15 Best CRMs for Small Businesses: Supercharge Customer Management and Drive Explosive Growth

CRMs are now ubiquitous for businesses across all industries with up to 91% using a CRM to grow and maintain their operations. In 2023, there are hundreds of options on the market, from general purpose software to those specifically designed to service almost any industry. We know first hand how challenging it can be to find the CRM that fits your specific needs/use case. In this list, we cover 15 general purpose CRMs that will work for any small business, no matter the industry. We provide a comprehensive insight into the pros, cons, pricing plans, and features for 15 of the best CRMs for small businesses in 2023.

What should small businesses look for in a CRM?

While there are many business-specific factors you should keep in mind when choosing CRM, as a general rule, most small businesses benefit from the following:

1. Ease of use: An intuitive and easy-to-use CRM will reduce training time and increase software adoption saving money in the long run.
2. Affordability: As a small business, your budget may be limited. Most CRM vendors offer many pricing tiers bundling different features. Choose one that has only the features you need, so you don't pay for anything you don't use. Lookout for hidden costs like limits on usage.
3. Integrations: Double-check what integrations your preferred CRM offers. The ability to sync with the tools and platforms you already use, such as email marketing or accounting software, shouldn't be underestimated.
4. Customization: Your business may require a custom field or workflow, so ensure that the software offers sufficient customization capability.
5. Scalability: The software should be able to support your business growth. That way, you don't have to switch systems as your needs evolve.
6. Support: Often an underappreciated facet of a CRM, good customer support and resources (such as training materials and user guides) can save your business from expending time and energy.
7. Security: Your CRM must have robust security measures to protect customer data from breaches and other cyber threats. Also, the software should be compliant with regulatory requirements like GDPR.

Quick Comparison of CRM software for Small businesses:

The Top 15 Best CRM Software For Small businesses are:

1. Active Campaign
2. Hubspot CRM Suite
3. Gist
4. Intercom
5. Pipedrive
6. Salesflare
7. Close
8. FreshSales Suite
9. EngageBay
10. Copilot
11. edrone
12. Prospect CRM
13. Klaviyo
14. Ortto
15. Campaign Monitor

1. Active Campaign

Founded: 2003
HQ: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Active Campaign is an excellent, affordable option for small businesses looking to increase productivity while spending less time performing repetitive tasks. Its Smart Automation system is a key feature that allows you to build dynamic pipelines that branch off based on complex conditions you set.

It offers over 700 pre-built automated pipelines for marketing, transactions, communication, and other business activities. Setting up welcome flows, abandoned cart emails, SMS reminders and notifications is a breeze as the automation pipeline is strongly interwoven with the other Active Campaign capabilities. This allows you to create campaigns for your consumers that are ever more specifically targeted.

The ability to create custom forms is yet another key pro for Active Campaign. With the help of this tool, you can incorporate web forms into any website that has been granted permission to do so. It gives you the ability to enter several different components, such as text boxes, radio buttons, and even a Captcha if you want to.

In addition, this CRM has a client dashboard that shows a detailed overview of each of your customers/clients. Each individual or company on your client list has a dedicated page showing all associated tasks, automation, and activities.

The platform also provides event tracking, lead scoring, dynamic landing pages, predictive content, website tracking, and many more. These features, bundled in affordable subscription packages that start at just $9, make Active Campaign one of the best CRMs for small businesses this year. Over 180,000 users who have rated it 4.6/5 on G2 share our sentiment.

2. Hubspot

Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Hubspot’s appeal lies in the sheer number of features it offers. It has hundreds of tools to manage sales, marketing, customer service, CMS, and operations. As an all-in-one platform, Hubspot eliminates the need for multiple third-party apps.

Despite having numerous features, the platform is simple to use and optimizes your operations through automated workflows. Hubspot can be customized to suit even complex business processes, giving it the flexibility to be used in any industry.

Furthermore, this CRM's sales pipeline is an indispensable tool for small businesses. It provides real-time deal tracking and analysis. Business owners can obtain detailed reports on productivity and team performance using the dashboard.

With robust automation and analytics, Hubspot scales easily to support the needs of rapidly growing teams.

It also offers SEO and content creation tools, Video hosting and management capabilities, features missing in most other CRMs.

Hubspot’s features can be overwhelming for small businesses that only need a small feature set. In addition, Hubspot has a forever free plan that comes loaded with features, including automation and chatbots. However, costs can grow rapidly to as much as $3000 for the full range of its features. As such, it might be best to stick to the free plan, as it contains most of the features needed to meet your CRM requirements.

3. Gist

Founded: 2020
HQ: Newark, Delaware, United States

Despite being one of the youngest CRMs on this list, GIST has quickly become a customer favorite among small businesses. This is hardly surprising, given that GIST has the longest list of features in its free plan. These features are designed to acquire, engage, and support your customers and leads. Moreover, GIST offers a 100 percent money-back guarantee on all its paid subscriptions.

If you're looking to grow your customer base, GIST offers a unique combination of forms, chatbots, and meetings. As such, you can create customized forms, control when they appear, and set their target audience. Using a simple and intuitive form builder, you can insert the forms into your website and run automation when customers interact with them.

Still, on automation, GIST's chatbot software can automatically qualify leads by asking questions based on customer behavior and preferences. It acts as a personal assistant, scheduling appointments, booking meetings, and routing important calls to the appropriate sales rep. The chatbot runs 24/7, requiring little to no supervision.

GIST's Visual Workflow is a customer engagement tool that you can use to send automated broadcasts and drip email campaigns to all your customers. You can set up automated campaigns with its intuitive visual flow graph. Alternatively, you can use the simpler Automation Rules to create campaigns in a more linear format. These tools run on autopilot, saving time and money.

All things considered, GIST is an affordable CRM for small businesses. Its free plan contains many features a small business or solopreneur requires for successful customer engagement. However, advanced features like Zoom integration and webhooks are only available in paid subscriptions. Fortunately, GIST offers price subsidies for small businesses, reducing the cost of the Premium plan from $499 to $99 per month. Better still, you can opt for the $29 plan that offers five additional support seats.

4. Intercom

Founded: 2011
HQ: San Francisco, California, United States

Intercom CRM is arguably the best option for businesses looking to improve customer support and, by extension, customer experiences. Testament to this is Intercom's impressive list of over 25,000 clients, which include Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Also known as the Engagement OS, Intercom creates an open channel between your business and your customers. It offers a unified platform for all messaging channels, including emails, SMS, and social media.

The platform's messenger app is more advanced than most competing products. It is highly customizable, providing a consistent branding experience. In addition, it is very flexible, requiring no technical or coding knowledge to embed in your apps and websites.

For small businesses, Intercom provides a six-step plan to acquire, engage and earn the loyalty of customers. It improves team efficiency through auto-messages, live chatbots, self-service, and centralized channels.

Despite its primary function as a customer support tool, Intercom offers several business management features. Its visual campaign builder allows you to orchestrate customer journeys quickly and efficiently. You can set up entry rules, branching conditions, and executions. What’s more, Intercom also provides visual analytics on team performance and customer engagement.

It also integrates with over 300 apps popular among small businesses, such as Slack, Hubspot, and G Suite.

Finally, Intercom's pricing model for small businesses is at a reasonable price of $74 per month. However, important features like surveys and product tours are locked behind paid add-ons. This pricing structure can get complicated and is expensive for most small businesses.

5. Pipedrive

Founded: 2010
HQ: New York, United States

Pipedrive is a flexible, easy-to-use CRM for sales teams of all sizes. It promises to help small businesses make as many sales as possible within a short time. Pipedrive claims to help users close 28 percent more deals after their first year using the software.

This CRM's functionalities revolve around the visual sales pipeline. It makes deal management easy by providing a visual representation of progress, ownership, and communication.

In addition, Pipedrive's Live Chat complements the sales pipeline by facilitating communication with leads, clients, and prospects. This programmable chatbot can automatically respond to messages and answer questions intelligently.

Like many highly-rated CRMs, Pipedrive provides workflow automation features that allow you to execute complex actions based on dynamic triggers and conditions. Pipedrive goes a step further with its AI-powered sales mentor, which acts like a sales assistant providing relevant data and tips to optimize workflows.

The Insights tool helps you efficiently use your customers' data to grow your business and increase profits. It helps you forecast revenue and measure KPIs.

Pipedrive's $9 entry-level plan allows small businesses to manage up to 3000 open deals and scale up to higher tiers as needed. It also integrates with lead generation tools like Prospector and Leads Inbox, helping you to get the most out of the sales pipeline.

All in all, Pipedrive is among the highest-rated CRMs on review platforms like G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra. It receives special praise for affordability. Many customers have stated that Pipedrive is one of the easiest CRMs to use and customize.

6. Salesflare

Founded: Antwerp, Belgium
HQ: 2014

Salesflare is a fully autonomous CRM, requiring little human input to perform its primary functions. Its artificial intelligence can build a detailed client profile with just their name and company, saving the sales rep time to focus on the deal.

Consequently, Salesflare boasts the most sophisticated automation features in any CRM software. It tracks how clients engage with you digitally and, provides real-time notifications to follow up. It also creates a smart overview of all the tasks that require your attention ensuring no opportunity is lost.

What's more, the CRM automatically logs meeting and phone logs and organizes all documents your team exchanges with customers.

This platform is popular for its time-saving features. According to many customers on G2, Salesflare saves up to four hours a week for each member of the sales team.

Salesflare hardly has any faults, evidenced by 4.8 stars out of 5 on G2. The customer support team quickly addresses issues. While not the cheapest on this list, the pricing model is affordable for small businesses looking for a CRM with advanced automation features.

7. Close

Founded: 2013
HQ: San Francisco, California, United States

Close is a powerful communications CRM for small-to-medium-scale businesses. Like most CRMs, it offers reporting and analytics, call coaching, and a sales pipeline. However, it stands out from the competition due to its ease of setup and customer support. So much so that several customers have abandoned their long-time CRMs in favor of Close.

The CRM's in-built caller app promises to double the volume of outbound calls. Using the predictive dialer, you can dial multiple numbers at once and automatically route responses to the nearest available sales rep. It uses a smart detection system to connect clients to reps only when a real human answers the call.

The caller app handles international and local calls so that you can contact customers in more than 200 countries. What’s more, the Zoom integration allows you to have video calls with clients.

With Close, you can automate email and call tasks to re-engage cold leads and lost opportunities, ultimately increasing revenue.

In addition, Close’s SMS features are similar to the caller app. It integrates with Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers, allowing you to synchronize your inbox and receive messages in-app. You can also record your history of conversations with clients using the timeline tracking tool. Additionally, the SMS tool allows you to send bulk messages to multiple clients and respond to synced messages.

8. Freshworks

Founded: 2010
HQ: San Mateo, California, United States

Freshsales is a highly-rated sales automation software offered as part of the Freshworks software suite. It helps sales teams find more business opportunities using a combination of AI-powered chatbots, web forms, and website tracking.

The activity tracking platform shows a chronological view of client interactions across your websites and apps, providing you with the context of each client. Freshsales contact scoring helps you identify the best leads to pursue.

It also enables automated yet personalized client communications across multiple channels like email, chat, phone, and SMS.

The platform's intelligent workflow automates repetitive tasks that sales teams face every day. It follows up on leads, sends emails, generates invoices, updates leads, and many more. Workflow creation in Freshsales uses an intuitive point-and-click interface with a flat learning curve. It also offers many workflow templates saving you time.

In addition, Freshsales offers many more features, including branded quotes and invoices, sales forecasts and reports, product catalogs, and territory management.

Despite being just one among many software in the Freshworks software suite, Freshsales has proved to be an all-purpose tool capable of meeting the CRM needs of small businesses.

Freshsales has a free plan to get you started. It offers phone, email and chat support even on the free plan. The paid plans are also affordable.

9. EngageBay

Founded: 2018
HQ: Wilmington, Delaware, United States

Engagebay is one of the most affordable CRMs for small businesses in 2023. It is a general-purpose platform for marketing, CRM, sales, and customer service. With a free plan and affordable subscription models, there's little wonder Engagebay is popular among startups.

This CRM offers unique features like a comprehensive social media suite and employee engagement to motivate the sales team.

It also makes it easy to monitor social media feeds, generate leads, and engage with audiences across different platforms from within Engagebay. Leads captured from social media are automatically added to the CRM.

In addition, EngageBay provides detailed and custom reports and metrics on customer calls, won and lost deals, tasks, and sales forecasts.

The robust CRM also offers free Live Chat software for real-time client communication. This tool is reminiscent of a social media text messaging service, offering features like emojis, file attachments, chat requests, and chat categories. You can embed the live chat service on any website and customize its appearance. The live chat also integrates with the 360-degree customer view to help personalize your chat. Additionally, multiple team members can collaborate on a single chat to provide faster assistance to customers.

Engagebay's free CRM has attractive features like contact scoring, customer segmentation, sales workflows, a landing page builder, video marketing and many more features. It is free for up to 15 users and 250 contacts.

The All-in-one bundle offers even more features like Automation, custom reports, A/B testing and email sequencing.

It is a top choice for more than 46,000 businesses, including Forbes, Neil Patel, and WebNovo. EngageBay has high ratings on G2 and Trustpilot and is considered a serious competitor to Hubspot in terms of the number of available features.

10. Copilot

Founded: 2020
HQ: New York, United States

Copilots’ core philosophy is to make customers feel like important components of your business. It provides a collection of modules, each designed to handle core aspects of client interaction. These software modules combine to make Copilot an all-in-one CRM for small businesses.

The messaging module offers secure communication between your team and clients. You can configure the messaging module to send periodic emails to existing clients, notifying them of new products and activities from your business. All conversations are captured in a central location.

Similar to how the messaging module replaces conventional communication media, Copilot’s file-sharing system aims to replace cloud storage services like Google Drive and DocuSign. It allows you to share sensitive documents like contracts, quotes, and billings through a secure client portal. It also has a sophisticated file management system that groups together all documents associated with a client. Clients can upload their files, append e-signatures, and receive notifications on new shared files.

The CRM also serves as a billings and quotation tool, allowing users to create branded invoices, quotes, and receipts.

In addition, Copilot's Knowledge Base module allows you to publish written and video blogs that provide information about your business and answer frequently asked questions.

All in all, this CRM is one of the highest-rated software on this list with a near-perfect score of 4.9/5 stars on G2 and Capterra. It’s flexible, easy to use, and full-featured. Some users have complained about the limited customization options. However, Copilot provides extensions and APIs that allow users to improve upon the software’s existing functionalities.

11. edrone

Founded: 2015
HQ: Krakow, Poland

edrone is an AI-powered CRM tool designed for e-commerce businesses, aimed at boosting sales and productivity. Using data as a key aspect, edrone creates personalized client experiences.

The platform claims to improve order values, purchase frequency, and customer retention within one month of use. With its AI capability to recognize clients' digital interactions and automate marketing pipelines, edrone offers comprehensive customer intelligence tools such as RFM analysis and behavioral profiles.

The CRM also automates on-site and off-site marketing tasks, including abandoned cart recovery and smart recommendations, and a loyalty program to restore lost leads and former customers.

edrone streamlines messaging management across multiple channels with custom templates and team member assignments. It provides inbox reporting to track team performance.

edrone stands out in e-commerce software integrations and offers robust support for social media, third-party websites, and other CRMs. Despite a smaller customer base, edrone has a loyal following and receives high ratings, particularly for its customer support team. However, edrone has faced criticism for its opaque pricing options.

12. Prospect CRM

Founded: 2000
HQ: Oxford, England

For businesses in the sales, distribution, and manufacturing industries, Prospect CRM is a game-changer. Designed to help you sell physical products, it's the ideal solution for B2B sales. With key CRM functions like task management, serial number tracking, email templates, and inventory management, it offers features not found in traditional customer management software.

With Prospect CRM, you can stay on top of stock levels and display detailed product information with ease, thanks to its inventory tracking system. This system integrates with the quotation tool, allowing you to include product images and specifications in your quotes, and even keep track of equipment under lease.

RFM segmentation is another standout feature, helping you target customers with the right information at the right time. The automated segmentation system groups customers based on recency, frequency, and monetary value, allowing you to create tailored experiences for each group. The Magic Matrix Analysis takes things a step further, helping you increase customer lifetime value by encouraging them to buy more.

Generating quotes and processing orders is made simple with Prospect CRM. You can automatically generate quotes based on current inventory and customize them with your company's colors and logos. Quotes are also interactive, allowing customers to place orders with a single click. And with speedy order processing times, thanks to the Stripe payment integration, automated email responses, and order templates, you'll be able to close deals faster than ever.

With its opportunity tracking feature, Prospect CRM combines customizable pipelines, sales reporting, and leaderboards in one interface. It calculates lead scores and categorizes prospects into Worst, Best, and Likely. It also automatically tracks problems and generates support tickets, improving customer support efficiency.

This is why companies like LTT Vending, Beta Value, and Under Control Instruments choose Prospect CRM for its superior B2B reporting, B2C tracking and segmentation, earning it a 4.8/5 rating on G2.

13. Klaviyo

Founded: 2012
HQ: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Klaviyo is a simple, easy-to-use yet highly efficient email and SMS CRM designed specifically for eCommerce businesses. It excels at creating personalized behavior-based campaigns like abandoned carts and other essential email CRM flows.

Additionally, Klaviyo generates dynamic content based on items ordered, abandoned carts, recently viewed products, and other user activities and includes this content within email and SMS campaigns.

The SMS tool automatically captures phone numbers from contact lists, sign-up forms, and third-party forms, allowing you to reach even the most elusive customer. The professional looking email and signup form templates can be easily customized to match your brand and will save you hours of time and money trying to hire designers to build html email templates.

Klaviyo is consistently innovating and recently unveiled their new AI-powered SMS assistant that can automatically write texts and offer suggestions when you're stuck on what to say to a client. The form builder is also a standout feature. You can create interactive forms that display as pop-ups or fly-outs in the browser window, so they don't interfere with your customer's browsing activities. It also integrates A/B testing within its forms so you can test which colors, fonts, or logos work best for customer engagement.

Klaviyo excels in email and SMS but lacks other features offered by CRMs and is only suited for eCommerce. However, what Klaviyo lacks in functionality, it makes up for in hundreds of integrations with advertising, e-commerce, and helpdesk software. Nevertheless, customers have complained about the pricing model since these integrations mean they have to subscribe to a myriad of other platforms.

If you are running an eCommerce business there are few better options than Klaviyo.

14. Ortto

Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Sydney, Australia

Ortto, formerly known as Autopilot, is a visual marketing software that automates customer journeys. Companies like Microsoft, Patreon, LiveChat, and Greenpeace trust Ortto to acquire, nurture, and convert leads into customers.

With its customer data platform, Ortto unifies customer data from multiple channels into one location, performs advanced segmentation, and selects the best communication channel for maximum engagement.

The customer journey builder personalizes content, automates tasks, and allows for the easy creation of sequences with multiple branching paths using its visual workflow tool. Choose from Ortto's templates to streamline common workflows.

With Ortto, you can create personalized dashboards displaying customer data using ten visualization options like pie charts, column charts, tables, and line graphs. Set team goals and receive notifications on Slack with these insightful reports.

Although Ortto's subscription plans may be slightly pricier, startups and small businesses can enjoy a 30% discount for the first year.

15. Campaign Monitor

Founded: 2004
Headquarters: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

Campaign Monitor is a top-performing email marketing CRM. Its central feature is the easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder, which enables the creation of visually appealing campaigns in minutes.

The CRM also offers engagement-based segmentation for targeted marketing and an extensive template library with hundreds of presets. The smart designer extracts your company's branding, and you can save designs as templates for future use.

Real-time analytics and business reports track email campaign performance, and A/B testing on images, text, and colors helps optimize engagement. Integrations with third-party analytics tools let you accurately measure customer engagement and ROI impact.

Campaign Monitor brings marketing automation to life with its visual workflow builder. Customize workflows for individual customers or segments, and automate actions based on triggers and conditions. Respond to customer activities with ease, and expand your reach by integrating with other CRMs to share email lists.

For a mere $9 per month, Campaign Monitor offers a budget-friendly option for small businesses, unlocking access to all its core features. As your business grows, simply pay for the number of customers you contact each month - a pricing model that's a true game-changer for growing businesses. Get creative with your marketing strategies and bring your vision to life with Campaign Monitor.

Conclusion

When choosing a CRM, navigating today's marketplace can make anyone dizzy! With countless options available, dodgy affiliate schemes, and fake reviews, knowing how to separate the wheat from the chaff is no easy feat. The reason we provide such detailed analyses is to give you a clear vantage point; one from which you can rise above the noise and determine the perfect CRM for your business.

However, while we have provided you with our expert opinions on the best CRMs in 2023, we always recommend you corroborate this with your own research. Make use of available demos and free trials and carefully assess your preferred CRM for yourself. Ultimately, we're here to help you make the optimal choice for your business. Good luck!

Our Pick - Active Campaign

Active Campaign’s advanced automation system, ease of use, great value for money and extensive integrations with other accounting software make it Toksta's top CRM software for Small Businesses in 2023.

Try Active Campaign Free

Meet the author

Sam Cassman is a seasoned growth marketer with over 10 years of experience as growth marketer for startups and small businesses. He is the founder of Toksta, a research technology company that helps businesses find and purchase the best software and SaaS. Sam has also run his own growth marketing consultancy Honest Growth, where he helped numerous clients to grow their businesses, including Eventcube, Baluu, Obby, and NBM Group.

Learn More About Sam