Top 12 Best CRM Software For Solopreneurs In 2023

In need of affordable, full-featured CRM software to help manage your side hustle? Fortunately, there are several amazing options for you in 2023. This article highlights the ten best CRMs you can use, focusing on their free and entry-level plans, pros, cons, and target market.

Solopreneurs are, more often than not, fledgling business owners with small businesses and even smaller capital. Yet, they need CRMs to help them manage their customers and maintain lasting relationships. These CRMs cost money and require time commitments. How, then, can they obtain this software without breaking the bank?

The solution is to look for CRMs with free or low-cost starter plans, as they provide all the features needed for the successful running of a small business. Ultimately, an affordable CRM is an indispensable tool for a solopreneur.

What is Important to Look for in a CRM for Solopreneurs?

As a solopreneur, your business is quite different from multi-personnel companies. You're directly involved in all operations and often handle all your tasks single-handedly. Consequently, you need a unique set of CRM requirements that most software may not be able to satisfy. To avoid making (often expensive) mistakes when choosing the best CRM to use as a solopreneur, you should consider the following factors:

1. Low cost
   
   Your solo enterprise may be hard-pressed for cash, prompting you to make smart financial decisions and cut costs when possible. As such, the first thing you should consider when deciding is the software's cost. You should look for CRMs with free plans or low-cost entry plans.
   
2. Full feature set
   
   Not only should you consider the cost of the software, but you should also examine the features available on your chosen subscription. These features should be able to satisfy all your CRM needs. If you do need to upgrade to access more features, the cost of upgrading should not break the bank.
   
3. Easy to use
   
   A good CRM for solopreneurs must be easy and intuitive to use without requiring the services of a software developer. It must be easy to set up, and customer support should provide adequate help navigating difficult areas.
   
4. Plenty of integrations
   
   CRM software is not the only tool in your arsenal. You need quotation software, website builders, accounting software, and other tools to run your business. Therefore, any CRM you choose must be able to integrate with these software and even other CRMs seamlessly. This helps you save the costs of using developers to provide these functionalities.

Quick Comparison of CRM Software for Solopreneurs:

The Top 12 Best CRM Software For Solopreneurs Are:

1. Active Campaign
2. Hubspot
3. Less Annoying CRM
4. Pipedrive
5. Engagebay
6. Klaviyo
7. Zoho CRM
8. Campaign Monitor
9. Apptivo
10. Agile CRM
11. Sendinblue
12. GIST

1. Active Campaign

Founded: 2003
HQ: Chicago, Illinois, United States

With a starting price of just $19 per month, it's hardly surprising that Active Campaign is one of the most popular CRMs in 2023. Active Campaign has more than 130,000 users worldwide because it offers more features in its entry-level plan than most other CRMs. That is to say, ActiveCampaign is a great CRM tool for small and medium-sized businesses looking to save time and money.

As the sole owner of a growing business, your attention is often divided among several aspects of your company. Active Campaign helps to relieve this mental burden through its smart automation system. This tool can send email campaigns and automatically track customer engagement. It provides an extensive collection of triggers, commands, and conditions that you can combine into flowgraphs for a seamless workflow.

Active Campaign's Lite plan becomes all the more attractive when you discover that you can send unlimited emails, subscription forms, and newsletters to your clients. You can craft personalized emails for each customer using an easy-to-use email builder and more than 150 templates. If you're a techie with programming skills, ActiveCampaign allows you to customize the underlying code of your forms and emails.

Another of Active Campaign's features is the client dashboard which allows you to organize your leads and clients with segmentation. Additionally, you can view customer reports and analytics on this dashboard. ActiveCampaign offers lead scoring, win probabilities, and contact nurturing functionalities, but you need to be on higher subscription plans.

Active Campaign is an industry-standard software and is often the subject of comparison with other CRMs on G2. This shows the respect accorded to this software as the gold standard of what CRMs should be. Aside from some reservations about its steep learning curve, most customers have no complaints about this software. In fact, one satisfied customer states that:

"I absolutely love the automations in ActiveCampaign. The options are so powerful, and it's a very good tool to visualize the customer journeys…."

Active Campaign scores 4.6/5 on G2, 4.6/5 on Capterra, and 4/5 on Trustpilot.  

2. Hubspot

Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Hubspot is a modular software suite comprising marketing, sales, CRM, and CMS tools. What sets Hubspot apart is the sheer amount of these free tools—far more than any other software on this list—and more than enough to sway any solopreneur.

You might be tempted to choose Hubspot simply for its free plan, yet you should bear in mind that companies use this tactic to acquire customers. Hubspot's pricing model allows you to add features on a need basis, creating a custom user experience. Nonetheless, if you're not careful, you may spend up to $5000 per month to get the full Hubspot experience. It then may become difficult to abandon the software, given the time and money spent on it.

One notable feature is the deal pipeline which keeps track of all ongoing deals and predicts future income based on their win probabilities. Using the visual dashboard on the pipeline, you can obtain detailed reports on productivity and team performance.

Hubspot provides several tools designed to complement email integration. The email templates allow you to craft engaging marketing campaigns, and you can also track replies and client interaction with each email and view them on the contact timeline. Additionally, you can schedule emails for the right sending and receipt time and receive notifications on them. Hubspot offers several more advanced email tools in its enterprise and professional editions.

Interestingly, Hubspot allows you to have voice calls with employees and clients from within the app. It can record these calls in multiple formats and automatically generate text transcripts. The caller app is part of the service hub, a customer support software that helps you develop deeper relationships with clients. This software contains a knowledge base for written and video blogs that provide customers with relevant information about your company.

Hubspot scores 4.4/5 on G2, 4.5/5 on Capterra, and 3.8/5 on Trustpilot.

3. Less Annoying CRM

Founded: 2009
HQ: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Less Annoying CRM’s selling point is that it’s less complex to use than competing products. According to G2, it’s the easiest-to-use CRM in 2023 and is popular among small businesses. With just one subscription plan that provides the full range of all its features, Less Annoying CRM has definitely earned its near-perfect customer rating of 4.9/5 stars.

Per its main goal, Less Annoying CRM offers fewer CRM tools and features than other software. However, though this design decision presents a dilemma to users who want more functionality, many customers prefer the minimalist feature set and the simplicity it offers. That being said, many users have reported a need for Less Annoying CRM to implement more functionalities. Despite all this, considering the $15 price tag, this software is a good bargain for solopreneurs.

Less Annoying CRM's few but powerful features handle a large chunk of business operations. The Workspace tool is an advanced contact manager that organizes all tasks, contracts, and events in a single location. As such, you can quickly and efficiently complete any pending tasks. You can also view all your leads, reviews, and onboardings as histograms and gain performance metrics.

Less Annoying CRM allows you to add multiple users to your account for the same base price per user. All users have separate logins and passwords, and you can control their access level. While its benefits may not be immediately apparent to you as a solopreneur, the team collaboration platform will become indispensable as your business grows.

Less Annoying CRM has positive reviews across all categories on G2. It scores highly on ease of use, quality of support, and ease of setup. Many customers love its flexibility and the ability to create custom fields and pipelines. Less Annoying CRM may not be the best choice for larger firms, but it’s perfect for solopreneurs.

Less Annoying CRM scores 4.9/5 on G2, and  4.8/5 on Capterra.

4. Pipedrive

Founded: 2010
HQ: New York, United States

The sales pipeline is the driving force behind any CRM and is Pipedrive's outstanding feature. Its primary purpose is to manage your leads and deals by providing an overview of progress, ownership, and communication. You can manage up to 3000 open deals with the entry-level plan and scale up to higher tiers as needed. The main benefit of this feature is that you can close more deals in less time, leaving you free to tend to other portions of your enterprise.

Pipedrive may be a sales CRM at heart, but it provides other useful features to a solopreneur. One such feature is workflow automation which allows you to execute actions based on dynamic triggers and conditions. The automated pipeline is highly customizable and can contain an unlimited number of stages. This feature is not as robust in the basic plan as in the more expensive plans. Yet, the sales assistant it provides makes up for this limitation.

Pipedrive prioritizes the privacy and security of your client’s information. Accordingly, it provides a world-class data storage system with single sign-on login, two-factor authentication, and 256-bit encryption. You can also categorize your users into groups and control which client information each group can access.
Pipedrive is not perfect software; some customers have encountered technical bugs and glitches in the UI. While we didn't encounter these issues during our trial run, it's worth knowing about them. To sum up, Pipedrive's offering of features, at a $9.90 starting price, gets you a really big bang for your buck.

Pipedrive scores 4.2/5 on G2, 4.5/5 on Capterra, and 3.8/5 on Trustpilot.

5. EngageBay

Founded: 2018
HQ: Wilmington, Delaware, United States

EngageBay is a general-purpose platform for marketing, CRM, sales, and customer service activities. Despite its relatively young age, EngageBay has grown to support more than 29,000 startups globally. Offering a free plan and affordable subscription models, EngageBay is a strong contender for the best CRM for solopreneurs.  

EngageBay offers three software packages you can get individually or as an all-in-one bundle; Marketing, CRM & Sales Bay, and Service Bay. As expected, the all-in-one bundle offers a discount on each package. You can also get the free plan if you think its features satisfy your business needs. Using this plan, you can manage up to 500 contacts and companies.

This software provides a 360-degree view of your contacts and leads. It automatically scores leads and tracks customer behavior in a single interface. The client dashboard provides powerful filters to sort clients based on specific parameters. In addition, it allows you to conduct bulk operations like email campaigns and notifications on any number of customers.

Another of EngageBay's useful features is the Live Chat service for real-time communication with clients. This software contains all you'd expect of modern chat software; emojis, file attachments, chat requests and chat categories. You can embed the live chat service in your company's website, customize its appearance, and record transcripts of previous conversations.

EngageBay provides sales automation, third-party integrations, and multi-currency sales pipelines. However, these features are locked behind the paid subscription plans. In fact, most of EngageBay's advanced features require some payment. Consequently, you must spend money to get the most out of this software. But make no mistake, EngageBay is by no means expensive as its highest subscription tier is just under $50.

Engage Bay scores 4.8/5 on G2, and 4.6/5 on Capterra.

6. Klaviyo

Founded: 2012 
HQ: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Klaviyo's pricing model is almost entirely based on the number of clients you have. All of its features are available in every subscription plan it offers, including the free plan. If your business has fewer than 250 customers, you can enjoy the full range of Klaviyo's features for no cost. There's little wonder why Klaviyo has more than 100,000 paying customers when considering its advanced functionalities.

Klaviyo is designed to deliver personalized experiences to all your clients and grow your business. Using the SMS tool, Kalviyo automatically captures phone numbers from contact lists, sign-up forms, and third-party forms. This allows you to reach even the most elusive client. It also enables you to conduct email marketing campaigns and design sign-up forms with an extensive template library.

Klaviyo provides more than 200 integrations with other CRM software. It provides real-time customer segmentation and behavior tracking. Furthermore, the smart automation system can send personalized messages while respecting the customer's behaviors and preferences. It also collects reports on client interaction so you can accurately assess your business performance.

Klaviyo often relies on integrations to provide some functionalities, sparking criticism from some customers. These customers have argued that the subscription costs should be cheaper since the integrations require them to subscribe to another software service. Yet, Klaviyo has remained popular for its easy-to-customize templates and marketing automations system. Several customers have reported increased profit margins, with one of them stating that:

“Klaviyo has been very helpful in getting our business to make a very positive ROI on the cost. Our email campaigns continue to be successful, but the segmented and targeted flows are the moneymaker for us!”

Klaviyo scores 4.6/5 on G2, and 4.7/5 on Capterra, and 3.8/5 on Trustpilot.

7. Zoho CRM

Founded: 2005
HQ: Austin, Texas, United States

Zoho has been providing SaaS to entrepreneurs and small businesses for more than 25 years. It has over 80 million customers that use the 50 applications in its software suite, including Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM is a fully-featured software you can use for all your basic CRM needs without breaking the bank. Really, you don't have to spend a dime to enjoy its advanced features!

If you're a solopreneur looking for a personal assistant to manage your lead, clients, and deals, Zoho CRM has just the tool for you. The Sales Force Automation feature saves not only time but also the hiring costs of getting someone to fill that role. Using this tool, you can capture leads, score them based on win probability, and follow them up using their contact information. Additionally, this tool provides workflow management services that allow you to automate common operations.

Zoho CRM offers several other features in its free plan. You can use the Omnichannel for real-time communication with clients. The process management tool allows you to create blueprints that your sales team can execute in the sales pipeline. What’s more, the analytics and performance management tools help you make forecasts on performance reports.

Interestingly, most, if not all, of these features can be accessed on Zoho CRM's mobile app. As a result, you can stay on top of your business whenever and wherever you go. The mobile app also includes a card scanner with which you can scan business cards and QR codes of new contacts. This feature is one of Zoho CRM's strong points among customers, along with its flexibility and ease of use. However, this software has been criticized for its dated UI and subpar customer support.

Zoho CRM’s pricing model is designed such that you only need to upgrade to higher tiers as your business grows. All of the basic features you need to run your business are available in the free plan. Nevertheless, if you need a higher cloud storage capacity or convenience features like AI insights, you can opt for the professional or enterprise plan. It’s noteworthy that Zoho CRM’s subscription plans are pretty affordable compared to other CRMs on this list.

Zoho CRM scores 4/5 on G2, and 4.3/5 on Capterra.

8. Campaign Monitor

Founded: 20o4
HQ: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

One of the most captivating features of Campaign Monitor is the free email template builder. Powered by HTML and CSS, this tool allows you to create highly customizable email campaigns within minutes. It can extract your company’s colors, logos, and brand name from the website URL you provide. Campaign Monitor allows you to save your emails as templates or pick from their library of optimized and mobile-friendly email templates. It also integrates with Unsplash to access millions of free photos for your emails.

If you’re looking to send targeted emails to a selected group of customers, Campaign Monitor offers segmentation tools to efficiently get this job done. It helps you set the foundation for personalization by collecting customer data, such as location, gender, and interests. Data collection is very secure as customers can choose the kind of information, they want to divulge about themselves using the preference center.

One underrated feature Campaign Monitor offers is the email analytics tool. This subsystem provides real-time insights and reports on email campaigns, automated journeys, transactional emails, and many more. It even collects data on seemingly routine actions like email opens, button clicks, and shares. In addition to data collection, the analytics tool offers A/B testing on email campaigns, allowing you to make educated business decisions.

Campaign Monitor's pricing model is based on the monthly number of emails, making it very affordable for solopreneurs. All the subscription tiers offer an unlimited number of users and collaborators. Another benefit to this pricing model is that nearly all features are available across all the subscription plans. Unless you want time zone sending, third-party link tracking, and phone customer support, you can stick to the $9 basic plan.

Campaign Monitor scores 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

9. Apptivo

Founded: 2009
HQ: Fremont, California, United States

Apptivo, as the name implies, is a collection of web applications for all your sales, email marketing, billing, and customer service operations. The number of apps you can install increases as you increase your subscription plan, allowing you to pay for only what you use. Similarly, the kind of apps you can install also depends on the plan you’re subscribed to. For example, you need to be on the $12 premium plan to access CRM apps.

Apptivo offers a free plan that provides basic functionalities like calendar appointments, tasks, and email integration. These features are not nearly enough to handle all of your business activities as a solopreneur. The next tier, Lite, adds additional features like email tracking, third-party integrations, and custom dashboards.

Apptivo's CRM apps include case management, contact regulatory notifications, work orders, and a contact center. You must upgrade to the $20 Ultimate plan if you need advanced automation tools. This plan also allows you to install up to 57 apps and create 150 different automation workflows.

Apptivo has a respectable rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars on G2. Many customers praise its versatility and customization options. It's extremely easy to use, and customer support is on hand to guide you through the difficult parts.

Apptivo scores 4.3/5 on G2, and 4.4/5 on Capterra.

10. Agile CRM

Founded: 2013
HQ: Dallas, Texas, United States

Agile CRM is a cloud-based platform for sales, marketing, and service. With a free plan for the first ten users in your account, this software provides an affordable, all-in-one CRM solution. This free plan does not require your credit card information, so you can be sure there are no hidden charges when using this software.

Agile CRM is used and trusted by more than 15,000 customers for its speed, automation features, and integrations. Its free plan allows you to manage up to 1000 clients and contacts. Using the contact management tool, you can track milestones for an unlimited number of deals and automatically schedule appointments. Furthermore, the Gamification tool helps to increase sales by promoting healthy competition among your team members.

Agile CRM’s free marketing tools are some of the reasons it has excellent ratings on Trustpilot. These tools allow you to create email campaigns and web forms from several templates. Nevertheless, you may need to upgrade to higher tiers to remove the campaign limit of 5,000 branded emails. Likewise, advanced features like marketing automation and mobile marketing are locked behind paid subscriptions.

As a solopreneur, it's vital that you stay up to date with your customers and maintain a constant communication stream. To that end, Agile CRM provides a helpdesk service that you can use to address your customers' issues. This helpdesk provides convenience features like customer labelling and grouping. In addition, Agile CRM's paid plans feature a two-way email and telephony communication channel with email tracking.

Despite complaints about the poor implementation of some features, most customers praise Agile CRM for its amazing customer support. These customers specifically name each support team member and thank them for their help. Also, Agile CRM's automation features and user interface have earned it positive reviews on G2.

Agile CRM scores 4/5 on G2, 4.1/5 on Capterra, and 4.8/5 on Trustpilot.

11. Sendinblue

Founded: 2012
HQ: Paris, France

Sendinblue's strength lies in its modular nature. It's a software suite of ten different applications, including email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM. You can opt-in and out of services at any time for no additional cost. Most of Sendinblue's features are designed for digital marketing and client onboarding.

Unlike many other CRMs that base their pricing on the number of your clients, Sendinblue gives you unlimited contacts and charges you based on the monthly email volume. You could not ask for a better deal as a fledgling business owner. Starting with a free plan that allows you to send up to 300 emails daily, you can affordably upgrade this CRM as your business grows.

Sendinblue’s email and SMS marketing features are top-notch. This tool helps you design and send personalized emails to your contacts. Although there are only a few email templates, they’re professional-looking and highly customizable. Moreover, you can track if clients have received, opened, or clicked on your emails.

Sendinblue's free plan shares many other features with the paid subscription, including workflow automation. This advanced tool allows you to create automated pipelines that send emails, notifications, and payment requests or launch entirely new pipelines. Using workflow automation, you can define triggers that start the pipeline or conditionally execute actions through flow control logic.

Sendinblue has been praised for its affordability and how it consolidates all its contacts into a single platform. Furthermore, many customers have reported that this software played a significant role in growing their businesses. Similarly, customer support has been commended for its response speed, friendliness, and helpfulness.

Sendinblue scores 4.5/5 on G2, 4.6/5 on Capterra, and 4.4/5 on Trustpilot.

12. GIST

Founded: 2020
HQ: Newark, Delaware, United States

GIST has the longest list of features in its free plan than any other software discussed in this article. These features are designed to acquire, engage, and support your customers and leads. GIST is comparatively a latecomer to the CRM industry, however, it has utilized ample time to learn from the successes and failures of older software. As a result, it is constantly improving, doing much better than other software, and has already earned a high rating of 4.6/5 stars on G2.

GIST helps you acquire customers using forms, chatbots, and meetings. Using this software, you can create visually appealing forms with customized looks. It enables you to monitor forms in an efficient way where you control when they appear and who can view them. The form builder is easy to use and doesn't require an external developer. What's more, it's free to use on any website of your choosing. GIST also allows you to run automation when people interact with your forms.

Another one of GIST's great features is the free no-code chatbot builder. The chatbot software can automatically qualify incoming leads and ask the most important questions. It runs 24/7 and engages with customers on your behalf, routing the hottest conversations to your sales reps. The chatbot acts as your personal assistant, scheduling meetings and guiding customers in booking appointments. GIST also has tools to engage customers that allow you to send automated broadcast and drip email campaigns to all your customers. GIST provides a simple drag-and-drop email builder with hundreds of templates. You can customize emails for personalized campaigns and modify colors and logos to match your brand. In addition to the email builder, GIST allows you to create automation workflows using a visual builder. It runs on autopilot, executing complex actions based on conditions and triggers.

GIST is a very affordable and cost-effective CRM for solopreneurs. Its free plan contains many features a small business or solo enterprise needs for successful customer engagement. However, GIST also offers many other features that may not be useful to a solopreneur, making it seem bloated. Moreover, advanced features like Zoom integration and webhooks are only available in paid subscriptions.

Fortunately, GIST is offering a price subsidy for small businesses, slashing the Premium cost from $499 to $99 per month. If this new price is still too costly for your business, you can opt into the $29 plan that offers five additional support seats.

GIST scores 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra.

How to pick the right CRM for your enterprise

As discussed in this article, choosing the right CRM to meet your needs is not as straightforward as it may initially seem. Luckily, we have given you guidelines on what to look for in a CRM and how to assess your CRM needs. Each software discussed in this article is an equally viable option, but with subtle and not-so-subtle differences that may serve to sway you. It's up to you to choose the right software to help grow your business.

Our Pick - Active Campaign

Active Campaign’s advanced automation system, ease of use, and extensive integration with other accounting software make it Toksta's top CRM software for solopreneurs in 2023.

Try Active Campaign Free

Need more small business software advice? Take a read of some of our related guides below:

• Best CRMs for SaaS Startups
• Best CRMs for Life Coaches
• Best CRMs for Investor Relations
• Best CRMs for LinkedIn Messaging Automation
• Best HR Software for Startups & Small Businesses
• Best Quotation Software Tools for Small Businesses
• Best CRMs for Sales Teams and Reps
• Best CRMs for Email Marketing

Meet the author - Ademilade Shodipe-Dosunmu

Ademilade is a versatile and multi-faceted content writer with over 5 years of expertise in SaaS, technology, business, finance, travel, and entertainment journalism. During his years in the dynamic content landscape, he has worked with a variety of clients across various sectors, providing high-quality reviews and content.

As a content writer for Toksta, Ademilade works in collaboration with the research team to develop in depth SaaS breakdowns that help entrepreneurs choose the best option for their small business or startup.