We all know the story of Goldilocks. Not too hot, not too cold — it needs to be just right. It’s the same when trying to find the perfect CRM for startups. Too many features and your team will be bogged down with the complicated interface. Too little, and you’ll crash before you take off.

It needs to be just right.

Our research team has compiled the best CRM for startups list to make your software selection easier. We’ve also sprinkled in benefits and features for some food (porridge) for thought.

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Best CRM for Startups

Before diving into the best software list, let’s quickly go over what a CRM for startups is. A CRM for startups is a tool that simplifies customer relationship management, monitors client data, and integrates sales, marketing and service departments.

Startups and small businesses can use the system to handle workflows and nurture leads effectively. It also saves time through automation and robust dashboards and reports.

Our research team has compiled this list after thorough research and consideration of various factors like capabilities, mobile apps and integrations. These are our picks for the best CRM for startups:

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a SaaS solution suitable for businesses of all sizes. It’s adept at serving industries like eCommerce, healthcare, manufacturing and engineering, and software and technology.

Sales reps, project managers and marketing heads can use this dynamic solution to improve workflow efficiency. The HubSpot CRM suite has hubs for marketing, sales, service, CMS, operations and commerce, which you can use as standalone products.

Pricing

• Free
• Starter, which has two billing options: $20/month for monthly billing and $18/month for upfront billing
• Professional: $1,600/month for upfront payment
• Enterprise: $5,000/month

Top Benefits

• Work From Anywhere: HubSpot CRM offers mobile apps for iOS and Android to help sales reps make calls directly from the platform. It lets you navigate social media channels like Meta, Instagram, LinkedIn and X and publish posts that drive engagement. The software has a business card scanner and caller ID capabilities, making contact management easier.
• Track Revenue Efficiently: You can use revenue analytics tools to track revenue generated or lost during a specific time period. Use date range and frequency to filter revenue data accordingly. The solution also projects future revenue based on previous deals.
• Enhance Lead Scoring: Machine learning algorithms let you predict the probability of open contacts turning into customers within ninety days. Analyze, segment and categorize contacts based on a predictive lead scoring model. With “likelihood to close” and “contact priority” scores, you can manage leads easier and better.
• Distribute Leads: You can use HubSpot CRM’s lead rotator workflow action to distribute leads. This capability lets you divvy out leads when more than one salesperson is assigned to a territory. Assign leads evenly with lead rotation features.
• Schedule Meetings: Allow prospects to book meetings with your business. Meeting scheduler tools work with multiple apps, and the contact database syncs details every time someone books an appointment. Clients can select a one-on-one or group meeting option according to their needs.

Primary Features

• Pipeline Creation: Create deal pipelines using a drag-and-drop editor. The pipeline view helps categorize and track the progress of ongoing deals. You can know the probability of closing deals at every stage.
• Account and Contact Management: You can create contacts from visitors who reach out to the chat team or leads that convert through forms. The solution automatically associates contact records with companies, deals and tickets. Create contact records manually or import them in bulk and associate parent companies with up to 10,000 child companies.
• Customer Communication Channels: HubSpot CRM can connect with multiple channels, including email, Facebook Messenger and chat. Access a singular conversations inbox where messages from all platforms will appear. It redirects all incoming chats to this inbox, where agents can quickly respond to queries.
• Lead Management: Capture leads when people fill out information in forms. You can create lists of contacts, companies and deals and use them to design ads and send marketing emails. Track lead progress and visualize contact lifecycles through custom funnel reports.
• Quote Management: You can use quote templates or create custom ones with logos, signatures and themes. The solution offers quote summaries that give you a full picture of how much customers are charged, including discounts, fees and taxes. Generate quotes in PDF and share them through page URL or email.

Limitations

• The platform doesn’t offer out-of-the-box partner portal or partner management capabilities.
• It doesn’t have a built-in vendor portal.
• No native support for live chat in mobile apps.

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Bigin by Zoho CRM

Bigin is a CRM system suitable for small businesses in real estate, software consulting, education, legal and automotive industries. It helps a wide range of users, including salespeople, product managers, help desk technicians and talent acquisition directors. The solution has native iOS and Android mobile apps and provides a mobile-friendly, responsive web design.

Pricing: Bigin offers a 30-day free trial. It has three pricing options — Free for $0/user/month, Express for $7/user/month and Premier for $12/user/month. These prices are based on annual subscriptions.

Top Benefits

• Simplify Tasks: You can specify conditions that, when met, will trigger workflows. This capability automatically takes care of your processes and saves your team’s effort. Send automatic welcome emails, set up deal alerts and schedule workflows for later. Teams need to complete a checklist of items to move records between stages, helping create accountability.
• Enhance Call Management: Make and receive calls from the platform and log them in the Activities module for future reference. Route relevant calls to the right sales rep and enjoy voice recording capabilities.
• Handle Customer Records With Ease: Configure workflows that enable automatic record creation in team pipelines to capture business activities. It’s especially helpful when a customer’s journey needs multiple interactions with multiple teams.
• Enjoy Robust File Cabinets: Use the file cabinet feature to create unique links that allow customers to upload and collect files. The system generates OTPs when a customer tries accessing a link to ensure secure file transfer.
• Improve Email Management: You can convert emails from individuals into records in relevant team pipelines. When you receive emails from people who are not contacts, Bigin automatically creates new contacts for them. View and reply to emails directly from the conversations tab of records.

Primary Features

• Pipeline Management: Create team pipelines to store records like deals, refunds and testimonials. You can customize them to have different fields, stages and profile permissions. The solution also lets you make sub-pipelines within team pipelines, making it easier to be organized.
• Form Creation: Use a drag-and-drop interface to create forms. Embed forms on your website or share them through numerous channels like email, WhatsApp, text and social media. Bigin creates records according to the data in forms and places them in the appropriate pipeline stage.
• Products Management: Configure products manually or import them from a spreadsheet. Add prices and discounts to products and associate them with customers and ongoing deals. You can also group customers who buy specific products and monitor their pipeline performance.
• Multichannel Communication: Communicate via multiple channels, like email, WhatsApp, calls, X, Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Capture emails and automatically link them with relevant contact records.
• Dashboard and Analytics: Use dashboards to view business activities like lead status, closed deals, open tasks and marketing metrics. You can set team targets and monitor them. Track call and email metrics using pre-built dashboards.

Limitations

• The platform has only five team pipelines.
• It offers a limited number of custom fields.
• The system lacks automated lead allocation capabilities.
• It doesn’t provide out-of-box quote creation features and needs integration with Zoho Writer.

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Salesforce Starter

Salesforce Starter platform is a SaaS CRM solution that offers sales, marketing and service capabilities. It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries like retail, software and technology, media and entertainment, education, and manufacturing. It offers iOS and Android mobile apps that help sales teams and sales reps work efficiently on the go.

Pricing: Salesforce Starter is available for $25/user/month (billed annually). It comes with a 30-day free trial. Salesforce Sales Cloud has four additional plans — Professional for $80/user/month (billed annually), Enterprise for $165/user/month (billed annually), Unlimited for $330/user/month (billed annually) and Unlimited+ for $500/user/month (billed annually).

Top Benefits

• Segment Customer and Leads Smartly: Use smart segmentation to categorize customers and personalize messages. You can define rules and criteria to organize target audiences.
• Work Better With Knowledge Management: Create and publish knowledge articles. Share helpful information, like answers to frequent questions, how-tos and FAQs. You can also make article drafts for review and publishing.
• Enhance Case Management: The system allows you to create cases to manage customer support inquiries. Record client questions and feedback and get a 360-degree customer interaction view. You can send emails, track tasks and log calls related to the case. View case lifecycle from open to closed and review case history whenever needed.
• Boost Customer Engagement: Use the “Einstein Send Time Optimization” feature to send messages when the recipient is most likely to open it, eliminating guesswork and improving campaign communication.
• Enjoy AI in Activity Management: Built-in AI capabilities allow you to sync email and calendar to Salesforce. Manage emails, events and contacts with ease and save time through automation.

Primary Features

• Lead Capturing and Tracking: Track, filter and qualify prospects and customers. You can create lead and opportunity records to capture crucial details and important client conversations.
• Account Management: Salesforce Starter lets you create accounts with details like name, email address and country. Get a complete customer view along with activity history, client interactions and internal account discussions.
• Opportunity Management: Create opportunities for existing accounts and monitor important details like stage, quotes and products. You can also track opportunity updates and aspects like close date, probability and expected revenue.
• Email Management: Design personalized emails using Email Builder. The system provides pre-built email templates to build campaigns and supports up to 2,000 emails per month.
• Campaign Management: You can use templates to create and execute marketing campaigns and personalize them by segmenting customers. Manage campaign performance and track and optimize marketing campaign effectiveness with ease.

Limitations

• No live chat capabilities.
• It doesn’t offer analytics.
• The platform doesn’t have chatbot/conversational AI features.
• It lacks multi-currency support.

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Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a CRM SaaS solution suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries, including automotive sales, banking, retail, software and media. This dynamic system can help sales teams, operations managers and marketing heads with daily workflows.

Pricing: Pipedrive has a 14-day free trial that offers robust CRM features. It has five pricing options — Essential for $9.90/user/month, Advanced for $19.90/user/month, Professional for $39.90/user/month, Power for $49.90/user/month and Enterprise for $59.90/user/month. All of the prices are billed annually.

Top Benefits

• Track Deal Status: The deal rotting feature visually notifies if leads have been idle in the pipeline for too long, highlighting them in red. You can define the number of inactive days after which a deal is considered rotten.
• Store Contact Data Smartly: Smart Contact Data features find publicly available information about a customer’s email address. Gather data like location, job titles, and LinkedIn and X profiles and store it efficiently.
• Plan Better With Activity Calendars: Pipedrive lets you track tasks with an Activity Calendar and link them to deals for easy access. It enables customers to pick a comfortable slot for them and the agent. Automatically create video calls using Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.
• View Who Engages With Campaigns: The web visitors add-on helps you identify which organizations engage with your content or campaigns. View any firm’s browsing history and prioritize and rank leads based on web activity.
• Integrate With Multiple Apps: Integrate with accounting and invoicing systems, chatbots, email marketing apps, and proposal contracts. You can also connect with apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, DocuSign, Asana, Zapier and more.

Primary Features

• Web Forms: Pipedrive allows you to create web forms for an organization’s website. You can filter and prioritize leads by adding qualifying questions. Share web form links on social media and automatically import leads into a pipeline or Leads Inbox.
• Products Catalog: The system helps create customizable product catalogs of a company’s goods and services. Add product details like costs, notes, images, codes, unit prices and tax percentages.
• Document Management: You can centralize your entire documentation process and send trackable quotes, proposals and contracts from the system. Automatically create templates and track documents. Enable customers to eSign documents without printing files.
• Email Management: Create custom email templates or use pre-built ones for campaigns. You can design emails and newsletters and customize elements like titles, images, videos, icons and buttons.
• Telephony System: Directly make calls from Pipedrive without leaving the system. Log calls, adjust calling method, and record and label outgoing calls.

Limitations

• It doesn’t support scheduling reports.
• The system lacks comprehensive partner relationship management features.
• It doesn’t offer video messaging from the app.
• The platform doesn’t support call transcripts.

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monday sales CRM

monday sales CRM is a solution by monday.com suitable for small and medium businesses. It helps sales managers, sales reps and CRM consultants from industries like banking, hotels, retail, real estate and automotive industries manage client interactions.

Pricing: monday sales CRM has four pricing options — Basic CRM for $10/user/month, Standard CRM for $14/user/month, Pro CRM for $24/user/month and Enterprise CRM, for which price is available on a quote basis. The first three options come with a free trial. All four options are billed annually and require a minimum of three users.

Top Benefits

• Improve Invoice Management: You can automate internal communication to receive a notification when an invoice is ready for review. Download invoices as PDFs and send them to customers.
• Visualize Data Better: Visually differentiate data using conditional coloring, which colors cells on meeting certain criteria. Define conditions by entering a value and specifying whether a row or cell will be colored.
• Track Deal Stages: Monitor lead and deal progress in a visual and comprehensive way. The widget also allows you to reopen closed or abandoned deals and displays time spent on each stage.
• Utilize Funnel Charts: Follow deal stages from new to all the way to deals won or lost. You can also calculate percentage conversions for each stage and status.
• Work With Mobile Accessibility: Complete tasks anywhere with a mobile app available on Android and iOS. This helps sales reps work on the go and not let any important deals slip through the cracks.

Primary Features

• Lead Capturing: The system offers a “Monday Form” that integrates with the leads board, helping you capture information. Organize all relevant details and keep all qualified contacts in one place. You can also store the lead’s phone number and contact them directly from the Leads Board.
• Deals Board: Manage multiple sales pipelines and split active or closed groups based on the deal stage. View data points like deal length, value and close probability.
• Email Management: Send and receive emails and create custom email templates. The system provides email tracking and helps view read receipts. Send mass emails, follow up with multiple clients and build dynamic email marketing campaigns.
• Sales Forecasting: Use a sales forecasting template and view sales pipeline data and performance. You can create reports that track forecast vs. actual sales based on factors like monthly sales, annual sales and sales projections.
• Dashboards: monday sales CRM offers custom dashboards to visualize deal progress and team performance. It lets you create and personalize dashboards for your team’s unique needs.

Limitations

• The system doesn’t offer built-in telephony systems and needs integrations for it.
• It doesn’t offer comprehensive contact management features.
• There are no AI capabilities for lead management.
• The platform doesn’t provide partner or custom portals for partner relationship management.

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How We Choose Products

Our team of writers and analysts at SelectHub is committed to giving you the best recommendations based on our data. To make our list, products had to meet two criteria:

1. Closely match the topic
2. Earn a top-5 analyst score in our selection platform

Our analyst scores are based on an in-depth research process using primary and secondary sources. This includes SelectHub Analyst Briefings, direct communication with vendors, and reviewing materials such as user reviews, product brochures, specification sheets, case studies, user manuals, and technical documentation.

Our platform’s Scoring Engine processes the research and computes the analyst score. The score also factors in platform settings such as industry and company size.

Learn more about our research methodology and editorial standards

Primary Benefits

Here are some benefits you can enjoy if you implement a good CRM for startups for your business:

Centralize Data

Keeping data organized is vital for small businesses as it dictates the health of your current and future projects. CRMs for startups enable you to store and access data from a consolidated platform, leading to better data management and workflow efficiency. It also saves time for sales reps who don’t have to spend time switching between platforms.

Understand Data Better

CRMs help eliminate clutter and reduce data duplication. This makes your data view cleaner and simpler to understand. You can use tabs, lists and dashboards to get a comprehensive and visual representation of information. Use filters to browse data and refer to previous interactions to personalize future ones.

Enhance Collaboration

CRMs for startups help keep sales, marketing and service teams on the same page. This is especially important for small businesses as they can’t afford communication gaps that might derail campaigns. The systems ensure proper coordination and let hybrid/work-from-home teams stay on top of data.

You can set reminders and alerts, track team performance, and tag and update team members about the latest information.

Forecast Sales

Sales forecasting directly impacts your business and helps you keep up with market demands. Some of the best CRM for startups enable you to track seasonality, customer preferences and market trends.

You can identify buyer patterns and target them with hyper-personalized marketing campaigns. The systems also help you course-correct so you’re always on the right track.

Create Meaningful Customer Experiences

Today’s customers have an abundance of options. If it’s not you, it will be one of your competitors.

To ensure leads pick you, you need to be on top of customer queries and give quick replies. Alerts and reminders help sales reps provide customers with an optimal buying experience. You can also use communication templates, automated thank-you emails and chatbots on social media.

Increase Conversion Rates

With better sales forecasting, you can make quicker, smarter and more efficient business decisions. A CRM for startups provides enhanced pipeline visibility, giving sales reps a clear idea of where a lead stands and lets them strategize accordingly. And these improved sales insights lead to increased ROI in the long run.

Improve Time Allocation

CRMs for startups automate repetitive and manual tasks, allowing sales reps to focus on activities that require critical thinking and human intelligence. This automation saves energy and resources and helps sales agents manage their time better, increasing productivity.

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Key Features

Some must-have features you need for a dynamic CRM solution are:

• Contacts Management: Arguably the most important CRM feature, this capability enables you to handle, store, track and organize contact data effectively. It provides a unified view of associated accounts, tickets, opportunities, communication history, notes, activities and engagement history.
• Sales Performance Management: Monitor team performance, predict future anomalies based on past performance and get real-time sales notifications. You can manage goals, sales campaigns and targets. Sales forecasting helps you predict customer patterns and trends to stay on top of client preferences.
• Leads Management: Track client interactions from various touchpoints, including email, chats, calls and pages on your website. This feature identifies the best leads based on demographics like geography and lead score, helping your team contact the right people at the right time. You can also use business card scanner capabilities, do win-loss analysis and distribute leads automatically.
• Dashboards and Reports: This function helps you visualize data in a comprehensive yet understandable way. You can customize dashboards and reports according to your team’s unique needs and gain valuable sales insights to make smart business decisions. Activity reports, analytics, charts, pre-built dashboards and reports, dashboard and report sharing, and report preview are some functions to look out for.
• Customer Communication Management: Streamline client communication and stay on top of customer interactions. Robust CRMs for startups come with email, call, SMS and social media management capabilities. Advanced solutions provide features like a built-in caller, templates, call recording, call tagging, reminders, integrations, scheduling and mass emails.
• Opportunities/Deals Management: Create new opportunities, sort and filter present ones and manage opportunity flow from one stage to another. A CRM for startups comes with multiple sales pipelines that make deal management easier. You can also assign win-probability percentages to different opportunity stages.

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How To Choose the Best CRM for Startups

With so many vendors in the market, deciding which software would be the best for your business can get overwhelming. Jumpstart your search by considering the following aspects before committing to a purchase:

Preferred Features: Analyze your current system and identify its shortcomings. What are the most common problems you face? Which features can help maximize productivity? Take your time to make a list of requirements.

Budget: You need to be honest about your budget and how much you can afford to spend. Consider all variables like the number of users, hidden costs and maintenance fees before purchasing.

Deployment: Cloud CRM solutions are cheaper and easier to access than on-site platforms. On-premise software also needs an IT team to fix technical issues if they come up. However, it can be cost-effective for large teams with lots of data, while cloud solutions are useful for smaller teams or startups.

Integrations: Take note of apps you use daily. Your ideal solutions should integrate with your preferred apps, enabling you to streamline communication.

Customizations: What customizable features does the software offer? Does it come with any pre-built templates? What about scalability options? Investing in a scalable solution helps keep up with your company’s changing technical needs.

Automation: How well does your preferred software automate? Which tasks do you need to do on your own?

Vendor Support: Does your vendor provide hands-on customer support? Do they have 24/7 live chat? What do their onboarding and training processes look like? How do they ensure data security? How will they help you import existing data into the new software?

User Experience: A CRM for startups that is intuitive and easy to use is always a plus. It can save valuable time and money that would otherwise go into costly and time-consuming software training.

Challenges

Your CRM is only as good as your team’s ability to use it. Oftentimes, employees relegate CRM systems as mere databases when they’re capable of so much more. This leads to underutilization of CRM resources, which in turn causes poor adoption. Other times, your team members may get frustrated with the new platform and its interface.

It becomes even more difficult when the system is overloaded with features and has a complicated navigation system. Another challenge is not having the integrations your team needs, which can lead them to constantly switch between platforms and miss key data as a result.

Fortunately, training sessions about CRM software and its use can minimize most of these challenges and encourage user adoption within your company. Creating a knowledge base of resources that employees can refer to whenever needed is also useful.

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Next Steps

And that’s a wrap, folks! We hope you’ve gained new insights from our best CRM for startups list filled with details about various benefits, features and limitations. But don’t just stop here.

We’re sure you have more questions and wondering which system would fit you the best.

Check out our free comparison report to make your software selection process easier with access to dozens of popular products, scored by our analysts across features, technical requirements and more.

Which CRM for startups would be the right choice for you? Let us know in the comments below!