Best CRM software for startups

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The best CRM for startups (2024 comparison)

Startups face special challenges when it comes to sales. They often operate with a small team, a small budget, and a lot of passion when it comes to their product. With that sort of do-it-yourself attitude, it’s tempting for startups to use spreadsheets to manage sales, but that’s not a good idea. Startups need to generate revenue quickly to scale, and to do that, your they should use a CRM system that can keep up with your company’s growth.

1. Freshsales

Freshsales is a lightweight, all-in-one CRM platform that helps your salespeople track leads, visualize your sales pipeline, and contact potential customers via phone, email, and social media from inside the platform.

Easy to set up and intuitive, Freshsales is ready to use immediately so your sales team can hit the ground running. It’s also customizable to your business needs: track the most important sales metrics to your team, build automation to streamline your sales cycle, and integrate with the tools you already use.

Startups and small businesses need to do more with less to compete with large enterprises, and Freshsales’ workflow automation allows your team to do just that: automate chatbot interactions, contact scoring, or lead management and take the manual data entry off your sales teams’ plates.

Using sales automation for so many tasks means that Freshsales is a CRM tool that will scale with your startup as you grow. It’s also cost-effective. Freshsales offers a free CRM with advanced features for all your team members.

Key features

Free plan for unlimited users: You might have a small sales team now, but as your business grows, you’ll want a CRM that can accommodate a larger sales team, possibly more than one sales team. Freshsales offers a free plan with advanced features for unlimited users.

Sales management: No need to use a spreadsheet or spend money you don’t have on an extensive CRM system. Use Freshsales to create, manage, and track the sales pipelines of all your sales teams. Forecast sales revenue, track sales goals, and use collaboration tools like Slack to communicate with your reps.

Built-in telephony: Your team needs to compete with large companies, so minimize the time they spend switching between apps with telephony. Every Freshsales plan, includes a built-in phone system.

Workflow automation: Every minute counts for a small sales Organization, so automate time-consuming tasks. Freshsales automatically assigns leads, contacts, and chat conversations to the right salespeople using defined criteria like skill level and bandwidth.

Pros and cons

Pros

Cons

  • Automation: Freshsales’s free version doesn’t allow for automated workflows; however, it still contains plenty of features for free users.

  • Limited pipelines: Free users get just one pipeline, but higher-tier plans offer multiple pipelines. In the meantime, free users are able to get several views of their existing pipeline.

  • Sales activities: Custom sales activities are only available to paid users, but free users can create custom fields.

Is there a free version?

Most startup CRM software does not offer a free plan. However, Freshsales offers a free Plan. The free version includes features such as contact management, deal management, and built-in telephony. 

Freshsales also offers a free 21-day trial that allows you to try out the premium features associated with other pricing plans. This way, you know what you’re getting into before paying for the product.

How is it rated?

8.2 out of 10 on TrustRadius

4.5 stars. 1075 reviews on G2

2. Bigin

Bigin by Zoho CRM is Zoho’s product for startups and small businesses who might not need a large, complex CRM platform. Rather than being a stripped-down version of Zoho CRM, Bigin is its own platform, designed specifically for smaller teams.

Key features

Mobile app: Bigin is a mobile-first solution designed to be used on a phone or tablet; however, many other CRMs offer a mobile app as well. 

Integrations: As with other CRMs, Bigin integrates with cloud-based workspaces such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google G-Suite, specifically with email and scheduling.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Mobile app

  • Pricing

  • Integrations

Cons

  • According to customer reviews, Bigin customization

  • Learning Curve: The product can take a while for users to learn.

Is there a free version?

Yes, Bigin offers a free plan, although it is only for one user and offers limited features. For more add-ons, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. This can make Bigin a poor choice for startups with more than one employee.

3. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a sales member of the Zendesk software family. Offering the sales team a view across the entire buyer’s journey, Zendesk Sell also offers analytics and options for customizations.

Key features

Marketing automation: Offers automation specifically for marketing, such as email marketing and lead management. This is available from other CRMs as well. 

Interface: Zendesk Sell offers visibility of customer interactions, a simple interface, as well as drag-and-drop analytics dashboards; however, other CRMs also offer the same ease of use with their interfaces.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • User interface

  • Sales process visualization

  • Automations

Cons

  • Customer support: Support can be slow getting back to customers. 

  • Technical difficulties: Customers report glitches that slow down the CRM. 

  • Learning Curve: Installation can be complicated for new users.

Is there a free version?

Zendesk Sell does not offer a free plan, but it does offer a 30-day free trial. The next pricing plan is priced at $19 per user per month. The cost adds up quickly as startups scale.

4. Pipedrive

Pipedrive’s claim to fame is that it was designed for salespeople by salespeople. This CRM’s interface is focused on the actions your sales team has to take to close deals. It also uses a visual interface to track deals in the pipeline. While it allows teams to tailor their experience using features like custom fields, many users complain about manual data entry, saying that Pipedrive’s automations don’t work. If automation is an important feature for your startup, you might want to look for other CRMs that offer better automation.

Key features

Activity-based: Pipedrive’s task management system is based on specific sales activities reps need to do, such as calls, emails, follow-ups, and demos. Other CRMs, however, allow for customization of sales activities. 

Templates: Pipedrive offers email templates to help sales teams quickly create email campaigns, although other CRMs offer more comprehensive templates

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Sales process visualization

  • Activity-based

  • Collaborative

Cons

  • Integration issues: Customers report integrations being buggy or not working.

  • Not user-friendly: Customers describe the interface and dashboards as complicated and confusing. Startups may want to consider a CRM with a less complex interface.

Is there a free version?

No, Pipedrive doesn't offer a free plan. There is a free 14-day trial, but after that, pricing tiers start at $14.90 per user per month.

5. Copper CRM

Copper CRM is designed to integrate with sales teams that use Google Workspace, integrating with Google’s business tools, making for easy email integration and compatibility with Google Calendar and the Chrome browser. This means that contacts are automatically populated in the CRM. Additionally, the CRM integrates seamlessly with other Google offerings. However, it’s light on features that aren’t Google-related.

Key features

Google compatibility: If your sales team lives on Google Workspace, Copper CRM integrates quickly and easily, if not, however, you may want to consider another CRM

Simplicity: Copper isn’t complex, making it easy to use for reps, but its simplicity can work against it if your team needs more features. Other CRMs offer more functionalities and integrations. 

Pros and cons

Pros

  • User-Friendly

  • Organized data

  • Collaborative

Cons

  • Customer support: Customer support is reported to be unresponsive. 

Is there a free version?

No. Copper CRM doesn’t offer a free version, starting at $23 per user per month. Additionally, some of the features are only available with some of the more expensive plans.

6. Monday CRM

Monday Sales CRM is template-based, allowing users to customize their boards to meet their business needs. Monday also boasts automated workflows, although some users report that the automation doesn't always work.

Key features

Task management: Given that Monday is rooted in project management, it’s no surprise that it excels at task management and project management. However, other CRMs provide the same functionality with more of a sales focus

Dashboards: Monday CRM offers an array of templates to help customize your dashboards; however, those templates can be overwhelming for those who want a clean, easy-to-use dashboard.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Collaborative

  • Organized data

  • User Interface

Cons

  • Takes time to set up: Installation and creating new automation workflows can be slow.

  • Expensive: Customers must purchase at least 3 licenses, making Monday CRM an impractical choice for very small businesses. Startups may want to consider a free plan instead.

Is there a free version?

Not really. The only free Monday Sales CRM plans available are for students and nonprofits, although there is a free 14-day plan. The next pricing tier starts at $10 per user per month.

7. Hubspot

Hubspot CRM is a CRM that combines sales and marketing features, which makes sense, considering that Hubspot started as a marketing and content platform. HubSpot’s CRM platform offers automated email marketing, content management, project management, and customer support options.

Key features

Segmentation: Hubspot allows you to segment customers using criteria like behavior and demographic data. However, other CRMs offer greater ease of use. 

Analytics: Unsurprisingly, Hubspot’s built-marketing analytics are rated highly by users and can be useful to teams that need to manage both sales and marketing campaigns. That said, other CRMs also incorporate marketing analytics

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Sales Process

  • Organization

  • Sales Team Support

  • User-Friendly

  • Collaborative

Cons

  • Slow: The interface and integrations can be sluggish.

  • Learning Curve: Setup can be clunky.

  • Expensive: Smaller businesses may not be able to afford this product and should look for a free plan

Is there a free version?

Hubspot offers a free plan with limited features, including list segmentation, five email templates, telephony, and integrations. The next pricing tier-up is priced at $30 a month. This means startups can’t really get a feel of the CRM until they pay for it.

8. Insightly

Insightly is a platform that offers a robust set of lead generation tools, as well as email marketing, custom dashboards, and analytics.

Key features

Lead routing: Assign leads to the right salespeople as soon as they come into the CRM. An automatic lead assignment is available from other CRMs, however. 

Email marketing: Send emails in bulk, track messages, and create emails right inside the CRM. Integration with email is also available from other CRMs. 

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Sales Process

  • User-Friendly

  • Collaborative

  • Navigation

  • Organization

Cons

  • Customization: It can be difficult to customize Insightly without help from customer support. 

  • Learning Curve: Learning the CRM takes time. 

Is there a free version?

Insightly offers a free plan, but it’s only for two users and supports just 10 emails a day. The next pricing tier-up is priced at $29 per user per month.

9. Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce Essentials is a pared-down version of the larger Salesforce CRM, aimed at startups and small businesses, offering access to the Salesforce technology stack at a fraction of the price. This version of Salesforce is, however, limited to just ten users.

Key features

Easy set-up: Unlike its massive older sibling, teams can set up this version of Salesforce without calling in outside experts. However, several other CRMs are lauded for greater ease of use. 

Access to the Salesforce ecosystem: If you can’t afford Salesforce, normally you don’t get access to all its add-ons and partners. Essentials allows small businesses entry to the Salesforce world but that world is not everything: many other CRMs offer large libraries of integrations. 

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Sales Process

  • Sales Team Support

  • Organization

  • User-Friendly

  • Collaborative

Cons

  • Limited Features: Features are minimal compared to paid versions and other CRMs

  • Expensive: While Salesforce Essentials is less expensive than Sales Cloud, it’s still pricey for small businesses that might be better served by a free CRM.

  • Not scalable: Salesforce Essentials allows up to five agents, but once more agents are added, the next tier is priced at $80 per user per month, making it impractical for startups. 

Is there a free version?

Salesforce Essentials starts at $25 per agent per month. The company offers a 30-day free trial, but no free plan. If your startup scales, the next tier up is significantly more expensive.

10. Pipefy

Automations are central to Pipefy, which is not, strictly speaking, a CRM. Instead, Pipefy is a workflow management platform that can be made into a CRM using a template.

Key features

Automated workflows: Automation is Pipefy’s bread and butter. Its fast-to-deploy, no-code, automated workflows help take complex, tedious tasks off the shoulders of your team. Simpler automations, however, are available from more sales-focused platforms. 

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Several Functionalities in One App

  • Saves Time

  • Automated Workflows

Cons

  • Limited features: Fields have limited functionalities and could use a custom fields feature

  • Learning Curve: Users report a steep learning curve when learning how to use Pipefy.

  • Not a CRM: At its heart, Pipefy seems designed for automation, not sales

Is there a free version?

Pipefy offers a free plan for small teams and individuals. The next tier-up is priced at $25 per user per month.

11. Bitrix24

Britrix24 is not truly a CRM. Instead, it’s a business management workspace that includes a CRM functionality. Other tools include task and project management tools, chats, video calls, website builder, telephony, as well as CRM marketing and analytics.

Key features

Customizable: As an open-source solution, Bitrix is highly customizable, but it is not a true CRM.

A unified solution: With several functionalities, Bitrix24 is a good solution for a small business that needs several kinds of business management software in one package. Other businesses may be better served by a true CRM.

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Collaborative

  • Several functionalities in one app

  • Saves time

Cons

  • Slow: Users report a slow mobile app, as well as glitches in the platform. 

  • Not User Friendly: The user interface is not intuitive, resulting in a long learning curve. 

  • Customization: Customizing the interface is difficult and can take a long time.

Startup CRM ratings and reviews

ProductRatingsReviews
Freshsales4.5 stars1075 reviews
Bigin4.5 stars225 reviews
Zendesk Sell4 stars477 reviews
Pipedrive4 stars1656 reviews
Copper CRM4.5 stars1,111 reviews
Monday CRM4.5 stars633 reviews
Hubspot4.5 stars10,508 reviews
Insightly4 stars 871 reviews
Salesforce Essentials4.3 stars15,778 reviews
Pipefy4.5 stars 214 reviews

Source: G2

How startups benefit from a proper CRM system?

A CRM for a startup should be lightweight, easy to understand, and should automate business processes that eat up your sales team’s valuable time so they can concentrate on what they do best: sales. Here are some aspects you should look for when choosing a CRM for your startup:

1. Scale as you grow

Lightweight CRMs might work well for a startup, but you don’t want to outgrow your CRM and have to start over with a new platform. Choose a CRM that grows with you, letting you add features, like ticketing, sales forecasting, or customer experience management, when you need them.

2. Fits your budget

You shouldn’t have to break the bank to find the best CRM for your sales team. Look for a CRM with a well-rounded free plan that will let you grow into its more advanced features.

3. Provide a complete view of your customer database

Your CRM should allow you to view your customer base however you need to view it. That means customized views of your data, easy-to-find summaries, and lists that give you exactly the data you need when you need it.

4. Track customer interactions across channels

Meet your customers where they are, and track your engagement with them in email, social media, and through chat. By selecting a CRM that allows you to send and track emails and run chat campaigns from inside the CRM, you keep all of your customer engagement in one spot. This allows you to track your relationship with the customer across the buyer’s journey.

5. Provide an insight-heavy sales analytics dashboard

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Your CRM should allow you to track every sales metric important to your team. Look for a CRM with robust sales analytics that allows you to identify the activities, accounts, or sales reps that are generating the most revenue. Having that information at your fingertips will allow you to make data-driven decisions quickly.

6. Automate repetitive tasks

Your sales team is busy enough as it is. Use a CRM with AI and automation capabilities to automate the tasks that take away from their main goal: selling. Use sales sequences to automate outreach to potential customers, automated workflows to take care of business processes like lead qualification, and AI to help create content for sales campaigns.

7. Customizable and easy to adapt

Your business is unique, and your CRM should reflect that. Find a CRM that you can adapt to your unique business needs, whether that means adding customized sales activities or changing the language or currency to fit your target market.

8. Keep your customer data safe

It goes without saying that your CRM should be secure, protecting your customer’s personal and payment information. Look for a CRM with strong cybersecurity controls and the ability to easily manage permissions.

9. Integration with your existing tool kit

A good CRM should work with the sales tools you already use. Look for one that integrates seamlessly with your existing technology stack.

How much does a startup crm cost?

CRM platforms are available at several price points. The cost can range from $12 per user a month to more than $300 per user per month, depending on the software itself, the features you need, and the package you select.

Some CRMs, like Freshsales, allow you to get started for free

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Why should startups use CRM software?

1. Bring in only high-quality leads

Startups don’t have time to waste on bad leads. A good CRM assists with prospecting by allowing your team to segment the leads based on their behavior, interest, and location. You can also capture lead information using web forms that capture lead information and save it to your CRM, where a score is assigned to each lead based on their engagement with your business, telling you how likely a lead is to convert. This information means your salespeople are only spending time on the leads that are a good fit for your product and not clog your pipeline with deals unlikely to close.

2. See all your deals at a glance

As a startup, you need full, real-time visibility into your pipeline. An AI-powered CRM gives you a visual overview of all the deals in the pipeline, with tags such as ‘likely to close,’ ‘at risk,’ and ‘gone cold.’ Having this visual picture allows you to do the following: 

  • Track the progress on each deal throughout the sales pipeline

  • Gain a quick understanding of the status of deals

  • Focus on the deals that will bring you the most profit

  • Identify and resolve bottlenecks in the pipeline

  • Determine which deals are likely to close and where you need to dedicate more resources

This lets you keep your pipeline healthy and moving forward.

3. Quick, automated responses

82% of buyers expect an immediate response from businesses. Even more concerning, 62% of buyers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less. So no matter how small your sales team is, your response has to be speedy. 

One of the benefits of a CRM is that it can help you keep up with customer expectations, leveraging a chatbot for immediate responses and simple conversations. 

For queries that require human intervention, the chatbot can direct the query to a specified sales rep. A CRM with an auto-assign feature can also help you organize your team by assigning certain leads to specific reps.

4. Improve conversion rates

As a startup, you constantly try to increase sales. A CRM can help you boost your conversion rate. 

For example, by tracking your prospects’ behavior on your site, you can tell where they’re dropping off and where they are entering your sales funnel. You can use this data to minimize the drop-off points and maximize the converters, therefore, improving your website experience for more conversion.

5. Break down silos

 A good CRM provides a unified view of all customer activity and shows all data collected by a startup’s sales and marketing teams, including:

  • Prospects’ behavior on your site and in apps

  • Emails, call recordings, and chat conversations

  • Marketing materials the customer downloaded and engaged with

  • Each salesperson’s notes, upcoming appointments and meetings

  • How likely they are to convert

  • Suggestions for the next best actions

This 360° view aligns both teams, and allows everyone who interacts with that customer to provide a consistent and personalized customer experience. 

6. Increase deal value by upselling and cross-selling at the right time

It’s much harder to sell to a new customer than it is to sell to an existing customer; you’re 60-70% more likely to sell more to existing customers. They already know and trust your brand.

However, cross-selling and upselling are only a success when you target the right people at the right time. With a CRM giving you visibility on your customers’ websites and in-app activities, you can see who might be interested in buying more from you. For example, you can tell that a beginner package customer is likely ready to upgrade to a higher-tier package if they visit your pricing page.

7. Boost customer satisfaction

Customers expect a lot these days, especially from new startups without an established brand presence. They expect your team to know their business challenges and to personalize every interaction. A CRM can help your team do that by aligning all your teams, reducing response times, and helping your company speak with one voice.

8. Efficiency

Startups with small sales teams don’t have time to spare on redundant tasks. A CRM can streamline your sales process by allowing reps to do all their work inside the platform and by automating redundant tasks.

9. Fast decision-making

The analytics provided by a CRM give you insights into your customers’ behavior, your sales team’s performance, and your pipeline. All of that information means you’re able to make faster, more informed decisions.

10. Increased security

A CRM is designed to be secure and is a safer place for customer information than a document can ever be. The security controls used by a CRM can help you protect your business from fraud and other security threats.

Why doesn’t a spreadsheet suffice as a startup customer relationship management tool?

1. A spreadsheet can be duplicated, deleted, or even lost

When your team is using a list or spreadsheet to manage customer relationships, the document will likely be copied one more time by members of your team. The result of this is confusion. No one knows which version is the correct or latest version. Even worse, the document may be lost or deleted by mistake.

2. Spreadsheets and lists can become confusing

A spreadsheet or list might work well in the early days of a start-up, but unfortunately, they don’t scale well. They get confusing fast as your team adds products, needs to sort by demographics, or needs to add new fields.

3. Spreadsheets aren’t secure

One of the worst things about being able to copy a spreadsheet is that those copies can end up anywhere. You don’t know who might get their hands on one, and if that spreadsheet or list has sensitive customer information on it, that is a disaster waiting to happen.

4. Spreadsheets offer limited pipeline visibility

A list is just that - a list. Without dashboards, you’re not able to see your pipeline at a glance and that means your team can’t see the full picture: which deals are lagging, which need attention, and which are most likely to close.

5. There is no automation

Sure, a spreadsheet has formulas, but those can get complicated, and they can’t send an email out to a lead, or assign a lead to the right rep. Without automation, someone has to do all that work by hand.

6. Not everyone can see them

The sales spreadsheet may not be shared with marketing or any of the other departments that need visibility into the sales pipeline. This means you lack valuable information the marketing team has.

7. You need to use several tools to do the job of one

When you use a list or spreadsheet to manage customer interactions, that means you’re also using a variety of other tools: email, messengers, the phone, and other solutions. Your team is switching manually between tools, which is both a waste of time and a way that information can be lost.

8. Customer information is scattered across several solutions

Relying on more than one sales tool leads to  customer information is not stored in one place. It’s in inboxes, email threads and social media. Without a unified view of your customer, you’re lacking important information.

9. You are scoring your own leads

Do you know how good your leads are? With a spreadsheet or a list, you lack context. Your leads are just names in a list, and your sales team may waste time chasing deals that aren’t likely to close.

10. You can get a better tool for free

The best argument for using a spreadsheet or Notion to track customer engagement is price, but when there are such comprehensive CRM options available for free, it no longer makes sense to settle for a spreadsheet or list.

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Startup CRM FAQ

What is a startup CRM platform?

A startup CRM, or customer relationship management platform, is software that stores your sales teams’ customer information in one place. It shows you, at a glance, where deals are in the pipeline, which sales reps have handled customer interactions, and how much every deal is worth. A CRM for a startup should be lightweight, easy to understand, and should automate business processes that eat up your sales team’s valuable time so they can concentrate on what they do best: sales.

Do startup businesses need a CRM?

Startups need a CRM to centralize sales activities, customer data, and the sales funnel. A cloud-based CRM helps in real-time tracking of deals, prevents information loss, eliminates task duplication, and enhances productivity through adequate pipeline management, keeping the sales team focused.

Which are the best sales CRMs for startups?

Freshsales, Hubspot, Monday CRM, and Pipefy are excellent CRM solutions for startups. Freshsales is especially good for scaling startups because it’s easy to use and provides powerful insights that help them make informed decisions.

What is the best free startup CRM software?

Several CRMs offer free plans, including Freshsales, Pipefy, Hubspot, and Insightly. Many of those plans, however, offer limited features or are only for one or two users, except for Freshsales.

Freshsales offers a free plan for your entire sales team, including features such as contact management, deal management, and built-in telephony. The free 21-day trial allows you to try out the features associated with other pricing plans.

What is the best CRM software for Tech startups?

Freshsales, Bigin, Hubspot, and Zendesk Sell are all excellent solutions for tech startups. They are lightweight, customizable, and able to adapt to your business and your changing product.

What is the best B2B CRM for startup revenue growth?

Freshsales, Salesforce Essentials, Hubspot, Bigin, and Zendesk Sell help with B2B revenue growth. They’re designed for small teams but can scale as your business grows and adds more users.

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