Best of
Best CRM software: a list of CRM systems, compared on facts
CRM software keeps every customer, contact and deal in one place, with the emails, calls and notes attached, so a team can see who said what and what happens next. This CRM list covers general CRMs, industry CRMs and the marketing tools that call themselves a CRM. Each row is a fact you can check, not a score.
Side by side.
Facts a reader can check on each vendor’s own site. No prices.
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Trial, three clients
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Project board
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Booking flow
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Separate product
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- One app free
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Separate app
- Support tickets built in:
- Separate app
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Not published
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Except Enterprise
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Up to three people
- Seats from one:
- Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- With Zendesk Support
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Lead routing
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Via Sage accounting
- Support tickets built in:
- Service cases
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Via SAP ERP
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Sales add-on
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Quoted
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Klaviyo Helpdesk
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Free plan:
- Seats from one:
- Not published
- Sales pipelines:
- Invoicing built in:
- Support tickets built in:
- Conversations
| Free plan | Seats from one | Sales pipelines | Invoicing built in | Support tickets built in | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | |||||
| Copper | |||||
| Dubsado | Trial, three clients | Project board | |||
| folk | |||||
| HoneyBook | Booking flow | ||||
| Insightly | Separate product | ||||
| Keap | |||||
| Nimble | |||||
| Odoo CRM | One app free | Separate app | Separate app | ||
| Pipedrive | |||||
| Pipeliner | Not published | ||||
| Salesflare | Except Enterprise | ||||
| Spodus | Up to three people | Free up to 3; 5 on paid plans | |||
| Zendesk Sell | With Zendesk Support | ||||
| BoldTrail (kvCORE) | Quoted | ||||
| CINC | Quoted | ||||
| Elead (CDK) | Quoted | ||||
| ICE (Surefire and Velocify) | Quoted | Lead routing | |||
| Top Producer | |||||
| PeopleSoft CRM | Quoted | ||||
| Sage CRM | Quoted | Via Sage accounting | Service cases | ||
| SAP | Quoted | Via SAP ERP | |||
| ServiceNow CRM | Quoted | ||||
| ActiveCampaign | Sales add-on | ||||
| Constant Contact | Quoted | ||||
| Klaviyo | Klaviyo Helpdesk | ||||
| Mailchimp | |||||
| Clay | |||||
| Front | Not published | Conversations |
Checked on , against each vendor’s public plan pages.
Each one, plainly.
What it is, who it suits, and where it stops.
- 01
Close
A CRM with the phone inside it.
Close CRM is built for inside sales teams, with calling, SMS and email built in. Reps call from the CRM and run outreach sequences without another tool. It is used by sales teams that spend the day on the phone. It is sales only: no invoicing, no tickets and no free plan.
Best for: An outbound sales team that wants the dialer inside the CRM.
- 02
Copper
The CRM inside Google Workspace.
Copper is built inside Google Workspace. Contacts, emails and files come from Gmail, Calendar and Drive, and the CRM lives in the Gmail sidebar. Copper CRM pricing is per user, with no free plan. It has no invoicing and no help desk.
Best for: A team that runs on Google Workspace and wants the CRM inside Gmail.
- 03
Dubsado
Forms, contracts and invoices for creative businesses.
Dubsado is a client-management tool for photographers, designers and coaches, sold as the Dubsado CRM for creatives: forms, contracts, invoices, scheduling and workflows. The trial has no time limit but is capped at three clients. Its pipeline is a project board, not a sales pipeline. There is no help desk.
Best for: A creative business that wants its forms and contracts to run the client through a set flow.
- 04
folk
A lightweight CRM that looks like a spreadsheet.
folk CRM is lightweight, looks like a spreadsheet, and imports contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail and other tools. Founders, agencies and recruiters use it for outreach and light pipelines. Every plan is paid after a trial. It has no invoicing and no help desk.
Best for: A founder or a small agency doing outreach from a contact list.
- 05
HoneyBook
A client-booking tool for solo creatives.
The HoneyBook CRM is a client-booking tool for solo creatives and small studios: inquiries, proposals, contracts, invoices and scheduling. Its pipeline is a booking flow, not a sales pipeline. There is no free plan, and there is no help desk.
Best for: A photographer, planner or designer who books clients one project at a time.
- 06
Insightly
A CRM with project management attached.
Insightly CRM comes with project management attached: a won deal turns into a project with tasks. Insightly also sells a separate marketing tool and a separate service desk. The free plan was retired in late 2024, so every plan is now paid. Quotes are on the higher plans.
Best for: A team that delivers a project after every sale and wants both in one tool.
- 07
Keap
A CRM with email marketing and invoicing in one product.
The Keap CRM, formerly Infusionsoft, comes with email marketing, invoicing and appointment booking in one product. It is used by small service businesses that want follow-up emails to send themselves. There is no free plan. Support tickets are not part of it.
Best for: A small service business whose sales come from automated follow-up.
- 08
Nimble
A contact-first CRM that works from the inbox.
Nimble CRM is contact-first: it pulls in social profiles and email history for each person. It works from a browser extension and the Outlook or Gmail inbox. Solo sellers and very small teams use it to keep relationships warm. There is no free plan and no billing or support module.
Best for: A solo seller or consultant whose work is relationships, not a pipeline.
- 09
Odoo CRM
One app in an open-source business suite.
Odoo CRM is one app in Odoo, an open-source suite with accounting, invoicing, help desk and more. Odoo CRM pricing is simple: one app is free for unlimited users, and you pay once you add a second app. Invoicing and tickets are separate Odoo apps, so a CRM-only account has neither.
Best for: A company that plans to run accounting and inventory in Odoo as well.
- 10
Pipedrive
A sales pipeline CRM.
Pipedrive is a CRM built around a visual sales pipeline. Reps drag deals between stages and log calls, emails and notes on each one. It is used by small sales teams that want a pipeline and little else. There is no free plan, and invoicing and support tickets are not part of it.
Best for: A small sales team that lives in the pipeline and bills elsewhere.
- 11
Pipeliner
A visual sales CRM for mid-sized sales teams.
Pipeliner CRM is a sales CRM known for its visual pipeline and its reporting. It is sold to mid-sized sales teams, often through a partner network. All plans are paid. It does not include invoicing or a help desk.
Best for: A sales manager who wants pipeline reporting more than a simple tool.
- 12
Salesflare
A B2B CRM that fills itself in.
Salesflare CRM is built for small B2B teams and fills itself in from email, calendar and phone data. It is known for needing little manual entry. All plans are paid after a trial, and the top plan has a five-user minimum. It is sales only: no invoices, no tickets.
Best for: A small B2B sales team that hates data entry.
- 13
Spodus
A CRM on the same record as the invoice, the ticket and the task.
Spodus is a client-operations workspace with a CRM inside it: contacts, companies, pipelines and deals with close dates. The same customer record carries invoices, quotes, support tickets and tasks, so a deal and its invoice are one 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 service business that wants the CRM, billing and support on one customer record.
- 14
Zendesk Sell
The sales CRM sold beside the Zendesk help desk.
Zendesk CRM is Zendesk Sell, a sales CRM sold beside the Zendesk help desk. It has pipelines, calling and email, and it shares customer records with Zendesk Support if you buy both. There is no free plan. Invoicing is not part of it.
Best for: A support team already on Zendesk that needs a pipeline for the sales side.
- 15
BoldTrail (kvCORE)
The real estate platform that used to be kvCORE.
The kvCORE CRM was renamed BoldTrail by Inside Real Estate in 2024. It is a brokerage platform: CRM, IDX websites, lead routing and marketing automation for real estate teams. It is sold by quote, mostly to brokerages rather than to single agents.
Best for: A brokerage that wants websites, leads and the CRM from one vendor.
- 16
CINC
Real estate lead generation with a CRM behind it.
CINC CRM, from Commissions Inc, is a real estate lead-generation and CRM platform for teams and brokerages. It buys and routes online leads and runs the follow-up for agents. It is sold by quote, and it is built only for real estate.
Best for: A real estate team that buys online leads and needs them routed.
- 17
Elead (CDK)
A CRM for car dealerships.
Elead CRM, from CDK Global, is built for car dealerships: showroom traffic, internet leads, desking and follow-up. It is priced by quote per dealership. It is not a general CRM.
Best for: A car dealership, and nobody else.
- 18
ICE (Surefire and Velocify)
Mortgage CRM tools from ICE Mortgage Technology.
ICE Mortgage Technology, part of Intercontinental Exchange, sells the CRM tools searched for as ICE CRM: Surefire, a marketing CRM for mortgage lenders, and Velocify, a lead-routing tool for loan officers, beside its Encompass loan system. Both are sold by quote, and only to the mortgage industry.
Best for: A mortgage lender already on Encompass.
- 19
Top Producer
A real estate CRM for agents and teams.
Top Producer CRM is built for real estate agents and small teams: lead follow-up, MLS-linked market reports and drip campaigns. It is sold per user, with team plans, and there is no free trial. It does nothing outside real estate.
Best for: A real estate agent who wants follow-up tied to listings.
- 20
PeopleSoft CRM
Oracle's older CRM suite, still supported.
PeopleSoft CRM is Oracle's older CRM suite, still supported for the large organisations that run PeopleSoft. New buyers are steered to Oracle's cloud customer products instead. It is an enterprise system, sold by quote.
Best for: An organisation already on PeopleSoft that wants one more module rather than a new vendor.
- 21
Sage CRM
The CRM for companies on Sage accounting.
Sage CRM is a CRM for companies that run Sage accounting, such as Sage 300 or Sage 100. Sales, marketing and service cases sit beside the accounts. It is sold through Sage partners, by quote, and is mostly used by mid-sized firms already on Sage.
Best for: A mid-sized company on Sage accounting that wants the CRM to see the accounts it already has.
- 22
SAP
SAP CRM, now SAP Sales Cloud.
SAP CRM is the older on-premise CRM from SAP; the current products are SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud. They are enterprise systems, sold by quote and set up by consultants. They are not built for a small business.
Best for: A large company already running SAP for finance and operations.
- 23
ServiceNow CRM
Sales and service on the ServiceNow platform.
ServiceNow CRM is a newer product line from ServiceNow, built on its workflow platform, for sales and customer service at large companies. It is sold by quote with an implementation project. It is not a small-business CRM.
Best for: A large company already on ServiceNow for IT that wants customer work on the same platform.
- 24
ActiveCampaign
Email marketing first, with a sales CRM attached.
ActiveCampaign is email marketing and automation first. The CRM ActiveCampaign sells is a sales pipeline attached to that, with deals, tasks and lead scoring. It is used by teams whose main job is email campaigns. There is no free plan, no invoicing and no help desk.
Best for: A marketing-led business that wants deals to sit beside its email automations.
- 25
Constant Contact
The Lead Gen & CRM product, formerly SharpSpring.
Constant Contact CRM is the Lead Gen & CRM product, which was SharpSpring until Constant Contact bought it in 2021. It is marketing automation with a CRM inside: forms, scoring, email and a pipeline. The plain Constant Contact email product is not a CRM.
Best for: A marketing team that wants automation and a pipeline from one vendor.
- 26
Klaviyo
A B2C CRM for online stores, built on email and SMS.
Klaviyo CRM is how Klaviyo now describes itself: a B2C CRM for online stores, built on email and SMS marketing. It is used by ecommerce brands, not by sales teams, and its help desk is sold as Klaviyo Helpdesk. There is a free plan, capped by contacts. There is no sales pipeline and no invoicing.
Best for: An online store that wants marketing and customer data in one place.
- 27
Mailchimp
Email marketing with a contact list it calls a CRM.
Mailchimp CRM is not a separate product. Mailchimp is email marketing with an audience list, tags, segments and a simple contact view, which it calls its CRM. It fits a business whose customer work is newsletters and campaigns. There is a free plan, but no pipeline, no invoicing and no help desk.
Best for: A business whose whole customer contact is a newsletter.
- 28
Clay
Two products share the name, and neither is a team CRM.
Clay CRM means two different products, and neither is a team CRM. Clay, at clay.com, is a data-enrichment and prospecting tool that builds lead lists from many sources and pushes them into a CRM; it is not a CRM itself. Clay, at clay.earth, is a personal CRM app for keeping up with your own network. Both have a free plan.
Best for: A sales team building lead lists, or one person keeping up with contacts.
- 29
Front
A shared inbox, not a CRM.
There is no Front CRM: Front is a shared inbox, not a CRM. Teams answer email, chat and SMS together, with assignments and comments on each thread. It connects to a CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce rather than replacing one. There is no free plan.
Best for: A team that answers a shared address together and keeps its CRM elsewhere.
How we chose.
We started with the CRM vendors people search for by name, from the popular CRM systems to the industry ones, and added the marketing tools that call themselves a CRM. Then we read each vendor's public plan pages on the date above and wrote down what they say. The table runs in five groups, general sales CRMs first, then industry CRMs, then the enterprise suites, then the marketing-led tools, then the inbox and data tools people search for as a CRM, and the names are alphabetical inside each group. The columns are facts, not scores: whether there is a free plan, whether a seat minimum applies, and whether the CRM has pipelines, invoicing and support tickets of its own. There is no ranking. The most popular CRM software is not the best CRM for every team, and the top CRM companies change their plans often, so check the vendor's site before you decide.
More best-of lists.
The same table, dated the same way, for the other categories a service business buys.
- Best ofBest CRM for small business, 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
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You get every product: CRM, invoicing, support, team, chat and Spodus AI, which asks before it changes anything. Upgrade when your team grows.
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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
The names that appear on most lists of the top CRM companies are Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle, SAP and Adobe. On lists written for small businesses, the names given as the most popular CRM systems are HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, monday CRM and Freshsales. Any top 10 CRM list mixes those two groups, so ask which group you belong to before you read one.
Salesforce is the most popular CRM by revenue and by market share. HubSpot is the most used free CRM. Among small businesses, popular CRM software also includes Zoho CRM and Pipedrive. Popular is not the same as right: a real estate team is better served by a real estate CRM, and a two-person studio by a simpler tool.
No CRM list is complete. There are thousands of CRM providers, and new ones appear every month. This CRM tools list covers the CRM software companies people search for by name, plus the general CRMs a small business usually shortlists. Review sites such as G2 and Capterra keep a longer list of CRM systems, sorted by user ratings.
Not much. Vendors use system, platform and tool for the same product, so lists of top CRM platforms and top CRM systems name the same names. A CRM platform usually means one you can extend with apps and custom objects, such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Odoo. Top CRM tools for a small business are simpler: a pipeline, contacts and email sync. When you compare top CRM software, read the table, not the label.
It depends on what marketing means for you. For email campaigns with a pipeline attached, ActiveCampaign and Keap are the usual picks. For an online store, Klaviyo. For newsletters alone, Mailchimp is enough, and it is not really a CRM. For a sales team that also sends some email, a sales CRM with email sync is the better base.
For a small team, the best app for CRM work is the one the whole team will open every day. Pipedrive, Copper and folk are simple and work well on a phone. If customers also need invoices and support, an all-in-one such as Spodus or Keap keeps that on one record. Try two for a week with real customers before you choose.
Apple does not sell a CRM. People searching for an Apple CRM usually want a CRM that runs well on a Mac or an iPhone. Daylite is built only for Apple devices. Most other CRMs on this list run in a browser, so they work on a Mac, and most have an iPhone app. Spodus does not have a phone app yet.