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Are you comparing the best CRM software for small businesses? CRM software helps you manage customer relationships, increase sales, manage leads, and grow your business.
Due to the critical role customer relationship management (CRM) software plays in your business success, it’s extremely important that you properly research the industry and compare the top CRM providers before making your decision.
In this article, we will show you our expert pick of the best CRM software for small businesses. We will compare popular CRM software in terms of features and share the pros and cons to help you choose the best platform.
What Is CRM Software?
CRM software, or customer relationship management software, are tools that help you manage customer data and offer streamlined customer services across your business.
Most businesses need a contact manager to handle the contact details of their customers and prospects. In the early stages of most companies, this is typically done manually through spreadsheets or simple contact management tools.
However, these processes become inefficient as your business grows, and if you don’t fix the problem fast enough, then it can lead to a significant loss in opportunities and sales.
CRM software helps solve the problem by storing all aspects of customer relationships in a database and making it easily accessible. It allows your marketing, sales, and customer support teams to have all the data at their fingertips when needed.
CRM software is incredibly useful in increasing sales, building customer relationships, and providing amazing customer service. Your customers get more personalized, more attentive, and highly efficient service.
What to Look for When Choosing CRM Software
Since there are so many different CRM software companies out there, it becomes quite overwhelming for small businesses to decide which one is the best CRM for their needs.
Here are some quick tips on choosing the best CRM software for your business:
1. Ease of Use
A recent survey revealed that 67% of businesses put ease of use as the most important feature of their CRM software. You and your team will be using it for several hours every day. If the CRM is not easy to use, then it will not achieve your business goals.
2. Cloud and Mobile
In 2008, less than 12% of CRM software ran in the cloud. Today, 87% of CRMs are cloud-based software. It is more secure, faster, and easy to integrate with other apps and services.
Another study by Nucleus Research revealed that 65% of companies using a mobile-friendly CRM exceeded their sales targets. This means you want to look for CRM software that is mobile-friendly.
This makes it convenient for your teams to meet their targets. Your customers get quicker responses and don’t have to wait for hours just to get quick answers.
3. Make a Features List
You need to make a list of features that you need in your CRM software. Don’t worry if you can’t think of all the features right away. This exercise will give you an idea of what would be a good fit for your business.
CRM software is not just an address book of your customers’ contact information. They are useful because they integrate into your marketing, sales, and lead generation.
They help you manage every aspect of a customer’s journey with your business with great detail. You would need to see how you can integrate the specific CRM software with your existing business process and sales activities.
4. Integrations
Many modern CRM software applications include a ton of features. However, you will still need to get them to work with other apps, such as your WordPress website, lead generation software, email marketing service, business email service, social media platforms, and more. Make sure that your CRM software supports those integrations.
For example, if you are running a membership website or online store, then you would need your CRM to integrate with your membership plugin or eCommerce platform.
These are just some very basic requirements that you would want to check. You may also want to consider pricing, the ability to add users and departments, security, GDPR compliance, and more.
That being said, let’s take a look at the top CRM software on the market and how they stack up on these criteria.
1. HubSpot
HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses looking for a cost-effective solution to get started. It offers free plans for its CRM, Marketing, Sales, and Service hubs.
The free HubSpot CRM comes with unlimited users and unlimited contacts. It is also free forever.
However, many of the features are limited or unavailable in the free plan. To access the powerful features, you will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans under the Growth Suite.
HubSpot is quite easy to use, and you can connect marketing, sales, and service hubs to your CRM software. This provides you with a wide range of tools to efficiently manage the customer journey.
With an easy user interface, you get a bird’s eye view of your entire sales pipeline on your dashboard. You can view detailed reports, all contact activities, sales activities, and user/team performance.
HubSpot offers a comprehensive set of features, including mobile apps for iPhone and Android, a contact manager, email templates, real-time notifications, phone calls, email tracking, scheduling, and more.
Integrations are crucial for CRM software. HubSpot integrates with more than 300 apps and services, including WordPress, top email marketing services, lead generation software like OptinMonster, and many more.
Pricing: HubSpot offers the core CRM platform for free. For more features, you can upgrade to their paid plans for Marketing, Sales, and Service hubs or upgrade to CRM Suite, which starts from $18/month and includes 2 users.
2. FunnelKit Automations
FunnelKit Automations is a powerful CRM and marketing automation engine for WooCommerce. It’s packed with features that will help your online store get higher order values and repeat sales.
With FunnelKit Automations, you can see every detail about your customers with a 360-degree contact view. This includes name, email, gender, geographical location, tags, lists, and custom field data.
You can also see their entire purchase history, including orders placed, items bought, coupons that were used, and more.
Aside from the CRM, FunnelKit Automations allows you to easily create automated email and SMS sequences to nurture your relationships and boost sales.
Using the drag-and-drop builder and pre-built workflows, you can quickly set up personalized campaigns for abandoned cart recovery, next order coupons, shipment tracking notifications, subscription renewal reminders, and more.
In addition, FunnelKit Automations comes with features like detailed analytics, revenue tracking, audience segmentation, contact journey, A/B testing, and seamless integrations with popular apps and plugins.
Pricing: FunnelKit Automations starts at $99.50 per year or $249.50 per year with the FunnelKit plugin, which is one of the best sales funnel builders on the market.
