There are many CRM tools available on the market. 🌐 Among them are free CRM that offer access to free tools.
These CRMs are particularly attractive to startups and small businesses looking to keep costs down. 💰
But all businesses need to generate revenue to ensure their long-term survival. So, are free solutions as attractive as they seem? 🤔 Let’s take a closer look in this ranking.
What’s a Free CRM?
CRM software, whether free or paid, is a management tool that saves you time on a daily basis. ⌚ But that’s not all. It’s also an essential marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.
CRM enables you to manage your customers and prospects efficiently and with peace of mind. 🌟 Managing sales opportunities throughout the pipeline makes CRM an essential tool for business owners.
With a CRM solution, lost prospect files are a thing of the past. 💼 Everything is saved and archived.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of the features included in the free versions of these CRMs:
- Sales pipeline,
- Contact management,
- Customer relationship management,
- Sales management,
- Connection to social networks.
In fact, the best free CRM software always has the option of upgrading to a premium version at a later date if you wish. 🤑
Top 10 free CRMs for your business
Here are our top 10 free CRM must-haves for your business, we’ll look at the pluses and minuses of each tool below: 👇
1. Free Agile CRM
Agile CRM is SaaS software and not open source. 😳 But this CRM offers perhaps the most generous free package in this ranking.
In addition to many features on the commercial CRM side, the software also offers many functions that are very similar to those of marketing automation software. 🤖
However, these marketing features are only available on paid packages. This software even goes so far as to provide customer support features, and it’s also a full-fledged live chat software.
But, back to the free package: you can use the free package with 10 users, up to 50,000 contacts and businesses created. 👌
You’ll be able to benefit from fairly advanced features such as the notion of lead scoring, 🏆 appointment setting, follow-up on prospecting emails.
✅ Solid software and excellent reputation.
✅ Advanced features unmatched by a free CRM.
✅ Ability to upgrade to paid packages with excellent value for money.
⛔ A little more complicated than lighter CRM tools.
⛔ No French support and no free plan support.
2. CRM Pipeline by Trello
If you’re familiar with Trello, you’ll know that the tool’s power lies in its automation capabilities. 🦾
You can automatically assign, pre-fill and move cards, set deadlines and more. 📅 Here are the main features you can use for free with Trello Pipeline:
- Create a lead or customer management process that can adapt to your team’s needs for any type of customer relationship or contact management.
- Organize contact information and notes on each lead’s card.
- Keep active leads in a centralized location by attaching all relevant documents, such as e-mails and follow-up requests.
- Keep your company’s growth on track by assigning team members and due dates to tasks, then watch the roadmap change from « Incoming » to « Completed ».
✅ The free CRM template is well-designed and allows you to quickly see automations implemented (for example, pre-appointment checklists or automated leads arriving as contact forms are processed).
⛔ No reporting exists in Trello, apart from the Kanban view. You’ll need to set up other automations and be a little creative to adapt it to your sales processes.
3. SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM is open-source software used to manage contacts, sales, marketing, and customer support. It provides insight into prospect data and serves as a decision-making tool. 🧐
Companies use it to increase revenue by developing strong relationships with all their contacts. 🤝 As a result, a good customer experience will help convert more visitors and create engagement among potential customers.
✅ This tool offers the advantage of being customizable according to the needs of the customer service team.
✅ More advanced options can be added with paid services and extensions that integrate other SuiteCRM features.
⛔ Furthermore, the tool is only available in English. Additional settings are required to use it in French.
4. Free online Sugar CRM
Sugar CRM features a comprehensive, intuitive interface that helps your company save time and better manage prospects.
✅ This free CRM software has a large enough repertoire of languages.
✅ What’s more, the CRM is also famous and highly rated on the market. Sugar CRM offers great freedom of customization and a certain wealth of features.
⛔ On the other hand, installation can be complicated. Customer support is also in high demand.
5. EspoCRM
Already in place in 50,000 companies, EspoCRM is a popular Open Source CRM solution for managing customer relationships. 🤲
✅ This open-source software offers lead scoring functionality, an emailing application, comprehensive reporting and advanced analytics.
✅ EspoCRM also simplifies integration with other tools.
6. CiviCRM
CiviCRM is an open source CRM. It is aimed primarily at non-profit organizations. 🙌 There is no notion of prospect or customer, only the notion of sponsor, member, or household.
It can, however, be configured for use as a CRM and sales management tool. 🤓 Its main features are:
- Synchronizes easily with Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.
- An easy-to-use e-mailing tool: with statistics, A/B tests, segmentation…
- Fully customizable interface.
- Organize and manage professional events.
✅ This CRM software displays accurately on all media: computers, tablets and smartphones.
✅ CiviCRM features an intuitive, modern interface.
7. CRM Notion
CRM is completely free on Notion, providing you with building blocks that let you create your own layouts and toolboxes 🛠️ to work with.
Many people see Notion as an internal «wiki» enabling teams and individuals to plan projects and track their work and goals. 🎯
This workspace lets you:
- Create your own wiki (with countless pages of content),
- Plan with Kanban view, calendar view or simple list view.
- Document your workflow and save everything you create in spreadsheets and databases.
- Notion helps you collaborate in real time, share with teams, comment, assign tasks and set reminders. ⏰
✅ This tool is simple and easy to configure, with the power of Notion and a much nicer interface.
⛔ However, it is rather limited as a CRM. The fact that there’s only one table means you’ll quickly find yourself with many columns that aren’t used very much.
8. Waalaxy CRM freeware
Now, let’s talk about Waalaxy! 🥳 This is our free, 100% French-tech CRM. Our development and design teams are entirely based in France to provide you with an optimal user experience.
Waalaxy is a prospecting tool that automates your LinkedIn and e-mail campaigns. Thanks to automated lead searches, you’ll be able to create lists of qualified prospects. 🏅
All these features are available with our Freemium plan, 🌌 free forever:
- Automatic prospecting (sending invitations, messages, visits, follow-up, etc.),
- Automatic follow-ups via Inbox Waalaxy and LinkedIn + Email sequences.
- Retrieve pro emails from prospects with « Email Finder ». 🔍
- Use of artificial intelligence for prospecting.
Ideal for small and medium-sized businesses, Waalaxy maximizes the effectiveness of your prospecting efforts, while reducing the time and resources required! 💫
✅ Multilingual customer support, ergonomic, easy-to-use interface.
✅ Paid versions for access to advanced prospecting features.
9. Odoo CRM
Odoo CRM features an integrated management solution that makes it easy to track contacts right through to their conversion into customers. 💥
This open-source CRM is suitable for both e-tailers and companies with Inbound Marketing-oriented websites.
Among its most useful features: 👇
- Manage sales documents (quotes, invoices, purchase orders, etc.),
- Automating certain marketing efforts has little added value and is time-consuming,
- Real-time monitoring of sales activities.
✅ Easy-to-use interface.
✅ Integration with mobile platforms.
10. Bitrix24 CRM
Bitrix24 is a free CRM software that doesn’t get talked about much, but which really lets you go far. 🏹 The big drawback of this marketing tool is that all the features (of which there are many) are rather poorly organized. 🙈
It’s difficult to know where to start with this software, as their interface is much less clear and simple than that of similar solutions. 💻
On the other hand, if customer data management is at the heart of your business, and you’re fairly familiar with the subject, Bitrix24 will be very appealing. 👍
✅ Plenty of features available.
⛔ Quite complicated and difficult to get to grips with.
Get your first customers this week
Take advantage of the power of Waalaxy to generate leads every day. Start prospecting for free, today.
How to choose a Free CRM Software?
Choosing a free customer relationship management (CRM) software requires careful analysis of several key aspects to ensure it meets your company’s needs. 👉 Here are three key criteria to consider:
1) Main Features
Functionality is the first important criterion when picking a CRM. ✍️ Make sure the software provides basic functionalities such as contact management, engagement rate tracking, task and opportunity management, as well as reporting and analysis.
Also assess your CRM’s integration with other tools you already use, ⚡ such as messaging platforms, social networks or project management solutions.
For companies with specific needs, check whether CRM can be customized to add specific functionality via add-on modules or open APIs.
2) UX/UI Design
The user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) of your CRM are essential to ensure rapid and effective adoption by your team. 🥰
A CRM with a clear, intuitive and responsive interface will promote better engagement and reduce the training time required for new users. 🪶 Browse CRM demos to assess ease of navigation, menu consistency and access to key functionality.
Good UX/UI design will enable you to quickly see important information and perform tasks with a minimum of clicks. 👽 Here’s what our users are saying about Waalaxy:
(Source: Capterra.com)
3) Customer Support
Even with the most intuitive software, questions, and problems can still arise. 📣 Therefore, it’s important that CRMs provide competent, easily accessible customer support.
However, for some free CRMs, support options may be limited compared to the paid version. 🙊 Discover the types of support available on Waalaxy: live chat, blog/Help center, resources such as YouTube video tutorials or various FAQs.
What’s more, read other users’ reviews of support responsiveness and efficiency to get an idea of the quality of service you can expect. 💡
Conclusion: Which is the Best Free CRM?
In conclusion, the choice of your CRM must be guided by your specific needs. 🤔 Make a rigorous assessment of the features, the UX/UI design and the customer support offered, before deciding which is the best free CRM for you!
Here are some tips to help you choose: 👇
- If your need is oriented towards the organization of your activities, then choose a CRM like Notion which remains very basic and affordable.
- If your need is more focused on the development of your business and LinkedIn prospecting, then the best CRM is Waalaxy.
- If your need is focused on the collaboration of sales and marketing teams, select a simple-to-use software like Agile CRM.
- Etc…
These factors will help you decide the most suitable CRM! 🥇 First, think about picking a tool that does not require any initial cost.
However, the CRM is a valuable investment in managing your customer relationships and growing your business, 😏 so you may need a paid version later.
So, take your time to properly test and validate the solutions by your sales teams before committing to any tool. ✔️
Article FAQ
What is an Open Source CRM?
Open source CRM is a software whose source code can be viewed and modified by anyone. 🥸
This openness enables companies to customize their software to their specific needs without being tied to a specific supplier. 👍
As a result, users can add functionality, integrate new tools and adjust the user interface.
Open source CRM tools are generally free of charge, although some may offer paid services for support or advanced functionality.
Finally, they promote great flexibility and innovation, relying on an active community of developers. 🌐
Which Prospecting Tool should you choose?
If you’re not sure which prospecting tool to choose, we’ve got a hint… 🤫 Waalaxy automates multi-channel marketing campaigns, especially via LinkedIn and e-mail.
Our tool allows users to create automated, personalized prospecting campaigns, making it easier to target and engage potential contacts without the need for constant manual intervention. 👋
Waalaxy offers many useful features such as LinkedIn contact import, message management and real-time campaign performance tracking.
There you have it! You know all about the must-have free CRM software for your business. 🔥
