Business Featured Technology

Top CRM Tools for Startups

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions can greatly help you maintain a healthy relationship with your customers. However, as a startup that is probably still struggling to make it in today’s super-competitive business environment, you are faced with a few challenges you must overcome. One of which is your limited budget. 

Thankfully, you can find plenty of CRM solutions that are free to use and are still quite powerful and useful. In this article, we are going to try and make things easier for you by shortening the list to only three options. 

We believe these three solutions are on top of the list when it comes to startups. However, this by no means that you have to choose one of those three, and you can always choose another option. 

The three options we are going to discuss here are: 

  1. HubSpot CRM
  2. Freshsales
  3. Really Simple Systems

One last thing before we start. There’s a difference between CRM and marketing automation. If you don’t know it, we highly recommend taking a minute to learn it. It will come in handy in the future. 

1. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is the leading CRM solution and probably the most comprehensive one you can find. Not only does HubSpot deliver all the functionality you expect from a CRM system and then more, but it also is completely free to use. It’s easy to see why we consider it to be the best option for aspiring startups. 

HubSpot is designed to help businesses of all sizes, but especially those on the smaller side, close more deals and obtain full visibility of their sales pipeline. The solution can track customer interactions through multiple channels (such as social media, phone, and email). 

One of HubSpot’s best aspects is its intuitive interface that’s so easy to use and navigate that you don’t need any sort of training to start making the most of it right away. 

HubSpot CRM is a certified Google Partner, and also offers what is probably the largest collection of available integrations you can find with any CRM software. 

2. Freshsales

Freshsales is an excellent CRM solution from Freshdesk that can meet the CRM needs of businesses of all sizes. Freshsales has gained its popularity among startups and small businesses thanks to being well-balanced and having an up-to-date and fun interface that’s a pleasure to work with. 

Freshsales offers a freemium plan that offers to capture, distribute, verify, and score leads via multiple communication channels. The freemium plan also offers integration with your Freshdesk account. 

The freemium plan also includes the full management kit for leads, accounts, and contacts as well as advanced reporting capabilities. Unlike other freemium plans – such as insightly’s – Freshsales doesn’t limit its free users on storage, number of users, or contact base & records. 

Freshsales is a great option for startups looking for something to get them going, but you should be willing to use it in combination with other software to compensate for the features you only get with the paid plans. These premium features include Advanced lead scoring, Deal funnel view, templates, notifications, Custom reports, territories, segment integration, and more. 

If you think Freshsales is the solution for you, you can try out their free trial. 

3. Really Simple Systems

Other than the really cool name, Really Simple Systems is an excellent option for small businesses and startups thanks to its simplicity, affordable pricing, excellent support, and ease of use.

When we say excellent support we really mean it. You would be pleasantly surprised at the level of support you are getting for free. 

If your team consists of only two users, you can get most of the functionality free of charge. This includes sales automation, connections with accounting software, and automated synchronization of information. 

The free plan also gives you up to 100 company accounts, 100 MB of storage, contact management, custom reports, API integration, custom settings, and roles & permissions. 

For more users, accounts, and features, you will need to pick one of the paid plans, but if you’re running your business alone or with a friend, we think the free plan should do just fine for the time being. 

In the end, as I’ve said in the beginning, it’s up to you to choose the best one for your business. If you feel none of the above mentioned options works for you, you can check out the top CRM software for small business. We think you’ll find what you’re looking for over there. 

I hope you found this article helpful. If you did, why don’t you take a couple of seconds to share it with a friend or colleague who may find it useful as well? 

If you have a question or a comment, feel free to leave it below and we will get back to you as soon as possible. 

About the author

avatar

Raymond Thomas

My name is Raymond Thomas, I am working with Softxpert on a recent content marketing initiative about Email Subject lines and user behavior.