

To efficiently implement CRM (customer relationship management) one must first understand its history and its importance. Travel through time, and you will learn of a detailed background, its creators and evolution.
Where Thought Leaders go for Growth
Are you looking for a small business CRM software? What is the best CRM system for your team?
Small and medium-sized businesses, despite booming development, are not all equipped with CRM systems (customer relationship management), a precious key to better perform in commercial activity. CRM software will help you manage interactions with both current and potential customers, saving your precious time and energy to focus on growing your business.
Good news, we have put together a comparison of the best CRM software for small businesses, based on precise criteria, to help you make your choice.
But first, let’s find out what small business CRM software is and which criteria you should consider in selecting CRM tools.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM system is a platform that manages customer information and experiences and connects the different departments from marketing to sales to customer support into one cohesive system. Overall, CRM will help your team free up time. A CRM solution is now an important part of large businesses but is still less common in small businesses. Fortunately, there are CRM systems built specifically for small businesses that can help get you started.
Organizing a huge customer database and managing customer experiences always takes a lot of time for companies, especially for small businesses. That’s where a CRM system appears like a Customer Relationship Management solution for companies. This useful tool helps keep everyone in your company on the same page, brings marketing, sales team, and customer support together with all the data they need to succeed in their roles.
Organizing the customer information and client management
Generating, tracking, and managing leads more effectively
Searching for automated functions like sending emails, sales reporting, sticky notes, and memories
Renovating or changing the current CRM solution
The customer relationship management (CRM) softwares presented in this comparison have in common that they have key functionalities, essential to any good CRM solution. There are many, including:
In addition, we have taken into account the fact that small businesses must find a balance between:
Finally, we notice today that a significant number of small and midsize businesses have not adopted CRM systems. Consequently, they are not always familiar with this type of solution. This observation implies considering the ease of handling and use of the selected commercial management tools. It also involves looking into the quality of the publisher's customer support, as well as the presence (or not) of documentation to support users.
How much does a CRM cost? Most CRMs are priced per user per month. Some CRMs (like Sendinblue, Zoho CRM, Hubspot CRM, etc.) are email marketing-focused, and as such their pricing is instead dependent on the number of contacts you have. The pricing depends also on features. The more powerful the features are, the more expensive it will be per month.
Customer Relationship Management Software all offer a different range of features. It is up to each organization to find the formula that suits it among the many CRM software available on the market.
This is why we recommend that you perfectly frame your project to implement a new tool upstream:
From these various questions, you will determine the list of features necessary to meet your growth ambitions.
💡 Why not writing a specification for your CRM project? This exercise helps you ask yourself about all the elements that will allow you to select the perfect software:
Moreover, this question of the budget remains central for small businesses. These companies are in fact in a pivotal situation: compared to very small businesses, they require a more powerful tool that is available to a greater number of users... but they do not have the same finances as a large group! Therefore, we recommend that you agree on the envelope to allocate to your CRM system, and study in-depth all the pricing aspects:
Finally, we found that the majority of CRM solutions offer free trials. For your sales teams, this is a golden opportunity to test different solutions, to define which ones they feel most comfortable with. In this way, you promote their adoption… and increase your chances of success!
monday.com CRM is a cloud-based work management platform offering a simplified way for you to manage any team and any project while creating a more transparent work culture.
With this CRM software, you can:
monday.com is definitely a powerful CRM software that is customizable to fit your business needs. With this software, you can build your workflows in any way that works for you and your team. This is the reason why more than 100,000 business teams in diverse industries around the world rely on monday.com, from big companies like Wix and The Discovery Channel to small businesses just getting started.
Here are the 5 most useful Monday.com features:
There is a free version that includes the following features:
The paid plan starts from $25 per month for 5 users which is an affordable price for small businesses. The standard subscription is the most used. It has more features like:
The strengths of Monday.com:
The solution includes a powerful mobile application to support salespeople on the go. Finally, the free version remains a real bonus. You can test the software to start developing yourself… before switching to a paid offer with successful features.
ACT! is a great CRM system ideal for small businesses and startups that combines marketing automation and sales pipeline management into a centralized platform. The platform offers rich functionality, flexibility in operations, and exceptional benefits that fit perfectly for every customer. This solution includes tools for sales process automation and is suitable for businesses in any industry.
Here are some powerful features of this CRM solution:
ACT! provides a shared calendar that can help improve teamwork. This solution offers a Microsoft Outlook integration and connects with other apps like Dropbox, Slack, and more. ACT! Companion is a mobile CRM app that is compatible with iOS and Android devices to assist salespeople on the move.
ACT! is guided by an Executive Leadership Team with a wide range of experience working in and with businesses of all sizes. Some are entrepreneurs themselves, and others have worked with the largest companies in the Fortune 100.
There are 2 versions: ACT! Pro and ACT! Premium. The ACT! Pro standard version is already pretty complete. It includes:
The paid plan starts from $15 per month. If you want more functionalities, Full-featured ACT! Premium helps you build lasting relationships, close deals faster, and make informed business decisions. Add ACT! Marketing Automation to optimize all the ways you communicate with prospects and customers to maximize engagement and drive business growth! You can test ACT! free for 14 days to see if it's right for you.
ACT! platform promises very good value for money. This CRM tool focuses primarily on essential features for salespeople, which are also very powerful features, and also provides marketing features.
Unfortunately, ACT! Pro works only through a remote desktop. However, small businesses already using ACT! Premium can transfer to a hosted ACT! environment more easily because ACT! Premium is designed from the start to be able to do this.
Keap is a very simple but powerful CRM and sales/marketing tool. Its goal is to help small businesses to save their precious time and focus on getting more sales by:
It’s a cloud-based sales and marketing solution that offers customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation, and e-commerce functionalities in one cohesive system.
Existing for over 20 years Keap perfected a platform that's helped hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs grow sales.
Here are some features of Keap that makes this tool ranked #1 for ease of use:
The paid plan starts at $79/month for solopreneurs and new businesses - core CRM, automation, and email tools to get organized, automate follow-up, and close more deals. It includes 500 contacts and 1 user with all basic following plans:
Keap is very easy to use and it helps small businesses manage customer data and experiences.
Less Annoying CRM is a small business customer relationship management (CRM) software that offers cloud-based deployment, various configuration options, and a dashboard that provides an overview of contact information, projects, files, and other information.
Less Annoying CRM provides:
Here are some advantageous features of Less Annoying CRM:
Less Annoying CRM tool promises very good value for money with $15 per user per month which is an interesting price for all the functions. They also offer free personalized help to every customer, regardless of size.
Less Annoying CRM software also has more useful features:
The pricing is interesting with lots of powerful CRM features. It’s easy for every small business that starts using CRM software.
Salesmate offers simple, personal, and productive experiences for your sales team and customers. This platform allows you to generate more leads, close more deals, and build long-term customer relationships by delivering personalized experiences across marketing, sales, and customer service touchpoints across all channels – email, text, chat, web, calls, and eBusiness.
A number of powerful features explain how Salesmate can help you win more deals and create long-term customers relationship:
Salesmate offers simple and affordable pricing for your small business. The paid plan starts from $12 per month and you can save more than 20% with the annual subscription. You can test all the Salesmate features for free in 15 days.
Every plan includes:
With pricing starting from $12/user and lots of functional features, Salesmate platform offers one of the best value for money. This is definitely the best CRM tool for businesses in SaaS, software, marketing, real estate, insurance, finance, etc. industries. It is one of the highest-rated CRM platforms and has won 21+ industry awards just in 2020.
CRM Software | Target | Main asset | Pricing |
Monday.com CRM | Any type of business | Powerful features and robust functionality. Impressive, modern user interface. Free version | It has a free version. The paid plan starts from $25 per month with a basic subscription |
ACT! | Small Business | Tools for sales process automation | From $15 per month with the essential subscription |
Keap | Any type of business | Ease of use | The paid plan starts from $79 per month with the lite subscription |
Less Annoying CRM | Small Business and Startup | Functional coverage. Facilitate teamwork. | From $15 per month
with no complicated pricing tiers, no hidden fees, and no contracts |
Salesmate.io | Small Business | The high degree of customization and functional depth | From $12 per month for the Starter packs |
Because the choice of a CRM impacts the company at many levels (management, marketing, sales, customer support), it is essential to establish specifications with all the stakeholders in the project. It is on these bases that a first selection can be made to get as close as possible to the needs of the company and find the appropriate CRM software.
There is no better software than the one that will truly meet the needs of your business. Take the time to see if the software has the features you need, but also if the ergonomics are good!