Customer relationship management (CRM) software is an indispensable tool for businesses of all sizes, revolutionizing how companies interact with clients and manage sales processes. CRM systems centralize customer data, automate routine tasks and provide key insights that drive growth and improve customer satisfaction. With a variety of options available in today’s market, choosing the right CRM solution can be a challenging task.
We’ve researched and tested over 20 CRM providers and ultimately landed on the top 15 options available. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the best CRM software, carefully evaluating their features, pricing and suitability for different business needs. Whether you’re a small business looking for an affordable solution or a large enterprise requiring advanced features, our expert analysis will help you navigate the CRM landscape and find the perfect fit for your organization.
Our Top 15 Picks for Best CRM Software
- Best for Personalized Project Management Boards: monday.com
- Best for Add-Ons: Pipedrive
- Best for Advanced Customization and Functionality: Salesforce
- Best for Combined Sales and Marketing Features: HubSpot
- Best for Small Businesses Seeking Cost-Effective Solutions: Zoho CRM
- Best for On-the-Go Sales Teams: Insightly
- Best for Simplicity: Less Annoying CRM
- Best for Goal-Oriented Teams with Integrated Help Desk Needs: Zendesk Sell
- Best for Customizable Reporting and Analytics: Freshsales
- Best for Small Teams Seeking All-in-One Solutions: Salesmate
- Best for Customized Client Management: Apptivo
- Best Affordable All-in-One Solution: Bitrix24
- Best for Solopreneurs: Honeybook
- Best for Comprehensive Team Collaboration: Capsule
- Best for Customer Service Tools: SugarCRM
Read our full CRM methodology and see how we test and review products.
Other CRMs We Considered
In our review process, we evaluated several other popular CRM solutions, including Agile, Nimble, and Act! CRM. These platforms offer unique features that may appeal to certain businesses, but ultimately fell short of our top recommendations.
Agile CRM provides a comprehensive suite of sales, marketing, and service tools, including a free plan for up to 10 users. Its all-in-one approach and integrated telephony features could be attractive for small businesses looking for a budget-friendly option. However, Agile’s low user experience scores, particularly for its mobile app, and reported issues with bugginess and clunky interfaces led to its exclusion from our top picks.
Nimble stands out for its social media integration and contact enrichment features, making it a potential fit for businesses heavily focused on social selling. However, its limited integrations with other business tools and fewer customer support options (lacking phone support and user forums) prevented it from making our final list.
Act! CRM offers a robust set of features for sales and marketing teams, with a long history in the CRM market. Its strength lies in its customization options and industry-specific solutions. However, the absence of a free version, limited contract flexibility, and poor user experience scores for both desktop and mobile interfaces ultimately kept it off our top recommendations.
While these CRMs may suit specific business needs, we believe our selected top picks offer better overall value, user experience, and functionality for most small to medium-sized businesses.
Why Should You Use CRM Software?
CRM stands for customer relationship management. CRM software helps sales teams manage customer relationships by storing contacts and tracking sales. Many CRM options can also send emails and other forms of communication to help build and maintain that relationship, resulting in better customer experience and retention.
Features to Compare When Choosing CRM
We interviewed and surveyed real CRM users to understand which features they use in their daily workflow. The sales professionals we interviewed mentioned integrations, contact management and reporting as some of the top features, while the survey respondents cited customization, unique features (e.g., AI tools), integrations and customer service. Below is a list of the top CRM features to consider during your search process.
1. Contact and Deal Management
- Contact Organization: Tools for storing, categorizing, and updating client information with custom fields and tags.
- Lead Nurturing: Features for capturing potential clients, assessing their potential, and guiding them through the sales funnel.
- Sales Pipeline Visualization: Interactive displays for tracking opportunities as they progress through various deal stages.
- Document Handling: Capabilities for storing, sharing, and potentially signing important files like proposals and contracts.
2. Communication and Collaboration
- Email Synchronization: Seamless connection with popular email platforms to track conversations and maintain contact lists.
- Call Management: Built-in calling features, potentially including auto-dialing and call recording for efficient client communication.
- Team Coordination: Tools that facilitate information sharing and task delegation among team members.
- Social Media Connectivity: Features for monitoring and engaging with leads across various social platforms.
3. Automation and Productivity
- Workflow Streamlining: Ability to automate repetitive tasks and processes to save time and reduce errors.
- Third-party Tool Integration: Compatibility with other business software to create a cohesive work environment.
- Mobile Accessibility: Smartphone apps that allow for CRM management on the go, ensuring productivity outside the office.
4. Analytics and Customization
- Performance Metrics: Customizable dashboards and reports to track key indicators and sales performance.
- Data Visualization: Tools for creating clear, insightful graphics to represent sales data and trends.
- Tailored Interface: Ability to modify the CRM’s layout, fields, and processes to match specific business needs.
5. Support and Scalability
- Customer Assistance: Various support channels and resources to help users maximize the CRM’s potential.
- Data Protection: Robust security measures to safeguard sensitive client information.
- Growth Accommodation: Capacity to handle increasing users, contacts, and data as the business expands.
- International Capabilities: Features to manage multiple currencies and support global business operations.
Expert Tips and Tricks
Aside from core features, there are other factors to consider when comparing CRM reviews. Here are some tips we came up with as we completed our testing of CRM products:
Identify Your Main Pain Points and Goals
In many cases, sales teams may not need the most comprehensive CRM on the market. By you identifying the main problems you hope to solve by implementing CRM software, you can narrow your focus to look at only the providers that can help.
Consider mapping out what your current sales process looks like. Then, determine the most significant gaps that you hope a CRM can fill. Do you have repetitive tasks that you want to streamline with automation? Do you need a single place to organize everything? Creating this list of pain points is a good starting point for defining the features you want to look for.
A good way to think about CRM is user-first: What’s important to the people who will be using this software day in and day out? How do you ensure that the product is meeting their needs as effectively as possible? What features are business-critical vs. nice-to-have?
Tap Haley, Director of Business Development in IT Consulting
Don’t Forget About Compliance Requirements
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are two laws that set regulations for data security. The former applies to any international business that handles personal information for European Union citizens, while the latter applies to American businesses that transmit health-related information. If these laws apply to you, make sure the CRM you select follows the guidelines laid out in them so that you don’t incorrectly store your contact list.
All of the providers on our list support GDPR compliance, but the same isn’t true for HIPAA. Here is a table that summarizes the CRM companies that are and aren’t compliant:
| CRM Provider | GDPR Compliance | HIPAA Compliance |
| monday.com | ✅ | ✅ (Enterprise plan) |
| Zoho CRM | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pipedrive | ✅ | ❌ |
| Freshsales | ✅ | ✅ |
| Salesforce | ✅ | ✅ |
| HubSpot | ✅ | ❌ |
| Insightly | ✅ | ✅ |
| Zendesk Sell | ✅ | ✅ (Advanced Compliance add-on for Professional and Enterprise plans) |
| Less Annoying CRM | ✅ | ❌ |
| Salesmate | ✅ | ❌ |
Be Prepared for the Setup Process
The most crucial part of setting up your CRM is importing your customer data. As we tested CRMs, we noticed that most platforms offer bulk data transfer through a .csv file. Migrating this data can get more complicated if you’re switching from one CRM to another. It can also be more difficult if you’re choosing an inherently more complex CRM, such as Salesforce. Keep all of this in mind as you consider the amount of time and energy you want to dedicate to implementation.
You need to build buy-in – most leaders know they need a CRM, but they fail to build the buy-in necessary to take it across the finish line at their company. Managers get excited, don’t understand the ins and outs of it, then they throw it at everybody and say, ‘Let’s get going on this,’ and people are like, ‘How the heck do we use this thing?
Joe Karasin, Small Business Owner, Karasin PPC
Benefits of CRM
There are many benefits to implementing a CRM. Choosing the best CRM for your team can significantly impact productivity, organization and overall sales and marketing campaign performance.
Streamlined Daily Workflow
Finding the best CRM software for your business can empower your team to be more productive. Many CRM software will also allow you to automate tasks like updating customer profiles or adding a customer to an email list so your team can spend more time creating the best customer experience and closing deals.
Better Organization
Aside from streamlining daily tasks, using CRM software can be easy for your team to stay organized. With one central place for all your customer data, team members can access the information they need and collaborate effectively without having to search for data in multiple different tools. Not only is it a place to keep your customer database, but customer profiles in a CRM can act as a historical record of all activity related to a particular customer. The best CRM for your team will be the one that allows you to stay organized so you can easily access the customer data you need.
Better Insights to Power Marketing Campaigns
One of the many benefits of having a CRM is that your customer data can be used to create more innovative and more effective marketing campaigns. For instance, you can use CRM data to better segment your email marketing audiences based on customer behavior, purchase history or other activity. When you have software that can help you automate the collection and management of your customer information, it becomes much easier to use that data to make more informed decisions to drive sales and revenue.
How Much Does CRM Cost?
CRM pricing varies based on the provider and plan. However, the general range is around $15 to $500 per user per month.
Most starter pricing will range from $12 to $25 per month per user, but higher-tier pricing plans can vary widely. However, in most cases, the higher the plan, the more features you’ll have access to. Base plans are typically minimal and may only include essential features or a limited number of user seats. In most cases, your access to integrations won’t be limited by the plan you choose. Still, some providers will reserve native integration access to certain apps only for top-tier plan holders. It is always a good idea to confirm with a sales rep that your plan will include everything you may have tested out in a free trial or demo. Your CRM costs will also depend on the seats you need, which is the number of people on your team that will access the software.
Aside from this, it can be helpful to list the non-negotiable features you know your team will need to help you narrow down the plan you choose. This can help you avoid overpaying for a plan that includes extras your team won’t use. In the case of software like Salesforce (which has costs that start at $25 per user but cap out at $500 per user), this could save your budget.
The Future of CRM: Predictions for 2024 and Beyond
CRM is poised to witness several transformative trends that will shape how small businesses interact with their customers. According to Statista, the CRM market is expected to climb $44.73 billion, and the average spend per employee will reach $264.70 in 2024.
AI and Automation: Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a vital role, enabling businesses that were previously bootstrapped by their ability to create enough assets and the velocity to grow their business at a rapid pace. It will also allow for the quick analysis and forecasting of large data sets to predict and automate the delivery of those assets at scale. In our recent survey of CRM users, 90% of respondents said that AI features are either a somewhat or essential part of CRM software. CRM software providers like Salesforce, Zoho and Microsoft have invested in AI sales assistants designed to streamline tasks within CRM platforms and will likely continue to do so.
Dani Mariano
President, Razorfish
“The ability for us all to use Generative AI to bring down the cost of real personalization and getting to personalization at scale is what’s going to allow everybody to start driving the Ferrari because now we have the assets to fill it. That’s always been the biggest challenge: we can’t get enough assets to deliver these personalized experiences. It’s just too expensive. Now we’re on the eve of that changing, so the CRM tools are going to become more and more important in the marketing mix.”
Omni-channel Integration: As the channels we use to communicate with customers expand beyond email, delivering channel-appropriate and personalized experiences becomes more important than ever.
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs): CDPs will emerge as a central repository for unified customer data, aggregating information from disparate sources and providing insights into various customer touchpoints.
First-party Data: With the depreciation of cookies, the ability to collect data directly from prospects and customers will give businesses the 1 + 1 = 3 edge when combined with CRM.
Voice-enabled CRM: Voice recognition technology and virtual assistants will enable users to interact with CRM systems through natural language commands, facilitating hands-free data entry and task management.
Blockchain for Data Security: Blockchain technology will enhance data security and integrity within CRM systems by providing a decentralized and tamper-proof ledger for storing customer data and transaction records, ensuring greater transparency and trust.
Hyper-personalization: CRM systems will leverage advanced segmentation and targeting capabilities to deliver hyper-personalized experiences tailored to individual preferences, behaviors and demographics, fostering deeper customer engagement and loyalty.
Emphasis on Customer Experience (CX): The focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences will intensify, with CRM platforms evolving to prioritize CX metrics, sentiment analysis and feedback mechanisms to measure and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
The Bottom Line
Finding the best CRM company for your organization may take some effort, but it can be a beneficial tool to add to your day-to-day workflow. Using personal testing, expert interviewing and surveying, we evaluated some of the top CRM software companies on the market.
Monday.com’s CRM came out on top and stands apart thanks to its customizable interface and useful feature set. Teams that want a robust CRM and are willing to take on more of a learning curve should consider Salesforce or HubSpot. If you want an easy-to-use tool with sales and contact management essentials, there’s Pipedrive, Insightly and Less Annoying CRM. Zoho CRM and Freshsales also offer CRM essentials, combining them with customization and reporting, and Zendesk Sell stood out for its sales goal-setting features.
Frequently Asked Questions About CRMs
You don’t need a CRM, but it can be a powerful tool to help you reach your sales goals. Think about how you currently manage contact information and marketing communication. You could switch to a CRM platform to centralize everything if you have various spreadsheets, email inboxes and software tools.
We conducted a survey with 200 CRM users. Respondents cited Salesforce as the most used CRM platform, followed by Zendesk. HubSpot and monday.com tied for the third most used CRM.
CRM pricing varies based on the provider and plan. However, the general range is around $15 to $500 per user per month.
The more user-friendly a CRM solution is, the more likely your team will be able to adopt it as part of their everyday workflow. Complex CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot can require a steeper learning curve, while more straightforward CRM options may not have the functionality your team needs. Finding a balance between the two is crucial.
Involve your team in selecting a new CRM and take advantage of demos and free trials to evaluate a platform’s ease of use and overall value for your team. Guided onboarding or a customer success manager may also be worth the investment to help transition to new software.
CRM Software Testing Methodology
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help businesses bring in new customers and nurture current ones. With different businesses come different business goals and CRM needs. So, the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours evaluating 13 providers to determine who each CRM is best for. We looked at big names, such as Salesforce and monday.com, as well as small providers, including Liondesk and Less Annoying CRM.
We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using CRM or had used CRM within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:
- User Experience (15%)
- Features (30%)
- Pricing (30%)
- Customer Support (15%)
- Reputation and Credibility (10%)
Visit the full CRM methodology page for more details on our rating system.
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