6 Best CRM for Startups in 2024

If you are a startup founder or have a leadership position in one and are looking for ways to improve customer experience and management processes, using a CRM for startups can help you. CRM software provides several solutions to optimize tasks in different sectors of a company, prevent errors and save time.

CRM (customer relationship management) will be a useful tool to centralize the data about your customers and keep track of the interactions with them. You can develop workflows, allowing your team to know better how to organize their daily activities, and also build a personalized customer journey inside your startup by analyzing the CRM reports. 

What is CRM?#

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, it is a software system that enables you to store all your contacts, deals and sales data in one place. It helps with organizing the processes, automating tasks, creating reports, optimizes your time, and prevents you from losing valuable information.

In a single platform, you are going to have registered since the first visit someone made to your website to their latest purchase. It helps to turn leads into customers by providing a more personalized experience, for example, by identifying relevant products and content for each person.

A CRM records and analyzes calls, emails, and other documents information, which also are used to develop reports about sales and marketing performance. You can use this to have new insights, and increase revenue.

Benefits of Using a CRM#

Keep Important Data Organized#

Having your sales data centralized in a CRM system is much more efficient than keeping multiple sheets in one platform, than having notes saved in a different place and documents in another one.

As your company expands, the amount of data you need to store and analyze grows, keeping it disorganized can damage your business plan, and it isn't very professional. You need to have a method to maintain control of each process.

As CRM provides automated features, it's a solution to avoid ignoring data just because you didn't have time to take a look at it and study it.

For example, by integrating marketing tools, including email, you can segment your customers and leads. Also, some CRM platforms automatically identify deals opportunities and notify you.

Improve Customer Experience#

Discovering ways to outstand your services and products is essential to have a successful business, regardless of which sector you are in. In a competitive market, mainly when it comes to ecommerce, one of the most important successful factors is being able to offer an incredible customer experience.

That's what turns leads into loyal customers, which makes brands be reminded and recommended by their clients. Many people are willing to pay more, just to buy or hire service from a company that shows concern and cares for them.

The CRM gives you graphics about your customers’ main characteristics, like age, location, and gender. By understanding their preferences, you can define the type of discounts they are looking for, communicate more engagingly, and stimulate interactions.

Also, you won't lose track of your leads’ actions, you can follow up every activity and pay attention to the replies. Having a system that notifies you when a prospect makes an action, like sending you a message via your website, is essential to avoid missing deals opportunities.

By seeing the most accessed website pages, the emails with higher open and click-through rates, the most read blog posts, you can set behavior patterns that enable you to continuously improve customer experience.

Improve Productivity#

When you manage your time better, you and your team can focus on more important business activities, being able to develop actions to achieve your goals, and grow revenue.

Instead of putting your team’s efforts into creating spreadsheets and writing information down, you can have it automatically with a CRM. It will save energy that can be put into what matters: interpreting the data and developing strategies from them.

Stimulate Teamwork#

Since the whole sales process is going to be registered at the CRM system, the sales team can learn a lot from each other, see which are the most successful actions applied, exchange experiences, and have a broader vision of all the buyer stages.

Also, it becomes easier for the sales manager to sign tasks, as they are going to see what needs to be done to close deals and sales through the platform.

Everyone can contribute to developing better practices together, but that depends on the company environment. Encourage your employees to study the data available in the CRM platform, open space for new ideas, and for them to be shared among the team.

Increase Sales#

Knowing your prospects and customers better, giving efficient tools for your team to improve their work, having data to develop insights is certainly going to help you to sell more. Using a CRM platform can be the next move towards conquering your long-term goals.

You will have a complete set of tools created to help with customer management. But, to succeed, it's important to understand how to use a CRM, analyze the features offered, and learn how to implement them.

The CRM software usually offers an intuitive dashboard, easy to navigate and with help support to follow you through the implementation process. Make the most of each tool, and train your team to start using them as well. You will quickly see the results on sales revenue.

How to Choose the Best CRM for Startups#

When the subject is CRM for startups, there are some basic features that every good CRM should have, and they must be taken into consideration.

Marketing Integration#

A good free CRM should offer marketing tools, so you will be able to manage campaigns and analyze their performance through the platform.

Observe if the CRM you are choosing allows you to integrate with your website, email, SMS, and social media. It will help your sales and marketing team to work in sync, make better use of the data, and consequently increase revenue.

Lead Scoring#

Leads have several characteristics that enable you to divide them into many categories. Each one is in a different deal stage, some are more likely to make a purchase than others. Therefore, choose a free CRM that notifies you when there are selling opportunities, and set a score for each lead base on how likely they are to close a deal.

You just need to set the criteria that indicate a lead has a high potential to turn into a customer, then the software will send you a notification when it happens.

Task Management#

Another essential feature of free CRM software is enabling you to create and assign tasks, set deadlines, and follow up on how each activity is done. It becomes easier to manage your team, and they can organize their time better too.

Data Management#

A good CRM platform must allow you to centralize all customer data in the platform, and organize it as you prefer. Some options free CRM should give you includes: creating contacts lists, keeping track of customer history, and recording each action they make when interacting with your business.

6 Best CRM for Startups#

1. Brevo#

Brevo enables you to organize all your customer relationships in one place. It isn't necessary to install anything on your computer, you can sign up for free on the website, then upload your contact information and start managing the interactions. 

It's possible to store notes from previous calls and meetings, documents, and other important files, and save everything in the CRM contact profile. Then, if someone on your team is going to send a message to one of your startup customers, they will have access to the whole history of the conversation, simplifying the process. 

Once you have uploaded the contacts, you can divide them into different categories based on similar characteristics, such as the source of acquisition or the stage on the buyer's journey. To manage your team's activities, you also have the option to create tasks for them in the CRM and include a deadline.

Highlighted features:

• Easy-to-use
• Centralize all of your contact information
• Organize your contacts based on similar characteristics
• Create tasks for your team
• Include deadlines
• Automate follow-up emails

2. Pipedrive#

Pipedrive figures as one of the best CRM for startups for several reasons, it provides an easy-to-use platform that allows you to create pipeline stages according to how the sales process happens in your company. It's totally customizable, you can adapt it to your business model and workflow. 

Use Pipedrive to keep track of deals, add information about each one of them, and signalize when there is a deal that needs more attention. The platform enables you to automate multiple tasks as well, you can set triggers and desired actions, auto-nurture leads, and send personalized emails automatically. 

To keep track of important KPIs (key performance indicators), the CRM provides several reports and insights. You can add custom fields to your reports and see all of the main KPIs in one place. Besides, you can set individual, team, and company goals too. 

Highlighted features:

• Create pipeline stages
• Customizable
• Intuitive design
• Contact management
• Automate tasks
• Insights and reports
• Task management

3. Freshsales#

With Freshsales, it's going to be much easier to spot opportunities and close deals as you can centralize all the information about customers and leads in one place. In the activity timeline, your sales and marketing team can check the context of the interactions to understand better how to approach each person, and also get to know the customer behavior. 

The predictive contact scoring points out opportunities as well. Customers are able to get in contact with you through multiple channels, including telephone, email, chat, and SMS, and you are going to manage all the conversations using the Freshsales dashboard.

The platform counts on artificial intelligence as well, and they use it to send you personalized insights. To collaborate with your team, enjoy the integration with Slack.

Highlighted features:

• Activity timeline
• Predictive contact scoring
• AI-based deal insights
• Slack integration
• 360º customer view
• Automated sales campaign

4. RD Station#

RD Station is a CRM for startups that offers you efficient marketing and sales tools. You can connect pages, forms, WhatsApp, email, and much more to the platform to capture contact information, and develop a personalized journey for each person. 

To identify the best sales opportunities, monitor the customers' and leads' actions, including the messages they send you, pages visited and emails read, for example. Define criteria to prioritize contacts who are prompt to make a purchase.

To help you understand the CRM and get your team on board, you are going to count on a team of RD specialists,  technical support, step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and other educational content. 

Highlighted features:

• All-in-one tool
• Create personalized journeys
• Monitor each contact
• Identify opportunities
• Customer support

5. Zoho CRM#

Zoho CRM has a simple interface, which makes it easier to learn how to use all the features it provides. You can import all your data from spreadsheets or migrate from another CRM system with no hassle. It also offers training programs to help you get started. 

It allows you to unify all the customer channels in one platform, such as telephone, email, social media, and live chat. When a lead or a customer gets in contact, the CRM software sends a real-time notification, preventing missing opportunities. You have the option to automate different tasks as well and add conditions to trigger actions. 

Enjoy the analytics feature to make data-driven decisions. You are going to receive reports with KPIs to help you measure performance, manage your team, and identify what needs to be done to improve productivity and increase profit. Use Zia, the AI-powered sales assistant, to get advanced lead and deal predictions. 

Highlighted features:

• Reach customers across every channel
• Get real-time notifications when customers interact
• Automate tasks
• Real-time reports and insights
• Track KPIs
• AI sales assistant

6. Bigin#

Bigin is a CRM developed thinking about small business needs. You can easily manage all of your prospects' and customers' information and keep a timeline of every interaction with them. To organize and identify the stage of the buyer's journey each contact is, you also have the option to create multiple pipelines. 

In the dashboard, you and your team are going to have an overview of the sales pipeline, enabling you to identify opportunities and the tasks that are priorities. Bigin provides multiple CRM templates for different types of business, too, you can pick the one that fits your company better, and use it to organize the data. 

You are going to have a complete view of your customers, from emails to activities to deals. This way, you won't lose time looking for their information, and the communication becomes much more efficient. Schedule workflows and automate actions based on triggers and conditions you have set. 

Highlighted features:

• Engage prospects
• Manage pipelines
• Close deals
• Ready-made templates
• Get complete customer context
• Built-in telephony
• Automate tasks

Choose the Best CRM for Startups #

List what are your priorities when looking for the best CRM for startups. What features do you need, and what is your budget? Answering these questions will help you to select the right platform for your company. Also, pay attention if the CRM is easy-to-use and offers an intuitive dashboard, which will facilitate your team to get used to the new system.

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