7 Best Free CRM Software
For every sales and marketing manager, organizing customer data, identifying opportunities, and capturing potential leads while also building a synergy between marketing, sales, and support teams can be a challenging task.
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can help manage client information, track customer interactions, and automate marketing and sales processes. Before making an investment, consider free CRM software, which will help you test the usability of the software for you.
We highlight the top seven free CRM software products for marketing and sales professionals, in alphabetical order, based on verified software reviews. Read more.
Check out the complete list of CRM tools in Software Advice's software directory.
1. Bitrix24: Offers a sales intelligence module
As a CRM tool, Bitrix24 lets you manage leads, engage with clients, and close deals. It offers complete control over the sales process—from capturing high-quality leads and converting them into customers to preparing bills and invoices. The tool lets you run segment-based email campaigns for qualified leads and create targeted campaigns based on contact information. Using its sales intelligence module, you can track your marketing costs and calculate ROI to identify the best-performing marketing channels. Bitrix24 has a mobile app for Android and iOS users.
Free features*:
Sales automation: Automate sales with CRM rules and triggers that auto-launch ad and email campaigns, create invoices or documents, and move a deal through different stages in the sales funnel.
Inventory management: Manage your stock and warehouses, and get full visibility over the sales process within the CRM solution.
Client service and communications: Engage with your clients using live chat, web forms, email, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc., and manage all your client interactions from a single dashboard.
Client management: Plan meetings with clients, use the automatic dialer, leave comments for each deal, and manage client appointments.
Customer support options: FAQs, how-to videos, and an online ticketing system
Highest rated features: | Mobile access, Task management, and Reporting/analytics |
Ease-of-use rating: | 86% of users said Bitrix24 is easy to use. |
2. EngageBay: Facilitates email tracking
EngageBay’s free CRM software offers targeted marketing, workflow automation, and deal pipeline visualization, among other features. The tool offers a holistic view of all customer interactions to gain actionable insights. EngageBay facilitates email tracking that helps you capture leads from received emails and send appropriate communication to engage them. The tool has a mobile app for Android and iOS users.
Free features*:
360-degree customer view: Build profiles for each contact (including contact information, communication history, social media profiles, personal interests, points of engagement, lead scores, and related tasks and notes) to understand customer behavior and personalize engagement to convert more leads.
Lead qualification and management: Identify the most promising leads by assigning a score to them based on the actions they take on your website, the funnel stage they are in, etc. You can also create to-do tasks for each lead and track them from a unified dashboard.
Appointment scheduling: Schedule client appointments, sync with Google or Office 365 Calendar, and send out confirmation or reminder emails. You can also add buffer times before and after events to customize schedules.
Customer support options: A knowledge base and inquiries via email
Highest rated features: | Task management, Workflow management, and Lead management |
Ease-of-use rating: | 92% of users said EngageBay is easy to use. |
3. eWay-CRM: Converts email inquiries into deals
eWay-CRM integrates with Microsoft Outlook to help businesses manage their contacts and companies shared within the team, customer database, and sales and marketing functions. The tool enables its users to organize emails by contacts and deals, and convert received email inquiries into a deal with a single click. It offers a multifunctional address book that maintains all the customers’, partners’, and competitors’ information, sorted and filtered as per significance, potential, relationship type, and other custom fields. eWay-CRM is web-based and also has a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.
Free features*:
Sales automation: Track sales opportunities, record communications, and plan follow-ups with customized workflows and automated task generation.
Reporting with Power BI: Leverage the free Power BI sales executive dashboard app to create detailed sales reports, get insights into each employee’s performance, and export predefined reports, such as sales figures and staff time sheets as Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF files.
Email marketing: Execute customized email campaigns by sending personalized messages and quotes to potential customers and track feedback. You can also track the number of sent, delivered, and opened emails, and the number of hyperlink clicks.
Project management: Monitor emails, plan tasks and subtasks, manage your calendar, and record all communication in a unified dashboard.
Customer support options: Message, chat, and email
Highest rated features: | Contact database, Email management, and Data import/export |
Ease-of-use rating: | 93% of users said eWay-CRM is easy to use. |
4. Freshsales: Captures visitor data with an AI-powered chatbot
Freshsales helps small businesses attract and drive quality leads with AI-powered insights and nurture customer relationships. Its AI-powered chatbot enables sales reps to capture visitor information, understand their intent, engage in contextual conversations, get insights into the best customer deals, and forecast sales. Freshsales has a mobile app for iOS and Android users.
Free features*:
Contact lifecycle management: Map your unique sales process with personalized stages of a contact’s lifecycle and track its journey into becoming a customer.
Personalized customer experience: Leverage stored customer data, including contact details, historical interactions, and behavioral insights, to deliver personalized experiences and boost conversions.
CRM customization: Rename existing modules to match your business approach and use unique fields containing a value that helps you differentiate records, preventing duplication.
Sales activities: Add follow-up tasks, set appointments, and make quick notes to record each detail. You can also view, add, update, and delete deals to manage your sales pipelines.
Customer support options: Email, built-in chat, call, and a knowledge base
Highest rated features: | Contact database, Sales pipeline management, and Lead capturing |
Ease-of-use rating: | 85% of users said Freshsales is easy to use. |
Contact management in Freshsales (Source)
5. HubSpot Sales Hub: Comprises sales engagement tools
HubSpot Sales Hub supports email tracking, lead management, contact management, outbound and inbound marketing, sales automation, and sales pipeline management. The software includes sales engagement tools such as management playbooks to provide your employees with competitive call scripts and guides and improve sales enablement and faster onboarding. HubSpot CRM is a web-based CRM platform accessible on mobile devices, desktops, and tablets.
Free features*:
Customizable quotes and deals: Generate customizable quotes, add deals, assign tasks, and monitor progress in your dashboards to streamline sales pipeline tracking. Automate follow-up tasks to stay on top of your sales process.
Email management: Write one-on-one prospect emails and schedule them for the right time, track emails, and receive real-time notifications when an email is opened or clicked. You can also track which contact responded to an email and use that data for reporting.
Sales analytics and reporting: Automate administrative tasks and get full visibility into your sales and marketing process, identifying best-performing campaigns and accurately forecasting business revenue.
Customer support options: Chat, call, and email
Highest rated features: | Lead management, Contact management, and Lead qualification |
Ease-of-use rating: | 92% of users said HubSpot Sales Hub is easy to use. |
Prospects data in HubSpot Sales Hub (Source)
6. Really Simple Systems CRM: Complies with GDPR and HIPAA
Really Simple Systems CRM helps users track sales opportunities, prioritize potential leads, and create custom quotations and invoices. The CRM tool enables you to build personalized campaigns and send targeted emails to your customers. It captures potential leads from the business’s website and assigns them to the right sales rep for follow-up. Really Simple Systems CRM also complies with GDPR and HIPAA policies, which regulate the use of personal data to store customer data securely.
Free features*:
Sales management: Manage your customers and prospects, track opportunities through your sales funnel, create custom quotations, and forecast sales to streamline sales management processes.
Reporting: Create custom reports for your business, add ad-hoc listings, and forecast sales on all your CRM data.
CRM customization: Use diverse CRM customization options such as custom fields, tables, drop-down lists, and pages to fit your business needs. You can also add and remove dashboard widgets to align with your requirements.
Customer support options: Chat and email
Highest rated features: | Contact management, Interaction tracking, and Email management |
Ease-of-use rating: | 92% of users said Really Simple Systems CRM is easy to use. |
Sales dashboard in Really Simple Systems CRM (Source)
7. Streak: Helps avoid rewriting emails
Streak’s customer relationship management tool helps sales, marketing, and customer service teams keep track of leads and projects, close deals, and prioritize tickets. The tool integrates with Google Sheets and offers automatically updated Magic Columns to streamline data management. To avoid rewriting emails, Streak builds a library of commonly sent emails and shares it with your entire team. Streak has a mobile application for both Android and iOS users.
Free features*:
Pipeline management: Get a customizable view of your pipelines, track and share customer interactions with your entire team, view upcoming tasks across pipelines, and automate follow-ups.
Workflow customization: Customize your workflow by adding, removing, rearranging, and personalizing pipeline stages, and import and export data using Google Sheets.
Task management: Stay on top of your upcoming tasks with the Today Widget in the CRM mobile app, send contacts from your pipeline to your phone and connect with clients and prospects, and automate call logging for future reference.
Email tracking: Receive notifications as and when someone views your email, and sort your tracked emails for follow-up. You can also send and schedule personalized mass emails.
Customer support options: Message and tutorials
Highest rated features: | Email management, Contact management, and Lead management |
Ease-of-use rating: | 83% of users said Streak is easy to use. |
How to choose the best free CRM software for your business
The customer relationship management software you choose should help you manage customer information, provide behavioral insights, track sales opportunities, and ensure better revenue forecasting. Here are some considerations to keep in mind before investing in a CRM solution:
Identify your CRM requirements: Businesses typically need a CRM tool to streamline their sales pipeline, store customer data centrally, capture sales opportunities, and enable proper client communication. You should identify your business requirements before you shortlist a solution. If your software doesn’t align with your business needs, it may fail to provide the expected results.
Analyze lead and sales management capabilities: Lead generation is one of the most important features of a CRM tool. The solution you choose should be able to generate maximum leads from a variety of channels, including social media, website traffic, inbound calls, and newsletter sign-ups. Besides that, it should also offer lead qualification, scoring, and nurturing functionalities. You can also look for automatic follow-ups on tasks via email scheduling.
Understand marketing and workflow automation features: Marketing and workflow automation tools streamline customer data management while also helping marketers create personalized marketing campaigns. Pick a tool that records all interactions between your sales rep and the customer, uses it to run personalized campaigns, and eliminates manual data entry tasks. It should also help sales teams retrieve relevant documents or transcripts and address customer queries immediately.
What is the cost of upgrading from a free CRM software plan to a paid one?
In case you want to scale your sales and marketing efforts and require more features, check the cost you would incur when you upgrade from the free plan. Most products in the market are priced on a "per user, per month" basis and can be broken down into three common pricing tiers based on their starting price.
Price ranges:*
$5 - $9
$10 - $15
$16+
*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on October 29, 2022. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.
Hidden costs associated with CRM software
The above pricing list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features, for example, data filters and segmentation, marketing automation tools, and advanced forecasting. However, even the free plan may have some hidden charges, such as training and implementation costs, customization costs, add-on charges, and integration and scalability costs. Before making a choice, ask the software vendor about any such hidden charges to ensure full pricing transparency.
Frequently asked questions when selecting free CRM software
Here are some questions to ask customer relationship management software providers before making a final purchase:
How easy is it to integrate the software with the tools I already have? Tools that integrate with existing business apps, such as accounting and marketing software, help boost contact management efficiency. Ask the vendor if their free CRM software supports required integrations.
Are there any limitations on the number of users? Most free versions do not offer unlimited user access. Before investing in a tool, make sure it incorporates a sufficient number of users.
What are the available deployment and access options? Managing sales pipelines often involves quick iterations and updates. Ideally, the CRM tool you choose should be web-based to facilitate remote work and connectivity from any part of the world. Look for a remotely accessible tool to provide the best work environment to your team members 24/7.
Methodology
To be considered for this list, products must:
Have at least 20 unique product reviews published on Software Advice within the past two years, with an average rating of 3.0 or higher as of October 29, 2022. We selected the seven products with the highest ratings to feature in this article.
Offer a free, standalone version of the software (not a trial version of the software where you must purchase a product after a limited amount of time).
Meet our CRM software market definition: “Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps automate and manage the customer lifecycle for sales and marketing departments. CRM software consolidates customer information into one repository so that users can better organize and manage relationships, automates common processes, and provides tools for monitoring performance and productivity."
*Product features have been highlighted based on the features available in the free plan on the vendor website as of October 29, 2022.
We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.
Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s CRM software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Software Advice directory that offer them.
Product research for this article was contributed by Himanshi Arora.