The best CRM for small business and startups

In the early days of a business, managing information about your contacts and customers isn’t difficult. However, as your business grows, you get more customers and hire more employees, information about contacts gets dispersed across spreadsheets, notepads, sticky notes, and memories.

Business growth is a great thing and with it comes the need to organize your information. That’s where a CRM -- a Customer Relationship Management solution -- is useful.

However, there are hundreds of CRM solutions and they range from free to thousands of dollars a month.

To help you choose the best CRM, we’ve compiled the most recommended CRMs for small businesses and startups. We’ve collected reviews, highlights, and comparative features of each to help you evaluate the best CRM that suits your business needs.

The five major benefits of a CRM system are:

1. Contact data organization. CRM helps you organize information about all your contacts. This allows your team to keep track of who a customer has spoken to and what they discussed. In sales, this information gets your team on the same page to run your sales process smoothly.
2. Sales reporting. Track quota attainment and metrics such as emails sent, calls made, meetings booked, and deals closed to understand what your team is doing well and what to improve.
3. Accurate sales forecasting. Don’t rely on complicated Excel formulas or back-of-the-napkin math. A good CRM system generates an accurate sales funnel for you, making it easier to forecast sales and manage your team’s pipeline.
4. Customer segmentation. Segment your contacts by properties such as location, deal size, or close date, to find the warmest leads to focus on.
5. Scaling a sales process. A repeatable sales process is key to testing new sales motions and strategies. The data you keep in a CRM system will help you spot effective and ineffective patterns in sales behaviors. This knowledge will help you grow your business effectively.

Add new contacts and companies to your database in seconds

Create new contacts straight from your email with a single click. HubSpot CRM automatically creates and populates a company record for you.

Keep contact, company, and deal records up to date

While most CRMs need you to manually update information, HubSpot CRM automatically enriches your data and keeps records up-to-date by syncing with a database of over 20 million businesses.

Log sales activities automatically

Make calls, send emails, create tasks, and publish notes. HubSpot CRM will log your activities for you. Goodbye, manual data entry. 

Send optimized sales emails in less time

Email templates only go so far. With HubSpot CRM, you can also schedule your emails for the best deliverability. You’ll get a notification as soon as your email is opened so you can follow up effectively.

To choose the five best CRM software for small businesses and startups, we looked at review websites, business websites, and other credible online sources. We asked our customers about other CRMs they evaluated and understood the needs of small businesses and startups.

The table below compares HubSpot CRM with other CRMs and shows the average ratings across thousands of reviews so you can choose the best CRM for your small business or startup.

HubSpot CRM was built from the ground up to be ready for the modern world. Intuitive and automatic where other systems are complicated and manual, HubSpot CRM takes care of all the little details - logging emails, recording calls, and managing your data - freeing up valuable selling time in the process. It regularly ranks as one of the best CRM software products for small business.

Here are the reasons HubSpot CRM is the top choice for small businesses.

Manage your pipeline and never let a deal slip through the cracks.

Our pipeline management tool will help you keep track of your deals so you never miss an opportunity again. You'll get total visibility into team performance to gauge the value and health of your pipeline.

Learn more about pipeline management »

Find and focus on closing the warmest leads.

Don't waste time you on low quality leads. Filter through all your contacts to find the warmest leads who are most engaged and visiting your site in real time. Spend your time closing quality leads, not chasing cold prospects.

Learn more about the sales leads tool »

Use our proven email templates or create your own.

Access a library of email templates designed for every step of your customer’s journey or turn your best emails into templates you can personalize. Your templates will always be one click away inside your inbox – whether you use Office 365 for Windows, Outlook, or Gmail. Save hours when you can send an email in seconds.

Learn more about email templates »

You now know how a CRM will benefit your business. You know what to look for when choosing a CRM system. And you've also seen the best CRMs for small businesses side-by-side. Let's take the next step.