Best CRM Software For Your Business

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 -- helps you store information on client and prospect interactions with employees.  Marketing and sales touchpoints like email, phone, website, live chat, and social media are tracked to provide your business with detailed context on a client’s activity and feedback. Overall, a CRM helps your team save precious time. 

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

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

A CRM system should provide you these 8 benefits:

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 aligns your team so that your sales process runs 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 you can do to improve.
3. Accurate sales forecasting. Don’t rely on complicated Excel formulas or back-of-the-napkin math. A good CRM system generates a sales  forecast for you, making it easier to predict revenue and manage your team’s pipeline.
4. Customer segmentation. Segment your contacts by properties such as location, deal size, close date, and more, 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 over time.
6. Greater employee satisfaction. With so much going on, your sales reps can get lost in the sauce. A CRM will streamline a lot of your sales reps day by logging notes, playbooks, tasks, and reminders so that your sales reps are organized. This means that your sales reps will spend more time on generating revenue than having to perform manual organizational tasks.  
7. Cross-team alignment. Imagine reaching out to a lead that your coworker has already reached out to. Talk about an awkward moment and also a waste of time. With a CRM, you can see your contact’s profiles which shows if they’ve been communicated with recently. This can be extremely useful if your CRM works with Marketing and Customer Service teams as well.
8. Increased revenue and profitability. This is the one we all dream of. The benefits listed above all contribute to your company being more effective at closing deals. In turn, you’ll get ROI on your CRM and scale your revenues more than you had been doing before. 

Add new contacts and companies to your database in seconds

Create new contacts straight from your email with a single click or import lists. 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 small business and startup customers about other CRMs they evaluated and understood their needs.

The table below compares HubSpot CRM with other CRMs and shows the average ratings across hundreds 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 frequently 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.