Best CRM for Small Business Owners in 2021

HubSpot is a veteran in marketing technology solutions, web analytics, and customer service. The company has been offering content management, lead generation, search engine optimization, analytics, and customer relationship management systems for over a decade. It also has a solid free CRM toolkit that’s complemented by excellent paid addons.  

Main Features

HubSpot offers some of the best CRM software for small business owners absolutely free of charge. To start with, there is a solid contact management tool that allows you to manage up to one million contacts with ease and includes unlimited user logins. Contacts can be sorted through a myriad of different filters and imported from .csv, .xlsx, and .xls files or through one of the many app integrations, which includes Google Mail and Microsoft Outlook.

You can easily track sent emails through the Activity feed or manage all of your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Google ad campaigns through the Marketing tab. From here you can also create customizable emails and landing pages.

Widely regarded as the best sales CRM for small business owners, HubSpot allows you to track how prospects are being turned into customers through the Deals tab in the Sales section of your interface. It also offers highly useful ticketing tools that eliminate any hassle when handling customer complaints and questions.

In addition, HubSpot’s CRM service offers communication tools, including FB messenger integrations, automated email responders, and customized chat experiences for customers. But bear in mind that most of the advanced features are only available with paid plans.

Speaking of paid plans, HubSpot mostly charges for advanced automation tools such as sales forecasts, SEO, and other high-level analytics, automated email campaigns and lead scoring, and a service hub with more detailed metrics for measuring customer feedback.

User Experience

When it comes to the user experience, HubSpot offers a top CRM for small business owners. Registration is a breeze, and new users are given optional tutorials for almost every feature of the software. Mobile apps for iOS and Android systems are also remarkable, offering almost every bit of functionality as the web interface.

You can contact HubSpot staff by phone, email, or live chat, but response times aren’t particularly impressive, and unless you’re filing a complaint or inquiring about the price, you’re better off consulting one of the many well-written or interactive tutorials on the site.

Pricing

In addition to offering arguably the best CRM for a small business that’s attainable for free, HubSpot has three premium plans that build on this solid foundation. The free plan includes many helpful CRM tools, such as contact management, contact website activity, app marketplace integrations, reporting dashboard, and other. You can integrate these free tools with your Gmail, G Suite, or Outlook account and add up to 1,000,000 contacts to your account.

The Starter plan costs $45 per month if you commit to annual payments. It allows you to get more detailed sales reports, use HubSpot’s VoIP calling functions directly from your web interface, and utilize the live chat functionality and basic automation tools. HubSpot allows users with the Starter plan to remove HubSpot branding from all their documents, live chat and one-on-one email interactions.

The $450 per month Professional plan unlocks a variety of team management and email automation options, sales analytics, personalized outreach, and the option to use eSignatures for quotes.  Besides that, this plan also includes custom reporting, forecasting tools, and 1:1 video messaging.

The Enterprise plan costs $1,200 per month and offers even more advanced team management, revenue tracking, and predictive lead scoring tools. To get the best small business CRM software features at the most reasonable price, you can also sign up for one of the company’s bundles. The Growth Suite bundle costs $50/month and includes all the marketing, customer service, and sales software you need.

Constant Contact is a household name in email marketing and CRM software for small businesses. The company was launched in 1995 and has since joined the Endurance International Group, an IT services giant with over five million clients worldwide. They offer some of the best CRM systems for small business owners currently available on the market, but it can get pretty expensive for larger companies with lots of clients.

Main Features

Constant Contact is primarily an email creation and automation service, but its CRM products also include excellent contact and event management tools, eCommerce and reporting features, and great third-party integrations.

Starting with contacts, you can easily import them from productivity and email services such as G Suite and Outlook. You can also sort through them using multiple filters or employ interest tags to track their interests and tailor advertising campaigns accordingly. It’s possibly the best CRM system for small business owners that want a hands-off approach to email marketing, allowing automation of several tasks such as tracking emailing list unsubscribers or bounced mails and sending automated email replies.

The handy drag and drop interface of the software allows you to create much more than emails. There are templates for social media content, advertisements, surveys, landing pages, events, and even online storefronts. 

Real-time data reports can help you track all sent, bounced, opened, and clicked emails. Meanwhile, eCommerce features such as cart abandonment notifications and purchase confirmations help you track how well your products are doing. While it may not be the best CRM software for small businesses when it comes to third-party app integrations, there are over 20 integrations with popular platforms such as Facebook, G Suite, Outlook, WordPress, and QuickBooks. 

User Experience

Everything from the registration process to creating campaigns, surveys, events, or even websites and online storefronts is a simple and intuitive process, with plenty of help available if you need it. The web interface is mobile-friendly, but you can also choose dedicated smartphone and tablet apps, which are very well designed for both Android and iOS systems.

A lot of CRM reviews for small business-oriented solutions point to issues with customer support, and we’ve seen this with Zoho and HubSpot. Unfortunately, similar problems plague Constant Contact, as customer support can be especially slow to respond to emails. On the upside, you can also reach customer service by phone or live chat, and there are also excellent community forums available.

Pricing

Unlike some of its competitors, Constant Contact offers no free plans. The best you can hope for is a 30-day free trial on one of the two offered packages.

The cheaper Email plan costs anywhere between $20 and $335 per month, depending on the number of contacts you have (from 500 to 50,000), while the Email Plus plan starts at $45. 

From a small business CRM comparison standpoint, at over 10,000 clients you are better off using the Email Plus plan, as the prices for both plans even out by that point. You’ll get all of the features from the basic Email plan plus email automation and advanced eCommerce and marketing tools.

Finally, you can get a 10% discount by paying six months in advance, 15% if you pay annually, and 30% if you run a nonprofit organization.

Freshworks is relatively new to the world of CRM software for small businesses. Its parent company opened its doors in 2011 but only released their CRM tool Freshsales in 2016. In October of 2020, the tool was expanded and rebranded into one of the best CRM apps for small business management on the market called Freshworks CRM.

Main Features

To begin with, Freshworks CRM makes it incredibly easy to add and manage contacts, lists, and accounts. You can import contacts from .csv and xlsx file formats and track everything from basic user information to their lead scores and interaction history. 

This AI-driven lead scoring and client communication tool can rank prospects through their level of engagement and analyze past interactions to make predictions about leads turning into customers. It can also suggest engagement strategies that you can pass on to your sales team.

As with the best CRM programs for small business owners, Freshworks also offers workflow automation tools such as email autoresponders, marketing segmentation, and sequences as well as automated marketing and sales campaigns through the Journeys feature.

There are also native integrations with a host of Freshworks apps such as Freshdesk and Freshcaller, which enable you to integrate helpdesk and customer support features. Moreover, the software supports a host of third-party integrations with popular productivity and communication apps.

User Experience

While Freshworks CRM may not be the best CRM for small business owners who like to get an overview of their entire campaign from one window, it’s a great solution for people who value simplicity. The main dashboard mostly informs you about past and upcoming appointments and activities, while key analytics, metrics, and sales forecasts are displayed in separate sections.

Mobile apps are very highly rated on both mobile marketplaces thanks to their well-designed UI and powerful features that mimic all of the main functions of the web interface.

Customer support is excellent. In addition to offering perhaps the best simple CRM for small business purposes, the company has plenty of useful articles on its site and a team of agents that quickly responds to both email and phone queries. Best of all, these services are available to all customers, regardless of their chosen pricing plan. 

Pricing

Freshworks doesn’t offer a free package for its small business CRM tools, but there is a 21-day free trial that allows customers to test out all of the features before making any financial commitments. The three paid plans are Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. As is the case with many of the top CRMs for small business owners, each plan comes with additional features and support for more active contacts, marketing journeys, workflows, and sales sequences.

The Growth plan costs $29/user/month and offers predictive contact scoring with the Freddy AI, phone calls through Freshcaller, custom reports, and dashboards, as well as a handy mobile app.

The $69/user/month Pro plan adds several more AI-driven features such as the lead generation bot, more advanced tracking tools, and behavioral segmentation and enables you to create a product catalog. 

If you’re wondering what is the best CRM for a small business, check out the vendor’s Enterprise plan. For $125/user/month, you get the most advanced AI-driven metrics, forecasting insights, custom domains for different company departments, the largest number of active contacts (5,000), marketing journeys and workflows (100), and sales sequences (25).

Indy is the best lightweight CRM tool you can find on the market. Created by a small California-based team, Indy is an all-in-one platform freelancers and individual contractors can use for organizing workflow and managing payments. Moreover, Indy offers its clients the option to create business profiles, advertise their services, and find new job opportunities. If you are a freelancer or a solopreneur, Indy has a lot to offer, including CRM tools. 

Main Features 

Indy is primarily a task management platform for freelancers, but it doubles as a CRM tool. Aside from enabling you to organize your projects and tasks and send invoices to your clients, it helps you stay up to date with your leads. 

Indy deserved a place on our list of the best CRMs for small businesses, thanks to its simplicity and straightforwardness. Although it’s not as comprehensive as some other products on our list, it still offers many useful tools for growing leads and organizing projects. The app helps you capture leads, organize surveys, and gather all important information in one place. Depending on the version you choose (free or paid), you’ll get a portion of online storage to keep your files and documents online. 

Indy offers you prebuilt forms that you can use to find new leads. There are several already designed forms, but you can also create unique ones and embed them on your website. It’s the simplest way to find new leads and get feedback from potential clients. According to small business CRM reviews by satisfied customers, Indy’s CRM tools can streamline the entire process of customer relationship management. It helps you create and manage your contact list and send proposals to your leads. 

User Experience

One of the things we like the most about this app is its simplicity. Even when using it for the first time, you won’t have a problem understanding how it works. Firstly, you’ll need to sign to the company’s website by providing your email address and creating a password. If you want to use the mobile version, you should go to Google Play or to the App Store and download the app from there. 

Lots of CRM reviews for a small business praise Indy’s automated integration with PayPal and Stripe. You can also use other payment options, like direct deposits, Zelle, and checks, but you’ll need to add payments manually. 

The next thing worth mentioning is that Indy has various calculators on its website. For example, there is a PayPal calculator for calculating platform fees. Type the invoice amount, and the fees will be automatically calculated, so you’ll know exactly how much to charge to your client.

Pricing 

In addition to being the easiest CRM for small business, Indy is also one of the most affordable tools that you can find. You can get the Pro Bundle plan with unlimited access to all features and functionalities for $5.99 per month. If you refer Indy to other people and they subscribe to the platform, you can use it for free for two months. As mentioned, Indy comes with time tracking and task management options, so you’ll get everything you need to organize your business. 

Indy also has a free version of the app, but it comes with limited features. However, the free version gives you an opportunity to check if the app fits your needs before subscribing.