Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
EDITORS’ NOTE
November 14, 2025: With this update, our lineup of recommended small business CRM software remains unchanged. We have vetted the existing picks for currency and availability.
- Highly affordable
- Intuitive interface
- Supports payment collection
- Integrates with other Zoho software and third-party tools
- VoIP capabilities
- No AI features
- Lacks a dedicated app for Windows
Bigin, the smaller sibling of Zoho CRM, targets start-ups and SMBs. As such, it sets aside some of the advanced capabilities of Zoho’s full-featured offering in favor of ease of use. However, it still consolidates all the CRM features a growing business needs in one place, including basic voice over IP (VoIP) capabilities. Bigin also integrates with other Zoho software and many third-party apps, making it simple to implement into your workflow.
Businesses looking to scale: Zoho makes it easy to upgrade to its full-featured CRM product if your company grows beyond what Bigin offers.
CRM beginners: If you don’t have much experience with CRMs and don’t want a complex UI, a huge menu of features, or a commensurately steep learning curve, Bigin by Zoho is an excellent choice.
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Bigin by Zoho CRM Review
- Best-in-class sales tools
- Easy-to-use interface
- Robust commerce hub
- Minimal setup
- Pricey
- Lacks AgentForce AI chatbot functionality
Starter Suite is Salesforce’s most affordable CRM solution, but you can confidently use it to manage your company’s accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities. It offers flexible dashboard and reporting options, and plenty of help is available as you get up and running. Beyond the core CRM tools, it offers a comprehensive suite of commerce, customer service, and marketing tools. The platform supports up to 66 users through the regular setup process; however, you can contact the company directly if you require a custom solution.
Established companies after an all-in-one solution: Salesforce Starter packs a ton of functionality beyond CRM into one service. A subscription isn’t especially cheap, however, so make sure your business can afford its long-term costs.
Slack users: Slack (which Salesforce owns) is your only option in terms of integrations with Starter Suite. But if your organization already uses that top-notch messaging platform, then this integration should be very convenient.
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Salesforce Starter Suite Review
- One affordable plan
- Plenty of support and help options
- Looks great on mobile
- Limited reporting capabilities
- No way to add dedicated leads
This entry prides itself on not annoying its customers—or at least not as much as the competition—but its most outstanding feature might be its price, which is among the lowest of all the products we tested. Although “less expensive” can sometimes mean “low value,” Less Annoying CRM has an extensive feature set that’s worth considering.
Cost-conscious organizations: If you’re especially cognizant of costs and don’t know how much budget you’re ready to commit to CRM, Less Annoying CRM gets you the lead and contact management features you need for an extremely reasonable price.
Minimalists: Less Annoying CRM’s minimalist interface puts your data and tasks front and center. This same quality makes the responsive site usable on mobile platforms.
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Less Annoying CRM Review
- Works with more than 400 integrations
- Excellent video tutorials
- Straightforward interface
- No Kanban view for Contacts section
- Few options for customizing analytics displays
- Limited customer support for lower-tier plans
SMBs should appreciate how easy Pipedrive makes it to get started. The CRM integrates with over 400 third-party software packages, so it’s easy to align with your existing workflows. You can further customize your experience with add-ons for tasks such as project management and digital contract issuance. Pipedrive also features an AI assistant that can help you nurture leads and generate emails. Best of all, it offers an extensive library of self-guided training videos.
AI aficionados: You can use Pipedrive’s AI assistant to communicate and keep track of leads. These abilities are particularly beneficial for small teams with new hires who need to quickly adapt to the CRM system.
Self-learners: Pipedrive’s no-nonsense approach is ideal for companies and employees who want to learn how to fully use the service with as little friction as possible. And if you need help, numerous resources are readily available.
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Pipedrive CRM Review
Best for Basic CRM Needs
Freshsales CRM
- Affordable base plan
- Intuitive interface
- Excellent onboarding support
- Lots of integrations
- Base plan lets you create just one sales pipeline
- Other CRMs offer more advanced features
Freshsales specializes in ease of use. Interface elements (including reporting and analytics dashboards) are both intuitive and attractive. Creating a new account takes just minutes, and the setup process allows you to specify the type of business you operate. Freshsales’ AI assistant, called Freddy, can analyze your contact profiles and make suggestions about how to close deals. Support and help resources are plentiful, too.
Basic CRM users: Freshsales makes basic CRM tasks intuitive and prevents things from ever becoming overwhelming. You won’t have any issues working with its account, contact, and deal tools.
Smaller teams: The service offers a perpetually free tier for up to three users, and the base plan is very affordable for small teams. Pricing becomes less attractive beyond that.
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Freshsales CRM Review
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The Best Small Business CRM Software for 2025
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Buying Guide: The Best Small Business CRM Software for 2025
What Is Small Business CRM Software?
If you’re trying to manage your customer contacts as an entrepreneur or part of a small business with more than 50 customers in a spreadsheet, you’ve probably already realized this is an unwieldy task. CRM systems take the pain out of this all-important function.
CRMs have two important advantages over simple contact lists or databases. First, they add internal features that directly handle other parts of your sales funnel, notably commission management, pipelining, and scheduling.
Second, and even more important, they help move customer data back and forth between systems. Integrating your CRM with the rest of your software stack ensures that the details of every customer interaction are readily available on demand. That can include anything from lunch with a sales rep to form submissions, online chats, phone calls, and social media mentions. A sales rep can pull that data into a purchase conversation, while a help desk technician can use it to better understand a customer’s situation.
How Much Do Small Business CRMs Cost?
These types of CRMs can start at less than $10 per user per month and scale to upward of $50 per user per month. As with any subscription software, you should take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, it’s difficult to determine how well a particular CRM works until you start using it.
Your best bet is to look for a solution that is easy for non-specialists to grasp; you likely don’t have time (or the budget) for lengthy, in-person training. You should also search for a product that includes FAQs, a knowledge base, and other support articles. User forums can also often be an effective support resource.
What Can a CRM Do for Your Small Business?
A CRM can gather all your company’s interactions with each customer and combine them with related data from sources such as accounting, inventory, marketing, and purchasing. This can help you maintain an accurate sales pipeline that can react quickly to new opportunities.
For example, if a help desk representative realizes a customer is ready for an upsell opportunity while addressing an unrelated support issue, a CRM ensures that insight doesn’t get lost in an email. It can automatically extract that data from the ticket, add it to a record, and place the details in the pipeline so a sales manager can allocate the opportunity. Depending on how your sales department works, CRM data can appear in an app interface, an email, a Slack message, and on any device, especially mobile ones.
Salesforce Starter (Credit: Salesforce/PCMag)
Even more critical than fast dissemination is intake. By automating data gathering in the CRM and every connected app, you get the data where you need it. Think of your sales pipeline as a funnel with a wide mouth at one end that grabs as much data as possible. By the time the information reaches the other end, the funnel has parsed it into useful units for the people who need it.
The primary challenge for smaller businesses is deploying and integrating CRM systems with their existing ones. This often requires significant effort from trained IT staff, who are likely to be in short supply or nonexistent at very small organizations.
Over the last couple of years, however, CRM vendors have begun directly addressing the needs of small business buyers. Some offer custom products with interfaces and features that target these audiences. Others pare down their flagship products to make them easier to use, all the while maintaining an easy upgrade path for growing customers.
How Do CRMs Handle Customer Data?
The primary function of any CRM should be to gather data. Whether from documents, phone calls, social media chats, or any other source, your solution should be able to capture information from all the key channels you use to interact with customers.
For example, if you’re gathering phone calls and social media chats, keywords might become important, especially mentions of a specific product name. The same might be true for a valued customer name or account number. You could match that against sentiment indicators, which should tell you the topic of any interaction and how the customer felt about it. It takes work, but intelligent data distribution is where CRM systems can truly shine.
That routing function is less complex than the data gathering and parsing function, but it’s no less important. Your CRM can score top marks on gathering data, but still fail overall if it can’t deliver that information to the right people at the right time. Customizing this process depends on how your salespeople do their jobs, meaning there’s no turnkey solution. To map your CRM’s notification features correctly, you need to ask your staff how sales actually happen.
Is a CRM Worth It for a Small Business?
SMBs represent a huge market. In fact, according to data from the US Small Business Administration, 99.9% of all businesses in the US qualify as small. That’s why some big CRM players are reacting accordingly.
For example, Salesforce, a behemoth in the CRM space, has developed an entry-level product. It uses the same platform as the company’s enterprise offering, but with a reduced set of features and a simpler interface. However, even Salesforce’s most basic offering might be complex for some customers.
Smaller CRM vendors compete by intentionally keeping the solution simple. Some do this by adding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, but most focus on building as many third-party software integrations as possible. For instance, Freshsales CRM continues to develop integrations and focus on workflow automation and enhanced sales analytics, while Pipedrive CRM offers quick chatbots that customers can integrate into their websites.
Recommended by Our Editors
It’s also important to look to the future. Knowing how a CRM will grow with your company is vital. Work with sales leads to determine your current and future needs and investigate whether your CRM solution easily supports advanced analytics, digital marketing integrations, increased user capacity, and a larger contact base.
The Best Third-Party CRM Integrations
Small business CRMs may not offer all the capabilities of enterprise CRM platforms, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a unified system for your sales team. Ensuring that your small business CRM can establish data relationships with other apps, especially those that are low-cost and target smaller companies, is crucial if you want to maximize the lifespan of your purchase.
Check your CRM’s integration and partner lists to see your options. Dedicated vendors can handle business analytics, email marketing, marketing automation, lead management, and even social media listening and selling. Opting for a low-cost partner integration might still be cheaper than paying for a larger CRM platform that includes those capabilities.
Less Annoying CRM (Credit: Less Annoying CRM/PCMag)
Another way to connect business systems is with Zapier, a popular and low-cost third-party automation and integration tool. It can help you tie various web services together into automated workflows. Although Zapier is dependable, its ease of use limits its data exchange features. Determine what you need from a third-party integration, and then decide whether you want to go the DIY route with Zapier or invest in a custom solution.
The Best Mobile CRM Apps
One of the most important aspects of SMB CRMs is the availability of effective mobile apps. Many modern small businesses operate across multiple locations or have employees working in various places. The devices that sales staff use can also vary widely. As such, it’s important that your CRM supports not just PCs but also tablets and phones.
Although some vendors attempt to sell mobile browser versions of their web apps as a solution for mobile device users, this approach falls short in comparison to a dedicated mobile app. Browser-based apps can access online databases and services. But they don’t interact directly with the features many mobile devices offer, including access to cameras and other sensors, near-field communication (NFC) for mobile payments, and security.
Neil McAllister contributed to this story.
