Top 10 Free CRM Software for Small Businesses in 2023

When analyzing the best free CRM software available, Forbes Advisor considered hundreds of factors, including features, customer support, ease of use, user experiences and integrations. Assigning a weighted score to each value, we then narrowed the field to the seven best free CRMs on the market.

Important features in a free CRM include:

• Pipeline management
• Integrations
• Contact management
• Sales automation
• Email tracking
• Meeting scheduler
• Prospect tracking

While not every CRM on this list includes each of these features, many do, or have enough value-added benefits to make up for the feature that’s missing.

In addition to features, we considered how user-friendly the CRMs were and what kind of customer support they offered. We also analyzed user reviews, to get a sense of what real users thought of the CRMs.

HubSpot

HubSpot is the best CRM software for small businesses looking for a cost-effective solution to get started. It offers free plans for its CRM, Marketing, Sales, and Sevice hubs.

The free HubSpot CRM comes with unlimited users and unlimited contacts. It is also free forever.

However, many of the features are limited or unavailable in the free plan. To access the powerful features, you will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans under the Growth Suite.

HubSpot is quite easy to use, and you can connect marketing, sales, and service hubs to your CRM software. This provides you with a wide range of tools to efficiently manage the customer journey.

Benefits:

HubSpot is one of the biggest vendors out there (up there with Salesforce), and they offer a free CRM for unlimited users with basic features.

The free HubSpot CRM allows you to assign and track leads, manage the sales process, manage workflows for better management, and record customer interactions across every channel in one place. It also has pretty comprehensive email marketing, as well as inbound marketing tools (the latter is quite useful for getting search engine hits for blog posts).

The platform works with G Suite and Microsoft Office, making implementation and data syncing seamless. Integration with Zapier facilitates easy information sharing and task management across apps like Google Sheets, Facebook Lead Ads, Slack, and more).

The non-free, paid add-on packages for HubSpot CRM boost data storage, generate more sophisticated reports, and incorporate new AI and advanced automation tech.

Drawbacks:

The free CRM has many features, but a lot of them aren’t that robust, which means you may find yourself having to shell out for Marketing, Sales, or Service Hub products. Customizability is limited, which might make the CRM hard for certain niche small businesses to tweak and meaningfully implement.

Pricing: 

• HubSpot CRM is free and the number of users is unlimited.
• Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub add-on packages are $50
• HubSpot CMS starts at $300 per month
• All-inclusive Starter Growth Suite starts at $113

Streak

If Gmail is the base for all your business communication, you’re in luck. You don’t have to install a separate app or even give up the interface you’ve grown so used to. Streak doesn’t just integrate with Gmail: it fits seamlessly into the original interface, adding the buttons and features of a powerful CRM.

To get started, you have to download and install the Streak browser extension. With that out of the way, all you have to do is give Streak permission to access your Gmail account—necessary to enable all the features—and walk through the simple configuration process, with an introductory video to all the features sitting at the end.

Unlike other options on this list, Streak’s interface feels more like Google Sheets. The sales pipelines have the stages at the top, and below the graphical representation, there’s a spreadsheet where you can see your contacts, add relevant details, and move them through the pipeline. This approach may feel a bit strange at first, but after you add your first contact and see how the app handles it, things will click into place quickly.

You can add new contacts from emails in your inbox and assign them to any active pipeline you have. From that point on, all future emails will be labeled as a lead or deal, and the information about tasks/notes/activity will appear on a column to the right. If you click on the contact’s email on that column, the entire history will appear, letting you take a look at the whole relationship so far.

Benefits:

Streak provides a fully integrated Gmail CRM built into your inbox. Piggybacking off this familiar everyday software tool, the app makes CRM adoption easy for new users.

The free version of Streak, intended for personal use (i.e. freelancers and solo entrepreneurs), includes basic CRM tools and pretty comprehensive email features. Email templates allow you to personalize emails and send them out at high volume, a far more effective alternative to generic mass-blast email marketing.

To populate your mail lists, you can effortlessly pull contact information and data from Google Sheets using the Streak CRM Importer add-on, or import offline CSV files. This means it’s no longer necessary to fill in the blanks and email everyone one-by-one.

Email tracking gives you a heads up on who read your email, and where on earth they read it (thanks to a handy map view), as well as how many times. This is excellent for increasing visibility across your team, but particularly sales⁠—when you know someone read your message and understand their behavior a bit more, you can move the sales process along by following up in a way that’s both well-timed and appropriate. You’ll be able to avoid repetitive email practices and nurture the correct customer relationships.

Call logs and meeting notes, meanwhile, help keep an easy-to-find record of your non-inbox interactions, organized chronologically and by type. You’ll also be able to manage leads and sales by creating any number of pipelines you might need (the free version provides for unlimited pipelines too). Keep in-app notes, centralize record-keeping, utilize data tracking on your contact correspondence, and find out if leads have or haven’t opened your emails.

Drawbacks:

Streak is a browser extension, which is inconvenient when it comes to changing devices, as it’ll be necessary to download the extension and log in again on every new device you access. Given that Streak is a lightweight CRM, it might not work for more complex business processes.

Pricing:

• Personal version is free for individual users.
• Professional plan is $49
• Enterprise plan is $129

Apptivo

Apptivo is a simple CRM system with features that are easy to navigate and operate. For those using the Free option who need assistance, email support and online resources are available. Price-wise, the paid plans are cost-friendly and scalable for those who want to upgrade and gain access to more features and integration capabilities.

This CRM is the best solution if you are a solo-operated business looking for a basic way to manage your data. It includes a wide range of information management capabilities for storing, organizing, and viewing contact, lead, and customer records. There are even modules for storing information on partners in the supply chain, such as suppliers and distributors.

Apptivo only lets one user on the Free plan, which only comes with basic data management features. Users looking to add more users and access to more advanced CRM capabilities should look into Freshsales as a more robust alternative.

Apptivo Free Feature Summary

• Tasks and appointments: Users can create and track tasks or meetings associated with contact records.
• Notes: Teams can stay organized on lead or customer progress through activity notes within the CRM profiles.
• Lead data management: Lead information such as contact details, activity, and pipeline status can be stored and tracked in the CRM.
• Customer profiles: Users can monitor customer and client records and organize their data in the system.
• Supply chain data: Teams can store data and records for other businesses in their supply chain, including suppliers and distributors.
• HR tracking: Businesses can store employee data records, assign them to teams, and associate them with a department.

Benefits:

Apptivo’s cloud-based suite of business solutions focuses on customizability. They dish out their starter version free of charge for up to three users. which offers a lot of the core tools included in paid plans, as well as 500MB of storage.

Apptivo’s contact app (for contact management) makes it easy to import data from emails and websites, allowing you to harvest lead, client, and customer data without any tedious manual entry. Apptivo’s management apps provide team and individual organization tools.

Apptivo’s Cases app helps you manage customer issues and interactions, automatically turning customer emails into tickets. It integrates with CRM, project supervision, invoicing, and every other app in the Apptivo universe, meaning all pertinent information is always available to team members.

If you outgrow the free plan, you’ll find that Apptivo’s pricing plans are very reasonable, and all the features are bundled together (rather than sold separately), which is refreshingly simple.

Drawbacks:

The free version of Apptivo has no marketing tools and does not support third-party integrations, limiting is usefulness. Meanwhile, the app’s user interface does the job, but can be a bit unintuitive.

Pricing:

• Starter plan is free for up to three users.
• Premium plan is $8
• Ultimate plan is $20

Agile CRM

Agile CRM arguably has one of the most outstanding set of free features on this list. In addition to standard modules for tracking leads and accounts, its lead scoring capabilities enable teams to prioritize sales opportunities based on custom and preset criteria that indicate sales potential. There’s also appointment scheduling and the option to customize data fields and deal milestones. Free CRM Software for Small Businesses.

What stands out the most, however, is the platform’s customer service module. Not only can businesses handle sales and marketing activities for free, they can also manage an entire help desk and customer support system. These tools allow them to receive inquiries and tickets, add them to groups, associate them with labels, and use saved, canned responses to help efficiently fulfill customer needs.

If your business uses many outside integrations, Agile CRM is a poor free CRM choice as it only gives users up to one integration or plugin. HubSpot is the best option for free integrations, simultaneously offering many different options, including Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft Exchange, and many more.

Agile CRM Free Feature Summary

• Custom data fields and milestones: Users can customize data fields within the system to track specific lead or customer information relevant to them. They can also create a custom pipeline for deal milestones.
• Contacts and companies: Businesses can store data records for contacts, leads, customers, and accounts, including associated deals, tasks, and documents.
• Lead scoring: Teams can qualify leads quantitatively based on their profile and behaviors to determine which ones to prioritize.
• Email marketing: Email campaigns, including up to 5,000 emails with a template builder.
• Website content: Ability to create website landing pages with embedded forms, and facilitate web-to-lead form submissions to add new records in the CRM.
• Automation rules: Up to one campaign workflow and five nodes per workflow, which initiate functions such as sending an email, waiting a certain amount of time, or tagging a contact. System includes up to one automation rule that triggers an action after an event takes place.
• Customer service module: Free help desk and case management for teams to view, track, organize, and collaborate on customer service requests.
• Appointment scheduling: Teams can schedule appointments with customers or leads through the CRM system.

Benefits:

Agile CRM offers a free all-in-one business platform with project supervision, contact view, reporting, support/service, and timeline features.

Customer ticketing for support teams offers feedback forms, helpdesk, knowledge database, and everything else you need to keep churn down and boost the customer experience. Integrations with RingCentral and Twilio enhance the built-in telephony features of Agile CRM, ensuring conversation tracking, call recording, and deal-making over the phone lines is organized and super effective.

You can automate upcoming voice calls and follow-ups by putting your appointment calendar online. You can also attach documents in-app within the deal process, company and contact profiles, and emails.

Drawbacks:

If you upgrade from free to the Starter plan, the price jump is totally reasonable, but if you scale up again to Regular, you’ll find yourself paying over 3x more per user. This feels somewhat unfair, and it creates a notable financial obstacle for using the platform as your business scales. Customization options are limited.

Pricing: 

• Free version available for up to 10 users.
• Starter version is $8.99
• Regular version is $29.99
• Enterprise version is $47.99

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is free to an unlimited number of users, and includes unlimited data storage for contact, deals, and products within a catalog. Bitrix24 is the is the best Free CRM Software for Small Businesses. There’s also the ability to customize record data fields and pipeline stages to meet your unique needs, and options for automatic duplicate detection to ensure the database is clean and up to date all the time.

In addition to free CRM tools, Bitrix24 comes equipped with a project management module. This lets teams create, collaborate, assign, and monitor long-term initiatives within the company, such as marketing campaigns, product development initiatives, and even projects related to a service deliverable for a customer.

Bitrix24, unfortunately, is a complex CRM to set up and only has self-service options for customer service on the Free plan. Freshsales is the best alternative when it comes to user experience. The system is all-around easy to use and they offer 24 hour support, Monday through Friday, on all channels for free users.

Bitrix24 Free Feature Summary

• Deals and contacts: Unlimited records allowed to manage data for contacts, customers, and deal opportunities.
• Product catalog: Teams can create and use a built-in catalog to track an unlimited number of products or services from the CRM.
• Project management: Users can manage and collaborate on long-term projects, assign project owners, create templates, and do time tracking for specific tasks.
• Custom data fields: Businesses can tailor data fields for contact, deal, pipeline stages, and project records to meet their operational needs.
• Social media contact center: Teams can receive messages from connected social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and convert incoming messages into new deals.
• Duplicate detection: Ability to automatically identify records that are similar or identical to other records in the CRM to keep the database clean.
• Ecommerce: Online retailers can manage a store, unlimited products, and up to 100 orders through the CRM.

Benefits:

Based on a number of users, Bitrix24 is one of the most popular free CRM in the world. Bitrix24 provides a cloud CRM solution that’s free for up to 12 users, with a cap on data storage of 5 GB. Features-wise, it provides largely the same range as paid plans, albeit scaled-down. Everything you need is there: pipeline management, lead management, sales tracking, reporting, task automation, and more.

The user interface helps make Bitrix24 easy to use (the Kanban view is especially good). There’s voice, email, chat, and video channel access in-app, and mobile apps for iOS and Android to ensure your team can clinch deals and defuse issues at critical moments.

Drawbacks:

While the UI looks nice, it’s sometimes a bit confusing to navigate through different modules. Customization possibilities may not be robust enough for complex and/or specialized business applications. The app can lag sometimes.

It should also be said that Bitrix24’s learning curve is firmly in the ‘moderate’ category.

Pricing:

• Free starter business tool suite for up to 12 users.
• CRM+ plan for up to 6 users is $55 per user / month
• Project+ plan for up to 24 users is $55
• Standard plan for up to 50 users is $79
• Professional plan is $159
• The prices above are for the cloud-based version. On-premise solutions are also available.

BenchmarkONE

BenchmarkONE is an all-in-one sales CRM and marketing software. It’s convenient, it’s a great value and has an impressive ‘free forever’ plan.

Formerly called Hatchbuck, they were founded in 2012 and helped lots of agencies, SaaS companies, and financial services grow.

Benefits:

BenchmarkONE is a very comprehensive CRM system for sales and marketing. It’s also great for email marketing automation to gather and qualify prospects. The sales automation features manage your pipeline and help win more successful conversions.

It’s great for small to medium businesses like agencies, private practices and consultants. It also offers very detailed analytics and reporting.

Drawbacks:

Teams with more than 5 people will need to take a more expensive plan. There are no customer support tools, so it’s not a truly all-in-one CRM.

Pricing:

• Free version is good just for 1 user
• Core $70 is for 2 users per month
• Pro $139 is for 5 users per month
• Enterprise $199 is for unlimited users per month

There are also 2 premium onboarding services valued at $199 (included with Core Plans) and $399 (included with Pro and Enterprise plans).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)