Streamlining customer interactions across multiple channels while tracking leads is necessary for a flawless customer experience.
Customer relationship management tools ease this process by providing a centralized platform where sales, marketing, and other teams can nurture personal connections with customers.
As a result, the business identifies customers’ needs and requirements quickly and provides personalized services. Businesses recognize the need to build and nurture customer relationships through each customer-facing team, not just the sales team and modern CRM tools are designed to do exactly that.
They connect the sales, marketing, and service teams on a common platform, allowing them to provide a seamless customer experience. Small businesses looking to integrate CRM systems into their operations can try these five free CRM tools:
What are CRM Tools?
Before looking at the five best CRM tools, we need to find out what CRM tools are, why a business needs one and how to choose the best tool.
Simply put, CRM tools are software that helps businesses organize, record, and track customer data along every stage of the buying journey.
They collect and store the data in a centralized database, helping the sales, operations, marketing, and customer service teams plan an outreach, monitor performance, and streamline core business processes.
Such efforts go a long way in personalizing services to customers, which boosts customer loyalty and satisfaction. Good CRM tools are user-friendly and reliable, meet the user’s specific needs, and provide customer support.
Investing in a fully-fledged CRM tool can be costly for many small businesses. Free CRM tools are useful as they offer services like premium software, allowing small business owners to test drive them without committing to purchase.
Even so, the businesses are restricted to handling a specific number of customer lists. Plus, they have fewer features. So before you sign up for any free CRM tool, evaluate your business needs and choose accordingly. Here are five top-rated options:
The 5 Best Free CRM Tools
After identifying the most important business needs, you can look for CRM tools with a free version. We compare five free CRM tools to help you make an informed decision.
1. Clickfunnels CRM
Clickfunnels is a great marketing and sales CRM software that helps businesses create, manage, and optimize sales funnels. It has many features to help them streamline marketing efforts while maximizing conversations.
What stands out about Clickfunnels CRM is its funnel-building feature. It enables marketers to create and tailor sales funnels, making it an invaluable tool for all business sizes.
In addition, the software has tools to help you capture leads using channels such as pop-ups, landing pages, and opt-in forms. It organizes them within the CRM, making personalized marketing easy.
As for the sales CRM features, Clickfunnels has pre-designed templates to help you kickstart funnel creation and you only need to tailor them to your goals and brand.
You’ll also love its analytics feature, which provides valuable insights into funnel performance and user behavior. Other ClickFunnels features you’ll find in its free trial, include:
- Access to all Clickfunnels tools and features
- Ability to customize sales funnel pages
- Can create and launch email campaigns
- Access to pre-built funnels
- Lifetime access to training
- It can be integrated into other software
2. GoHighLevel Software
GoHighLevel is another CRM tool that helps you manage sales and marketing efforts from one platform. Its unlimited sales funnels make it stand out, as it allows businesses to design as many marketing automation funnels as possible.
Marketers can leverage them to provide additional information about the company’s products or services while following up on potential leads. The software also has a website-building feature, that helps your sales team to build a website without the tasking coding process.
The website builders have ready-made templates to help you curate marketing-related content. GoHighLevel CRM has a14-day free trial that provides access to features such as:
- Access to a suite of tools, including marketing automation, CRM, website building and more
- Integration to business tools
- Marketing campaign set up
- Customer support
- Analytical and reporting functionalities
3. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is an excellent CRM tool for automating sales functions. It has contact management, sales pipeline visualization, and email tracking features to help the sales team monitor and improve performance.
Its free version is handy as it supports unlimited users and up to 1,000,000 contacts, allowing even large businesses to leverage it. HubSpot also has a leaderboard that displays the best-performing sales reps to create friendly competition among team members. Furthermore, with the HubSpot LinkedIn Chrome extension, sales professionals can easily access valuable prospect information directly from their LinkedIn profiles, enhancing their outreach strategies and maximizing productivity. Other features of the HubSpot free version include:
- Live chat platform
- Ad management
- A comprehensive suite of sales and marketing tools
- Can send team emails with email marketing
4. Zoho CRM
Small businesses using cloud-based systems may prefer CRM tools tailored to this function, and Zoho CRM is an excellent pick. Its free version provides access to all the features of paid plans, helping small businesses empower their sales and marketing teams.
Its omnichannel solution allows sales teams to manage customer interaction across social media, phone, live chat, and email. You can also integrate the software with other Zoho business applications – an excellent choice for businesses using Zoho software. Other features of Zoho’s 15-day free trial are:
- Supports three email addresses
- Generates over 60 reports
- Supports 2500 workflows
- Supports sales, account, and lead management
- Add 5000 contacts, accounts, or deals only
5. Freshsales
The software equips your sales team with the necessary tools to get their CRM journey going. Freshsales has a marketing email journey and chatbot features that make it ideal for businesses looking for robust CRM software.
What’s more, its visual pipeline allows your team to keep track of potential deals and with its mobile app, they can monitor performance wherever they’re in the world. Other fascinating features of Fresales’ free trial are:
- Unlimited users
- Supports three users
- Allows users to set up chatbots
- Supports multichannel communication
- Provides customer support on weekdays
- Connects marketing and sales data in one platform
The Bottom Line
While these CRM tools have free versions, they often have limitations compared to their paid counterparts. As your business grows, consider upgrading to a paid plan or exploring other CRM options that better suit your evolving needs. Always check the latest features and pricing on the respective websites before deciding.