Best CRM For Small Business Of 2025

Zoho CRM is a low-cost, high-value CRM that offers everything you need to manage your sales pipeline and grow your business. Its free plan allows businesses of all sizes to customise their process, create sales workflows and leverage powerful reporting.

It also provides a full suite of apps that integrate with the platform for marketing, customer support, accounting, human resources and inventory management, provided you have a paid plan starting at £12 per month with annual billing.

Features
Zoho CRM has all of the features you would expect from a CRM – and many more. For example, it has basic features such as pipelines and task management, but it also has sophisticated sales and workflow automations, lead scoring, inventory management, multi-currency conversions for businesses that operate internationally, advanced analytics, data enrichment using artificial intelligence and more. On top of that, it has a large catalogue of integrations – both directly available from Zoho, such as Zoho Invoices for service providers, and third parties, such as Facebook Ads, Google Workspace, Shopify and DocuSign.

Usability
For the most part, I find Zoho CRM to be very intuitive and beginner-friendly. The user dashboard is clean, clutter-free and well-organised, making it easy to locate different features and set up various pipelines and workflows.

However, it is worth mentioning that it can be a bit of a challenge to use if you are making several customisations or building out very sophisticated workflows. In short, I find that it is an easy CRM platform for those looking to use something more or less ‘out-of-the-box’.

Pricing
Zoho CRM offers one of the best free plans in the market, which, unlike other free plans, even includes workflows. However, it is still fairly limited in terms of storage, features and its three-user limit. Granted, its paid plans start at £12 per user per month with annual billing. This Standard plan includes multiple pipelines, task management, lead scoring, multiple currencies, workflow rules, email notifications, custom fields, email marketing tools and more.

Paid plans also include features such as custom dashboards, inventory management, advanced customisation and scoring rules. You can also create a mobile app for your business in minutes using Zoho Creator. It allows you to access your business data from anywhere, directly from your Android and iOS devices.

Reputation
Zoho has a solid reputation for offering high-quality software for businesses at very competitive prices. It has an above average rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot from more than 5,000 users – of which, over 75% gave it a perfect 5-star rating. While the majority find it to be easy to use and feature-rich, offering everything they need out of a CRM, there are a handful of users that give it low marks for poor customer service experiences.

Who’s it good for?
Zoho CRM is a good all-around choice for the average small business seeking a versatile yet user-friendly CRM with affordable pricing.

More widely known as a project management solution, monday.com also has a high-quality CRM that is best for collaborative teams. It offers a Kanban-style board view of your tasks that helps you visualise your work and collaborate with team members by tracking the progress of projects, managing due dates, adding comments and attaching files. It also offers a long list of features, such as unlimited customisable pipelines, deal management, quotes and invoicing, sales forecasting and more, making it a versatile and feature-rich CRM.

Features
Monday sales CRM is designed to help teams more effectively manage clients and collaborate on projects and deals. All plans include unlimited customisable pipelines, contacts and boards; helpful pre-built templates for lead, contact and deal management; access to the mobile app so you can take your CRM with you on the go and the ability to create a dashboard based on one board. Its mid and top-tier plans include extra features such as activity management, quote and invoices, sales forecasting, email marketing with built-in tracking, sales automations, lead scoring, account management and more.

Usability
When it comes to ease of use, I have mixed feelings about the monday.com CRM. On one hand, it’s modern and streamlined, but on the other, it can feel complicated to set up as not all features and functionalities are obvious. I find that those who have used monday.com or any of its competitors that employ Kanban-style boards to manage projects consider it fairly easy with only a small learning curve. But if you don’t have experience using it and plan to build out a complex CRM system, expect a fairly steep learning curve.

Pricing
Monday does not offer a free plan for its CRM software, but it does offer a free 14-day trial to help new users decide if it’s right for them. It also offers competitively priced plans starting at £8 per seat (or user) per month for the Basic plan.

Granted, unlike most CRM solutions, monday has a three-user minimum, so you must sign up for at least three accounts to get started. For me, this is disappointing as many small businesses do not need multiple users managing their CRM, so it feels prohibitive to smaller teams.

Paid plans include features such as unlimited customisable pipelines, unlimited contacts and viewers, sales forecasting, sales analytics, automations and integrations. Its mid-tier Standard CRM plan for £11 per seat per month also includes quotes and invoices, activity management and custom automations.

Its Pro CRM plan for £17 per seat per month also includes mass email to help businesses streamline their marketing communications, sales analytics for an in-depth look at sales performance data and the ability to create a dashboard that comprises up to 10 boards.

Reputation
While monday.com generally has a good reputation for its project management software, it has an average rating on Trustpilot of 3.9 out of 5 stars from more than 3,000-plus reviewers. Granted, 75% of reviewers gave it a perfect 5-star rating and 18% gave it a 4-star rating, illustrating that despite its fairly low average rating, the vast majority of users give it top marks. While many users say monday.com is easy to use and that it offers what they need, others find that there are too many hidden fees and its features are too limited.

Who’s it good for?
The flexible monday.com CRM is best for collaborative teams, especially those that need to work together on projects and tasks. The platform visualises your work in Kanban-style boards and lets you track task progress and add due dates, comments and attachments.

Freshworks (formerly Freshsales) is a top-rated CRM that stands out for its built-in lead capture forms. These forms allow you to easily gather information from potential customers on the web, track leads through your sales pipeline and convert them into opportunities and customers. Unlike many CRMs, Freshworks offers a free forever plan for up to three users and low-cost plans starting at £7 per user per month with annual billing.

Features
Freshworks is a feature-rich CRM that gives businesses a 360-degree view of their customers with a visual table or Kanban-style dashboards, the ability to reach customers where they are – whether that be via email, chat phone or messenger – and the ability to save time while increasing productivity through numerous automations, workflows and sequences.

It helps businesses close deals with multiple sales pipelines and revenue forecasting to determine priorities, create quotes and invoices, maintain product inventory and make more informed decisions with rich data and artificial intelligence.

Usability
Not only is Freshworks feature-rich, especially in terms of sales and marketing and automations, but one of the things I like about it most is that it’s very easy to use. While some CRMs involve a steep learning curve, I find Freshworks to be well-designed and intuitive so it is pretty easy to grasp and use.

Pricing
What is nice about Freshworks is that it offers a free forever plan for up to three users, as well as industry-low prices with plans starting at £7 per user per month – with no minimum user requirement like monday.com.

The free plan includes Kanban views, email complete with email templates, built-in phone and live chat. For more features, users can update to the Growth plan for £7 per user per month for custom fields, basic workflows, a product catalogue, reporting and more. However, while its entry-level plan is very competitively priced, its plans quickly jump in price to well over double the average CRM.

For example, upgrading to its mid-tier plan costs £29 per user per month with annual billing. While I don’t personally like that it draws users in with low entry-level pricing, what’s worse is that you will need to choose its mid-tier plan for the basic inclusion of multiple sales pipelines. In other words, Freshworks is only very affordable if you are looking for very basic CRM functionality and if your business only needs one sales pipeline.

Reputation
Freshworks has one of the lowest ratings on Trustpilot out of any of our top CRMs for small business, with a poor 1.9 out of 5 stars. To make it even worse, just 32% of users gave it a 5-star rating, while 44% gave it a 1-star rating. It’s worth mentioning that while many reviewers note that its support is helpful, a large majority of its bad reviews say the opposite, which shows that either its support quality has tanked more recently or that it does not offer a consistent support quality.

Who’s it good for?
Freshworks is best for businesses with savvy sales and marketing teams that will take advantage of a CRM with comprehensive lead management.

Salesforce is an ideal choice for businesses seeking a comprehensive, all-in-one CRM solution that can scale seamlessly as they continue to grow. It allows you to manage your leads, contacts, opportunities and customers with a bird’s-eye view of your business. Plans start at £20 per user per month, making it one of the more expensive CRMs on our list, yet it’s also one of the most versatile, with plans and features to meet growing businesses of all sizes.

Features
While Salesforce offers a robust CRM, it’s worth highlighting that many of its advanced features are not available with its entry-level and mid-tier plans. In fact, many of the basic features you would expect with top CRMs are only available with its top-tier plans, such as sales forecasting and advanced pipeline management. On top of that, many features are available as add-ons for a hefty price. For example, the ability to create and send quotes will cost an additional £80 per user per month – a feature that is often included in CRMs at no extra cost.

Usability
Despite its comprehensive offerings, I have found the Salesforce CRM to be surprisingly easy to use. It still involves a learning curve—especially if you plan to make customisations and build out advanced automations and workflows. Also, new users should expect the setup process to not happen as quickly as other CRMs such as Zoho CRM, Pipedrive or Nimble CRM.

Pricing
To test drive plan features, take advantage of the free 14-day trial. Pricing starts at £20 per month when paid annually and goes up to £264 per month for the Unlimited plan. There are add-ons to extend the functionality of your Salesforce solution as you grow, which makes it a great option for companies that want to stick with the same CRM provider at all stages of growth.

Reputation
Salesforce has a bad rating on Trustpilot of just 1.4 out of 5 stars from over 400 users. I certainly find it odd that such a large company with an arsenal of software products has fewer than 500 reviews. Interestingly, 84% of reviewers gave it a 1-star rating, with many commenting that it is slow and cumbersome to use and that its customer service needs improvement.

Who’s it good for?
Businesses that need a comprehensive CRM in an all-in-one tool will appreciate Salesforce. As your company grows, you can add on additional products to support that growth.

Agile CRM ranks among our top CRMs for small businesses due to its advanced marketing tools that help companies nurture leads, stay top of mind and increase revenue. The essence of the platform is to ensure that limitations in personnel don’t translate into restricted marketing capabilities.

The Drag-and-Drop Designer empowers even those with limited technical skills to create intricate marketing workflows. With just a few clicks, small businesses can construct multi-step campaigns, ‌nullifying the steep learning curve often associated with CRM platforms. Even better, it offers a free forever plan for up to 10 users and affordable plans starting at $8.99 per user per month (billed annually).

Features
Agile CRM offers a large number of features despite its low price. All plans, including its free version, offer unlimited deals, tasks and documents, appointment scheduling, custom-deal milestones to help you better manage your pipelines, email tracking and two-way telephony.

Agile CRM’s entry-level paid plan is where its suite of marketing tools comes in. It offers marketing automations, email marketing and lead generation tools such as a form and landing page builder.

Agile CRM uniquely offers behaviour-based segmentation and it automatically tags and scores leads based on distinct activities, such as email interactions and website visits. This feature allows small businesses to strategically pinpoint the right audience segments, thus reducing the waste of resources on poorly targeted marketing campaigns. The real-time alerts about high-potential leads further help to streamline effort and focus.

Additionally, Agile CRM extends its automation into the sales process. The platform can qualify a lead and route it automatically to the appropriate sales representative. This creates a harmonious alignment between sales and marketing teams, ensuring that leads don’t fall through the cracks and that customer engagement remains consistent and timely.

By automating these various elements, Agile CRM provides small businesses with a tool that caters to their specific needs: managing intricate marketing campaigns and customer interactions without requiring a steep investment of either time or money.

Usability
I don’t find Agile CRM to be the most user-friendly. While its dashboard appears streamlined, I find that many of its features are very outdated. For example, its workflow builder is reminiscent of Microsoft Paint. Granted, some users find this easy to use, so it may depend on your familiarity with particular software.

Pricing
What Agile CRM lacks in ease of use, it makes up for in price. Not only does it have a free forever plan, but it has one of the highest user limits with a 10-user maximum. Its free plan includes up to 50,000 contacts; unlimited tasks, deals and documents, custom data fields, lead scoring, appointment scheduling, email tracking and two-way telephony. For access to its suite of marketing tools and features, such as email campaigns, form and landing page builders, users will need to opt for its entry-level Starter plan for $8.99 per user per month with an annual subscription.

Reputation
With one of the highest average user ratings on our list, Agile CRM has a near-perfect 4.8 out of 5-star rating from more than 1,700 reviewers on Trustpilot – of which, over 90% gave it a perfect 5-star rating. While the vast majority of reviews are centred around high-quality, quick and helpful support, it’s important to choose a CRM that offers top-notch customer service, as it can make a big difference when troubleshooting any issues or resolving any problems.

Who’s it good for?
Agile CRM is a good choice for small businesses looking to supercharge their sales and marketing efforts with advanced automations that can help nurture customer relationships and drive sales.

Apptivo offers a level of flexibility and customisation that’s invaluable for small businesses, striving to adapt the tool to their specific workflow rather than the other way around. Custom views, layouts and fields can be easily adjusted, making the CRM mould to your business’ unique requirements.

This feature alone sets it apart from competitors that often prescribe a one-size-fits-all solution. Unfortunately, it does not offer a free plan like many of its competitors, and plans start at $20 per user per month, making it on the more expensive side. But I find that its features are well worth the price.

Features
Apptivo is a CRM that includes all of the main features you would expect from a top-rated CRM, such as contact, lead, opportunity and task management; workflow automations; lead scoring and more. But it also offers more unique features, such as its sales funnel builder, which allows businesses to get an intricate understanding of their sales process, from lead generation to deal closure. Automated sales tools like email sequencing help sales teams by reducing repetitive tasks and ensuring consistent follow-up, making it easier to turn potential clients into long-term partners.

Additionally, Apptivo’s mobile CRM ensures that your sales team isn’t desk-bound; data-driven decisions can be made from anywhere. While some CRM platforms may have sophisticated analytical tools, Apptivo demystifies this by breaking down win-loss analyses, sales projections and performance metrics into digestible visuals. This means actionable insights are more readily available, even for those who aren’t data scientists.

Usability
Like Agile CRM, Apptivo is not the most user-friendly CRM on the market, largely because its interface is dated. I find it to be generally clunky, not only involving a learning curve to use but also making it difficult to locate certain features and tools. Granted, it is a great solution for those with development experience looking to build out a highly custom CRM, as it is among the more flexible CRMs in the market.

Pricing
Plans start at $20 per user per month with annual billing. This entry-level plan includes contact management, project management, up to 25 automated workflows, inventory management, multiple sales pipelines, referral tracking, a performance dashboard and more. However, its storage is limited to 1GB per user. Its mid-tier Premium plan costs $30 per user per month with an annual subscription and increases your storage limit to 3GB and includes additional features, such as ecommerce tracking, marketing automations and more integrations.

Reputation
Apptivo has mixed reviews. On one hand, it’s a quality solution for those who have the time and experience to set it up properly and take advantage of all that it has to offer. On the other hand, however, it’s not intuitive for new users, giving it a fairly steep learning curve. Users do agree that its support is poor, and with that, it has a low 2.6 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot.

Who’s it good for?
Small to medium-sized businesses looking for a highly customisable and mobile CRM solution that offers deep sales analytics and customisation capabilities.

HubSpot earns its reputation as a go-to CRM for businesses of all sizes. One of the key advantages is its ability to scale with a business, thanks to its long list of high-quality features. This makes it ideal for startups and SMBs alike. What’s more, it offers a free CRM plan so small businesses can test the waters without a financial commitment.

Features
The HubSpot CRM includes the core features of a CRM such as pipelines, contacts, deals and task management. It also provides a unified dashboard for marketing, sales and customer service functionalities, which avoids the cost and complexity of integrating multiple standalone tools. HubSpot’s detailed list segmentation enables granular targeting, allowing businesses to create personalised marketing strategies.

Usability
Despite being a very comprehensive software, I find that HubSpot does a great job of making it user-friendly with its modern and intuitive interface. It does this by making its core features and advanced features easy to use. This is not necessarily common across the board with CRM solutions as many have easy-to-use basic features, but the more advanced features are a challenge to employ.

Pricing
What’s nice is that there is a free version of the HubSpot CRM. While it’s fairly limited with just one deal pipeline, it does give new users a good way of getting to know the software. Paid plans start at £14 per user per month with annual billing or £18 per user per month with a monthly subscription. This includes two deal pipelines and additional features such as conversation routing, basic automations, multiple currencies, goals, the ability to create repeat tasks and more.

Reputation
HubSpot is widely known for its sales and marketing software that can help businesses automate many time-consuming tasks, improve processes and drive more sales. While I find its CRM to be a quality solution, HubSpot has a subpar Trustpilot rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, all without knowing which solution those customers used. However, in my experience, HubSpot has come a long way. Years ago, I found it to be a cumbersome and arduous software, but it has since become very well-designed and easy to use.

Who’s it good for?
Small businesses looking to grow their customer base without managing multiple apps or platforms.

Salesmate is one of the best CRM solutions that zeroes in on what small to medium-sized businesses need: tracking, organising and automating sales activities without overcomplicating the process or overstretching the budget.

Features
Salesmate goes beyond mere contact management to offer features such as multiple pipeline management and workflow customisation. These functionalities bring discipline to your sales operations, enabling a company to monitor deals in various stages and to automate repetitive tasks. The Team Inbox feature in its higher plans consolidates all customer correspondence in one place, making team collaboration more organised and effective. Email sync and tracking can amplify your outreach strategy by offering real-time updates on how recipients interact with your emails.

Usability
Generally, I find Salesmate very intuitive and well-designed, making it easy to get set up and started. However, users who are hoping to deploy its advanced automations quickly might be disappointed. This is because it is highly robust and has advanced automations, which lends to a learning curve.

Pricing
Salesmate is not the lowest-priced CRM on the market, and unlike many of the top CRMs, it does not offer a free plan. Instead, plans start at $23 per user per month, making it one of the more expensive CRMs to get started with.

However, it’s worth pointing out that its entry-level plan is far more comprehensive than the average CRM’s paid plan in this tier. For example, it includes many features that are generally only available with mid and top-tier plans, such as automations, built-in calling and texting, web forms for generating leads and more.

Reputation
In terms of reputation, Salesmate is regarded as a solid CRM solution that offers advanced features and a modern interface. It has a good – but not great – 3.8 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot from just a handful of users, indicating that its rating does not reflect a comprehensive review of its quality as there are too few users to really speak to it.

What I find interesting is that from the few reviews that it does have, users tend to either love it or hate it. Those who love it appreciate its ease of use and abundance of features, while those who don’t say that it can be glitchy and that late payment can result in losing your leads.

Who’s it good for?
Small to medium-sized businesses seeking an affordable, scalable solution to organise and automate their sales operations.