The 7 top CRMs for small businesses

Last updated on: July 31, 2023

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform is an essential tool for any B2B company.

The purpose of a CRM is to help you gather and organize data about your customers and leads. You can then analyze that data to help you improve your messaging and earn more sales.

But if you’re looking for a CRM for your small- to medium-sized business (SMB), you may have found that many options are optimized (and priced) for larger enterprises. Don’t worry, though—there are still plenty of top SMB CRMs out there.

Below, we’ll look at seven of the top CRMs for small businesses, so keep reading to find out more.

1. Nutshell

Starting price: $16 per user per month

We may be biased, but Nutshell tops our list of top small business CRMs for many reasons. 

The main benefit of choosing Nutshell is straightforward: We make you, the client, our top priority.

Firstly, our CRM is optimized for user-friendliness. It’s exceptionally easy to navigate the platform, with prospect data being divided between leads, people, and companies. Additionally, Nutshell can automate many different sales processes, like email marketing.

We also provide a variety of analytics offerings—you can create custom reports on virtually any metric. Those reports let you gain in-depth insights about your audience.

Most importantly, we make customer service our priority. Our team is always available for you to talk to if there’s an issue you’re having or a question you’ve thought of, and we’ll make sure not to leave you in the dark on anything.

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2. Salesforce

Starting price: $25+ per user per month

Salesforce is one of the best CRMs for small businesses, and for good reason. It’s optimized to help businesses of all sizes, from large enterprises to small, local companies. The great thing about this is that it offers specialized pricing for smaller business plans.

One of Salesforce’s greatest strengths is how intuitive and customizable it is. It’s incredibly easy to navigate the Salesforce dashboard, and you can customize how that dashboard is set up. You can also generate custom reports to help with your analytics.

As a bonus, Salesforce integrates with other tools like Slack to help you easily sync information and schedule tasks.

3. HubSpot

Starting price: $45 per month (with a free version available)

HubSpot is very similar to Salesforce in the sense that it’s one of the best-known tools out there. Also, like Salesforce, it’s built to help both large companies and smaller businesses like yours.

Unlike Salesforce, however, HubSpot offers a free plan. As you might expect, this plan doesn’t come with nearly as many features as the paid plans. That said, it still includes all the essential elements of a CRM. If you’re looking for a more lightweight tool—at least to start with—HubSpot might be the one for you.

HubSpot doesn’t offer as much customization as Salesforce, but it still features an easy-to-use dashboard that makes navigating this tool a breeze.

4. Zoho

Starting price: $14 per user per month

Another of the best CRMs for small businesses comes from Zoho. You might already be familiar with Zoho from some of their other digital marketing tools. 

If so, Zoho’s CRM could be a great choice for you. That’s because it integrates seamlessly with all of Zoho’s other tools, including the sales and marketing suite. For any business already using those tools, it makes sense to choose Zoho as your CRM, too.

One of the standout features of Zoho is the fact that it lets you scan social media platforms quickly to acquire new customer contact information. That helps you spend less time manually looking for that info. 

5. Insightly

Starting price: $29 per user per month (with a free version available)

Insightly is one of the best SMB CRMs out there for a few reasons. Firstly, it offers a free plan like HubSpot does, although that plan lacks many of the best features of the paid version (like the data backup system).

Insightly is very process-oriented—it lets you assign specific tasks to specific team members using to-do lists. It also incorporates business intelligence (BI) capabilities to help you see trends across your data so you can make more informed decisions for your marketing.

6. Streak

Starting price: $15+ per user per month (with a free plan available)

Another of the top CRMs for small businesses is Streak. Streak is most notable for its integration with Gmail and Google Workspace. It’s so well-integrated, in fact, that you don’t even have to pull up a separate platform to use it—it’s embedded directly into Gmail, so you can simply access it from there.

Streak performs all the usual CRM functions—tracking data on leads and customers and then storing that data for you—but it also puts a heavy emphasis on email marketing, hence its integration with Gmail.

Finally, Streak is yet another top SMB CRM that offers a free plan in addition to its paid ones.

7. Freshsales

Starting price: $15 per user per month (with a free plan available)

Rounding out our list, Freshsales is a CRM offered by Freshworks, a company that provides a variety of different digital marketing solutions. Freshsales is yet another tool on this list that conveniently offers a free plan, as well as a paid option. It also offers a 21-day free trial if you’re interested in trying it out.

Freshsales is available on both desktop and mobile, and on both types of devices, it provides an incredibly user-friendly interface. It also features an AI assistant to help you automate tasks and more quickly obtain data from your audience.

Freshsales integrates with various email platforms, and it lets you set up customized forms on your website to help you capture data from leads who visit your site. 

Drive more sales with Nutshell, your top SMB CRM

Looking for the best SMB CRM out there? Look no further than Nutshell. With our CRM, you can gain top-tier insights about your audience, helping you improve your marketing. That will enable you to drive more sales and earn more revenue in the long run.

But you don’t just have to take our word for it. If you want to see for yourself what Nutshell is capable of accomplishing for your business, you can try it out free for 14 days!

NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED

Want to kick the tires a bit?

No problem. To see if Nutshell is the right choice for your sales team, start a 14-day free trial today!

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