25 Best CRMs for Small Business in 2023Reviews, Comparisons and a Curated List of the Top CRMs to Grow Your Sales

In this guide, we’re breaking down a curated list of the best CRMs for small business, including in-depth reviews, comparisons, pros, cons and criteria for deciding which type of CRM will best fit your needs today. Plus, we’ll answer the question of whether or not you even need a CRM—and you can grab my free CRM spreadsheet template too.

35 Best CRMs for Small Business and Startups to Grow Sales icon

Before we get into choosing the best CRMs for small business, I want to be very clear–you might not actually need a CRM at all. At least not today.

Weird way to start an article about the best CRMs for small business, right? Bear with me and I’ll start by dispelling a common myth:

Does Every Small Business Need a CRM?

No, not every small business owner needs a CRM. Whether or not you need CRM software depends on a lot of variables.

If you run a relatively young small business, or you just launched a brand new startup, then you’re likely consumed with executing mission critical tasks like trying to get enough investor capital to keep the lights on, or bringing in your first paying customer (as your one-person sales team) to prove the business has a viable future.

In the very early days, you won’t have so much customer and prospect data you feel like you’re drowning in a series of Excel spreadsheets and email tracking tools. Having trouble writing formulas in spreadsheets? Use my excel formula generator to get the right formulas without banging your head against the wall.

If this sounds like where you’re at right now, then a CRM is probably not for you… today. Instead, you leverage free tools. I’m talking about Spreadsheet status, like this one:

Free Download: My CRM Spreadsheet Template

Best CRMs for Small Business (CRM Spreadsheet Template) by Ryan Robinson at ryrob

To help you get started (if you’re at square one with your sales process today), I’m giving away the actual free CRM spreadsheet template I used when I was getting my own freelance business off the ground, before I switched over to using Close as my CRM.

It’s pre-loaded with all of the essential form fields and dropdown menus you need—from tracking your lead status, to making sure you’re talking to decision-makers, evaluating the deal size, keeping a pulse on how warm your lead is—I’ve got it all covered.

Free Download: My CRM Spreadsheet Template

Before you make a financial investment in any CRM, which will eventually become an extremely useful, valuable, and often vital tool for your business, take an honest look at your revenue and current position as a company.

Focus on growing your revenue and landing early adopters by using a combination of free software tools—like a simple yet powerful combination of Gmail, Google Sheets and the (free) Hunter Extension for Google’s Chrome browser that quickly tracks down lead email addresses.

What is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software) for SMBs?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is software that helps small businesses manage their customer interactions and close more sales.

The goal of a CRM system is to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention by organizing and automating core processes like sales, marketing, and customer service. A typical CRM platform typically includes features like contact management, lead scoring, lead management, opportunity tracking, sales forecasting, real-time reporting, and analytics metrics. The best CRM solutions also integrate with other tools small businesses often use, including email and marketing automation platforms.

For small businesses that invest in using the right CRM features with great ease of use, you’ll be able to create a centralized database of customer information, which can be used to close more sales, enhance customer support efforts, run a help desk, get notifications about prospect activities, and gain greater insights into customer behavior (all in a cloud-based platform these days). In short, the best CRMs will help you drive more revenue for your small business.

How will I know I’m ready to use a CRM?

If you’ve got your first loyal customers, you’re starting to grow and trying to keep pace with all the (exciting) changes happening, then it is the perfect time to invest some of that capital back into your company by choosing the best CRM for your small business.

Time is the most valuable resource you have at this stage, so almost any investment that saves you time is likely to pay massive dividends back to your bottom line—especially one like a CRM that’s designed to help grow your revenue.

At this point you need a CRM, and badly. A CRM can free up so much time to focus on capturing (and converting) new leads.

In this breakdown of the best CRMs for small business, I went to a lot of effort to highlight several different types of CRMs focused on various aspects. We cover CRMs that are a good fit for small businesses, and even specifically for freelancers.

Some are more focused on generating sales, others for managing contacts or sending bulk email, and yet others still for tracking and reporting your sales team members’ performance. It’s really up to you and what your company needs!

Remember, you get what you pay for.

Look critically at the needs of your business, and what you can reasonably gain by saving time on customer management. When you see the pricier CRM options, it’s because their offerings often have many features and will provide you with more value—but remember, a CRM is only truly valuable if you use it.

Determine the features that are most important to you, your sales process and business goals before pulling the trigger on which CRM is best for your needs.

Without further delay… Here are my picks for the best small business CRMs on the market in 2023.

Quick note: I created this hyperlinked menu below, so that you can quickly click on any of the SMB CRMs we’re talking about today, and immediately jump down to the section of this guide that goes into more detail about each one. That being said, I recommend taking this list one-by-by-one starting with Close right below this menu.

25 Best CRMs for Small Business (to Grow Sales) in 2023

  1. Close
  2. HubSpot CRM
  3. Pipedrive
  4. ActiveCampaign
  5. Agile
  6. Copper
  7. Salesmate
  8. Nutshell
  9. Salesforce Essentials
  10. Insightly
  11. Keap (Previously Infusionsoft)
  12. OnePageCRM
  13. Salesflare
  14. Capsule
  15. Solve360
  16. Maximizer
  17. Creatio
  18. SuiteCRM
  19. Bloom
  20. Indy
  21. Monday.com
  22. Zoho CRM
  23. Less Annoying CRM
  24. Bitrix24
  25. Nimble

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products, tools, services and learning resources I’ve personally used and believe are genuinely helpful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to purchase them. Most of all, I would never advocate for buying something that you can’t afford or that you’re not yet ready to implement.

Kicking off this list, my personal top choice is a small business CRM that I’ve used for years—and have a ton of experience with.

1. Close

Close Best CRM for Small Business (Screenshot)

First up is Close. This is my #1 pick as the best CRM for small businesses, because of their intense focus on cutting down time spent on activities that don’t move deals forward—plus, they’re actually the only CRM on the market that comes with built-in calling, making it a steal if calling is part of your sales process.

Close is really geared toward reducing mundane tasks like data entry and contact field updating, so you can maximize the time you spend contacting, developing, and closing leads. What takes 8 clicks to do in a bulkier CRM like Salesforce, takes just 2 in Close. For small businesses more focus on what’s most important (closing more sales), the time you’ll save with a CRM that isn’t bloated with occasionally used features, translates into real dollars.

For small businesses, the intense focus on driving more revenue is the most vital part of growing your business today. And when you’re busting your ass trying to keep your highest priority leads on track, and spending time managing at least some of the deals yourself, Close will be a serious lifesaver.

My favorite features from Close is their extremely easy-to-use Email Sequences feature that allows me to send an automated series of (customized) drip sales emails to new client leads that come in either automatically from my blog, or from manual list imports after something like attending a trade show or presenting on a big webinar.

Best CRM Small Business Close Email Sequences

Everything is designed to help you get more replies, book more meetings, schedule more demos and close more deals, resulting in a refreshing CRM that truly cuts out all the BS. They pride themselves on sales productivity over everything else.

If you’re a small business with a growing but loyal customer base, proven results, and a sales team with between 3 to 20 sales reps, consider leveling up with Close to see how much more you can accomplish. You’ll get access to great sales reporting, an easy-to-use sales funnel view, and a host of excellent sales management tools to monitor your team’s sales activities.

Plus, the Close team actually cares about your success as a sales organization—they have a great guide to choosing which CRM is best for your needs (even when it means not choosing them.) From my perspective, Close offers the best user-friendly tools with a user experience designed around sales productivity and closing more deals.

Free Trial: 14 days (no credit card required)

Pricing: Basic ($59/user/month) | Professional ($89/user/month) | Business ($129/user/month)

→ Want to see Close in action? Check out their free (short!) demo.

2. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM for Small Business and Startups

This CRM can be a great choice for small businesses that don’t need all the frills, but could really use some basic assistance with systematizing the data entry side. HubSpot centralizes your contact list, automatically logs customer interactions, and scrapes data from the internet to populate information about your prospects.

For a contact-focused company that doesn’t have a huge need for a complex CRM, HubSpot is ideal (and has a pretty simple user interface to learn)—landing it here on our list of the best CRMs for small business who also want to run their marketing campaigns (and marketing automation) out of the same platform.

Also, if you want to try a really simple version to see if it’s a good fit, it’s completely free. If you want to eventually upgrade and unlock additional features (careful, they add up pretty quickly!)They have features broken down by marketing, sales, and service—but charge a flat fee per month, instead of per user, so it doesn’t add up quite as quickly as other CRMs.

Free Trial: N/A. Try their standard free plan to see if you like it

Pricing: Varies based on which additional features you want to use. Ranges from $50 to $800+ per month.

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive Top CRMs for Small Businesses (Product Screenshot)

Pipedrive makes the cut as one of the best CRMs for small business because it’s all about getting more sales and actively managing your deal pipeline. They pride themselves on being simple, yet powerful—opting for efficient over flashy features in their customer experience design. It’s easy to set up (visual) sales processes to predict issues before they occur, which is a dream come true for any sales manager.

For small businesses, you can get ahead of the game when you’re trying to grow quickly by implementing a powerful tracking tool and streamlined process from the get-go. It’s super affordable, and also a great choice for integrating with other tools if you need a little more functionality.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Essential ($14.90/user/month) | Advanced ($24.90/user/month) | Professional ($49.90/user/month)

4. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign CRM (Small Businesses) Screenshot of Pipeline

ActiveCampaign makes our list of the best CRMs for small business because its focus is on both marketing and sales—more specifically, helping you use automated processes to streamline your communications with an eye on connecting with your customers.

They also harness the power of segmenting your customers, using behavioral data about your customers to help you send out the right messages.

Bonus: ActiveCampaign also integrates with just about any other popular online business tool you probably already have in place.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Based on the number of contacts you have. Up to 1,000 contacts: Lite ($29/user/month) | Plus ($49/user/month) | Professional ($149/user/month)

5. Agile

Agile Best CRMs for Small Business Owners (Screenshot)

Unlike our previous contenders, Agile touts itself as an “all-in-one” solution for small businesses. And unlike your all-in-one shampoo-conditioner-body-wash-lotion-dish-soap-detergent, Agile actually works pretty well for different types of businesses.

Agile has three main areas of focus to keep your team members on track:

  • Sales enablement
  • Marketing automation
  • Customer service

There are basically two ways a CRM can work—by offering a lot of services you can use through their platform, or offering a few core services and integrating really well with the other tools and services you already use.

Agile is one of the best CRMs for small business because it does a decent job of being your go-to business management software, the closest thing to a one-stop shop you’ll find. By far their biggest strength is reporting, where you can get a thorough and comprehensive look at anything you want, grouping statistics by deals, calls, activities, and growth.

Free Trial: Unlimited basic for 10 users

Pricing: Starter ($8.99/user/month) | Regular ($29.99/user/month) | Enterprise Plan ($47.99/user/month)

6. Copper

Copper CRM (for Gmail) Screenshot Small Business Users

Formerly known as ProsperWorks, Copper makes our list of the best CRMs for small business because it does a fantastic job at integrating with everything Google in a super intuitive way. It’s basically as simple to use as Gmail, making it a major quick win as a CRM in your sales process if you’ve never used one before.

Copper integrates directly into your existing G Suite (Gmail and Google Apps), so you can keep using everything as you normally would, but add a lot of features like task automation, reporting, deal tracking, and forecasting.

While it leaves you wanting more compared to other more fully-featured picks on our best small business CRM list, Copper’s saving grace is  you can also link it up to other programs you already use through a series of Zapier integrations. Ultimately, if you’re looking for a quick jump into using a CRM beyond your Excel sheet and existing Gmail account, then this is a great way to get started.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Basic ($23/user/month) | Professional ($49/user/month) | Business ($99/user/month)

7. Salesmate CRM

Salesmate Homepage (Best CRMs List and Reviews) Screenshot

Salesmate is a CRM designed intentionally for sales teams to have a simple, powerful and productive sales experience. It helps streamline your sales process and grow customer (and prospect) relationships. With the right combination of features, Salesmate CRM makes sure your sales team is relentlessly focused on performing the activities that lead to more sales.

With Salesmate, you’ll be able to convert more prospects into customers with well-targeted emails, texts, calls and follow-ups—all of course automated and personalized as much as possible. Features include things like: Deal Management, Multiple Pipeline Management, Activity Management, Deal Timeline, Contact Management, but more advanced features like their Built-in Phone System, Smart Queue, Sequences, Workflow Automation, Power Dialer, Shared Team Inbox and Teams really make the real difference and will help you stay one step ahead.

Salesmate also boasts integrations with tools like QuickBooks Online, Data Studio, InvoiceBerry, Google & Microsoft Calendar, MailChimp, Harvest, RingCentral, ActiveCampaign, Clearbit and many more. The product is also available as a web app, through apps on Android & iOS devices and as a Chrome extension, making it one of the most broadly usable CRMs on the market today.

Free Trial: Fully featured 15 day free trial to give Salesmate a test run

Pricing: Starter: $12/user/month | Growth: $24/user/month | Boost: $40/user/month

8. Nutshell

Nutshell CRM for Small Business (Screenshot of Pipeline)

Small outbound sales teams will love how easy this CRM is to use. In a nutshell (sorry), this was created specifically with sales teams in mind, so instead of feeling forced to use this new product just because management says so, your sales reps will actually love how much it helps streamline and track their progress—which is why it lands on our list of the best CRMs for small business.

Features your sales team will appreciate include easy to set and track appointments, setting quick follow ups, and reporting results. It’s also extremely customizable, and easy to add-on features as you progress from beginner to more advanced. Your salespeople will be happy with the simplicity Nutshell brings to the table.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Nutshell ($16/user/month) | Nutshell Pro ($42/user/month)

9. Salesforce Essentials

Best CRM for Small Business Startups salesforce

If you’ve had even a passing thought about getting a CRM in place for your business, that evaluation process has probably included Salesforce at some point. It’s basically the OG of CRMs (I hear they’re adopting that tagline shortly), and they service tons of small businesses, startups, SaaS companies and eCommerce giants all over the world—making them a must-include on any list of the best CRMs for small business. But… speaking from personal experience, Salesforce is pretty overwhelming and comes with a steep learning curve, if you’re just getting started with your sales process.

Salesforce Essentials offers two different basic plans to start out, specialized to what exactly your business does.

  • Sales Cloud for sales-focused businesses
  • Service Cloud for more service-focused businesses

Their starting price is actually pretty reasonable, which is why they can be a great choice for a small business that has experience with CRMs in the past. The biggest downside is that your expenses can add up pretty quickly if you need anything more than their super basic monthly plan for $25/user/month for salespeople to join your account. The next pricing tier is $75/user/month, so while it’s definitely worth evaluating Salesforce as an option for your potential best CRM, be sure to carefully crunch the numbers and keep an eye on the return on your investment that you’re getting.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: $25/user/month for just their sales features

10. Insightly

Insightly Best CRM for Small Business (Screenshot of Product in Use)

You know those people who are so obsessed with iPhones that they look down on anyone who dares use another type of phone? If you’re even half that passionate about Google, Insightly is a great choice for you when it comes to the best CRMs for small businesses.

It integrates with every app Google offers (and many other apps you probably use), and is perfect for integrating contacts from various social media accounts with your existing contact profiles. Or you can use a third-party tool like Piesync to sync contacts between all of your cloud applications.

Insightly is also a full-fledged CRM for small businesses. They focus on three major areas:

  • Accelerate sales
  • Build relationships
  • Deliver projects

They offer great categorization and filtering of your data and super customizable reporting, allowing you to get a one-of-a-kind snapshot of where your small business is at today, based on exactly what you should care most about. For a small to medium-sized team, the price point and utility is really worth giving it a shot.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Plus ($29/user/month) | Professional ($49/user/month) | Enterprise Plan ($99/user/month)

11. Keap (Previously Infusionsoft)

Keap CRM (Formerly Infusionsoft) for Small Businesses and Solopreneurs

This CRM lands squarely on the sales and marketing side of things, helping you give your clients personalized experiences which can translate into more closed deals. Sounds nice, right?

Keap makes our list of the best CRMs for small business because it includes a few functions most CRMs don’t: automatic lead generation capture, personalized flows, quotes and invoicing which can all be pretty useful to eCommerce businesses.

One of the things they focus on is segmentation, which is crucial for growing any small business. What makes your customers similar or different? What message will hit home for one segment and put off another? Figuring this out and leveraging it makes all the difference, and Infusionsoft is designed to help you uncover (and track) those key insights.

Free trial: 14 days

Pricing: Pro ($129/mo/1500 contacts) | Max ($199/mo/2500 contacts)

12. OnePageCRM

OnePage CRM for Small Business (Screenshot)

If checking items off your list gives you butterflies in your stomach, then prepare yourself for a lot of butterflies with OnePageCRM. This tool makes our list of the best CRMs for small business because its big concept is taking all of the complex information you input (into a CRM) and turning it into a simple to-do list for you.

How awesome is that? No overly complex features. It’s easy to use, easy to manage leads, and easy to increase sales.

Free Trial: 21 days

Pricing: Professional ($9.95/user/mo) | Business ($19.95/user/mo)

13. Salesflare

Salesflare as one of the best CRMs for small business

Salesflare makes this list of the best CRMs for small business because it’s designed around the philosophy of helping any small (primarily B2B) business that wants to make more sales with less work.

What I like personally is the CRM automatically fills information in by synchronizing with your email, calendar, phone, social media and then organizes all of this data for you into contact records of leads. Its email integration is great too—they have an instant import, customizable email signatures, tracking of email open rates, link clicks and website visits. It’s particularly unique on this list because it packs all this functionality into their mobile app, so you can even send email campaigns on the go.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Growth ($29/user/month) | Pro ($49/user/month)

14. Capsule

Capsule Customer Relationship Management System (Screenshot)

Capsule makes my list of the best CRMs for small business specifically because of how simple it is, and how well it integrates with all of the tools most small businesses already use (like Gmail, Google Docs and such.) It also helps keep your sales pipeline extremely organized. From managing contacts to sending emails and tracking sales, Capsule streamlines your sales process into one efficient and useful pipeline you can use to get ahead of the competition.

Also, when Capsule says they’ll manage all of your contacts, they mean it. Beyond just keeping track of conversations with your customers, this CRM stores and manages your leads, vendors, and anyone else that has a hand in making your business run smoothly—adding to its uniqueness.

Free Trial: 30 days

Pricing: Professional ($18/user/month) | Teams ($36/user/month)

15. Solve360

Best CRM for Small Business Startups solve360 crm

Solve360 aims to help you manage “pretty much anything” when it comes to keeping your business (and sales process) on track. And, it does pretty damn well at it, making it a shoo-in on our list of the best CRMs for small business.

You can use Solve360 on-the-go with their mobile app, to manage and organize client activity, leads, keep tabs on existing projects, jobs, and everything else that matters to your business. The built-in utility and customizability is a big part of why Solve360 made it on our list, because it can be used by just about any type of business.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Plans start at $25/user/month, but you must start a free trial to see all plan options.

16. Maximizer

Best CRM for Small Business Startups Maximizer Screenshot of Product

Maximizer is another “all-in-one” tool suite that maximizes (sorry) the features and value you get in terms of the cross-business impact it can have on various processes. It’s particularly effective if you’re a financial advisor, a niche they have features specifically for.

What I like about Maximizer is it helps you organize your contacts, manage all of your communications, automate key components of your sales process that consume the most time, see how all of your working deals are moving down the pipeline, manage your campaigns, automate reporting and so much more (as if that didn’t sound like enough.) Multi-purpose CRMs like this can be super valuable for small businesses, as it’s sometimes easier to have all of your mission critical tools located in just one single destination online.

Free Trial: 30 days

Pricing: Basic ($55/user/month) | Sales Leader Edition ($75/user/month)

17. Creatio

Creatio CRM for Small Businesses to Close More Sales

While hardly the smoothest product name, Creatio earns its place on this list of the best CRMs for small business because it’s designed for rapidly growing small businesses that have outgrown the free (and simple) tools they originally kickstarted the company with.

Their sales tools are an excellent choice for a small business with a proven model and sales process, so that  they’re now focused 100% on building a large customer base and hunting down more qualified leads. Creatio Sales offers complete control over the customer journey, including lead management, opportunity management, invoices, forecasting, project management, and a whole lot more.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: Team ($30/user/month) | Commerce ($35/user/month) | Enterprise Plan ($60/user/month)

Now, it’s time to talk about the best CRMs for small business that also apply more specifically to helping freelancers (like me) manage a high volume of sales conversations for freelance work from home jobs.

Let’s dive into my picks for CRMs that single person small businesses (like freelancers, founders and solopreneurs) shouldn’t ignore.

18. SuiteCRM

Best CRM for Small Business Startups suitecrm

SuiteCRM makes the cut as one of the best CRMs for very small business because it can be used in either a product-focused business or service-focused company… and believe it or not, it’s totally free as it’s part of an open source project (in fact, it’s the world’s most popular open source CRM with 4 Million+ users). In SuiteCRM, it’s easy to take notes, track cases (or leads), schedule tasks for yourself or your team to complete, and organize all your contact information on prospects in one central location. Plus, everything’s easily managed from mobile devices and tablets.

The only downside to SuiteCRM, is that since it’s open source, you’ll need someone with a bit of technical expertise to set it up, customize it for your own unique business purposes, and continue managing it as your needs grow and evolve over time. They have a team there to help you, but if you have a confident developer on your team, it’ll help you out a lot.

Pricing: Free Forever (nope, no paid plans!)

19. Bloom

Small Business CRM (Bloom) Inbox Screenshot

Three words describe how I feel about this CRM: Modern, sleek and robust. Bloom.io is designed to be an all-in-one management tool for freelancers and small businesses specifically. Bloom really stands out with its beautifully designed, clean layout and price point—which includes a starter plan with a free trial. The straightforward design makes it easy to dive into the features and build your own. It integrates well with several other online tools like Gmail, Quickbooks and more.

Bloom makes repetitive tasks easy with a suite of tools, including Zoom integrated scheduling, lead and client management, instant booking, email automations and dynamic customizable workflows. It puts workflow and customer data right at your fingertips. Bloom excels at lead generation by keeping the sales process easy for clients. They also offer a few other killer features like workflows, quotes, contract signing, and an invoice generator.

Pricing: Starter Plan (Free) | Premium ($33/user/month)

20. Indy

Indy Banner Best CRMs for Very Small Businesses to Try

Indy makes our list of best CRMs for small businesses because of its low pricing and focus on the admin needed for freelancers to land new clients.

First, the admin. Closing the deal requires some paperwork – a proposal, a contract, and then a project map, invoices, and billable hour tracking. Indy gives you the tools you need to do all of these things in one place. You can add your lead’s details, create a fresh proposal from a customizable template in minutes, use a contract template to seal the deal, then start working on the project with the time tracker. When it’s time to get paid, create and send invoices from customizable email templates in no time at all.

Second, the price. Indy does all this for $12 per month. It’s not going to work as well for a massive corporation, or even a growing sales team of 5-10 people. But freelancers who want to get their business off the ground by closing more leads with professional proposals, contracts, and documents will love how easy Indy is to use.

Free Trial: Unlimited Time, Limits on Use

Pricing: Free plan and the Pro Bundle for $12/user/month

21. Monday.com

Monday CRM for Small Business (Screenshot)

While this small business CRM actually has it’s roots in being a project management tool, it can be used quite well as a way to manage your sales pipeline, landing it here on our picks of CRMs for very small business, freelancers and solopreneurs. Monday.com bills itself as a visual-first tool, cutting down on complexity and ramping up on usability with cool drag-and-drop functionality. They offer great features to manage your sales pipeline, track potential leads and clients, and see your entire sales process visually, all while being super intuitive to use.

Their pricing setup increases not only as you get more features, but also as you add more people to your team. However, for freelancers, if it’s just you or a small group of people using the CRM, your pricing stays very reasonable.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing (for 5 Users): Basic ($25/user/month) | Standard ($39/user/month) | Pro ($59/user/month) | Enterprise Plan ($118/user/month)

22. Zoho CRM

Zoho Top CRMs for Small Business and Entrepreneurs

Zoho CRM makes the cut for our list of the best CRMs for small business and solo entrepreneurs because it strikes a great balance between providing features within the software, and highlighting great options for integrations with other tools you’re probably already using (plus, Zoho comes with a conversational AI that answers just about any question you throw at it, something that really sets it apart from Freshsales by Freshworks).

This CRM has a very wide range of email marketing tools too, so if you’re a small business owner or SaaS founder reaching out primarily by email to a high volume of prospective clients, this is a great choice—and of course, it features that great Google G Suite (and Outlook) integration I appreciate so much in a CRM.

Free Trial: 15 days

Pricing: Standard ($14/user/month) | Professional ($23/user/month) | Enterprise Plan ($40/user/month) | Ultimate ($52/user/month)

23. Less Annoying CRM

Less Annoying CRM for Small Businesses and Solopreneurs

They really killed it with the name, right? Less Annoying makes our list of the best CRMs for small business because of just how simple and easy to use the product is—which is everything you’d expect from a CRM that claims to be less annoying.

It’s a particularly good choice as a CRM for solo entrepreneurs and freelancers, because it’s so simple in that you can strip everything else away to focus on just managing leads and watching your sales pipeline, with efficient (but very basic) reporting. At the risk of getting a little annoying by now, I’ll leave it at that. Check it out for yourself.

Free Trial: 30 days

Pricing: Only one option; did you expect anything less? ($15/user/month)

24. Bitrix24

Bitrix24 CRM for Very Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

Bitrix24 makes my list because of how well-suited this tool is for the remote working lifestyle, making it particularly suitable for freelancers. Within Bitrix24, you can send quotes and invoices directly through their platform, which is a huge chunk of the average freelancer’s workday.

Their platform also offers an incredible amount of features in their free version (for up to 12 users), which is pretty unusual for a CRM. Using Bitrix24, you can chat with other teammates, manage your leads, create schedules, and track the progress of each deal in your pipeline. They even offer quite a bit of customization for free.

Free Trial: Their Freelance-Specific Plan is Forever Free!

Pricing: Basic ($46/month for 5 users) | Standard ($87/month for up to 50 users) | Professional ($175/month up to 100 users)

Note: Monthly pricing is per month for multiple users; most other CRMs charge per user. This makes it a bit more affordable for small businesses!

25. Nimble

Nimble CRM for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners

For Nimble, simplicity is key. They’re all about the customer data, intelligently gathering it in one place and making it highly useful and valuable for users.

Beyond just the data you input or import yourself, Nimble also goes out to source as much additional customer data as possible—including scanning social media profiles and viewing websites, making it ideal for solopreneurs and freelancers with an active social presence.

Free Trial: 14 days

Pricing: $19/user/month for their paid plans

Final Thoughts: Choosing the Best Small Business CRM in 2023

There we have it! All of my picks are in the running for being the best CRM for small businesses.

And while I’m clearly a little biased based on my own experiences, this breakdown should guide you toward the best possible choice based on where your business is at right now.

Like I said at the top of this post, you should only invest in a CRM once you’re ready.

So, if it’s too much of a stretch to employ a paid CRM tool for your business today, I highly recommend picking up my free CRM spreadsheet template to stay organized and on top of managing your leads… allowing you to focus on closing more deals, so that you can afford a more professional CRM soon.

Free Download: My CRM Spreadsheet Template

Best CRMs for Small Business (CRM Spreadsheet Template) by Ryan Robinson at ryrob

My template is pre-loaded with all of the essential web form fields and dropdown menus you should be concerned with—from tracking your lead status, to making sure you’re talking to decision-makers, evaluating the deal size, keeping a pulse on how warm your lead is—we’ve got it all covered.

Free Download: My CRM Spreadsheet Template

Did I Miss Any of the Best CRM Software for Small Businesses?

Are there any great tools I missed that should be included in this list of the best CRMs for small business?

If so, share your favorite picks for CRM software with me in the comments below!

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

I'm a blogger, but I'm not my blog. I am not my business either. Occasional podcaster and very-much-recovering side project addict. Co-Founder at RightBlogger. Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog and build a purpose-connected business. Be sure to take my free blogging tools for a spin... especially my wildly popular free keyword research tool & AI article writer. They rule. Somehow, I also find time to write for publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Next Web, Business Insider, and more. Let’s chat on Twitter (X?) and YouTube about our feelings (and business, of course).

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44 replies to “25 Best CRMs for Small Business to Grow Your Sales in 2023”

  1. Are there any great tools I missed that should be included in this list of the best CRMs for small businesses, startups and freelancers?

    Reply
  2. I simply love your blog Ryan… you are so concise and precise and practical, you make everything seem easy! Thank you so much for sharing what you know.

    Reply
  3. Sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is one type of sales automation. It helps manage and organise customer data, track sales activity and pipeline, and enhance customer interactions. Software for sales forecasting that uses past data and other variables to anticipate future sales can also be automated.

    Reply
  4. Have you had a chance to review EspoCRM? If not, I would be happy to give you a detailed demonstration at a time that suits you.

    P.S. EspoCRM is an Ukraine open source CRM

    Reply