Best of
Best CRM for small business, compared on facts
The best CRM for small business is the one your team will keep using: contacts, a pipeline and email sync, without an admin to run it. A small company often wants a free plan or a low floor to clear, and sometimes quotes and support in the same tool. This table lists those facts for eleven CRMs.
Side by side.
Facts a reader can check on each vendor’s own site. No prices.
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Commerce Hub
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Higher plans
- Invoices:
- Higher plans
- Support tickets:
- Zoho Desk
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Higher plans
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Via accounting apps
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Higher plans
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Separate product
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Three-seat minimum
- Quotes:
- Higher plans
- Invoices:
- Higher plans
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quotes:
- Pro Suite
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
- Free plan:
- Up to three people
- Seats from one:
- Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans
- Quotes:
- Invoices:
- Support tickets:
| Free plan | Seats from one | Quotes | Invoices | Support tickets | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Commerce Hub | ||||
| Zoho CRM | Higher plans | Higher plans | Zoho Desk | ||
| Pipedrive | Higher plans | ||||
| Capsule | Via accounting apps | ||||
| Less Annoying CRM | |||||
| Insightly | Higher plans | Separate product | |||
| Copper | |||||
| Keap | |||||
| monday CRM | Three-seat minimum | Higher plans | Higher plans | ||
| Salesforce Starter | Pro Suite | ||||
| Spodus | Up to three people | Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans |
Checked on , against each vendor’s public plan pages.
Each one, plainly.
What it is, who it suits, and where it stops.
- 01
HubSpot
The free CRM most small businesses try first.
HubSpot CRM is the most common first CRM for a small business because the core is free: contacts, deals, email tracking and forms. Quotes are on the free plan too. Invoices come through Commerce Hub, and tickets through Service Hub. Each paid hub is bought separately, and the free tools stop where the hubs begin.
Best for: A small team that wants to start free and grow into the paid hubs.
- 02
Zoho CRM
A full CRM with a free plan and low-cost paid tiers.
Zoho CRM has a free plan for up to three users and paid plans above it. Quotes and invoices are modules on the higher plans, and they connect to Zoho Books. Support tickets are a separate product, Zoho Desk. It does a lot, and the setup shows it.
Best for: A small company that will use several Zoho apps and does not mind configuring them.
- 03
Pipedrive
A pipeline-first CRM for small sales teams.
Pipedrive is a pipeline-first CRM that small sales teams pick for its simplicity. Deals move across stages, and activity reminders keep the follow-up honest. Quotes and proposals come from Smart Docs on the higher plans. There is no free plan, no invoicing and no help desk.
Best for: A sales team of two to twenty whose whole job is moving deals.
- 04
Capsule
A simple CRM with a free plan for two people.
Capsule CRM is a simple CRM for very small teams, with a free plan for two users. Contacts, a pipeline, tasks and a project board are the whole product. Invoices come from Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent through an integration. There are no quotes and no tickets.
Best for: A two- or three-person business that wants a CRM it can learn in an afternoon.
- 05
Less Annoying CRM
One plan, phone support from real people.
Less Annoying CRM is a CRM for small businesses that sells one plan and nothing else. Contacts, a pipeline, a calendar and tasks, with phone support from real people. There is no free plan, only a trial. It has no quotes, no invoices and no help desk.
Best for: A small business that wants a CRM with no settings to get lost in.
- 06
Insightly
A CRM with projects attached.
Insightly is a CRM with projects attached, so a won deal becomes a delivery project with tasks. Its free plan ended in late 2024. Quotes are on the higher plans, and there is no invoicing. Service tickets are a separate Insightly product.
Best for: A small company that delivers a project after each sale.
- 07
Copper
The CRM that lives inside Gmail.
Copper is the CRM for companies on Google Workspace: it reads Gmail, Calendar and Drive and lives in the Gmail sidebar. Small agencies and consultancies use it. There is no free plan. Quotes, invoices and tickets are not part of it.
Best for: A Google Workspace company that wants the CRM to fill itself in from email.
- 08
Keap
CRM, email marketing, quotes and invoices in one.
Keap is a CRM with email marketing, invoicing and quotes in one product, aimed at small service businesses. Automated follow-up is its main reason to exist. There is no free plan, and the setup takes time. Support tickets are not included.
Best for: A small service business that sells through email follow-up and bills from the same tool.
- 09
monday CRM
A board-based CRM from monday.com.
monday CRM is the sales product from monday.com: a board-based CRM with pipelines, email sync and, on the higher plans, quotes and invoices. Paid plans have a three-seat minimum. There is no free plan for the CRM product, and there is no help desk.
Best for: A team that already thinks in monday.com boards and wants the CRM to look the same.
- 10
Salesforce Starter
The small-business edition of Salesforce.
Salesforce Starter is the small-business edition of Salesforce: sales, service and email marketing in one plan, sold per user with no minimum. Cases give you support tickets. Quotes arrive with the Pro Suite. It is the same Salesforce underneath, which is both the appeal and the learning curve.
Best for: A small company that expects to be a large one and wants to start on the platform it will end up on.
- 11
Spodus
A CRM with quotes, invoices and support tickets on the same record.
Spodus is a client-operations workspace with the CRM as one part: contacts, companies, pipelines and deals with close dates. Quotes, invoices, support tickets and tasks sit on the same customer record. It is free for up to three people, and paid plans start at three seats. It has no dialer, no SMS and no email campaigns.
Best for: A small service business that sells, bills and supports the same customers.
How we chose.
We picked the CRMs a small company is most likely to shortlist, including the ones people search for as the best CRM software for small businesses or simply a good CRM for small business, and read each vendor's public plan pages on the date above. The columns are what a small team asks first: is there a free plan, is there a seat minimum, and can it send a quote, send an invoice and hold a support ticket. No prices, because they change; no scores, because your team is not ours.
More best-of lists.
The same table, dated the same way, for the other categories a service business buys.
- Best ofBest CRM software: a list of CRM systems, compared on facts
- Best ofBest HR management software for small and mid-sized teams
- Best ofBest helpdesk system for small support teams
- Best ofBest invoice software for small business, compared on facts
- Best ofBest agency management software, compared on facts
- Best ofBest project management software, compared on facts
- Head to headSpodus against one tool at a time
Two ways
to start
Start fresh today, or bring the clients, deals and history you already have.
Start fresh
Free for up to three people.
You get every product: CRM, invoicing, support, team, chat and Spodus AI, which asks before it changes anything. Upgrade when your team grows.
Start for freeBring your data
Bring your data from the tool you use now.
Your deals arrive with their stages, owners and dates. Connect your work email, and each client's emails land on their record. On a paid plan, we'll move it all for you, free.
See the whole workspace, not one row of it.
Start today, or bring your own data to a demo and see it there.
Questions, answered
For most small companies, a simple CRM beats a big one: HubSpot if you want a free start, Pipedrive if sales is the whole job, Capsule or Less Annoying CRM if the team is two or three people. If the same customers also get invoices and support requests, an all-in-one such as Spodus or Keap keeps that on one record.
monday CRM has a three-seat minimum on paid plans, so a two-person team pays for a third seat nobody uses. Spodus has the same three-seat minimum on paid plans, but a team of up to three can use it free. Every other CRM in the table sells from one seat. HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Capsule and Spodus have free plans, so you can try them without paying.
HubSpot has the most small-business users, because the free plan removes the first decision. Zoho CRM and Pipedrive follow. Being the top CRM for small business by count does not make it the best CRM for small companies in a given trade: a real estate team, a clinic or an agency each has CRMs built for them, and those usually fit better than a general one.
G2, Capterra and GetApp collect CRM reviews for small business, and you can filter by company size. Read the three-star reviews first: they say what a product does badly without anger. Then run a two-week trial with your own customers and your own emails. A review tells you how a CRM worked for someone else's team, and that is all it can tell you.