Best free CRM software for your business

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Top 15 free CRM software tools to power your business today

1. Freshsales

Customers appreciate how easy it is to get up and running with a simple CRM like Freshsales—and that the product is only getting better over time. Says one G2 user, “Freshsales is a user friendly CRM that is constantly looking for ways to improve. I like that they not only take feedback, but actually implement it. It syncs up easily to your email and allows for seamless work across different platforms like Google calendar/[Gmail] and Acuity.” 

Avanse Financial Services, an education-focused new-age non-banking financial company (NBFC), considers Freshsales’ intelligent workflow automation features a major selling point. Intelligent automation rules make it easy for Avanse to assign the right tasks to the right people on the right teams, cutting down on response times and improving customer support.

Freshsales also shines when it comes to building better client relationships. DVV Media International uses Freshsales email marketing tools like email templates and bulk emails to save time, maintain regular communication, and cultivate long-term customer loyalty.

Key features

There are plenty of free CRM solutions available, and it may even be overwhelming to evaluate so many different options. Which is the best free CRM software in the pack? Well, that depends on what you’re looking for. You need a CRM that can grow with you, adapting to your changing business needs. Here are just a few of the Freshsales features that make this possible:

  • Communication. Engage your customers on the channel they prefer, including email, phone, and chat.

  • Context. Achieve a, unified view of leads during the various stages of their buyer journey, from the awareness stage to the decision stage

  • Customization. Rather than limiting you to pre-defined workflows or processes, Freshsales adapts to the way your team works. Create your own lifecycle stages, and custom fields as you see fit

Freshsales also includes some interesting features on their premium plans such as:

  • Automation With Freshsales, you can automate daily task management, sophisticated sales sequences, auto-assignment rules, and internal notifications. 

  • AI capabilities With the power of Freddy AI, Freshsales helps you score your contacts. This advanced scoring system allows your sales team to reach out to the most promising contacts first for maximum sales conversion.

  • Advanced customization Freshsales also provides some advanced customization options such as custom modules, and custom sales activities in its premium plans.

Pros 

  • Sales processes are easy. “As a sales rep, this tool is really helpful for me to create, manage, and project deals of prospects and see the progress and the sales cycle,” says a G2 reviewer

  • Simple to set up and use

  • Keeps improving as new features are added

Cons

  • Customer support could be better

Pricing

  • Free for up to three users

  • Paid plans start at $15/user/month (billed monthly)

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2. HubSpot CRM

Key features

  • Contact management

  • Call tracking 

  • Company insights 

  • Pipeline management

Pros and cons of HubSpot CRM

  • Easy to manage deal stages from cold through closed

  • Tracks email correspondence well

  • Limited AI workflows. Says a Trustradius reviewer, “I would love to see some AI features regarding the logic of workflows.”

Pricing

  • Free plan includes unlimited users and basic tools

  • More feature-rich plans start at $30/month for unlimited users (billed monthly)


3. Bigin 

Key features

  • Pipeline management, including unified team pipelines and connected pipelines that track customer journeys

  • Customer management tools that streamline data integration and enable real-time notification of inbound customer communications

Pros and cons of Bigin

  • Easy to use

  • Good social media integration

  • Sales approaches are generalized 

  • According to a Trustradius reviewer, “Making adjustments to some of the templates or template options is tough.”

Pricing

  • Free for one user

  • Paid plans begin at $9/user/month (billed monthly)


4. Pipefy 

Key features

  • Robust business process automation capabilities

  • User-friendly visual workflow design interface

Pros and cons of Pipefy

  • Flexible customization and integration

  • Not the traditional, dedicated CRM solution

Pricing

  • Free for up to 10 users

  • Paid plans begin at $32/user/month (billed monthly)


5. Bitrix24

Key features

  • CRM and lead management

  • Live chat, web forms, and VoIP options for client engagement

Pros and cons of Bitrix24

  • Powerful range of business capabilities including project planning, task management, and time-tracking attributes.

  • Users might find Bitrix 24 overwhelming at first. A G2 reviewer summed it up this way: “Think of Bitrix24 as your favorite gadget—it's user-friendly for most tasks, but you might need a moment to get the hang of all its features.”

Pricing

  • Free plan includes unlimited users but limited CRM features

  • Paid plans begin at $61/month for five users (billed monthly)


6. Zoho CRM

Key features

  • Salesforce automation for leads, accounts, contacts, and deals

  • Standard CRM analytics reports

Pros and cons of Zoho CRM

  • Customizable fields and workflows to suit your unique requirements

  • “The learning curve for first time individuals can be high, especially for those who are unfamiliar with CRM programs,” says a G2 reviewer.

Pricing

  • Free plan supports up to three users

  • Paid plans begin at $20/user/month (billed monthly)


7. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Key features

  • Contextual emails based on CRM data

  • Visual pipeline management including AI-based scoring models

  • Strong integration with Microsoft 365 applications

Pros and cons of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

  • Good reporting capabilities for sales management purposes

  • Knowledgeable customer support

  • Price is high compared to other CRMs on the market

Pricing

  • 30-day free trial, but no free CRM plan

  • Paid plans begin at $65/user/month (billed monthly)


8. EngageBay

Key features

  • Targeted marketing, workflow automation, and visual deals pipeline

  • Supports better alignment between the sales and marketing teams

Pros and cons of EngageBay

  • Supports streamlined, all-in-one sales and marketing processes

  • Responsive and helpful customer support team

Pricing

  • Free plan supports up to 250 contacts

  • Paid plans begin at $15/user/month (billed monthly)


9. Less Annoying CRM

Key features

  • Unified view of contact information along with a simple search tool that makes it easy to find contacts

  • Calendar and tasks live directly within the CRM; option to sync with Google Calendar

Pros and cons of Less Annoying CRM

  • Affordable

  • No mobile app. “Currently there is no App for Android or iOS and that would be fabulous if they would develop it,” says a G2 reviewer.

Pricing

  • 30-day free trial, but no free plan

  • There’s just one paid plan: $15/user/month (billed monthly)


10. Insightly

Key features

  • Sales pipeline and lead management allow for prioritization and a real-time view into deal status

  • Sales lead tracking and opportunity management capabilities allow for efficient risk and opportunity management while accelerating the sales process

Pros and cons of Insightly

  • Efficient storage of records and documents

  • No AI capabilities

Pricing

  • Free for up to two users

  • Paid plans start at $29/user/month (billed annually)


11. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Key features

  • Lead management allows for tracking deals across any channel and provides sales professionals with a handy daily to-do list

  • Activity management feature keeps emails and other engagement activities synced and continually updated

  • Account and opportunity management tools gather customer data, simplify customer relationship management, and enable timely action

Pros and cons of Salesforce Sales Cloud

  • Wide range of functionality to support lead and opportunity management, sales automation, and analytics

  • Scales to support future growth and expansion as needed

  • Paid plans are expensive compared to other CRMs on the market 

  • “When we have an issue or process we're trying to solve, it gets salesy pretty quick because that the solution is always the next price tier away,” says a G2 reviewer.

Pricing

  • 30-day free trial, but no free plan

  • Paid plans start at $25/user/month (billed annually)


12. ClickUp

Key features

  • Automated sales processes for assigning leads, tracking follow-ups, and triggering lead status updates

  • Convenient visual layouts for tracking prospects, clients, and deals 

  • Real-time reporting capabilities that show how well the team is performing

Pros and cons of ClickUp

  • Supports cross-team collaboration beyond sales

  • Can be customized to support a range of workflows

  • May not be ideal for businesses that are just getting started with CRM tools

Pricing

  • Free plan supports unlimited users and up to 100MB storage

  • Paid plans begin at $10/user/month (billed monthly)


13. Pipedrive

Key features

  • Sales automation including task automation, one-click data collection, an open API, and an AI-enabled sales assistant

  • Customizable sales pipelines

  • Centralized email and communications that nurture leads through the sales funnel

Pros and cons of Pipedrive

  • Effective sales pipeline management processes

  • Integrates well with other application and tools

  • Reporting and analytics are not as robust as they could be

  • Lacks advanced automation capabilities

Pricing

  • 14-day free trial, but no free plan

  • Paid plans begin at $21.90/user/month (billed monthly)


14. Copper

Key features

  • Centrally organizes all your emails, calls, files, and notes for every contact, so you can have a complete view of your relationship with them

  • Lets you capture new leads and track conversions from your inbox

  • Integrates with Gmail and Google Workspace. A Chrome extension is available, too.

Pros and cons of Copper

  • User-friendly and attractive interface

  • Allows contacts to be synced with Gmail

  • Customization may not always work as expected. “While you are able to customize some things, usually those customizations don't play well with some of the other functions,” reports a G2 reviewer.

Pricing

  • 14-day free trial, but no free plan

  • Paid plans start at $29/user/month (billed monthly)


15. Apptivo

Key features

  • Lead management tool that gathers leads from various sources, scores them, and identifies which ones are ready for conversion

  • Sales funnel builder that lets you analyze and map your sales progress

  • Pipeline management feature that shows the win rate, sales cycle length, and conversion rate during a specific time frame

Pros and cons of Apptivo

  • Makes it easy to keep contacts up to date

  • Vendor is open to requests for features or improvements

  • According to a Trustradius reviewer, “The platform may seem a little bit out of date. They haven't really updated the format of their site, logos, etc.”

Pricing

  • 30-day free trial, but no free plan

  • Paid plans begin at $10/user/month (billed monthly)

Benefits of a free CRM

The best free CRM software unifies your sales process under one platform—from customer outreach and closing deals to analytics. It helps you provide seamless customer engagement, just like larger businesses do. But as your business grows, it gets tougher not to burn a hole in your pocket on different solutions for invoicing, lead generation, contact management, marketing tools, automation, messaging and telephony platforms, etc. At the same time, your business needs all of these capabilities to keep growing. This is where a free CRM comes into play.

Here are four key benefits of using free CRM software:

Cost-effective and scalable:

The best free CRM software allows you to manage customer relationships without incurring additional expenses. This is especially helpful for businesses with limited budgets. As you grow and require additional features, many free CRM vendors offer the option to upgrade to a paid plan. This prevents the hassle of migrating all your data to a new system.

Foster stronger customer relationships:

A free CRM system helps you know your prospects and customers better. For example, a customer 360 view pulls together all the information you have and provides a holistic view of each contact. This empowers your salespeople to personalize communication with every prospect and convert them into customers for life.

Increased sales productivity:

A CRM system can streamline many aspects of customer management, such as lead capture, contact and deal management, sales automation, etc. This helps salespeople save time and increase productivity, allowing them to focus on what they’re best at: selling!

Track the right metrics:

A free CRM with reporting and analytics capabilities can provide insights into sales data such as sales performance, tracking sales achieved versus the target, identifying crucial sales trends, and resolving bottlenecks. This can help businesses make more informed decisions about sales strategy and forecasting.

Use cases of customer relationship management software

A free CRM can be valuable to any type of business, and there are many kinds of CRM tools to pick from. Whether you’re looking for a free CRM for small business, the best free CRM for startups, or something more specific like a CRM for real estate companies, you can find a free CRM tool that meets your needs.

Most businesses are looking for a CRM that can help them carry out certain processes or address specific use cases. The best CRM software covers these use cases, for starters:

Contact scoring

This feature allows a company to know which lead to prioritise and engage with them first thereby increasing the chances of earning high-value conversions. A CRM does this by giving you deeper insight into how customers are behaving when they engage with your website or app.

Deal management

Tracking a deal to completion can be a high-touch process, but a CRM makes it easier. Deal management helps you keep tabs on where your various deals are in the pipeline so you can properly manage them. An AI-powered CRM elevates this automation even further by allowing you to predict how your deals will perform, forecast revenue, and make smarter sales decisions in less time.

Workflow automation

Before CRMs arrived, the work of a sales professional involved a lot of manual, repetitive tasks such as following up on leads, sending emails, raising invoices, and so on. By using a CRM to create custom workflow automation, you can significantly reduce the amount of manual work they have to carry out, allowing them to concentrate their time and talent on closing deals.

What are the essential features of a CRM system?

Visual sales pipeline

Freshsales free CRM gives you a visual snapshot of all your current deals in different stages of the sales process with their corresponding value.

Salespeople can identify deals to focus on using: 

  • Weighted pipeline: Assign values to every stage in the deal pipeline to determine the chances of deal closure and forecast revenue.

  • Rotten deals: Set an age limit to surface deals whose chances of winning diminish, i.e., when the deal rots.

One look at this screen, and you know where you should start for the day. You can also integrate Freshsales with messaging platforms like Slack to collaborate with different stakeholders on a deal right from within the CRM.

Multichannel engagement

When we say Freshsales free CRM is a one-stop solution, we actually mean it. Freshsales customers agree. 

“We realized if we can develop a personal contact before their appointment, and we do that via email and through text messaging through Freshsales, we dramatically reduced our no-show rate,” says Mike Hopkins, senior VP of sales and service at Blue Nile, the world’s leading online diamond retailer.

With the free version of Freshsales CRM, you and your team can engage with prospects and customers across multiple channels such as

Email marketing

Enable a two-way sync between your email client and Freshsales so you can spend less time navigating between the applications and more time selling.

Phone

With a built-in phone, you can place calls with a click, automatically log calls, map the recording to the respective contacts, and record voicemail.

Chat

Route inbound queries to the right salespeople and create FAQs about the topics your customers ask about the most to help them self-serve.

SMS

Send individual, bulk, or automated SMS to prospects and create a two-way communication channel with them.

Facebook Messenger

Connect Facebook Messenger with chat to interact with customers in real time on a platform they frequently use.

Reports and analytics

If you can’t measure your performance, you can’t improve it. And with all the sales data stored in the free version of your CRM solution, using it to generate various reports can help:

  • Track sales activities and team performance

  • Monitor sales outreach such as email campaigns and sales call performance 

  • Identify salespeople, teams, and regions that bring in revenue

  • Map sales achieved versus the target

Mobile app

When you have a mobile CRM that gives you the same functionality you would find in the desktop version, you are no longer tied to the office desk. Free CRM software like Freshsales empowers you and your sales teams to work from anywhere and stay productive. Freshsales' mobile app allows you to:

  • View a quick summary of accounts, deals, prospects, and customers

  • Schedule, track, and manage your tasks, appointments, and meetings

  • Take notes or record conversations and save them as voice note for future reference

  • Navigate to your meeting location or book an Uber right from the Freshsales mobile app

  • Create, manage, and track the progress of deals using a visual sales pipeline

  • Personalize call preferences, notifications, alerts, task reminders, email digests, and more

You can stay updated on the go with push notifications and no gap in data, as information entered into the mobile app seamlessly syncs with the desktop version.

A unified view of your contacts

In Freshsales free CRM, get a 360-degree view of your leads and customers captured on one screen. It provides a quick summary of all essential information, such as: 

  • Contact details

  • Status of ongoing deals

  • Notes, tasks, and related appointments

  • Activity timeline with conversations across emails, phone, and chat in chronological order

Intelligent workflows

With powerful automation, a free CRM such as Freshsales enables businesses to optimize for time and get more done, even with a lean team. 

You can automate sales tasks like

  • Nurturing new leads with personalized email sequences

  • Scheduling follow-up emails for different scenarios

  • Raising invoices

  • Updating CRM fields based on specific events

  • Creating tasks, appointments, and reminders

  • Sending renewal reminders

By using intelligent workflows to eliminate manual work, you can quickly grow the business.

“Over the last year, we’ve acquired 10x more customers and are rapidly scaling. To our surprise and relief, through this busy phase, the time spent on administrative tasks by teams dropped by 20%” says Alexandra, CRM operations manager at Humn, a London-based insurtech company.

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What is a CRM?

A customer relationship management (CRM) system manages your company’s relationships with its customers. It helps sales professionals keep track of conversations and interactions with customers so your business can provide better support to them. You can also use a CRM tool to align sales and marketing teams and processes for even more effective business outcomes. Learn more about it in our CRM guide.

How much does a CRM cost?

There are many free CRM tools available. You can start with free CRM software before deciding whether to invest in a CRM solution. Most CRMs offer paid plans, too. Cost depends on several factors, including the number of users and contacts your business needs. Depending on the CRM you pick and your particular situation, the cost could range anywhere from $10/user/month up to hundreds of dollars per month.

What are the benefits of free CRM software?

Free CRM software is very budget-friendly, which makes it especially attractive to small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs. It allows you to get comfortable learning how to use customer relationship management tools without having to make a major investment right away. The best free CRM software lets you build stronger customer relationships, which can lead to business growth.

Who can use free CRM software?

Anyone can use free CRM software—an entrepreneur looking for a startup CRM, or any other kind of business up to a large enterprise. If you need to keep track of your customer relationships, you will find a free CRM tool useful. It is especially attractive to small businesses or self-employed professionals who are working with small budgets.

What are the major features of free CRM software?

A free CRM solution typically has contact management, workflow automation, and lead management features, among other things. The best free CRM software also supports plenty of customization, so you can tailor it to your own needs. Reporting and analytics capabilities are a must so you can understand how your sales processes are performing and identify how to optimize them.