CRM Software

The CRM system market is a highly competitive field. With constant and continuous innovations, companies always seek to either improve or establish themselves for both new and existing customers. Some CRM companies try to find a specific niche while others try to remain as broad as possible in order to appeal to as many potential clients as possible.

However, because the field is so crowded, these days it can be difficult to find the best CRM solution for your company, and finding the CRM software that offers exactly what you need, takes a lot of extensive research.

This selection of CRM software highlights some of the bigger CRM companies for the respective targets. While these tend to be the most popular, this does not mean it is necessarily the best fit for you and your business. The following is a brief overview, in no particular order, to help you get an overview of the variety of these CRM software.

This CRM software is usually the first to come up when one is looking for a CRM system for a small business. Hailed by many as the best CRM software for sole proprietors, it offers a variety of features and is considered to be very user friendly.

Insighltly has a CRM product available for free for up to 100,000 records, making this a very attractive option for very small business. As a business continues to grow it can move on to one of their subscription models from as low as $12 per month, a fraction of the cost of what many larger CRM companies offer.

This CRM provider is the largest and most popular open source CRM tool currently on the market. The great thing about the open source software is that is allows for a lot of customisation, making it an ideal tool for anyone in need of something highly specialised.

However, this does mean users need a high level of IT skill to make the most out of this software. But if the business has someone with these capabilities, it is possible to create a CRM systems tailor made for your business.

The software has a free community version available, and their professional plans including cloud storage space start at 40 dollars per month. This places the CRM software in the mid range of CRM, not quite inexpensive, but still far from high-priced.

Probably the biggest and best known CRM software currently available, this is currently the number one player to beat. This platform was one of the first of offer exclusively cloud based CRM products, and remains the dominant force, with numerous other CRM companies following in its footsteps.

Probably one of the more expensive CRM options available, Salesforce is also one of the most extensive, with innumerable features and options. The CRM software includes a 30 day free trial to allow you to get a good look at its capabilities before deciding if you to want to purchase.

While the CRM provider does offer versions for smaller companies, it is most appropriate for larger enterprises which can make the most use out of the software’s capabilities.

Zoho is a great all-round CRM software with powerful automation functions to save its users a lot of time otherwise spent on day-to-day tasks. They have recently rebranded themselves as ‘’multichannel’’ and increased their customer support functions making it an even better option than before.

This CRM vendor has a wide array of options and customisable features ideal for small to medium size businesses, while also remaining a great solution for large enterprises. They offer a number of different plans, allowing you to find the optimal CRM solution for your business. Their plans start at 12 dollars per user per month, up to 100 for the most complete ‘’ultimate’’ version.

Netsuite, together with salesforce, is one of the largest and best CRM providers of Cloud based CRM solutions worldwide. This CRM software offers products primarily targeted towards small to midsize companies, although it is still a suitable option for large businesses.

Netsuite combines a few powerful software, with great functions relation to e-commerce. The software includes top of the line sales and marketing functions making it an ideal option for businesses that require a little extra support with online sales. Their software is one the more expensive side, starting at 79 dollars per user per month.

 Data provided by pcmag.com

There are many other options of CRM companies that do their best to meet the demands of their customers. Some CRM vendors really focus on their specific niche with tailor made options whereas others prefer a more general approach. The following are but a few examples of other great CRM software.

Nimble: This CRM software provides a fresh take on CRM by focusing mainly on social media integration, and how this can improve customer relations. It is a great CRM tool for those who prefer to have their customer relations through social media.

Base CRM: This CRM software is currently one of the market leaders in mobile CRM, making it perfect for people that need access to their customer data at any time.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: One of the biggest draws for this CRM software is the fact that, as the name suggests, it is very well integrated with all other Microsoft product and application. This is ideal for those working in conjunction with other Microsoft products.

Veeva CRM: This is a unique CRM vendor in the sense that their software is meant for the field of life sciences (the medical and pharmaceutical field), making it the number one CRM software for those working there.

Nutshell CRM: This CRM software is quite often compared to Insightly, and offers CRM products for small B2B teams, and aims to increase sales successes. The packages are low prices and they guarantee no hidden costs.

Hubspot CRM: If you are not only looking for a great CRM systems, but also want to integrate it with dedicated marketing and sales software, this is the CRM solution for you. While you can use the CRM tool separately it works best in conjunction with Hubspot’s other applications.

Pipedrive CRM: As the name implies, this CRM software focuses its efforts on optimising and organising the pipeline of their customers, and provides a clear visual of said pipeline.

Really Simple Systems: This CRM software is well known among B2B businesses for great usability and user experience. The philosophy behind this software is based upon making complex applications easy to use and as affordable as possible. 

Sturtevant is a family-owned business that manufactures highly specialised material processing equipment that was founded back in 1883. Their success increased over the years and the volume of customers has only continued to grow.

Due to the high demand of their customers, the company was starting to have a hard time keeping up with the ever-increasing demands. This led to a problem that most people wish they had, they had more potential customers than they were able to handle.

According to the director of sales and marketing, Sam Rajkovich, they received so many questions about their products and prices they were no longer able to answer their emails. To get a better handle on it they only replied to those that sent out second enquiries, but this was by no means an ideal option to find leads.

Mr Rajkovich thankfully had prior experience with CRM software and realised that implementing such a system would increase their ability to respond immensely. The company decided to use Salesforce’s CRM software to help with their customer management.

One of the problems they had before implementing a CRM systems was the fact that they worked with 6 separate, unconnected databases. This made it nearly impossible to keep track of their customers email addresses and even meant they had to work with bad data.

Thanks to the help of the CRM software they were able to centralise all of the incoming emails and data, smoothing over communication between different locations. This allowed the company to save a great amount of time. The system allowed them to contact their leads with greater ease and cutting down the response time of up to two months, to a reply within minutes.

Overall Sturtevant was very happy with their new CRM software, praising the CRM software for allowing them to focus on the most relevant aspects of the business, their pipeline, and revenue and future opportunities.

The company was so pleased with the results of the implementation, that they expanded the use of CRM features to further increase their sales results. And, this is but one example of many that show that even the most basic of CRM features can be of incredible help in improving customer relations exponentially.