What does it take to go from a cold lead to a closed deal?
Ask any experienced sales rep, and they will tell—a whole lot.
Tracking customer data manually will not get you there, but using CRM is a great place to start.
In fact, your competitors are probably already using it since 91% of companies that employ 10 or more people use CRM.
Luckily, not all CRMs are expensive, and there are many free CRM software options for small teams, startups, and businesses that don’t have a budget to invest yet.
In this article, we analyze the best free CRM systems currently on the market, so you don’t need to look further.
What is a CRM software?
CRM is a software that manages all customer relationships.
The goal of CRM is to build and nurture stronger relationships with your leads and clients. It automates customer data, analyzes interactions, and gives consolidated view of every customer.
Before CRMs, most businesses would keep their customer info in general-purpose tools like Excel and Outlook but today they are too limited.
The rising CRM popularity in recent years can be attributed to the fact that’s it’s very effective and powerful tool.
By capturing and analyzing customer data, CRM tools can provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. It’s something no general tool can possibly do.
The reason for a low revenue can be hiding in your spreadsheets.
The Round Up: 9 best free CRM software
1. HubSpot CRM is the best free CRM for sales teams and automation features
2. Insightly is the best free CRM for basic needs
3. Zoho CRM is the best free CRM for rich integrations
4. Agile CRM is the best free CRM for small teams in need of a sales platform
5. Mailchimp is the best free CRM for marketing teams
6. EngageBay is the best free CRM for live chat
7. Bitrix24 is the best free CRM for unlimited users
8. Freshsales is the best free CRM for beginners
9. ClickUp is the best free CRM for personal use
How to choose the best free CRM?
When choosing the best free CRM tool, you want to look for these features:
- Ease of use.
Some CRM systems can have steeper learning curves than others. If you’re just starting out with CRM, it should be intuitive, easy to use, and quick to set up. You should also look into whether tasks like tracking deals or managing contacts are easy to carry out since you will be doing these things repeatedly.
- Reporting and analytics.
Your CRM is not worth much if you cannot track your CRM insights and the progress you made with it. Choose the CRM with the best dashboards that are informative, can run many reports at once, and give you actionable insights.
- Contact management.
Since all CRM is customer-centric, it should have a variety customer focused features. Look for features that allow you to make filtered customer lists and segment them accordingly. Plus, make sure you can create and customize sales pipelines since this CRM function is very important for sales teams.
- Integrations.
The good free CRM is the one that can seamlessly send and receive data from multiple apps. Our advice is to look for rich integration capabilities because they will make the information retrieval, and overall CRM procedures much smoother. On the other hand, most free CRM versions offer basic integration capabilities, and you may need to upgrade your plan to get the most out of it.
What other functions do you need in your free CRM system?
When choosing a CRM system for your business, make sure you check what advanced features they offer free of charge.
Look for a CRM that can be customized to fit your business processes, including custom fields, sales stages, reports, and dashboards. Customization allows you to tailor the software to your specific requirements.
Don’t expect much, since most advanced features like automations and AI-powered lead targeting is only available with paid plans.
But you can surely get project management functions, traffic analytics, and team collaboration features in a free CRM package.
With the increasing need for mobility, ensure the CRM has a robust mobile app. It will allow your team to access data, update records, and communicate on the go.
The Best Free CRM in 2024: The ultimate guide
1. HubSpot CRM is the best free CRM for sales teams, and automation features
HubSpot is a very robust system, popular among businesses of various industries. It has a free CRM version available which offers a well-balanced package of functionalities.
It has a free plan with various features, including:
- Up to 1,000 contacts on its free plan
- A reporting dashboard for performance and activity metrics
- Sales automation
- Contact management (deals, tasks, activities, companies)
- Marketing tools like email marketing, forms, ad management, a shared inbox
- List segmentation and landing pages
- Ticketing service tools like email scheduling and ticket-closed reports
- Integrations with Outlook, Gmail, Messenger, and the App Marketplace
- Sales documents, in-app calling with VoIP, email tools, community support, and HubSpot Academy
HubSpot’s free CRM stands out for offering a wide range of useful features, user-friendliness, and scalability.
Its free account is great for sales teams thanks to its sales automation, email tracking, contact management, and prospect tracking features.
As businesses grow, they can easily add more advanced features and upgrade the plan at any time. HubSpot’s suite of sales, marketing, service, and operations software is hard to beat in the market.
The Verdict:
HubSpot free CRM is an excellent way to start with a CRM system without initial investment. If your company focus is on sales teams and your goal is automating sales procedures, then HubSpot free CRM edition is for you.
2. Insightly is the best free CRM for basic needs
While Insightly is nowhere near as popular as the leading CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce, we recommend giving its free plan a go.
Insightly is a great CRM for businesses who want to build and enhance existing client relationships. But that’s something most CRMs can do, so don’t expect anything special in that area.
On the other hand, Insightly focuses on combining sales and project management. This combo helps users to identify sales opportunities and link them with project deliverables, which can in turn boost sales.
Insightly free plan offers these features:
- Up to two people
- Contact management, sales, and projects
- Custom fields to track your data
- Project management features like milestones and task tracking
- Calendar syncing
- Mobile app
- Google Workspace integration
Insightly free CRM: Pros
- Up to two users
- Some features for managing projects
- Integrations with 250 apps
- Mobile app
Insightly free CRM: Cons
- Sign-up requires your contact and business info
- Free plan is not transparent
The Verdict:
Insightly is a free CRM solution with lower profile compared to other CRM market leaders, with a strong emphasis on integrating sales and project management. It will benefit the businesses who aim to streamline operations and boost sales through better project deliverables alignment.
