loading times can sometimes be slow.
• It may require more frequent configuration updates than some other CRMs.

Product Updates:

• Mobile App – Shortcut Actions allow you to add contacts, deals, and notes quickly.
• Mobile App – Share Recordings allows you to share your records with your team.
• Upgraded Freshsales-Freshdesk integration so you can now view Freshdesk tickets within Freshsales.

• Advanced CRM Analytics – Integrates your data and derives actionable insights.
• AI-Powered Sales Assistant – Zoho helps sales teams and representatives make decisions based on customer profiles and detect anomalies.
• Performance Management – With features like gamification, reporting, sales forecasting, and territory management, you can make the best of your small business spending.
• Sales Enablement – Helps you generate price quotes and access sales scripts.
• Process management – Enables the team to chart every sales process step with sales builder and processing rules.

• Omnichannel customer support via phone, live chat, email, and social media.
• Provides high-level automation.
• Highly customizable.
• More than 100 third-party integrations, including LinkedIn, Zapier, email integrations like Google and Outlook, and more.
• Highly scalable.
• 15-day free trial period.
• Offers a mobile version (for paid plans).
• Ensures data security, integrity, and regulatory compliance.
• Multi-language offered.
• Has a free plan for up to 3 users.
• Provides holistic calendar management.
• Offers data import/export.
• Predictive sales feature to help with data enrichment, email sentiment analysis, and more.

All four paid plans, the ‘Standard,’ ‘Professional,’ ‘Enterprise’, and ‘Ultimate,’ cost $14, $23, $40, and $52 per user per month (billed annually). Zoho CRM also offers a freemium plan for up to 3 users.

• Relationship Management – helps you automatically combine and collate social media connections, communications, inboxes, and calendar appointments.
• Live Profiles – actionable, accessible contact records to quickly locate contact information and interaction history.
• Segmentation – helps you stay organized by segmenting your contacts into lists to take various actions.
• Reminder feature – never miss out on an opportunity with pre-scheduled reminder features.
• Pipeline management – always stay on top of every sale funnel stage by the visual representation of pipelines.

• Sends out group emails to help you engage your audience at a large scale.
• Email tracking to engage customers/leads more effectively.
• Extensive third-party integrations include Gmail, Outlook, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and more.
• Offers a redesigned smart contacts app (enhanced widget to support calendars, tasks, deals, and more).
• Highly scalable and customizable.
• 14-day free trial.
• The prospector tool allows you to visit a website and get professional details about people who aren’t listed.
• It has a ‘group message’ feature.
• Extensive task management to create and assign tasks to different team members.
• Compatible with mobile phones.
• Ensures data security, integrity, and GDPR compliance.

• Only a single plan is available.
• Doesn’t come with the auto-responder feature.
• Doesn’t have a free plan.
• Many integrations need a ‘sync’ tool to function correctly.

There is only one plan available. The price is $25 per month (billed monthly) and $19 per month (billed annually).

• Customer Relationship Management – Takes care of managing and following up on leads, taking care of existing customers, creating records, and answering questions.
• Pipeline Management – Picks the right deals and activities to select and follow up on a daily or weekly basis and see how close you are to closing a deal.
• Sales Cycle Management – Go after leads more effectively, find out the status of the sales cycle, and optimize efforts.
• Leads Tracking – Ensure timely follow-up and status of leads so that you can track and address them effectively.
• Sales Tracking – This helps you track sales across multiple channels, monitor the KPIs of the sales team, and capture information about leads and customers.

• Fully integrated with Gmail.
• 14-day free trial period.
• Filter, sort, and save data the way you need.
• Highly customizable and scalable.
• Sends out personalized, bulk emails.
• Capture prospective leads in one click.
• User-friendly, intuitive interface.
• Extensively integrated with third-party applications (LinkedIn, Mailchimp, Twitter, Facebook, and more).
• Cloud-hosted (inexpensive and easy setup).
• Multi-language platform.
• Email, phone, and live chat customer support are available.
• Compatible with mobile devices.
• Data import and export are effortless.

• It isn’t compatible with Linux.
• Ticket customer support is not available.
• On-premise deployment isn’t available.
• No free plan is available.

NetHunt CRM offers three plans, called the ‘Basic,’ ‘Business,’ and ‘Advanced.’ The prices start from $24 per month and go up to $96 per month.

• Lead Routing – Tracks the most relevant lead information, including a rich activity timeline of marketing campaign sources, emails, phone calls, and meetings.
• Relationship Management – This enables you to build strong relationships with existing customers and get new customers on board.
• Extensive Third-Party Integrations – Integrated with various applications like Gmail, Mailchimp, Dropbox, Outlook, and more.
• Pipeline Management – This allows you to monitor the sales team’s performance, track sales pitch, and identify where it is precisely in the sales funnel.

• Compatible with mobile devices, both Android and iOS.
• Provides visual dashboards for displaying and tracking essential metrics.
• Ensures data integrity (military-grade AES-256 encryption) and regulatory compliance (GDPR-compliant).
• Highly flexible calendaring and events.
• Highly scalable and customizable.
• Offers features to ensure efficient filtering and tagging possible.
• In-built automated email reminders and tracking.
• 14-day free trial.
• One of the most affordable software solutions.
• Customer support is available via phone, tickets, and email.
• In-built tutorials for hands-on experience working with the software.
• Get a real-time macro/micro view of your business.
• User-friendly and intuitive.

• Doesn’t have live chat support and on-premise deployment.
• Supports only one language (English).

The prices start from $29 and go up to $99 per user per month (billed annually). Insightly also offers a free plan for up to 2 users.

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• Email Marketing – Offers a great module with features like A/B testing, auto-responders, CAN-SPAM compliance, dynamic content, event-triggered emails, and more.
• Lead Generation – Efficient lead generation with features like contact import and export, lead capture, database integration, nurturing, scoring, segmentation, and more.
• Marketing Automation – Offers customizable CTAs, drip marketing campaigns, sales intelligence, website visitor tracking, and so forth.
• Social Media Marketing – You can perform analytics, contact management, automated publishing, content management, and multi-account management.
• Content Management – Allows you to create custom content that fits the needs of your target audience.

• Offers a great free plan.
• Extensive third-party app integrations, such as Zapier, Xero, and more.
• Highly customizable and scalable.
• User-friendly and intuitive interface.
• Comprehensive customer support via phone, live chats, email, and tickets.
• Offers free trial period for paid plans.
• One of the most affordable plans in the market (entirely cloud-based).
• Ensures data security, integrity, and regulatory compliance (GDPR-compliant).
• Real-time, consolidated customer information for all (including previous interactions and purchases).
• Variety of forms and pop-ups for visitor engagement and lead generation.

• Doesn’t offer on-premise deployment.
• Supports only English software.

It has four broad segments:

• All-in-one
• Marketing
• CRM & sales bay
• Service Bay

The CRM & sales bay segment has four plans (one free and three paid).

The paid plans start from $11.04 and range up to $67.99 per user per month, based on features (when paid bi-annually). You can also pay annually or monthly.

• Sales Pipeline Management – This feature allows you to visualize, optimize, and understand your sales pipeline for maximum efficiency.
• Lead Management – Identify, track, follow up, and nudge the leads that are most likely to be converted (into sales) along the sales funnel.
• Contact Management – Helps you build new relationships with prospective leads and follow up on existing customers.
• Sales Team Management – Sets meaningful objectives and establishes team activity tracking. Moreover, it helps you eliminate redundancies, delays, and confusion by organizing team knowledge and providing a framework for collaboration.
• Automation – Automate mundane and repetitive tasks so your team can focus on more important things.

• 14-day free trial period.
• Unlimited deals, stages, companies, and contacts.
• Unlimited file storage.
• Accessible import/export data (Excel or other CRM).
• Since it is cloud-hosted, it’s inexpensive and easy to set up.
• High customizability and scalability.
• Compatible with mobiles (Android and iOS).
• In-built email acceleration helps track open rates, click-through rates, and downloads.
• It enables you to develop dashboards for real-time visualization.
• Extensive third-party integrations (Mailchimp, Outlook, Excel, Zapier, and more).
• In-built foreign currency tracking (any market or local currency).
• Comprehensive data analytics and campaign management for actionable insights.
• Extensive customer support via email, phone, live support, and tickets.

• Doesn’t offer a freemium plan.
• You don’t get an on-premise deployment.
• No multi-language support (only English).

The paid plans start from $25 to $49 per month.

• Contact Management – Efficient single-page management of contacts can help you close more deals.
• Project Management – Effective management of all projects on the same platform with features like drag-and-drop task lists and more.
• Appointment Scheduling – You can share your calendar online & automate scheduling, invites, and follow-ups.
• Email Marketing – Create and send professional emails and newsletters, personalize them, and track & analyze results.
• Lead Management – Track & monitor leads more effectively. Keep track of their contact details, activities, and interactions with your sales team in one place.

• It offers a free plan for up to 10 users.
• Cloud-based (inexpensive and easy to set up).
• Offers multi-chat windows, easy data entry, and workflow automation.
• Extensive customer support via phone, email, live chats, and tickets.
• Comprehensive email tracking to help you gain essential insights into your email marketing campaign.
• Built-in auto-responders.
• Extensive third-party integrations with social, billing, email, and customer support apps.
• The “telephony” feature lets you enjoy one-click calling, call scripts, and voicemail automation.
• Offers mobile marketing to send out personalized SMS and use mobile messaging in campaigns.
• It helps you create dynamic landing pages to attract and engage potential leads.
• Offers excellent exit intent pop-ups (convert abandoning visitors using them).
• Highly scalable, customizable, and user-friendly.

• Doesn’t provide on-premise deployment.
• Supports only English.
• 24/5 customer support (not 24/7).

Agile CRM is a free plan with limited features. There are three paid plans starting from $8.99 and ranging up to $47.99 per user per month.

Adsoup is a multi-platform CRM software focused on streamlining communications between your business and clients.

It is most suitable for sales and useful for small and medium-sized enterprises.

• Real-time Messaging – Mobile compatibility ensures that you can always serve your customers, even from remote locations, by using a web browser.
• Sales Tracking – Know the exact status of a prospective lead and its position in the sales funnel.
• Revenue Monitoring – Study and keep track of the channels generating the maximum revenue for increased focus.
• Single-platform communications – Allows sales representatives to keep track of all prospective leads across multiple windows and not miss out.
• Data Insights – Get a deep dive into the customer base and build strategies for better efficiency.

• Has a great free plan.
• Paid subscriptions have a 7-day free trial.
• High level of automation (collect Facebook lead generation, messaging ad responses, and email leads into a pipeline).
• Provides shared IMAP email and Google Dialogflow bot (paid plans).
• Compatible with mobile devices.
• Perform simultaneous chats.
• Contains a canned responses feature (added efficiency).
• Real-time value tracking and revenue reports.
• Cloud-hosted (inexpensive and easy setup).
• Customer support via live chat.
• Offers a single dashboard to unify multiple channels.
• Involves document storage and an easy platform switch.
• Offers drag-and-drop deal management.
• Extensive third-party integrations.

• Doesn’t have email/phone customer support.
• Supports only English (no multi-language capacity).
• You have to pay an additional amount for extra add-ons.

For one, Adsoup offers an effective free plan.

The paid subscriptions start from $19 and go up to $56 per user per month (billed monthly).

The annual payment involves a discount.

Some tools not yet listed include SugarCRM, Netsuite, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

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What Should You Look For in CRM Software?

Here are the top 10 things to look for when choosing your web-based CRM software:

1. Sales and Lead Management.

Your CRM should generate leads from inbound marketing, sales calls, email sign-ups, and more. Look for preset tasks to follow up with leads in less time.

Your CRM should nurture your leads through the entire sales pipeline, from lead to close.

2. Marketing.

Built-in marketing tools like email pipelines, databases, and social media integrations can help with marketing and sales alignment.

3. Integrations.

Here are some of the demonstrated benefits of using a good CRM for businesses of all sizes:

1. Improved Client Relationships and Customer Interactions.

CRM software allows you to streamline customer information and can help you generate insights, allowing you to serve your clients better.

2. You Can Cross-Sell And Up-Sell.

Armed with a knowledge base about customer choice and preferences, you can easily suggest purchasing complementary products.

On top of that, you can recommend other value-added versions of the product(s) that are pricier than the one your customer has bought.

3. Improves Collaboration.

Breaking away from silos, every organization member can access the same data in real-time, leading to enhanced collaboration between team members and the other sales and marketing teams involved.

While most people think of CRM for marketing or closing software for sales, collaborative CRM is about using customer relationship management software across various departments to improve customer relationships.

4. Enhanced Efficiency.

Since you are privy to customer preference, choice, and purchase history, the client doesn’t need to explain their requirements.

You can capitalize on your knowledge, satisfy the customer, and enhance work efficiency.

5. Save Costs In The Long Run.

Setting up CRM software can be costly, but it is a one-time cost.

On the other hand, enhanced operational efficiency and collaboration lead to increased productivity, which lowers in the long run.

6. Increases Employee Engagement.

Employees feel empowered when they can access data, resulting in employees taking more ownership of the day-to-day work.

Thus, CRM solutions naturally increase employee involvement.

It is easy to start using CRM software, especially when you think about the benefits associated with it.

For best results, you need to use it across all levels of your organization.

Here are some steps on how to use a CRM:

Before adding anyone else, ensure you get your salespeople on board since they’re most vital for your CRM tool.

Your sales team will ultimately rake in the revenue, and CRM is crucial to get more sales for the business. You also need to ensure they find it easy to use.

Every business is different, and there are different ways a company can segment its sales funnel.

The most commonly used method is dividing your potential customers into stages like ‘lead,’ ‘opportunity,’ and ‘customer,’ representing them from a company standpoint.

While many small businesses use different CRM systems for various uses, using a single one is a good practice.

However, whether or not you’re using a single CRM, you’ve got to import your data, like the contact list, past deals, and other customer information.

Almost all of the CRM systems tools allow CSV file uploads.

The whole point of a CRM is to focus on the customer details and data through as many channels as possible.

Therefore, you need CRM software that provides abundant third-party integrations.

Some essential integrations you should look at are Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, among others.

CRM systems can simplify things for you by creating a dashboard.

A dashboard lets you take control of everything you need to do by displaying it on the screen.

It’s a visual, central control panel where you can access all your business functions and control anything you want at any time.

Here’s an infographic that depicts what a typical CRM systems dashboard looks like:

You can see and monitor project updates, task completions, statistics, visualizations, charts, and much more.

The sales team is where your marketing efforts hit real-world sales.

That’s why you should provide them with as much information as possible, which will ease their job of selling the right value to the right customers.

It’s a good practice to create reports at regular intervals, like weekly, quarterly, or monthly, and send them to the sales reps.

These reports help the sales reps to:

• Evaluate their performance
• Evaluate the performance of the team
• Keep track of the targets they have achieved and the goals they’re yet to achieve
• Keep track of the comparative performance between colleagues (for bonus and incentive considerations)

The sales reps can then modify their performance accordingly.

Top Ways A CRM Improves Customer Relationships

Here are some of the ways a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform can help improve customer relationships:

• Automated responses: A CRM system automates most of the customer service process, saving you time and energy to focus on more critical tasks. This automation includes responding quickly to customer inquiries with automated messages tailored to their needs.
• Data integration: With a CRM, your team can access all customer data in one place and easily segment customers into different groups based on information such as purchase history or current location. 
• Improved communication: A CRM system streamlines team communication so everyone is always on the same page. 
• Lead generation: A CRM can help identify potential leads by analyzing customer data and monitoring their activities for real-time insights into their needs and behavior.
• Enhanced analytics: With a CRM system, you can collect and analyze real-time customer data to better understand their buying habits and preferences.

These are just a few ways a good CRM platform can help improve customer relationships and drive growth for your business. 

Best Practices for Managing Data in a CRM System

The best practices for managing data in CRM systems have been well-established and refined over time.

One of the critical factors to successful data management in CRMs is proper organization.

Data should be organized into logical groupings, such as customers, contacts, products, orders, etc., so it is easy to find and access when needed.

This will also make it easier to determine where changes need to be made or which areas may require additional attention and resources.

In addition to organization, regular data maintenance should be done regularly to ensure accuracy and reliability.

This includes verifying contact information or updating customer accounts with new purchases or activity history.

It also pays to consistently audit the system for any potential issues or discrepancies that may need attention.

Doing this regularly can help prevent errors that could cost both time and money trying to fix them down the road.

Data integrity is another critical factor in proper CRM data management.

For proper data entry and accurate information stored within the system, specific processes need to be followed.

For example, inputting customer details into a CRM must follow strict guidelines set forth by the company’s internal policies to be accurate and complete upon submission.

Ensuring all fields are updated accurately at each step along the way is essential for accurate reporting later down the line.

It also helps track individual customer interactions throughout their journey with your business.

Security should also be considered when managing data within a CRM system, especially if that system stores sensitive personal information such as payment methods or addresses.

Establishing appropriate user permissions levels can help protect your company’s assets from unauthorized access while allowing those who need access to get the job done correctly without compromising.

Encrypting sensitive fields can also provide added security without sacrificing the usability or functionality of the system itself.

Finally, training staff on the proper use of the CRM is essential for ensuring everyone knows how best to use and manage data within it, so nothing gets lost or overlooked through human error alone.

CRM Software FAQ

There are a lot of CRM tools on the market, and all of them have unique features and benefits.