Five Best CRMs for Startups

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is vital for every business to manage customer relationships. 

It’s hard to digest but the fact is, around 20% of startups fail within the first year of launch.

Therefore, you need a CRM tool to increase engagement and customer experience.

When choosing a CRM for your startup, you need to consider factors such as flexibility, learning curve, and cost. 

With so many CRM tools launching, choosing the best CRM for your startup can be daunting. In this article, you will learn the five best CRMs for startups to help you make an informed decision. 

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Before we begin, let’s have a look at the features you need to take into consideration when choosing a CRM solution. Keep reading!

Features To Look For When Choosing The Best Crms For Startups

Before buying your CRM software, please consider the following features:

Accessibility: You should easily log into the CRM software using a desktop, laptop, or mobile phone.

Sales and marketing automation: The CRM software should automate sales and marketing processes to save you time.

Lead scoring: Understanding your leads increase customer lifetime value. So, it’s imperative to choose a CRM software that offers lead scoring at an affordable cost.

Integration: Make sure your CRM software has application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow it to integrate with a wide range of third-party applications.

Customization: When dealing with many customers, personalized sales or marketing pitches are generated. Hence, choose a CRM that allows customization.

Reporting measures: Your CRM should offer a seamless dashboard to display various analytics and reports, vital in predicting future sales via forecasting options.

Mobile and social support: Research shows that mobile phones generate 51.3% of global web traffic. So, CRMs should be compatible with mobile devices, and their features should support social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Here are the five best CRMs for startups.

EngageBay

EngageBay is a powerful customer relationship management tool. It offers workflow automation with targeted personalization to offer an exceptional customer experience. This CRM is best for your startup as it helps in boosting engagements that you can convert into sales. It offers a wide variety of marketing tools like landing page assistance and email marketing, thus allowing you to create awareness about your business effectively.

Pros

• The free plan offers a robust selection of tools
• You can maintain all your contacts in one place
• You can view your sales pipeline and check the status of every deal
• You can also leverage the power of gamification to keep your team motivated
• Ability to track activities like click rates, web activity, and email response
• Provides live chat integration tool for your website

Zoho CRM

Your startup needs to utilize social media for potential customer engagements effectively. Zoho CRM is the best bet for your business as it can integrate with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This integration allows you to monitor conversions, share content and generate leads. Therefore, you can grow your leads from content marketing.

Zoho offers robust tools for lead generation, work automation, pipeline management, robust reporting, and analytics. This CRM offers a free plan that helps manage leads and collaboration using direct messaging and syncing team calendars. However, if you want sales forecasting and social media management features, you will upgrade to the standard plan.

Pros

• Easy to use and navigate 
• Allows you to manage leads
• Offers robust products

HubSpot CRM

The HubSpot CRM is the best and the most innovative CRMs in the industry. This CRM comes with fantastic e-signature, email tracking, and automation tools. Additionally, it offers free live chat software that you can use to connect with your online clients. Having this connection can increase your chances of converting leads to customers. If the main goal for your startup company is to build trust and new relationships, then HubSpot CRM is the best bet.

Pros

• Availability of rich training resources
• Discounts for qualified startups
• Excellent customer experience

Agile CRM

Agile CRM  offers a free plan with robust sales and marketing features like thousands of company records or contacts, a lead scoring tool, custom deal milestones, and an in-built appointment scheduler. You can hold friendly competitions among your sales teams to keep them on their toes and keep your workplace organized.

You will need to upgrade to a Starter plan to use email integration and marketing automation. However, telephonic capabilities via integration are only available on Regular plans.

Pros 

• Offers a free plan for up to ten users
• The free plan offers lead scoring and appointment scheduling
• A wide variety of deals

Insightly

Insightly is the best choice for startups that require project management tools in their CRM. It helps you manage your project effectively using calendar syncing and task tracking.

This software comes with powerful features to increase efficiency in your startup and save time. You can, for example, send, track, and create emails from within Insightly’s email marketing tools. Plus, you will know the kind of click and open-through rates your emails are generating.

Pros

• Affordable and easy to use
• Project management capabilities
• You can design and customize your dashboard

Endnote

CRMs are vital for your company’s growth, organization, and efficiency. It helps in the daily processes to save time using features like marketing automation, lead, and contact management.

Make sure that your CRM is affordable and flexible enough to adapt to changing environments and that it offers powerful features that will help your startup grow. Additionally, ask for personalized training before installing your CRM to ensure it’s working in line with your customer dynamics. Plus, choose a straightforward software to use across all organizational levels.

There are many CRMs in the market, making it challenging to tell the right one for you. The above list offers an excellent choice for startups, so go for the one that suits your business needs.