Sales

Best Free CRM Software

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When your business is brand new, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s impossible to win clients and keep them happy without spending any money. Free CRM solutions are a great place to start, but choosing one can feel more challenging than using one. We tested more than a dozen free options and narrowed them down to our top choices. In doing so, we found Hubspot to be our #1 pick because it makes it easy to build strong relationships, includes an intuitive interface that’s approachable for beginners, and offers more features than many paid CRMs on the market.

The Best Free CRM Software For Most Businesses

Hubspot Logo

Hubspot

Best For Most

For growing small businesses, Hubspot’s free CRM software is the most robust option on this list with capabilities that span marketing, sales, and customer service for your entire team. The free plan includes up to 1,000,000 non-marketing contacts, 2,000 marketing emails, and unlimited user seats.

HubSpot is the gold standard for inbound marketing and CRM software, offering one of the most robust free CRMs we’ve ever seen. HubSpot’s free plan actually beat out every paid CRM we tested, including the likes of EngageBay, Salesflare, and Zoho CRM. With unlimited users, a five-star beginner-friendly interface, and up to 15 million non-marketing contacts, it doesn’t get much better for something with a $0 price tag.

Whether you need sales, marketing, support, operational, or blogging CRM functionality (or a combination of all five), you get entry-level access to each hub. Read: more than enough to change how you manage all types of business relationships.

The Best Free CRM Software to Consider: 

  1. Hubspot – Best for most
  2. Streak – Best for solopreneurs using Gmail
  3. Freshworks CRM – Best for outbound sales teams
  4. Agile CRM – Best for small businesses that want to stay small
  5. Bitrix24 – Best for nonprofit organizations
  6. Betterlance – Best for freelancers

When it Makes Sense to Invest in Free CRM Software

If you’re disorganized about relationship management, losing clients (and revenue) is an unfortunate possibility.

Whether you’re not using a CRM or at all or are stuck with one you’re unhappy with, failure to properly manage customer relationships can create a major disadvantage for your business.

You don’t want that and we don’t want that for you either (even if you have exactly $0 to spend).

If you’re a brand-new business with a small budget and a handful of clients, free CRM software is an excellent addition to your tech stack that has the potential to change how you work, deliver better customer experiences, and turn customers into lifelong loyalists.

Aside from better relationship management, a free CRM can help you boost revenue while giving you time to learn how to wield your new software without worrying about running out of time or paying a penny.

Regardless of your situation, time isn’t free. But using the CRMs on this list is. 

Plus, it takes just a few minutes to get started and you can usually hit the ground running in a matter of hours (rather than weeks). It’s a fantastic way to start streamlining your client-related actions while aligning your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts within one platform. 

#1 – Hubspot — Best For Most

Hubspot Logo

Hubspot

Best For Most

For growing small businesses, Hubspot’s free CRM software is the most robust option on this list with capabilities that span marketing, sales, and customer service for your entire team. The free plan includes up to 1,000,000 non-marketing contacts, 2,000 marketing emails, and unlimited user seats.

Hubspot’s free CRM delivers the most robust feature set out of all the options on this list at the free level, spanning marketing, sales, and customer service. This, along with its modular approach, makes it perfect for growing small businesses. 

Its integrative capabilities and App Marketplace make it even more versatile, allowing users to add on various tools to extend its functionality without ever having to pay to upgrade.

Plus, it’s one of the world’s leading CRM platforms, so you know you’re in good hands. 

It comes with everything you need to streamline and automate marketing, sales, and customer service processes to prepare your business for fast growth. 

With it, your marketing team can easily create landing pages and forms to generate new leads, then nurture those leads with email marketing campaigns using Hubspot’s intuitive email designer. 

While most free CRMs don’t offer emails, you get 2,000 monthly marketing emails for free

When those leads become prospective customers, your sales team can seamlessly take over and start tracking them through the sales pipeline. Sales reps can set up meetings, make phone calls, and send emails directly within the platform to close the deal. 

Meanwhile, your customer service team can leverage conversational bots, canned responses, ticketing, and automatic live chat routing to improve their response times without hiring more reps. 

Plus, your entire team will love Hubspot’s document library for shared company assets and quick file sharing, plus a robust set of project management tools to ensure everyone’s on track every step of the way. 

The free plan also comes with unlimited user seats, so you can onboard your entire team plus new employees as your team expands. 

This is HUGE since most free CRMs limit the number of users you can have. With no limits, you can have an entire enterprise using Hubspot for free. 

Furthermore, Hubspot understands that as a growing business, not all of your contacts and communications are for marketing purposes.

As such, you can mark contacts as marketing or non-marketing to create a clear distinction.

If you’re starting from scratch, you can set up workflows and automations designed to tag marketing contacts automatically, so you don’t have to do it by hand. If you’re importing contacts, you can create custom lists and assign marketing tags in bulk. 

While the software limits the number of marketing emails you can send, you can have up to one million (yes, a million) non-marketing contacts in the system for free. 

This makes managing communications for partners, sales contacts, one-off customer inquiries, unsubscribes, and other non-marketing situations a breeze. 

When you’re ready to upgrade, you can bundle advanced sales, marketing, and customer service features for $50 per month for up to 1,000 marketing contacts and 5,000 monthly marketing emails. 

Sign up for Hubspot’s free CRM to see if it’s right for you today!

#2 – Streak — The Best for Solopreneurs Using Gmail

Streak Logo

Streak

Best for Solopreneurs Using Gmail

Streak is a free Chrome extension designed to turn your inbox into a full-scale CRM platform for managing pipelines and customer relationships without bouncing form software to software. Get everything you need to track tasks, manage projects, prioritize emails, and monitor business relationships with ease. Installs in less than 30 seconds for quick setup and is always free for one user.

Streak is a bit different from the other options on this list because it’s a Chrome extension specifically for use with Gmail. Its free plan is perfect for solopreneurs in a wide range of industries looking for a better way to manage workflows within Gmail. 

With it, you can easily track sales pipelines, manage projects and tasks, monitor business relationships, and prioritize support emails.

It’s even suitable for managing hiring processes or real estate agents managing dozens of home buyers and sellers via email. Plus, it takes about 30 seconds to download, install, and start using, making it an excellent choice if you want to get started as soon as possible. 

Streak is incredibly powerful, despite being easy to use. It works by providing context for every email, contact, task, date, and note within your Gmail account. 

Essentially, it pulls the best parts of Gmail and Google Sheets into one customizable workspace to streamline project and relationship management. 

From there, you can set up custom views using “magic” fields that automatically pull information from associated email threads. There are dozens of configurations you can save and pull up in just a few clicks. 

Want to get a bird’s-eye visual of your entire pipeline? No problem. Need to see all the emails related to a specific project? You can easily do it in a few seconds. 

Alternatively, you can organize all of your tasks in a single view, so you always know what’s coming down the pipeline next. 

Users can customize workflows by rearranging fields, adding new ones, deleting unnecessary columns, and adding their own colors. 

So, not only is Streak easy to use, but it’s also an enjoyable experience. 

On top of that, you can take Streak with you on the go. You can easily set up a Today Widget (for Apple users) that automatically pulls upcoming tasks to your phone. And you can automatically log calls or take notes during the call directly from your phone. 

Streak comes with various other email and task management features, including:

  • Email tracking and customizable notifications
  • Up to 50 personalized mass emails per day
  • Advanced email scheduling capabilities
  • Reusable email templates and text snippets
  • Full integrations with all G Suite tools

Download and install Streak to take it for a test drive and see if it’s right for you today!

#3 – Freshworks CRM — The Best for Outbound Sales Teams

Freshworks Logo

Freshworks

Best for Outbound Sales

Get an intuitive, yet powerful free CRM software with outbound and inbound calling capabilities via an integration with Freshdesk Contact Center. Simply purchase your phone number and pay only for the minutes you use. Plus, get all the inbound marketing, sales, and customer service functionality you need to generate more leads and close more sales without paying a dime.

If your team focuses on an outbound sales strategy, Freshworks CRM offers an excellent free plan. With it, your sales reps can reach out to clients and prospects via a wide range of channels from their computers or mobile devices in just a few taps or clicks. 

And it includes access for an unlimited number of users, so regardless of how many reps you have or how fast you grow, you don’t have to worry about maxing out the free plan. 

If you plan to use the free version of Freshworks CRM for outbound calling, you’ll have to purchase a local or toll-free number for a few dollars per month and pay $0.022 per minute to use their call-related features.

Note: this is typical for free CRM software. However, we found that Freshworks offers some of the most affordable per-minute prices on the market.

Alternatively, you can port your existing phone system with Freshwork’s Growth plan or higher. 

If you decide to set up a phone system, users can set up custom greeting messages for incoming calls, record calls, take notes directly within the system, and configure custom desktop notifications with caller details included. 

However, outbound calling isn’t the only way to leverage Freshworks for your outbound sales efforts and strategies. And you can still use the majority of its features without paying a penny.

During any form of customer communication, representatives can take notes directly in the system, tying all relevant information to a single contact. This helps deliver visibility across your entire team and with other departments. 

New reps can pick up right where the previous one left off, resulting in a more streamlined sales approach. 

Plus, prospects will appreciate the fact that they don’t have to repeat themselves or repeatedly entertain offers they’ve already heard. 

With Freshworks, users can also design and deliver targeted emails with a visual drag-and-drop campaign builder so every prospect gets the right message at the right time. 

On top of that, your team can actively interact with visitors as they move around your website through a free chatbot widget. 

And users can visually track leads and deals throughout the sales pipeline to review the status of ongoing deals, even if multiple sales reps are involved. 

Aside from outbound sales efforts, Freshworks CRM also comes with powerful inbound marketing and sales features designed to help you turn leads into paying customers. 

With the free plan, you can:

  • Capture leads with custom forms and landing pages
  • Integrate Freshworks with existing sign-up forms
  • Monitor lead activities across your website to understand their behavior
  • Consolidate leads into segmented lists
  • Manage your contacts on the go

As your business grows and you need more robust marketing, sales, and customer service capabilities, you can easily upgrade to a paid plan starting at $29 per month for up to 1,000 contacts. 

Sign up for a free forever plan to see if Freshworks CRM is right for you today!

#4 – Agile CRM — The Best for Small Businesses that Want to Stay Small

Agile CRM Logo

Agile CRM

Best for Businesses that Want to Stay Small

As a small business that wants to stay small, you can probably use Agile CRM for free… forever without ever needing to upgrade to a paid plan. With it, you get everything you need from lead generation to sales and customer service. It’s free for up to ten users, 1,000 contacts, and 5,000 monthly emails with each additional email being $0.004 if you go over your limit.

If you’re a small business on the hunt for a free CRM you’ll never have to pay for, Agile CRM fits the bill. 

It’s free for up to ten users with 1,000 contacts and 5,000 monthly emails, allowing small teams to maximize revenue and close more deals while keeping their staff small. 

If you do end up needing more monthly emails every once in a while, you can pay a la carte—they’re only $0.004 per email. So, it’s incredibly affordable even if you go over your limits on occasion. 

If you have an existing contact list, importing it is simple and takes just a few seconds. 

You can also create custom forms or landing pages to gather new leads with Agile CRM’s intuitive drag-and-drop creation tools. 

The free plan comes with complete contact visibility in a familiar social media-like format. 

As such, anyone from your team can pick up where the previous conversation left off to answer questions, nurture leads, and ultimately close the deal. 

This is especially important since smaller teams don’t always have divided sales, marketing, and customer support departments. Anyone can hop in with a technical answer or to take that final sales call, regardless of their role. 

One of Agile CRM’s standout features is its campaign workflow functionality with automation triggers. The free plan comes with one workflow, one automation trigger, and up to five steps, which can be created in its drag-and-drop automation builder. 

You can use it to build a welcome sequence, share more information about your business, or weed out unqualified leads.

If a lead isn’t a good fit for your business, you can remove them from the system to free up space for new potential clients without paying a penny. 

Plus, Agile CRM lets you score leads based on their actions, so it’s always easy to tell when it’s time to remove a prospect unlikely to ever convert. 

The free plan also comes with various customer service features built to help turn existing customers into lifelong loyalists, including:

  • Advanced ticket categorization
  • Ticket prioritization
  • Canned responses
  • Automated smart recommendations
  • Basic reporting and analytics

As such, you get everything a small business needs to streamline marketing, sales, and customer service processes while maintaining a small team. 

But if you do want to upgrade, paid plans start at $8.99 per user per month.

Sign up for a free forever plan to see if Agile CRM is right for your small business today!

#5 – Bitrix24 — The Best Free CRM for Nonprofit Organizations

Bitrix24 Logo

Bitrix24

Best for Nonprofits

Bitrix24 is an excellent free CRM software all around. However, it’s particularly useful for nonprofits because it makes donor relationship management and volunteer coordination a breeze. You get unlimited users, in-depth project management capabilities, payment processing for accepting online donations, and more. Plus, users can automatically sync their calendars so nothing ever slips through the cracks again.

As a nonprofit, you manage a lot of moving parts, usually with limited resources and an extremely tight budget. From donations and outreach campaigns to coordinating with volunteers, there’s a lot going on at any given time. 

But the good news is that Bitrix24 delivers everything you need to streamline operations and make the most of your resources for free

It even outshines a lot of other premium CRM platforms built specifically for nonprofits. The free plan includes unlimited users and is ready to go in less than 30 seconds. 

So, you don’t have to worry about outgrowing the free plan or spending previous time trying to learn how to use it and onboard your entire team. 

After creating your account, you’ll be able to import your contact list, start creating email templates, and add your entire team to the system. 

Perhaps the most beneficial feature is the ability to accept donations online and effectively manage donor relationships to streamline the entire process. You can easily set up donation pages, accept various payment methods, and automatically store donor contact information. 

As such, you can improve your fundraising and donation collection processes while gathering contact information for future communications and outreach efforts. 

Bitrix24 also empowers you to level up email and phone-based outreach campaigns and fundraising pushes. You can bring your own phone number or purchase a low-cost number to make calls directly within the platform. 

Plus, you can send up to 5,000 emails every month for free. 

Aside from outreach capabilities, you also get advanced project management features with the free plan, including:

  • Task and subtask management
  • Reusable checklists
  • Project start and end dates
  • Kanban and Gantt views
  • Task time tracking
  • Up to five task dependencies
  • Customizable reminders and notifications
  • iOS and Android mobile apps

So, you can schedule projects, manage available resources—like budget and volunteer workers—and track project progress from start to finish. In doing so, you can get projects done on time with fewer donor dollars and volunteer hours required. 

These features are great if you’re working on a fundraising event, ramping up your outreach program, or onboarding new staff members. 

On top of that, Bitrix24’s social collaboration features make volunteer coordination a breeze. 

With it, you can assign tasks, share files, and create group chats to ensure everyone’s always on the same page. You can also set up video conferences, create shared calendars, and set up workgroups to keep volunteers who are working together on the same page. 

From there, users can sync their calendars with Bitrix24’s calendar to keep an eye on upcoming events, campaigns, tasks and deadlines. 

One of Bitrix24’s standout features is the ability to instantly turn emails into tasks, calendar events, and group discussions in one click. So, you can turn that brilliant fundraising idea into a task or group discussion to keep the ball rolling with no interruptions. 

And you can say goodbye to continuously forwarding long email threads and trying to keep everything organized in your head. 

Sign up for an unlimited free forever plan to see if Bitrix24 is right for your nonprofit today!

#6 – Betterlance — The Best Free CRM Software for Freelancers

Betterlance Logo

Betterlance

Best for Freelancers

Ready to make the switch from headache-inducing spreadsheets? Betterlance is a new player in the CRM world, but it’s one of the first free CRM systems built specifically for freelancers. Set up automated follow-up reminders, snooze those reminders, store contact information, and leverage re-usable professionally written email templates within the platform so you never have to wonder what to say again.

As a freelancer, gathering leads and turning them into paying clients is the heart and soul of your business. 

You may be able to get by for a while using spreadsheets and manual processes to manage client relationships, but it’s not a long-term solution. 

Those spreadsheets and manual management processes will quickly become inefficient, clunky, and outdated. They may even cost you new clients. 

Without the right CRM software, it’s challenging to automate follow-ups and manage communications with multiple clients. That results in missed opportunities and mountains of wasted time juggling unorganized business processes.

Thanks to Betterlance, that’s not what your business has to look like any longer.

It’s designed to fill in the gaps and automate your client management processes so you can turn more leads into clients and deliver better client experiences without outsourcing, cloning yourself, or hiring an assistant to keep your head on straight.

With it, you can set up automated reminders to send follow-ups to cold pitches, warm leads, past clients, and existing clients, so you never miss a paid opportunity again. 

This becomes particularly important when you’re juggling various clients at different stages. 

Some may need a friendly reminder to pay an invoice, while others may need more nurturing before they’re ready to hire you. And still others may have opened your cold pitch and simply forgotten to reply. 

Betterlance offers dozens of outreach, nurturing, and sales email templates designed to help you maintain your client relationships. They’re professionally written and easily customizable, so you don’t have to worry about what to say next to close the deal. 

You can import an email template in just a few clicks, customize it, and send it out right within the platform. 

So, there’s no longer any need to waste time switching tabs four hundred times a day to communicate with clients and leads. 

Betterlance also comes with a wide range of other features, including:

  • Automatic email signatures
  • Snoozable follow-up reminders
  • Client-based follow-up frequency settings
  • One-click client and lead importing
  • Merge fields for automatic email personalization
  • Drip campaigns for lead nurturing

Those last two are coming soon, along with email tracking, scheduled sending, and built-in integrations with tools you already use to automate workflows across your entire business. 

The complete CRM system is 100% free to use the second you sign up. And there are no catches, caveats, limits, or restrictions on the free plan. 

However, Betterlance also offers paid plans if you’re interested in getting hyper-targeted leads sent to your inbox every month. We haven’t tried this out, but it sounds like an excellent deal if you’re interested in drumming up new leads every month. 

Sign up for a free forever plan to see if Betterlance is right for you today!

Methodology For Choosing The Best Free CRM Software

Despite free CRM software being free, we know it’s still not a light decision to choose the right one.

The software you choose today may be just the thing you need to improve how you manage your leads and customers. But the wrong one could induce more headaches than you can count.

Whether you’re unhappy with your current processes or are a small business with limited needs, the best free CRM software for you depends on various factors. 

To help make your decision easier, we put together a definitive list of considerations to think about as you go through the process. 

Long-Term Fit

Changing from one CRM platform to another can be an incredibly painful process, especially if you have a lot of data to move. Mistakes can happen during the process and you may have to halt sales activities until you’re done. 

So, it’s crucial to choose an option that’s a long-term fit for your business. 

To do that, you should ensure the CRM you ultimately go with plays nice with the processes you already have in place and the ones you plan to implement in the future. 

We highly recommend testing your solution from day one to identity potential hiccups. 

Essentially, you want to try to break your CRM software by integrating it with every other platform you use and stressing it under the most intense usage you expect it to see in its lifetime. 

If something does break and doesn’t come with an easy resolution, you can try again with the next free CRM software on your list. 

Exploiting the free plan to its full potential on day one will ensure you make the right choice.

It’s also important to think about the potentiality of upgrading to a paid version of your free CRM. 

Some businesses may be just fine staying on the free plan forever. But that’s rarely true for everyone. 

So, if you see yourself upgrading in the future, be sure to check out new features and new limits on paid plans. 

You may even want to snag a free trial of a premium plan to explore its capabilities. From there, you can downgrade to the free plan before your trial is over to avoid paying any surprise fees. 

Just make sure to test the free plan on its own before making any decisions. 

It’s also important to remember that some providers offer unlimited users on the free plan, but charge per-user when you’re ready to upgrade. Not all do, but upgrading can be a lot more expensive than you were initially expecting, depending on the size of your business. 

Business Type

While there are dozens of CRM options out there, your business type plays a role in which one is right for you. If you’re a nonprofit, freelancer, or outbound sales team, your decision is a whole lot easier than everyone else’s because you have very particular needs. 

As a nonprofit, you need a better way to manage donors and volunteers while also accepting donations online. As such, Bitrix24 is the perfect solution. 

If you’re a freelancer, a simple system with automated follow-up reminders and customizable email templates is more than enough to level up your client relationship processes. 

In this case, we recommend Betterlance. 

For outbound sales teams, we recommend Freshworks CRM because you only have to pay for your phone number and minutes used. Aside from that, everything else you need is 100% free forever. 

It’s important to consider how well a CRM option fits with your business type. But if there are multiple choices that could do the trick for your operations, the number of users and contacts you have is likely a bigger differentiator. 

Number of Users and Contacts

The biggest split for free CRM software is the number of users you’re allowed to have. 

Some are always free, regardless of how many users you have. Essentially, you can have thousands of sales, marketing, and customer service reps without ever paying a penny. 

On the other hand, most limit the number of users. 

These options may offer more contacts or a higher number of monthly emails, but you can’t onboard an enterprise-number of team members for free. 

If you’re a one-person show, Streak is an excellent choice. It’s always free for one user and includes everything you need to organize your Gmail inbox and stay on top of customer communications. 

Small businesses that plan on staying small are better off using Agile CRM because it’s always free for up to ten users, 1,000 contacts, and 5,000 monthly emails. 

With this plan, you get more emails than “unlimited user” plans and more advanced features at the free level. 

It’s more than enough for most small teams, and you won’t need to upgrade to a paid plan if you do go over your monthly email limit on occasion. All you have to do is pay $0.004 per extra email instead of forking over a monthly fee. 

For growing small businesses, we recommend Hubspot. 

Its free plan is the most robust on this list and you can continue to onboard new employees as your business grows without ever hitting a user cap. 

Integrations at the Free Level

Most free versions of anything come with limitations. 

CRM software is no different and free CRMs typically limit the number of software integrations. 

This is the bread and butter of leveraging CRM software to its fullest potential. They’re what makes it possible for marketing and customer service to tap into the data that your sales team gathers and push information back to them seamlessly. 

A free solution may seem like the perfect fit, but if it only works with WordPress websites and you used Squarespace to build yours, you’re going to have a difficult time making the systems play well together (if you can get them to at all). 

Going off that example, you may not be able to leverage your CRM’s ability to track a lead as they move through your website. 

If the CRM doesn’t integrate with your email marketing platform, you won’t be able to track opens or centralize email communications within your CRM. 

This could make it extremely difficult for your sales team to score a prospect based on the emails they open or pick up the conversation where marketing left off. 

Hubspot certainly has the most extensive integration capabilities while Agile CRM only allows free users one integration. So, you’ll have to be picky about which one you want to go with. 

Regardless of the free CRMs you’re considering, it’s definitely worth the extra effort to dig into integrations before making any final decisions. 

Hubspot Logo

Hubspot

Best For Most

For growing small businesses, Hubspot’s free CRM software is the most robust option on this list with capabilities that span marketing, sales, and customer service for your entire team. The free plan includes up to 1,000,000 non-marketing contacts, 2,000 marketing emails, and unlimited user seats.

Summary

If you’re a micro, small, or new business looking for a better way to manage customer relationships, free CRM software is a great place to start. 

With it, you can ease into automating your marketing, sales, and customer service processes without paying to learn something new or overwhelming yourself by trying to do all the things simultaneously. 

Plus, it’s an excellent way to test out new processes without worrying about spending your hard-earned money to do it. 

To recap, our top recommendations are:

  1. Hubspot – Best for most
  2. Streak – Best for solopreneurs using Gmail
  3. Freshworks CRM – Best for outbound sales teams
  4. Agile CRM – Best for small businesses that want to stay small
  5. Bitrix24 – Best for nonprofit organizations
  6. Betterlance – Best for freelancers

Don’t forget to use the methodology we talked about as you go through the process of choosing the best free CRM software for your business. 


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