Experts Tell Us the Best CRM Software For Very Small Businesses

I am a former computer programmer turned lawyer who founded one of the most successful female owner law firms in Georgia. I used many of the big names for CRM like ACT!, Salesforce, and Constant Contact for my CRM but ActiveCampaign has been the solution I also dreamed of. The ease of use and open API has allowed me to scale my company quickly just by being able to implement my ideas quicker and fast then my competition.

Hubspot CRM has all basic features a CRM needs also it is Inbound Marketing oriented and the best: It is free forever! It also has a lot of integrations including mail (gmail, outlook,..), has a very nice nice API, If you contract the sales paid module you get a very nice sales automation feature called Sequences where you save your sales team tons of time magically automating your follow-up emails. It’s really a great CRM for small business.

For small businesses, I would have to go with Zendesk as my go-to customer service tool. Especially when you integrate it with other apps such as Gmail, LiveChat and RingCentral, Zendesk can become a complete customer service suite. It also functions as a light CRM that covers the basic needs of small businesses. It works by creating a support ticket every time a client contacts your company with any issue. From the support ticket, you can then choose to reply by email or call the number back directly to resolve the issue. You can also browse previous support requests by the same customer to see if it’s a new or recurring issue, for example. So it makes it very easy to quickly address issues via the integration with Gmail since you will get alerts every time a support ticket comes in. Zendesk supports integration with external apps, such as LiveChat, which extends its functionality by a lot. For example, say a call comes into your customer support line and all lines are busy. RingCentral will then ping your Gmail with all the details from the missed call. Then with a couple of clicks, you can create a support ticket from the missed call alert and then proceed to contact the customer. Overall, Zendesk is a light and flexible CRM that can be used on both desktops and mobile phones, using any browser. It’s simple and easy to set up, and I would highly recommend it to small business owners

Brighton-based tech company Cloud9 Insight, a Microsoft Gold Partner which has provided more than 700 UK businesses with cloud-based CRM software systems. Founded in 2010, the company has 30 staff and is also an award winning provider of training and apprenticeships programmes which it runs through its sister company Vantage Academy. Carlene established her first business in Brighton aged 17 and then spent nearly two decades in the software industry working for companies including IBM, Xansa, and Sage before going it alone to take advantage of the booming cloud technology sector.

After exploring my options a few years ago, I landed on Dubsado as the best CRM software for my business. Their backend is intuitive and easy to set up, offering customizable and automated systems that are quick to set up and implement into your workflow. The front end, customer facing side is clean and easily designed to match your branding. In essence, Dubsado does well to get out of the way in order for your own brand to shine. Best of all, they offer lots of education and quick customer service to teach you how to use their service best for your individual set up. You can even set up a one-on-one call with them to get you up and running.

Having spent the last 15 years implementing CRMs for hundreds of small businesses I see a common mistake – owners don’t think about how their business will scale and change in the next one to three years. Too often they go the “easy button” route and pick CRM “app” because it’s cheap and easy. In a matter of a few years (or months!) they realize the “easy button” they chose was a bad investment when faced with the switching costs and business disruption cutting over to a new CRM.

Intercom is a customer engagement tool that allows you to interact with your customers at any point in time while they are on your site. It also serves as a CRM platform that allows us to send email campaigns to customers at specific points in the customer journey. With this tool, we have inserted ourselves into our on-boarding funnel and can reach and talk to customers and get real-time feedback during critical moments of the sign-up process. With this data and real-time feedback, we can make a design or copy changes to improve our click-through rate and overall customer experience. This tool has saved us thousands of dollars as it is truly a complete one-stop-shop for our customer relationship, marketing, and email campaigns.

Hands-down, the best tool I’ve found for most things digital org (not just my CRM) is Airtable. It’s pretty intuitive, highly customizable, and can do so much, plus the design is really pleasant to stare at all day. And all of its fundamental features are available on the free plan. You can use Airtable to organize your information exactly the way you need it. You don’t have to deal with unnecessary features that are pre-built into other CRMs and aren’t relevant to you. It grows with you as the needs of your business change – you can easily adapt your setup so that it reflects the information that’s most relevant for you at that stage. The one (big) caveat is that you’re the one building it… and that’s not the right solution for everyone. I love it and recommend it all the time, but I’ve found that it’s best for people who geek out a little over things like this. If you’re looking for something that’s done-for-you, then you might need to go with an alternative.