5 Best CRM for Small Businesses with Pros and Cons

If you are a small business with a growing customer base, it’s time to invest in a CRM. Customer Relationship Management systems (CRMs) are software that helps you analyze customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. They also let you store a potential customer or prospect’s contact information and identify sales opportunities. However, finding the best CRM for small businesses can be quite challenging. But don’t stress out! 

This article explores the five best CRM for small businesses along with their pros and cons so you can pick the one that perfectly suits your needs. Continue reading! 

5 Best CRM for Small Businesses 

Do you know that 94% of tech businesses and 71% of small businesses use a CRM system? Yes, it’s true! So, if you also want to invest in a reliable customer management solution, here are the best CRM for small businesses: 

Zoho CRM 

The first option on our list of the best CRM for small businesses is Zoho CRM. It’s a cloud-based customer management solution that provides tools for sales, marketing, and customer service. 

You can use it to automate sales tasks like lead management, deal tracking, and even follow-ups. Not only this, but you can use this platform to connect with your audience via phone, email marketing, and social media. 

Detailed analytics are available to help you track the performance of marketing campaigns and make quite informed decisions. It integrates with third-party tools like Slack and Google Workspace, which allows better collaboration among team members. 

Pros 

• An AI assistant that automated daily tasks, saving significant time 
• Quite cost-effective compared to other CRMs available 
• Highly customizable so you can create workflows, modules, and fields according to business needs 
• User-friendly interface so even employees with little technical knowledge can navigate it 
• Offers a 15-day free trial 

Cons

• No social integration in the free CRM version 
• Provides only 8/5 customer support 

EnagageBay 

EnagageBay is also among the best CRM for small businesses and was launched back in 2017. It’s a comprehensive business customer management solution that costs very little. It offers you 26 different reports, including sales performance stats, deals forecast graphs, and team leaderboards. 

In the Deals Tab, there’s a Kanban Board that gives you an overview of all the deals in the sales pipeline. You can also use it to save all information about a deal, including the contact details and deal value. 

Automation is at the core of EnagageBay, as you can automatically create new events and notes and assign tags. It makes email marketing a breeze with three different broadcasts: Regular Broadcast (product updates), A/B Broadcast (test email variations), and RSS to Email (share blogs). 

Pros 

• The free version provides almost all the necessary features for a small business to get started 
• Pleasant UI and responsive customer support 
• All marketing and sales features or products sync together, adding to their versatility 

Cons 

• Can be a little clunky at times 
• No option for template customization 

Agile CRM 

Agile CRM is an amazing customer management and sales enablement platform that caters to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. It offers you an efficient contact management feature, bringing together data from customers from different sources. 

The best part is that if a prospect changes their social media information, the changes will automatically sync to your contact list. You get an instant overview of your team’s workflow and can filter them by status, deadline, owner, and priority. 

It captures leads from different sites, including LinkedIn, and scores leads based on already-set triggers. Audience segmentation, email and social media marketing, and email tracking are some of its other features. 

Pros 

• Landing page builder that helps build mobile responsive pages 
• Gamify sales tasks to encourage healthy competition among teams
• Customizable templates for emails, landing pages, and web forms 
• YouTube channel to guide people about its effective usage 

Cons 

• Sales, marketing, and customer service tools aren’t available for purchase in separate modules 
• Very few integrations are available in the free and starter plan 

Salesforce CRM

When it comes to the best CRM for small businesses, Salesforce CRM is a common name. It’s a cloud-based platform that helps you collect valuable data from website visitors and existing customers to gain deeper insights into your target audience. 

It can easily track, manage, and score your leads based on your set requirements. The goal is to provide you with information about customer behaviors and expectations. 

It takes over all your sales activities, whether it’s forecasting sales or managing orders, so your sales team focuses on closing more deals. But that’s not all; Salesforce also provides you with detailed sales performance reports so you can analyze your team’s performance. 

Pros 

• Integrates with other tools like document management software, ERP, personal planning software, and others 
• Mobile application for iOS and Android devices 
• Highly customizable, allowing the business to tailor the system according to their unique needs 

Cons 

• Requires a stable internet connection for working 
• Quite expensive 

Nimble 

If you want to maximize customer engagement, Nimble is the best CRM for small businesses. It gives you a 360-degree view of your contacts’ digital footprint through social media channels, emails, and calendar activities. 

You can use it to store around 25,000 contacts, and once you reach the limit, you can purchase more contacts anytime. This platform makes audience segmentation quite easy, allowing you to identify and target high-potential companies and customers for business. 

It suggests a series of sales stages to follow throughout the pipeline, or you can create your own from scratch. Nimble has a Web Form feature that empowers you to capture leads directly from your website and integrate them into the CRM for quick follow-up. 

Pros

• Nimble CRM mobile app works smoothly on iOS and Android 
• Easily integrates with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and other apps 
• Drag-and-drop features for managing all sales stages 

Cons 

• Charges $10 for 10,000 contacts once you reach your 25,000 contacts storage limit 
• Doesn’t offer a free plan 

Why Should Small Businesses Invest in a CRM? 

Now that you are aware of the best CRM for small businesses, here’s an overview of the major benefits of investing in one: 

Increase Sales

One of the major benefits of investing in the best CRM for small businesses is an increase in sales. So how does it happen? Well, a CRM takes over generic daily tasks like follow-ups and lead assignments, freeing up the sales team so they can focus on acquiring new leads and closing more deals. 

Not only this, but this solution also streamlines sales processes like collecting customer information and helps build a sales pipeline, resulting in more sales. 

Statistics show that integrating AI and CRM can lead to a 15% increase in repeat sales and customer retention. Even your revenue can increase by as much as 245% when businesses use a CRM platform. 

More Customer Retention

It may surprise you, but the best CRM for small businesses also significantly improves customer retention. This platform tracks customers’ churn and identifies the major reasons behind it by analyzing customer behaviour. Based on this data, you can then address all the challenges, whether it’s improving customer service or product features or ensuring customers stay for a long time. 

Enhance Business Efficiency

The best CRM for small businesses is helpful in enhancing business efficiency. It creates a better workflow that aligns with project goals and improves overall project management. Team members can also use it to collaborate and communicate during projects and automate repetitive business tasks.

Conclusion 

Finding the best CRM for small businesses can sometimes feel like a daunting task. You may get overwhelmed by the variety of options and pricing. However, you can go through all the above-mentioned options and invest in the one that’s within your budget and offers all the necessary key features for your business tasks!