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8 Best Free CRM Systems for 2022

Choose the free customer relationship management app that suits your business.

If you're reading this article, you may be using Excel, Google Sheets, or a simple notepad to keep track of your sales, contacts , and even projects. In this case, a CRM system can make your life much easier. With customer relationship management (CRM) software, you can improve your business organization, become more productive, and serve your customers better. In addition, there are free options for such software.

Dozens of companies offer free CRM plans with the expectation that you will love using their software, so you will eventually upgrade to a paid plan or at least recommend the CRM to other people.

We reviewed over twenty free CRM systems and, after extensive testing, came up with a final list of eight options to suit a variety of companies and use cases.

What should be a quality-free CRM system?

The best CRM systems don't try to reinvent the wheel, they seek to make it more efficient. That is, UX or other features and features of the CRM system should be familiar enough so that any person, even if he previously worked only with an electronic mailbox, could quickly get used to it. All of the free customer relationship management tools presented here are relatively easy to use for beginners and provide ample help resources (user support or read-and-help resources) to turn to if problems arise.

While we'll only cover the free versions of CRM systems in this article, each offers a variety of paid plans that represent different levels of pricing and allow you to adapt the system to the growing needs of growing companies. These paid plans will be affordable for most small and medium-sized businesses, especially if the offerings are so broad that they can replace additional independent software designed, for example, for marketing management or customer support.

Below are the features and features that we paid attention to when studying and evaluating free CRM systems. Not all of the CRM systems reviewed have all five features or features, but those that do not all offer quite impressive features or can be used in very specific cases, so they made it to the final list.

• Contact and sales management. When creating contacts, the user should have some flexibility in choosing the type of information to add. Features like custom fields let you collect information that is important to your business. In addition, the maximum number of contacts in a free CRM system should be at least a few hundred to start full-fledged work in it. Deal tracking is a must-have feature in any customer management software, and systems that provide a visual, graphical sales pipeline (like kanban style) with the ability to customize steps to fit your sales business processes are ideal.
• Ease of use. Customer relationship management software should provide relatively easy repetitive actions (such as creating contacts), information entry, and some ability to customize the system to meet user needs. We also looked for CRM systems with the ability to automate tasks (emails, calls, and so on) related to sales.
• Unique features. If a CRM system provides a unique or non-standard feature that is not usually found in free plans, we will mention it in this review.
• Reports and data analytics. At a minimum, a CRM system should be able to generate reports to track the entire sales pipeline, as well as manage: transactions for each sales agent, calls, emails, and business meetings. Some of the systems we selected also include predictive capabilities, tracking lead sources, and calculating average sales cycle times.
• Integration with other applications and tools. We appreciated CRM systems that have both built-in integration with third-party applications and integration with Zapier since a customer tracking application is just one part of your business' technology toolkit.

The Best Free CRM Systems

Engage Bay (Web, iOS, Android)

Every year it becomes more and more difficult to find a free CRM system with sales, marketing, and customer service management capabilities. It is understandable. For a free or shareware CRM system, such requirements are too high. EngageBay is relatively new and is one of the few free CRM systems that has everything included. In addition, the transition to paid tariff plans of this CRM system is very affordable from a financial point of view. If you are looking for an alternative to HubSpot CRM, then starting your search with EngageBay would be a great idea.

This CRM system allows you to create up to 500 contacts, each of which gives a complete picture of a person. In these records, you can view (when relevant information is available) contact-related activity, emails, deals, tasks, notes, workflows, chats, events, and other customer touchpoints that allow users to see how a person has interacted with your business in different points in time.

This system is one of the few that allows you to create custom sales pipelines for various trading business processes, goods, or products. Sales funnels, which let you create, schedule, and track a series of automated, personalized emails to follow up with contacts and leads, is another feature not typically found in the free plan. In addition, sales funnels are located in the marketing module, are configured in the same way, and have the same functionality.

The marketing tools package includes lead scoring, forms, pop-ups, email templates, landing pages, newsletters, and other tools for both collecting and nurturing leads. EngageBay offers a good selection of templates for these tools. You can also create your own template from scratch. You can, for example, create a pop-up for signing up for a newsletter on your personal site using one of the templates, and make the pop-up pop up by adding some code to the site's HTML markup.

While automated workflow creation is only available on the two most premium paid accounts, you can create and send emails and videos using segmented contact lists. The Social Media Toolkit lets you connect and track your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. You can, for example, connect your Twitter account, and in a few seconds your feed, mentions, and retweets will appear on the screen. Here you can also schedule the publication of posts in various information channels.

The basic customer service management toolkit includes ticket creation, automatic linking of tickets to the right people, and a dashboard that allows you to track ticket priority, first response time to a ticket, and the number of tickets. You can use chat to create an additional channel for sales or customer support, and then monitor the total number of chat conversations, their duration, and first response time in a dashboard. Although this chat has basic features, for novice users of such tools and/or for those who are engaged in small business, its functionality should be enough.

EngageBay Cost: Free for up to 15 users. Fully featured plans start at $10.79 per month per user.

Bitrix24 (Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) - the best free CRM system with an unlimited number of users and contacts

Most CRM systems, especially free versions, have a certain limit on the number of users and contacts. Bitrix24 is the only exception in our selection. This CRM system allows you to create an unlimited number of users and contacts. Compared to other systems, for example, HubSpot CRM allows you to create an unlimited number of users and up to a million contacts. This feature, together with others, distinguishes Bitrix24 from other CRM systems. In addition, it is difficult to find real alternatives to this system. In addition to managing contacts and deals, this system also includes collaboration tools such as workgroups, chat, business feeds, and surveys.

Due to the abundance of functions available in Bitrix24, at first, it seems that there is too much in this CRM system, but you can hide and delete various menu items, as well as change their order. Thus, in each menu item, for example in CRM, you can adjust the order of elements, such as deals, contacts, companies, and analytics. If you want to see everything at once, click on the "Sitemap" button in the lower-left corner of the menu.

Thanks to an unlimited number of users, you can connect all employees to Bitrix24 by distributing them according to the sections of this CRM system you created. Once your employees accept the invitation, they will have access to their own customized version of the system. However, to assign each user rights to view and make changes, you will have to upgrade to a paid version.

In a contact record, you can customize the menu to display only information that is important to your company. You can also add fields to these records or change their location by simply dragging and dropping objects with the mouse. For each entry, all contact details and features (email, calls, notes, and so on) are immediately available to you - there is no need to click on any interface elements to simply see the events or actions associated with the contact.

 There is a Profile tab at the top of a contact entry., which opens to display various reports related to the contact, such as sales, calls, emails, and business activity. All this activity is calculated as "communication load", or the amount of work of employees per transaction that is acceptable for your company. This feature can show you exactly how specific customers prefer to communicate with employees to better understand them, which will lead to more sales in the future.

In the Activity Stream, you can communicate with employees, assign work tasks, design and conduct an employee survey, and make announcements to the entire work team. By clicking on Teams, you can create private or public spaces to collaborate, assign tasks, share a calendar with anyone, and build knowledge bases. Invite employees or third parties to each workgroup.

You can spend weeks studying all the available features, so to make the most of your time, choose a few goals (for example, ensure that employees communicate with each other only using Bitrix24), focus on them, become an experienced user of this CRM system, and move on to a new set of goals.

Bitrix24 cost: the free version does not limit the number of users and contacts. Paid plans start at $34 per month for five users.

Zoho CRM (Web, iOS, Android) is the best free CRM system to scale your business

As a business grows, technology needs tend to change as well. And Zoho is the company best placed to help drive this growth. Starting with their free CRM system, Zoho provides inexpensive and gradual ways to upgrade to paid features and functionality. In addition, Zoho provides access to its other set of business applications. Zoho offers tools for most business tasks - marketing, e-commerce, finance, and human resources (HR).

Customer relationship management tools include deal management, task management, and the ability to create up to 5,000 records, which here means contacts, accounts, deals, campaigns, and a few other "modules". Records in use can be easily tracked and controlled using the Setup section, and Data Administration and Storage provide guidance on deleting unused records. But please note that to increase the limit of modules, you need to switch to a paid tariff plan.

Unfortunately, the free version currently supports integration with only one application - SalesIQ. This application provides an online chat and allows you to track your website visitors by adding a code snippet to its source code. This is a great sales promotion tool because it allows you to answer the first questions of visitors and ask them follow-up questions. And then, if the visitor is interested enough, you can use chat to schedule a call. SalesIQ will qualify leads, monitor visitor chat activity on your site, and send notifications when a person in your contact list visits your site again.

If you're a solo CRM user, take a look at Zoho's little brother CRM, Begin. It's free for a single user and can integrate with a range of other Zoho products, as well as Zoom, Gmail, and Zapier. If in the future you need to upgrade from Begin to any of Zoho CRM's paid plans to get more features, it can be done with just a few clicks. Check out this Zoho CRM vs. Begin comparison page to better understand the features and limitations of these tools.

Zoho CRM pricing: Free for 1-3 users. Paid plans start at $14 per month per user.

HubSpot CRM (Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android) is the best free CRM for businesses looking for rich integrations

If you use multiple applications or tools in your company and want your CRM system to support integration with them, there is no better option than HubSpot CRM. The massive app store has over 900 integrations available on various HubSpot plans (such as Marketing Hub). At the same time, users of the free version of this CRM system can choose from more than 800 applications distributed in categories such as e-commerce, analytics, marketing activities, finance, project management and work with clients.

 Not only that, many of these third-party apps have free versions, making them more accessible to smaller companies with limited resources. And a new app included in Operations Hub provides additional data synchronization capabilities for a specific group of apps.

This CRM system is offered free of charge and allows you to create an unlimited number of users and up to a million contacts. It includes deal tracking, landing pages, a chat/chatbot, basic email marketing, and tickets to track customer service requests. All of these features are designed to introduce you to the more functional Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Service Hub, which provide advanced features and "tiered" pricing.

For many people, this CRM system will be enough for tracking transactions and managing customer relationships, especially if you take advantage of integration with other business applications used. For example, it's a good idea to start by connecting an Outlook 365 or Gmail account so you can send emails directly from a contact's record, track conversations, and use sales templates that allow you to quickly respond to customers.

HubSpot simplifies customer relationship management by using Contacts, which displays all sales, tickets, and activity on the site with page history if the site has a tracking code. You can also view events from your integrated applications and tools. For example, if you're using Mailchimp to run email campaigns, the contact data record will show the number of emails sent, email opens, clicks, and emails bounced. Similarly, the Eventbrite integration will show event registration on the contact's timeline.

It's easy to connect apps, but if you run into a problem, each app's integration page has a setup guide and help resources. Also note that not all integration features will be available in a free CRM system, as some advanced features require paid plans to access.

HubSpot Operations Hub appeared in April 2021. This line of products from HubSpot is designed to make it easier and better to sync data between Hubspot CRM and third-party apps. There are currently over 50 apps available for this new sync method. For testing purposes, you can, for example, connect a free Zoho CRM account. This app is in the "Data sync built by HubSpot" category of the app store.

 With a few clicks, you can link these applications to each other. You can then, for example, choose how your contacts are synchronized using various synchronization rules (there are dozens of filters). You can, for example, only sync contacts that you own. By default, 16 contact fields are mapped between the two applications. To work with custom fields, You need to upgrade to a paid plan.

 Next, click on the "Review" button to get a summary of the synchronization, and then click on the "Save and sync" button to save settings and start the synchronization process. In about 20 seconds, all your contacts will be bi-directionally synced between the two apps. That is, HubSpot CRM contacts will sync with Zoho CRM and vice versa. Any contacts you add or changes you make in one app will immediately appear in the other.

HubSpot CRM pricing: The free version of the CRM system allows you to create an unlimited number of users and immediately includes free features from Operations Hub. The cost will start at $45 per month for one Hub if you choose to use the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub. Operations Hub and CMS Hub paid plans to start at $60/month and $23/month, respectively.

Insightly (Web, iOS, Android) - Best Free CRM for Project Management

Insightly can be used, for example, to manage sales and projects, although these are different tasks. This platform solves both problems well, even when using only basic features. In addition, this statement is true even in the case of the free version, in which a maximum of two users can work. So if you and your business partner need to manage both customer relationships and projects, Insightly is a very promising option and provides many opportunities that can be used in the initial and subsequent stages of business development.

To understand how Insightly works, start with the elements of the navigation bar on the left. These elements—contacts, leads, leads, emails, and others—are referred to here as objects, and represent records that you can create. The record resides in an object and includes fields that you can fill in, such as name, phone, email, or any other information you want to track. You can create new fields, make them required, and customize their placement on the page.

Once you create an entry, you can perform various actions on it, such as turning a contact into a lead, or adding a task, project, or set of actions to a contact. An action set is a group of automated tasks and events/activities. For example, if you have a standard project launch process, you might have one employee send an email to a new client within three days of the sale, and another schedule the first meeting with the client five days later. Action sets can also be triggered at various stages of a project.

If you provide any services, you can create sales pipelines and related stages to manage each pipeline as a separate project and link it to a company, contact/contacts, and other projects. All these connections are displayed in different posts, so you will always have a complete picture of what is happening. For example, if you're chatting with a client about another project, you can easily see the progress of their other pending projects.

One feature of Insightly that is missing from many CRM systems, especially free ones, is lead tracking using a kanban board. Similar to creating leads and project pipelines, you can create all stages of the lead qualification process (for example, “first call”, “contact made”, and “deal failed or expired”) and move them around the board by dragging them to the next state. Leads can be created: on any tab of this CRM system using the quick add button, from contacts and by importing leads.

Be aware of the 2,500 entry limit on the free plan (entries include contacts, leads, accounts, projects, tasks, emails, notes, reports, and comments). If you have a lot of sales and projects that you are actively working on, the number of entries can quickly reach this limit. You can see the number of used records in the billing and accounts section - under your profile picture.

Cost Insightly: Up to two users can work in the free version. The cost of the paid plan starts from $29 per month per user.

Capsule (Web, iOS, Android) is the best free CRM in terms of usability

Most CRM systems offer more than just contact and deal management. These platforms also have important features such as marketing management and helpdesk. So far, Capsule hasn't shown this trend as a whole, which is nice if you want customer relationship management to be and remain simple.

This simple CRM system is a breath of fresh air if you happen to work with something more complicated than an email inbox. It has a simple user interface, which, in fact, provides almost no customization options - you can only change the color scheme and add a logo. The six small icons on the left provide access to the main functions, while the account settings are on the right. Any section of the user interface has a drop-down list for adding people, organizations, sales leads, and business data stores (cases). So, the user interface does not look like a dump.

Capsule provides custom fields for contacts, accounts, and sales leads, making it easy to tailor data collection to your business needs. In this system, for example, you can create a check box and drop-down menu for contacts and sales leads to select different types of customers, such as manufacturer, supplier, reseller (VAR), and end-user, in a few minutes.

Another nice feature is "Tracks", which here refers to sets of tracked tasks. It allows you to create a reusable set of reminders for actions related to potential sales. For example, a typical workflow for a new incoming lead might include five steps that are incremental lead work, scheduled over two weeks, and combine emails and calls. Tracked task sets applied to these leads will automatically add a list of tasks to be completed and ticked in the lead record.

If you use Gmail or Outlook, be sure to download the Capsule email plugin. It allows you to add contacts, leads and tasks right from your inbox with just a few clicks. It will also automatically save in contacts (unless you disable this feature) all current email correspondence with them. However, you cannot send emails directly from a contact record. This feature is available in all other free CRM systems discussed in this article.

Finally, if you have hundreds of contacts in your Capsule, you'll either need to clean them up (which is usually a good idea) or look for another contact store, since the free plan only allows you to use up to 250 contacts. By switching to the first tariff plan in the “price hierarchy”, which costs $18 per month per user, you can increase the contact limit to 50,000.

Capsule cost: Free for one or two users. Paid plans start at $18 per month per user.

Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android) - Best Free CRM with Low-Cost Options to Upgrade to Paid Features

As a free CRM system for small businesses, Vtiger offers many features that will appeal to many small businesses: contact and deal management, support ticket management, email marketing, good reporting capabilities, and more. Here you can create up to 10 users and up to 3,000 entries. Vtiger can be called a really profitable option for those who do not exclude the transition to paid features - sales management tools that cost from $10 per user, or a full set of features that cost from $30 per user. Let's take a look at the main features of the free version and see what you can expect when you switch to paid plans.

Navigating this CRM system is a bit different from others. To access any of the main functions of the system, here referred to as modules, click on the "hamburger" in the upper left corner. A menu will appear that includes all of your apps: favorite apps pinned at the top, and below and to the left, apps like sales, marketing , and customer support. If you hover over an app, all of its features will appear on the right. For example, when it comes to sales, you'll see deals, email sequences, a leaderboard with top sellers, and other features. Just one click and you can get started. It will take you some time to get comfortable, but then you will be able to quickly and fully work with this CRM system.

For contacts, you can calculate a rating (Profile Score), which helps to determine whether a person fits your portrait of an ideal buyer. In the settings, you can assign numerical values for the position, lead source, company size, income, and industry. If these values are selected when creating the contact and company (for example, using the CEO title gives 10 points), you will receive a rating of 1-5 stars that will appear at the top of the post. This rating will give your employees some idea of how well the person is a potential buyer, but not how interested they are in your products or services, as with traditional lead qualification. Vtiger's paid plans have another scoring system called "Engagement Score",

With the marketing module, you can create your own custom landing pages to collect contacts, segment those contacts into lists, and then send emails to temporary email addresses. This CRM system provides users with a thousand credits per month for sending emails (one credit is required per email). You can buy additional credits for sending letters as needed, for example, 50,000 letters - $ 100.

Creating marketing campaigns is pretty easy. You create a list of email recipients, set conditions for the list, such as lead source, date of last contact with the lead, or idle leads, then create an email using the email campaign functionality, where dozens of email templates are available.

 Once you're done with all of this, use the email preview to see how it will look on desktop and mobile, then send yourself a test email before you launch. Each email campaign provides data on email opens, clicks, bounces, and more. When you upgrade to paid plans, you can get much more credits for sending emails, planning marketing campaigns and autoresponder campaigns that send emails depending on certain conditions (triggers).

Vtiger cost: The system is free for 1-10 users. The cost of paid tariff plans starts from $10 per month for each user.

Streak (Gmail, iOS, Android) - Best Free CRM for Gmail Users

Streak is one of the few free CRM systems that sits right in your Gmail inbox, which means you don't need a separate login app. If you're going to use a CRM system on your own and want to manage contacts and deals from your inbox, you might want to check Streak in action.

After downloading this extension , you will see an orange icon in the top right corner of your inbox. By clicking on it, you will see settings, help, integrations and other features. It should be noted that you can't share your sales pipelines with other users on the free plan (requires upgrading to a paid plan that costs $49 per month), so the free plan is ideal for a single user.

Although this system is part of Gmail, it takes some getting used to as it behaves differently than other CRM systems implemented as standalone applications. It is similar to Excel. However, once you understand this CRM system, you will appreciate the ability to centrally manage contacts, deals, and even projects.

 Contacts can be added from email addresses to leads and sales pipelines with a few clicks. Once added, all subsequent emails associated with that contact will be color-coded as a lead and/or deal, and all the details (tasks, notes, activity, and so on) will appear in the right column. To open a full contact record, click on their email address in the sidebar. Here you can view the entire history of correspondence and add tasks, notes and other data.

To create a sales pipeline, click on the Pipelines button , which has a plus sign and is located just below the Drafts folder . The Templates window will appear , allowing you to select multiple pipeline options for sales, customer support, HR, and other projects. In pipelines, you can customize steps, step colors, and fields such as source, industry, and priority.

One handy feature is email tracking. When the recipient opens your email, a notification pop-up window will appear on the screen. Streak will then display in the sidebar the interaction history with that contact for any email conversation, displaying email views by date and location. A green eye icon means the email has been read, and a crossed out eye means the email has not been read.

Streak Cost: Free for one or two users. Paid plans start at $15 per month per user.