You can take your time studying CRM without the pressure of investing money with free CRM software. You will be able to determine which features are most important to you and “shop around” (for free) before deciding on a vendor.
This is significant because a CRM system does not simply “do its thing” after being included into a workflow. People must work with CRM and understand it in order to reap concrete, positive company benefits. CRM definition and meaning may be found in this article.
Free CRM software is usually available as a feature-limited or limited-time version of a paid-for complete edition. Deciding on a CRM may be difficult, therefore companies provide free versions to help take the guesswork out of the process—it is a wonderful way for consumers to trial out a CRM before fully committing.
Understanding how customer relationship management works can, in the end, offer up a slew of new opportunities for your company.
Freshsales
Freshsales is a complete sales force automation solution for sales organizations. It has everything a salesperson needs: quality leads, contextual interactions, AI-powered insights to drive deals, and nurturing customer connections.
Benefits:
Freshsales gives sales teams more time to sell by automating the sales process and increase efficiency and productivity in their everyday activities with built-in email, phone, chat, and telephony. Salespeople may use Freddy AI to gain insights on the best opportunities to pursue and what actions to take.
It also helps forecast revenue through sales forecasting. Freshsales allows businesses to take the next step toward effective pipeline management. Additionally, the option to use native CPQ simplifies the process of creating and exchanging quotes and other important sales assets.
Drawbacks:
Some of the finer features are reserved for premium subscriptions, as they are for many suppliers. Time-based processes, chatbot tools, and comprehensive metric reporting are among the features available in Freshworks CRM. However, the free and basic plans are a good starting point, and you may always upgrade later.
Pricing:
- A Free Forever Startup plan is available
- The Growth plan costs $15
- The Pro plan costs $39
- The Enterprise plan costs $69
Less Annoying CRM
Less annoying CRM (also known as LACRM) is a comprehensive CRM system for small enterprises. They provide a 30-day free trial. They have a single, low-cost, paid plan after that.
Benefits:
Task management, lead-to-sale, contact management, and follow-ups are all handled by LACRM. Track your leads via sales pipelines and manage all of your client data. Keep track of upcoming events and tasks (in easy-to-use calendar and agenda formats). It is ideal for real estate CRM.
Inside LACRM, emails written and received outside of a CRM platform can be tracked. Every user gets their own email address for logging in. You can use any email service provider to make contact.
Drawbacks:
There are few app connectors, which may be a major drawback depending on your needs. Notifications are sent by SMS or email rather than in-app, which feels a little antiquated.
Pricing:
- $15
- LACRM offers a risk-free, 30-day free trial for its only pricing plan.
Zoho
With a simple user interface, customisable modules, pragmatic automation, and social networking tools, Zoho CRM is a small business-friendly platform.
Benefits:
Their basic plan for up to three users is an excellent place to start if you are looking for something free. You may use the platform to create and define specialized workflows, manage leads, and begin streamlining day-to-day operations. It connects to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook, allowing you to contact leads with superhuman precision.
When you have outgrown the free CRM, you can upgrade to the fairly priced Standard version of Zoho CRM, which adds powerful sales forecasting and KPI tracking to the usability equation. More capabilities are included in the Enterprise version, including stage-by-stage sales funnel tracking, data comparisons between users, teams, geographies, products/services, and more.
Drawbacks:
If one-on-one, long-term engagement with specific people is critical to your organization, Zoho lacks email tracking and individual lead notifications, which could be a concern. The user interface can be a little sluggish. Purchasing Zoho add-on modules to extend the CRM’s functionality can significantly increase operational expenditures.
The free version lacks mass emailing capabilities, and the CRM’s overall customizability is limited.
Pricing:
- There is a free version available for up to three users.
- For paid versions, there is a 15-day free trial.
- The standard version costs $14, while the professional edition costs $23.
- The Enterprise version costs $40.
- $52 for the Ultimate Edition. Trial for 30 days for free.
Really Simple Systems
Really Simple Systems (RSS) is not shy about calling their marketing automation, sales, and service platform simple—but that does not imply it is lacking in sophistication; it is just incredibly simple to use. This is especially useful for businesses with many locations and remote employees.
Benefits:
While they do offer premium versions, their free alternative is more than just a trial offer for firms with up to two people, allowing small enterprises and single entrepreneurs to use the CRM without having to worry about the calendar. It has an infinite number of contacts and 100 MB of document storage. Many of the main capabilities, such as sales automation and customer service, are included in the free edition.
Users with a free account will have access to separate management tools for contacts and leads, which will update all necessary information and related tasks for contacts, vendors, and suppliers in real time. RSS also conducts its own reporting, breaking the action into two sections.
For starters, there are ‘Listing reports,’ which provide quick facts on topics like “how many hits did we get this month?” (You can also ask more complicated questions.) Then there are ‘Forecast reports,’ which focus on predicted sales figures over various time periods.
RSS makes transitioning into the CRM zone a breeze for small B2B firms.
Drawbacks:
Reporting is probably more difficult than it needs to be. The opportunities system is a little difficult to navigate. The email templates are quite simple, therefore email marketing may be improved. You also can not link tasks to active reminders in your inbox if you are using Outlook.
Pricing:
- Free plan for up to 2 users.
- The starter plan costs $15.
- The professional plan costs $33.
- The enterprise plan costs $50.
EngageBay
Marketing Automation, Live Chat & Helpdesk, and CRM & Sales Bay are the three business process-oriented suites offered by EngageBay, which touts itself as a HubSpot competitor. CRM & Sales Bay, the final of these, offers contact management tools that are geared for ease of use and corporate growth.
Benefits:
The platform provides multi-channel listening, aggregating contact info from across all your customer touchpoints. Track contact activity, web activity, email response, open and click rates, and more.
Integrates with Gmail, Office 365 or any other IMAP service, with two-way sync capabilities. Zapier, SendGrid, Mailgun, Xero, and Mandrill integrations allow you to connect your CRM with your other business processes and further streamline your operations.
Drawbacks:
More native integrations with third-party apps are needed. The amount of email template selections are minimal, and the style is simple.
Pricing:
- There is a free plan with 1,000 contacts and 1,000 branded emails.
- The most basic package costs $12.99.
- $24.99 for the growth plan
- The Pro plan costs $49.99.
Capsule
Capsule works to bump not just your customer relationships, but all your business relationships, to the next level. And this it does ever so simply, with a clean user interface and zero learning curve.
Benefits:
Rather than heaping on extra features, Capsule focuses on being exceptionally good at handling daily tasks. You can see what is going on with your sales funnel (bids, lead generation, proposals, client data), as well as what your team needs to do and when.
Contact lists may be imported from Gmail, Outlook, and your CSV spreadsheet and database files, making it simple to retrieve important information.
You can get by with Capsule’s free edition if you run a business solo or with a partner (the cap is two users). Zapier, G Suite, Zendesk, Twitter, and Mailchimp integrations are available in the Professional version, allowing you to collect data and acquire leads from several platforms.
Drawbacks:
Because the free plan has a limit of 250 contacts, you may find yourself hitting a wall and having to upgrade to a paid plan. You may pay anything from zero to $18 per month to keep utilizing the product you have invested in for your day-to-day business.
Apart from that, you will have to remember to BCC them to your Dropbox in order to track and auto-generate contacts from email, which is easy to forget.
Pricing:
- Capsule is offered in a free, basic version for up to two users.
- The professional edition costs $18.
- Professional and Teams versions each come with a 30-day free trial.
BenchmarkONE
BenchmarkONE is a sophisticated sales and marketing CRM solution.
Benefits:
It is ideal for gathering and qualifying leads via email marketing automation. Sales automation features help you manage your pipeline and convert more customers. Small to medium enterprises, such as agencies, private offices, and consultants, will benefit greatly from it. It also provides extensive reporting and analytics.
Drawbacks:
Teams with more than 5 persons will require a more costly package. It is not a true all-in-one CRM because it lacks customer support functions.
Pricing:
- The free version is one user only.
- Core $70 per month for two users
- Pro is $139 per month for 5 users.
- Enterprise $199 per month includes unlimited users.
- There are also two premium onboarding services available for $199 (included with Core Plans) and $399 (not included with Core Plans) (included with Pro and Enterprise plans).
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the biggest vendors out there (up there with Salesforce), and they offer a free CRM for unlimited users with basic features.
Benefits:
HubSpot CRM is a free tool that lets you assign and track prospects, manage the sales process, create workflows for improved administration, and keep track of customer interactions across all channels in one location. It also features email marketing and inbound marketing capabilities that are rather thorough (the latter is quite useful for getting search engine hits for blog posts).
The platform integrates with G Suite and Microsoft Office, making setup and data synchronization a breeze. Zapier integration allows for seamless information sharing and task management across platforms such as Google Sheets, Facebook Lead Ads, Slack, and others. The non-free, commercial HubSpot CRM add-on packages increase data storage, provide more comprehensive reports, and include new AI and advanced automation technology.
Drawbacks:
The free CRM offers a lot of functions, but many of them are not very robust, so you can end up paying for Marketing, Sales, or Service Hub solutions. Customizability is limited, which may make the CRM difficult to alter and apply for certain specific small firms.
Pricing:
- HubSpot CRM is available for free and has an unlimited number of users.
- Add-on packages for Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub are each $50.
- The monthly fee for HubSpot CMS is $300.
- All-inclusive The starter growth suite costs $113.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is one of the most popular free CRMs in the world, according to many users.
Benefits:
Bitrix24 offers a free cloud CRM solution for up to 12 users with a 5 GB data storage limit. It offers a similar feature set to paying subscriptions, albeit with fewer options. Pipeline management, lead management, sales tracking, reporting, job automation, and more are all available.
Bitrix24’s user interface makes it simple to use (the Kanban view is especially good). In-app voice, email, chat, and video channel access, as well as iOS and Android mobile apps, ensure that your team can close transactions and defuse situations in real time.
Drawbacks:
While the user interface is appealing, navigating through the many components might be difficult at times. For complicated and/or specialized business applications, customization options may not be sufficient. The app can occasionally lag. Bitrix24’s learning curve is also firmly in the’moderate’ category.
Pricing:
- For up to 12 users, a free starting business tool suite is available.
- The CRM+ package costs $55 per user each month for up to 6 users.
- The Project+ package costs $55 for up to 24 participants.
- The standard package costs $79 for up to 50 users.
- $159 for the professional plan
- The above pricing apply to the cloud-based version.
- There are also on-premise alternatives available.
Streak
Streak has a Gmail CRM that is entirely integrated into your inbox. The app makes CRM adoption simple for new users by leveraging this commonplace software technology.
Benefits:
Basic CRM tools and rather full email functionality are included in the free edition of Streak, which is meant for personal use (i.e. freelancers and solo businesses). Email templates allow you to tailor emails and send them out in large quantities, making them a considerably more effective alternative to mass-blast email marketing.
You can easily retrieve contact information and data from Google Sheets with the Streak CRM Importer add-on, or import offline CSV files to create your mailing lists. This eliminates the need to fill in the gaps and email everyone individually.
Email monitoring shows you who read your email, where they read it (thanks to a nice map view), and how many times they read it. This is great for enhancing visibility across your organization, but especially in salesâ—once you know someone read your message and have a better understanding of their behavior, you can move the sales process along by following up in a timely and suitable manner. You will be able to avoid sending out redundant emails and cultivate the right customer relationships.
Meanwhile, phone logs and meeting notes allow you preserve a chronological and type-specific record of your non-inbox encounters. You will be able to handle leads and sales by setting up as many pipelines as you require (the free version provides for unlimited pipelines too). Maintain in-app notes, centralize record-keeping, collect data on your contact correspondence, and determine whether or not leads have opened your emails.
Drawbacks:
Streak is a browser extension that is cumbersome to use while switching devices because you must download the extension and check in afresh on each new device. Streak is a lightweight CRM, thus it may not be suitable for more sophisticated company procedures.
Pricing:
- Individual users can use the personal version for free.
- $49 for the professional plan
- $129 for the Enterprise plan
Insightly
Insightly has a free edition. With project supervision features and contact records all accessible within a beautifully designed user interface, the freeware gives you a lot of bang for your cash.
Benefits:
There are training films that explain features in an easy-to-understand manner, reducing the learning curve and implementation time. Lead routing, workflow automation, customer management, and sales pipeline technologies are all available with Insightly. It is based on the’relationship linking’ notion, which refers to the intricate web of contacts between your organization and your customers and leads.
Record linkage, or generating colorful, fleshed-out profiles of all the contacts in your business universe by grabbing cross-channel data and seeing who knows who, who has engaged with who, and when said interaction(s) occurred, is an important part of this. Insightly’s appeal is mostly based on its capacity to be customized.
You can also create bespoke apps and data visualizations to track critical metrics without having to know anything about programming; simply click through settings and drag-and-drop elements into position. Setting permissions by business role and/or department allows you to manage organizational security for certain modules, contact data, and other items.
G Suite and Microsoft 365, as well as Mailchimp, Slack, Dropbox, QuickBooks, and a slew of other apps, are all natively integrated.
Drawbacks:
The CRM’s free edition is limited to two users and lacks a data backup system, as well as daily mass emailing limits and custom field limits per record. In a similar spirit, access to more thorough, valuable lead assignment modules requires a subscription plan.
Pricing:
- The basic plan is free for up to two users.
- Plus is $29
- $49 for a professional.
- Enterprise costs $99 annually.
- The Plus and Professional programs both provide a 14-day free trial.
Apptivo
Customizability is at the heart of Apptivo’s cloud-based business solutions. They give away their beginning edition for free to up to three people. This includes 500MB of storage and many of the basic functions found in pricier subscriptions.
Benefits:
Apptivo’s contact app (for contact management) makes it simple to import data from emails and websites, allowing you to gather lead, client, and customer information without having to enter it manually. Apptivo’s management apps help teams and individuals stay organized.
The Cases software from Apptivo helps you manage client concerns and interactions by converting consumer emails into tickets. It interacts with CRM, project management, invoicing, and every other Apptivo product, ensuring that team members have access to all relevant information at all times.
If you outgrow the free plan, Apptivo’s price options are incredibly inexpensive, and all of the capabilities are combined together (rather than sold separately), which is a refreshingly easy approach.
Drawbacks:
Apptivo’s free edition lacks marketing features and does not accept third-party integrations, thus limiting its utility. Meanwhile, the app’s user interface does the job, but it is a little confusing at times.
Pricing:
- For up to three users, the starter plan is free.
- The premium plan costs $8.
- The most expensive plan is $20.
SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM is a free, open source CRM system that handles sales, service, support, and marketing. It is one of the most popular pieces of open source software on the market because of its flat learning curve and quick set-up time.
Benefits:
A real-time dashboard syncs incoming data so you can see open project statuses, pipeline analytics, and revenue/expenses in real time.
If you have an IT department (or at least one IT person), the CRM vendor’s bespoke layout, module, and relationship development capabilities will be very appealing to them. SuiteCRM can handle applications of any complexity level thanks to its ability to customize and the enormous number of add-ons available on the web. It also runs on almost any operating system, including Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, Android, and iOS.
Drawbacks:
The SuiteCRM community provides helpdesk support, which might delay down response times. As one might assume, the free edition of the application has various limitations, such as fewer integrations and functionality than the commercial ones. In general, the provider does not offer any ERP software connectors, which could be a problem if you are searching for a platform that can handle everything.
Open source is frequently associated with a steeper learning curve, and SuiteCRM is no exception.
Pricing:
- Pure SuiteCRM is completely free.
- $123 for the starter plan (recommended for 1-10 people).
- $430 for a business plan (recommended for 5-50 users).
- $614 for the premium package (recommended for 10-150 people).
- All SuiteCRM: OnDemand hosted solution plans provide a 30-day free trial.
Agile CRM
Agile CRM is a free all-in-one business platform that includes project management, contact management, reporting, support/service, and schedule management.
Benefits:
Customer ticketing for support staff includes feedback forms, a helpdesk, a knowledge base, and everything else you need to reduce churn and improve customer satisfaction. RingCentral and Twilio integrations strengthen Agile CRM’s built-in telephony functionality, guaranteeing that conversation tracking, call recording, and deal-making over the phone lines are all well-organized and efficient.
By putting your appointment calendar online, you may automate upcoming voice calls and follow-ups. Within the deal process, company and contact profiles, and emails, you may easily attach documents in the app.
Drawbacks:
If you move from free to Starter, the price difference is negligible; however, if you scale up to Regular, you will be paying almost 3x more per user. This seems unjust, and it poses a significant cost barrier to using the platform as your company grows. There are few customization possibilities.
Pricing:
- Up to ten users can use the free version.
- The basic edition costs $8.99.
- The standard version costs $29.99.
- The Enterprise edition costs $47.99.
Airtable
A non-traditional, lightweight CRM with a sharp design aesthetic and simple functionality. With infinite ‘bases,’ the free edition of the software is quite handy (i.e. flexible workbooks that can contain different-yet-related spreadsheets). Each base may hold 1,200 records, and each base has a 2 GB attachment data limit.
Benefits:
The workflow management database Airtable attempts to reinvent the spreadsheet by allowing users to effortlessly integrate data from other sets and analyse it. Data from is being imported and exported. CSV is simple to use.
The fact that Airtable’s software prioritizes innovation and individuality is perhaps the key reason for its popularity. You can create custom fields and populate them with everything from attachments to run-on long-form text notes, checkboxes, links to records in other tables, and yes, even barcodes, using the drag-and-drop dashboard.
The end result of these “souped up spreadsheets” is an all-in-one collaboration platform with broad CRM capability for those who are averse to most business products (i.e. creatives, editorial teams, and the like). This makes it a good fit for teams that need a combination of analytic, organizational, and communication capabilities.
Drawbacks:
It is important to remember that Airtable was never intended to be a full-featured commercial CRM. Its overall lightweight CRM features reflect this. More complex work procedures and task management will almost certainly overwhelm the platform.
Pricing:
- The free version has all necessary functions.
- The Plus version costs $10
- The Pro version costs $20.
- Pricing for the enterprise version is negotiated with the vendor.
Flowlu
Flowlu is a collaborative cloud CRM that includes the best project management software and knowledge base features.
Benefits:
The product’s free version, which is limited to two users, provides 1 TB of data storage. Create and store knowledge bases, track project expenses and revenue, and manage finances and records. You can easily create customised invoices with Flowlu, auto-insert CRM data into them, and send them out in-app.
You may also use custom web forms to create leads and invite clients to forthcoming events and surveys. The free edition contains an Agile Scrum component that lets you use a visual task management board to apply scrum tactics like sprints. With configurable project tools, you can stay on top of issues and bug reports, track and prioritize product requirements, and streamline your workflows.
Drawbacks:
The task filtering feature is not the most user-friendly, and the collaboration capabilities are minimal. Financial reporting tools are similarly limited, and may not be sufficient for businesses with more complicated company procedures.
Pricing:
- Up to two users are free.
- The team plan is $29 per month for all users.
- $59 for a business plan
- $119 for the professional plan
- $239 for the Enterprise plan
If you are new to the CRM world, here’s an article for you about what is CRM?