8 Best Free CRM Software: Elevate Your Business to New Heights

Senior Writer: Supriya Bajaj

Date: February 29, 2024

Free CRM software is a non-negotiable tool for growing businesses. Aren’t useful capabilities like customer relationship or contact management, customer interaction tracking, and deals/opportunities management at zero cost everything you need in a tool for business success? Well, sure it is!

Also, CRM data enables you to create customer-preferred, personalized campaigns. This is especially important given that 72% of customers only engage with brands with personalized messaging. That’s another reason you must consider adopting CRM software for free for your business.

Curious to know more about CRM software? Well, here’s an extensive guide on its benefits, major features to look out for, and a table of comparison between paid and free CRM tools. We have also curated a buyer’s guide of the 8 best free CRM software with their features, advantages and disadvantages (based on user reviews), and pricing. Let’s dive right in!

Looking for Best CRM Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest's CRM Software solutions.

What is Free CRM Software?

A free CRM system or customer relationship management system is a free-of-cost software businesses use to gather, sort, and maintain customer data like contact, customer preferences, and purchasing history in a unified ecosystem.

But remember, free CRM systems go far beyond just being a reservoir of customer data and offering contact management capabilities; here’s how:

• Free CRM software help you create and deliver personalized messaging or targeted ads that resonate with customers’ needs to maintain strong relations with customers and prospects.
• Free CRM systems offer marketing tools for marketing automation—sending automated notifications/reminders or email campaigns and maintaining friction-free communication with customers about your latest launches or changes.
• Free CRM tools help you with customer behavior and sales tracking, plus keep you updated on market trends. You can modify your product and marketing basis these trends.

For instance, if you have a real-estate business, a free CRM for real estate enables you to track lead generation campaigns, manage contacts, strengthen relations between sellers, buyers, and developers, and understand real estate trends to create personalized campaigns.

Expert Advice

"Businesses must persistently strengthen customer relationships by understanding their needs and pushing personalized marketing. This can be done by getting a holistic view of customer behaviour and interactions with your business. That’s where a CRM comes in. To make a wise choice, understand CRM benefits, and base your decision on its features, reviews, and pricing."

What Are The Benefits Of Free CRM?

CRMs are necessary for business growth, improving customer experience, strengthening customer relationships, and saving time. A free CRM lets you experience all this and benefit from its robust features without additional cost.

Here are some other benefits of a free CRM:

1. Budget-friendly

Free CRM systems help businesses with limited budgets build and manage customer relationships. How? By gathering customer information from different sources and providing a holistic view of each contact using its functional features free of cost. This helps tailor targeted marketing, close deals, and boost sales. When CRM tools give such value at no cost, it is no doubt cost-effective.

2. Task automation

Automation is extremely important as employees waste 21 days a year on repetitive tasks. Free CRM automates operational tasks, saving support/marketing/sales teams from draining time unnecessarily. This increases their productivity and lets them focus on delivering enhanced customer experiences.

3. Data-driven decisions

CRM tool offers analytics to forecast customer behavior and sales and identify areas of improvement so you can make more accurate and fruitful decisions. When inefficiencies are consistently resolved, losses are prevented and customer experience is always on point.

4. Quick problem spotting

With CRM solution, you have a 360-degree view of your customers, making problem identification easy. When inefficiencies are eliminated before they get bigger, customer churn is reduced drastically. This helps businesses stay proactive. And 85% of customers look forward to proactive communication and contact from businesses.

What are the Essential Features of Free CRM System?

Free CRM solution comes with a stack of all the features that are popularly used, but not all would add value to your business. So, choose the ones that suit your business needs.

Here are the major ones –

1. Workflow automation

This feature automates major workflows and operational sales tasks to save your team time and make them more productive. This is done by setting custom rules that, when triggered, automatically perform the specific action or task.

2. Reporting and analytics

This feature has two parts: customer analytics and reporting. Customer analytics lets you dive into customer data based on which you modify your product, service, and marketing. Reporting is for letting you know the performance of your sales and marketing.

3. Contact management tools

This feature records each customer, prospect, and lead’s information–name, phone number, email, and social media handles to use when needed. It allows you to create contacts, add their information, and share it with other team members.

4. Customization options

Customization allows you to choose your desired features or customize basic areas based on your business-specific needs–custom workflows and reports, for instance. You may opt for an open-source CRM that keeps its source code open to configuration for better integration and customization.

5. Mobile apps 

Mobile apps allow your sales team to view customer information and manage relationships regardless of location. It also allows them to enter their sales target/quota reports, manage the sales pipeline, and update contact information in real-time while on the go.

Check out these best CRM mobile apps!

6. Lead management tools 

This feature allows you to collect contact information, send customized nurturing emails, and track channel and activity engagement. With this lead information, your sales team can deliver the right message and enhance the chances of prospects turning into customers.

7. Collaboration tools

Collaboration tools allow your support, marketing, and sales teams to communicate with other team members about various tasks and projects. This ensures that all team members are updated on key information and always make informed decisions.

Free vs Paid CRM: Which One is Better for Your Business?

We have created a table of comparison between free and paid CRM solutions so you can understand the difference better and conclude which one’s better:

The difference between paid and free CRM is clear from this table.

Free CRM platforms are great for businesses with tight budgets, limited resources, a small customer base, and basic requirements.

However, if your business has access to resources, a flexible budget, and advanced requirements shifting to the paid version of CRM platforms is a better deal. (Explore some of the most efficient online CRM software.)

How to Choose a Free CRM System?

A free CRM offers features and marketing tools with limited marketing automation capabilities compared to paid versions, so choose the free CRM that best fulfills your business needs.

To do so, follow this step-by-step process:

Step 1: Identify your business needs

Understand your business needs. Are there any specific metrics you need to monitor or a list of tasks you’d like to automate? See if you want to eliminate specific operational problems or want a CRM to address a certain business requirement. You can also consider your business goals and determine the necessary tools to fulfill them. Find a CRM that offers such tools.

Step 2: List out the desired capabilities

Once you know your business goals, it’s time to start researching and preparing a list of capabilities you want in your free CRMs. Include both types of features–non-negotiable and good-to-have. Don’t forget to be aware of the CRM’s customer support quality–live chat, email, phone support and data security level–advanced user permissions and two-factor authentication.

Step 3: Compare different software

Compare CRMs against each other based on price, features, usability, and user reviews. You may also refer to trade online magazines and websites related to your industry to get an idea of the popular CRM software in your niche. Asking your colleagues or other business owners about the CRM they use is also a great idea. An easy way out would be to continue reading as we elaborate on the 8 best CRM for you.

Step 4: Take a test drive

Use the selected CRM for a certain time, see if its features offer the promised value, and ensure it has an intuitive UI. Check whether appropriate customization options are available enough to fulfill your business-specific needs. Also, some training must be available so you don’t waste time figuring it out and can smoothly adopt the CRM.

Step 5: Check CRM scalability

Check if the CRM is scalable; otherwise, you might have to shift to a different CRM as your business grows, which is quite taxing and costly. Also, shifting to a new CRM requires importing heaps of critical customer data, which you cannot afford to lose. Also, getting adept to a whole new platform is time-consuming.

Step 6: Run integration check

Identify whether the chosen CRM integrates with your high-priority apps and software that lets your data flow seamlessly. Ensure that your CRM integrates with accounting software/HR software/ your website so it’s easier to import new leads and record transactions/billing.

You May Also Read : CRM Software: What it is, Types and Benefits

8 Best Free CRM Software

Ideally, free CRM software uplevel how you understand and engage with your customers by tracking and analyzing contextual customer information. But not all software will suit your business’s goals, needs, type, and size. So, here’s a buyer’s guide for you to make an informed decision –

1. Free CRM

Free CRM is an innovative tool and the best free CRM system that helps businesses efficiently manage and strengthen customer relationships. Its high-utility features will empower you to stay ahead of the competition and boost sales.

Features

• Deal and client/contact management
• Workflow automation
• Account and project management
• Lead management

SoftwareSuggest Free CRM Pros and Cons

It automates operational tasks so the sales team can focus on more strategic and revenue-generating tasks.

This CRM system gives a centralized platform for disruption-free team communication to enhance customer experience.

It gives insights into sales trends for better business planning and capitalizing on early opportunities.

Users may require some time to get familiar with it.

It might not be suitable for highly advanced requirements.

Pricing

Get it for free

2. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM, one of the best free CRM for small businesses, aims to bring the best out of your customer-facing/ customer service teams or sales teams by empowering them with robust tools–omnichannel presence, predictive intelligence, customizations, and more.

Features

• Sales process builder
• Pathfinder
• Customer portal
• Real-time report

Zoho CRM Pros and Cons

Zoho CRM has an intuitive interface making it easy to set up and use.

This free online CRM has a mobile app to access contacts, leads, notes, deals, and take customer calls on the go.

Zoho CRM has AI-powered tools to predict crucial information and make informed decisions.

Zoho CRM low-tier plans do not include sales forecasting and customization options.

It has unsatisfactory customer support.

Pricing

Standard: $20/user/month

Professional: $35/user/month

Enterprise: $50/user/month

Ultimate: $65/user/month

3. Insightly

Insightly is a modern, secure, and scalable CRM software that is easy to set up, supports your growth, and integrates (with 500+ apps) seamlessly. It centralizes your business data to make it more accessible and usable while helping you with sales and lead management.

Features

• Validation rules and advanced permission
• Account and contact management
• Sales lead management and tracking
• Performance dashboard and reporting

Insightly Pros and Cons

Insightly is a flexible and customizable platform.

It offers editable email templates to attract prospects and retain customers.

This software has a convenient customer support portal for quick issue resolution.

Insightly logs you out after a short non-use period, leading to time drainage.

It sometimes changes automation settings after updating.

Pricing

Plus: $29/user/month

Professional: $49/user/month

Enterprise: $99/user/month

4. HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is a scalable and best free CRM for small businesses that unites your data, sales and marketing teams, and customers together. Get a 360-degree view of your sales pipeline, track customer interaction automatically, and neatly segregate lead data with HubSpot.

Features

• Visual dashboard
• Sales activity log and sales tracking
• Email tracking
• Meeting scheduler

Hubspot Pros and Cons

HubSpot CRM gives real-time notifications, which is a base for crucial decision-making.

It offers customizable templates to interact with customers, which speeds up communication.

This free online CRM analyzes sales pipeline activity and suggests the lead that needs your attention, keeping you ahead of the curve.

HubSpot’s per-user plan can be expensive for small businesses.

The live chat has HubSpot’s branding.

Pricing

Professional: $1600/month

Enterprise: $5000/month

5. Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM, a robust Zendesk alternative, aims to help you sell faster and more smartly. It combines the power of AI, real-time data, and automation. This software helps businesses tackle the challenges of today’s business world, regardless of size.

Features

• Lead auto-assignment
• Mass emailing
• Customizable dashboard
• Forecast management

Salesforce CRM Pros and Cons

Salesforce has extensive customization capabilities–workflow and sales pipeline.

This free online CRM integrates with 3000+ platforms, which is best for unifying different information pieces.

It has 24-hour, 7 days/week customer support via telephone and live chat for query resolution at any time.

Salesforce offers analytics and reporting as an add-on.

The dashboard and user-interface is difficult to navigate.

 Pricing

Essentials: $25

Professional: $75

Enterprise: $150

Unlimited: $300

6. Zapier

Although Zapier is not entirely a CRM software, it still forms an intrinsic part of the best free CRM list. Why? Because it has customer relationship management automation capabilities via third-party integrations–Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and more.

Features

• Real-time integrations
• Pre-built and custom connectors
• Data transformation
• Workflow automation

Zapier Pros and Cons

Zapier offers task automation tools that save time and enhance productivity.

This free online CRM is easy to use and requires no coding experience.

It is handy and affordable, especially for small businesses without deep pockets.

Some of Zapier’s app integrations have limited functionality.

It requires technical knowledge for customization.

Pricing

Starter: $19.99/month

Professional: $49/month

Team: $399/month

Company: $799/month

7. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is one of the first free CRMs designed by and for salespeople. This software is top-rated for product innovation and user satisfaction. It is known to be well-suited for small businesses and large enterprises alike.

Features

• Team collaboration
• Email analytics
• Email segmentation
• Lead generation software

Pipedrive Pros and Cons

Pipedrive offers detailed analytics and reports for better sales pipeline overview and improvement areas identification.

This software has a clean interface, so all customer information is organized and instantly available when required.

It is extremely easy to add, manage, and track individual leads with Pipedrive.

Pipedrive has limited branding customization options.

It has a steep learning curve for those who haven’t used a CRM before.

Pricing

Essential: $9.90/user/month

Advanced: $19.90/user/month

Professional: $39.90/user/month

Power: $49.90/user/month

Enterprise: $59.90/user/month

8. EngageBay

EngageBay, one of the best free CRMs for small businesses, is an all-in-one CRM platform for your support, sales and marketing teams. Its high-utility feature stack helps you discover new opportunities, convert visitors, increase customer happiness, and more.

Features

• Ticket management and automation
• Chat form customization
• Landing page builder
• 360-degree customer view

EngageBay Pros and Cons

EngageBay offers free migration from other companies.

This software’s customer support is highly responsive.

Its user-friendly dashboards can get work done easily and quickly.

EngageBay offers website activity tracking as an add-on.

Its mobile app has some bugs; clicking on some options leads nowhere.

Pricing

Basic: $12.74/user/month

Growth: $42.49/user/month

Pro: $84.99/user/month

Read Now For Exclusive Insights : 9 Reasons CRM Phone Integration Improves Customer Experience

Wrapping Up

Best free CRM systems organize your customer database and eliminate the need to manually maintain spreadsheets and enter customer data. It pulls data from various resources and gives a neat view of your customers’ behavior and health.

If this sounds interesting, choose one from our list of free CRMs after evaluating its usability for your business. Remember that it should be scalable–capable of accommodating your users, data storage requirements, customization needs, and more, so you don’t have to shift to a new system as your business grows.

FAQs

1. How can small businesses benefit from free CRM?

A free CRM helps small businesses centralize customer data to understand their behavior better and needs for free. Making data-driven decisions boosts sales, improves customer retention, and enhances productivity.

2. Are there any disadvantages to using free CRM?

Free CRM applications might have bugs, little or no customer support, limited automation/integrations (important automation might not work), and limited help to set up or navigate.

3. Who can use free CRM software?

Anyone with any kind of business can use a free CRM. It works well for almost all business types. However, it’s a better choice for businesses with limited resources, basic customer relationship management requirements, and tight budgets.

4. What are the risks of using free CRM software?

Free CRM runs the risk of having limited functionalities, which hinders the productivity of your sales teams. Such systems have limited scalability, and you are sure to outgrow its features as your business gains momentum.

Supriya Bajaj

Supriya is a highly skilled content writer with over 8 years of experience in the SaaS domain. She believes in curating engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly content to simplify highly technical concepts. With an expansive portfolio of long-format blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, and case studies, Supriya is dedicated to staying in touch with emerging SaaS trends to produce relevant and reliable content.

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