If you want to help your business grow and thrive by improving customer relationships and streamlining processes for greater efficiency, a CRM is an excellent option. Within a CRM, you can track customer data, maintain client profiles, collaborate with coworkers, measure key performance metrics, and much more.
Although the benefits of using a CRM can’t be denied, the costs can sometimes be too much for small or lower-profit businesses.
Thankfully, there arecheaper CRM options that work well for many companies. Today, we’ll tell you the top affordableCRMs of 2023 and provide crucial information on their limitations and alternatives.
What are the core features of a CRM?
The features available in a customer relationship management system can vary wildly from one option to another. However, there are key features you’ll want to see in a CRM. These features include:
- Contact management: The primary purpose of a CRM is to store, track, manage, and leverage customer data. A user-friendly, highly efficient contact management system is a must for any CRM.
- Lead management: Using detailed client information, KPIs, and other metrics, your CRM allows you to better identify promising leads and how to best convert them to customers. With a higher lead-to-customer ratio, your company can expect an increase in profits and reputation.
- Reports and dashboards: Reports and dashboards that can be customized to fit your company’s unique business plan and goals are highly beneficial because they offer all relevant stakeholders the information they need when they need it most. In turn, this can lead to better decision-making and happier customers.
- Automation: The ability to automate everyday tasks, marketing, sales, and even aspects of customer service can save your team significant time that can be reinvested elsewhere.
- Integrations: Try finding a CRM that integrates with your business tools. When all (or most) of your business tools can be accessed via one platform, you’ll save a lot of time, effort, and frustration that comes from having to open a new application for each new task.
Remember to look for these features and any additional ones you need in the top cheap CRMs of 2023, including monday sales CRM.
Top cheap CRMs
There are many potential options if you’re looking for a cheap CRM for your business. Not all options are created equally, so check out our list of the top cheap CRMs — or ones that offer free tiers — below:
- HubSpot: This is a well-known cloud-based CRM software option with a logical interface your team will have no trouble learning to use. It promotes cross-department collaboration between sales and marketing and is highly scalable. However, this option becomes very expensive when you scale beyond the free option. It also may be too feature-heavy for businesses looking for a simple solution.
- Pipedrive: With over 350 integrations, mobile apps, lead management, and communication tracking, this can be an excellent high-quality option. Pipedrive’s essential tier is only $15 per month, making it highly affordable for small businesses. Unfortunately, this cheapest option also has many limitations, and scaling within this CRM becomes incredibly pricey.
- monday sales CRM: monday sales CRM has a free option for up to two users with limited features. Fortunately, even the standard plan is only $14 per user each month, making it highly affordable. At this tier, you get access to all the features you need to run complex workflows, streamline business processes, and build better customer relationships.
- Apptivo: Although there’s a free plan, the starting price for paid options is only $8 per user. There are ample integration options, mass email communication options, and invoicing. Unfortunately, Apptivo can be challenging to use, and you don’t get access to customer service at lower pricing tiers.
What types of businesses should consider more affordable CRMs?
Generally, most small businesses should consider a more affordable CRM because they tend to have lower annual profits and fewer employees.
Investing in and maintaining a more expensive CRM would cut too much into profits, making it counterintuitive. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Small businesses that generate enough annual income (and subsequent profits) to reasonably afford a more comprehensive CRM will likely find it worthwhile to do so. This is because a cheap CRM’s limitations may become an issue for companies hoping to scale moving forward.
Limitations of a cheap CRM
Although a cheaper CRM can provide many of the features and benefits you need for a smaller business, they also have some limitations. Examples of limitations common in free or cheap customer relationship management systems include:
- Hard cap on users: Most cheap CRMs have a hard cap on how many users can be added to the platform. Generally, the number of user accounts is minimal, often between two and five.
- Might not work for your industry: Certain industries require specific features that meet their unique challenges, and cheaper CRMs aren’t likely to provide these. Examples of industries requiring special features include publishing and construction.
- Poor or nonexistent customer service: You might find cheaper CRM companies’ customer service lacking or nonexistent in some cases.
- Not scalable: Cheaper CRMs generally aren’t scalable, so you’ll have to switch to a more comprehensive option when your company has sustained enough growth.
Cheaper CRMs vs. monday sales CRM
monday sales CRM is an excellent balance of affordability, capability, and scalability. The scalability of this option is what really sets it apart from cheaper options because you can grow your business without spending significantly more on the CRM you already use.
For a reasonable price point, you’ll get all the features you need without ever having to switch platforms and undergo new onboarding. Customizable dashboards, numerous business tool integrations, time-saving automation, and real-time collaboration features are just a sampling of what monday.com offers.
With monday.com, you can view and track customer projects, manage the activities of yourself and your team members, and access an array of email templates that autofill with your customers’ information to save time. You’ll also have access to simple sales forecasting and team goals to ensure your business is on track.
Although you likely have a working understanding of cheaper CRMs now, you can check out the FAQs section below if you still have questions.
FAQs
What is the best cheap CRM for a small business?
Apptivo and HubSpot have free options that might provide the capabilities a small business needs. monday sales CRM also has a basic option that costs only $12/month per user. Which of these options is best would depend on the features your small business needs most.
Balance affordability and capability with an affordable CRM
A CRM provides crucial benefits to help your company build a solid reputation, promote stronger customer relationships, generate more leads, and increase profits.
For small businesses with low profit generation or few employees, a cheaper CRM may be a good option. However, your company can reap all the benefits of more expensive options to balance affordability and capability by using monday.com’s Work OS.
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