If you’re on this blog, one thing’s clear — you’re on the hunt for the CRM (customer relationship management) tool that fits your organization like a glove.
Well, first of all, congratulations on expanding your business operations and considering a CRM tool for your organization.
Second of all, let’s get started — we’ve got all the need-to-know details about the top five CRM solutions in the market!
Must have features in your CRM system
No matter what CRM platform you choose, some features cannot be compromised.
On that note, here are a few CRM features that can help businesses efficiently maintain customer relationships at all stages:
- Contact management
- Third-party integrations
- Workflow automation
- Mobile CRM software
- Pipeline management
- Reporting and analytics
Examples of CRM software
Due to the thousands of tools in the market, it might get overwhelming to make a choice and decide on the right CRM.
To make your evaluation process easier, we have categorized CRM tools into five categories based on the function they perform.
| HubSpot | Copper | Salesforce | Freshworks | Zoho | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific use case | Promote inbound marketing | Deepens customer relations | All-in-one platform | Improve sales process | Better lead management |
| Rating | 4.4 based on 10,482 reviews | 4.5 based on 1,110 reviews | 4.3 based on 18,313 reviews | 4.3 based on 7,376 reviews | 4.4 based on 5,047 reviews |
| Free plan | Yes | No | No | Yes, up to 3 users | No |
| Pricing | Free | Between $29-129/user/month | Between $25-330/user/month | One free plan and two paid plans starting at $18/user/month | Between $20-300/user/month |
| Best for which audience | Small businesses | Small businesses | Large businesses | Company of any size | Small to medium-sized businesses |
| Ease of use | Very easy to use | Easy to use | Challenging to learn and navigate | Easy to use | Relatively difficult to navigate |
| Contact and lead management | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Email marketing | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Sales forecasting | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Built-in automation | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| integration | 1000+ integrations | 50+ integrations | Offers integrations through the Salesforce App exchange | 1000+ integrations | 500+ integrations |
1. HubSpot (Inbound CRM)
HubSpot CRM is a solution that works as a “one size fits all” for all departments, including sales, marketing, and customer support teams.
Even if you’re a one-person team (such as a business owner), you’ll still benefit from HubSpot’s capabilities as it’ll allow you to capture leads and manage them using the inbound marketing strategy.
With it, you can organize customers into specific categories depending on their expectations, create customized experiences for them, and streamline your business activities.
Why use HubSpot?
HubSpot allows you to create custom dashboards and add deals, assign tasks, and track prospects from one place.
You get to stay at the forefront of inbound activities by using pre-built templates for blogs, email content, and social media posts.
You can even automate business activities by using live chats and bots
HubSpot also has a clean user interface with no learning curve; thus, it has an advantage over other category leaders.
You get to counteract department silos by getting all teams up and running from the same platform.
- It also has 1000+ integrations to maximize the potential of your current tech stack.
Pricing
HubSpot’s CRM has a free plan; however, it’s recommended that businesses with established sales processes use the paid plans, which begin from $18/month.
2. Copper (Fully-integrated CRM)
Copper CRM is one of the best CRM software and pipeline management tools that makes tracking and organizing leads seem like a breeze.
It offers real-time visibility of lead performance and monitors the health of the business.
Moreover, it automatically alerts sales reps of new tasks and recommends actions to increase pipeline value.
Why use Copper?
You can build and customize multiple sales pipelines to manage processes for any team, department, or line of business.
Customizations even extend to fields, views, and activities.
Copper helps you qualify leads, define sales stages, and measure opportunities in your sales funnel to nurture leads.
Copper is also the only sales automation tool endorsed by Google.
It integrates seamlessly with your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive, so you never have to switch tabs for any function.
It even offers integrations to your favorite tools, including Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Dropbox, etc. (basically, you can easily integrate any tool into your CRM using Zapier).
You can also set up workflow automation in Copper based on criteria to trigger actions.
Simplicity is Copper’s core feature.
It has no complicated workflow system and takes just seconds to complete any task in Copper.
Pricing
Three pricing piers are available: Basic: $29; Professional: $69; and Business: $129.
3. Salesforce (Operational CRM)
Salesforce’s CRM software lands high on multiple “Best CRM” lists, mainly because of its “Customer 360” offering.
Customer 360 helps all team members of all departments (not only sales) track and manage customer interactions with the help of AI.
Basically, with it, you can gain insights into the customer lifecycle and use that data to elevate customer experiences.
Why use Salesforce?
Companies that use Salesforce’s capabilities report a 27% increase in lead conversion, a 34% boost in sales revenue, and a 52% increase in sales volume (this is due to its Sales Cloud feature).
The CRM tool integrates with all significant tools, including Google Workspace, Mailchimp, Dropbox, etc.
- Their customer support is available 24/7 in multiple languages.
Salesforce’s AI (Einstien) and business intelligence platform (Tablue) are both extremely well-developed, with years of training under their belt, thereby allowing it to show you more accurate results.
The most important benefit of Salesforce’s CRM is that it uses all customer-facing interactions (such as sales, support, marketing, IT, e-commerce, etc.) to collect customer data and improve their experiences.
Salesforce pricing
The prices are capped at the following: Starter: $25/user/month; Professional: $80/user/month; Enterprise: $165/user/month; and Unlimited: $330/user/month.
4. Freshworks CRM (Sales CRM)
Freshworks Suite positions itself as an all-in-one CRM solution that helps you attract leads, leverage AI, and deliver personalized experiences to customers.
With it, you get to map your entire customer journey, find out customer intent, and tailor campaigns so you can access more leads and opportunities.
Moreover, it also happens to be one of the more affordable CRM options in town, so that’s an added bonus point, too!
Why use Freshworks?
Freshworks CRM offers a powerful conversational AI tool called Freddy to promote revenue predictability with dynamic forecasting.
They also have excellent 24/7 customer support alongside self-service support options, including reports, a knowledge base, and detailed videos.
Their CRM easily integrates with third-party applications like Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Google Workspace, and more.
With Freshworks, you also get to visualize and manage deals across multiple sales pipelines. Moreover, you can even get to create role-based permissions to regulate the actions your salesperson can perform.
Freshworks provides a 360-degree view of the customer journey so agents can fully empathize with customer’s needs. You can also create custom dashboards for team leads, CSMs, and executives to organize information the way each of them likes.
Freshworks pricing
Freshworks is free for up to 3 users. Post that, their Growth plan costs $18/user/month, and their ProPopular plan costs $47/user/month.
5. Zoho CRM (General CRM)
Zoho CRM is an expert in lead management, mainly because it can track the entire lead cycle to assess sales readiness.
You can also assign leads ratings and tags depending on their profile, online behavior, and interaction with the sales team.
Plus, the level of insights it presents is unmatched — you get to access information about the interest level of leads, how they interact with your campaigns, and which channels they most often visit.
Why use Zoho?
With Zoho, you can segment your contacts and target them with personalized campaigns to improve ROI on marketing campaigns (this includes online as well as omnichannel marketing campaigns).
Zoho CRM also offers advanced security features like audit logs, encryption, two-factor authentication, and IP restrictions to protect its user’s data.
It even provides real-time reporting on all your marketing, sales, and email campaigns.
You get to integrate with over 40 applications on both web and mobile. And, if needed, you can also build your extensions and integrations using Zoho’s developer console.
Zoho also allows you to automate routine marketing, sales, and support functions to reduce manual data entry.
Zoho pricing
Zoho has four pricing models, all of which are priced per organization per month: Standard: $20, Professional: $50, Premium: $100, and Elite: $300.
Next steps
While all these CRM solutions have different use cases, benefits, and USPs, there’s one thing that’s common between all of them: you can connect all these solutions (HubSpot, Salesforce, Copper, Freshworks, and Zoho) with PandaDoc.
We also have other CRM integration partners like Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk Sell, Salesmate, Salesmate, and more.
Connecting with PandaDoc will help you get your contracts e-signed and notarized once your leads convert into paying customers.
Click here to learn how our e-signing capabilities can help your business.
Disclaimer
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