The best simple CRMs for any business

CRMs may have garnered a complicated reputation in sales and marketing teams, but at their core, CRM systems have a simple purpose. They allow any kind of organization to build rapport with customers and prospects so that they can nurture leads to help grow a business.

While many businesses already use them, some may be worried about the complexities and added burden of a new work tool. However, there are plenty of simple CRMs on the market that don’t require significant training and can still help organize customer interactions.

In this blog, we’ll look at the 10 most simple CRMs out there, key features you should look for, and how monday CRM offers a platform that’s both easy to use and customizable.

What is a simple CRM?

A CRM is software that helps track information, communications, and interactions between your organization and your customers or leads.

A CRM app stores, organizes, and retrieves interactions between your team and customers or prospects, so anyone in your organization can retrieve and review every touchpoint you had with existing or potential customers. This ensures interactions with customers are always consistent and personalized, which in turn increases the chances of conversion and fosters stronger customer trust and loyalty.

Simple CRMs are platforms that include the key features needed to manage and maintain customer relationships while still being easy to use, intuitive, and flexible.

Some simple CRMs are focused on just a few key features, while others offer a full suite of functionalities but still retain their simplicity in how users interact with the platform and customize it to their needs.

The benefits of a simple CRM for businesses

At the heart of any successful business is its ability to maintain good relationships with its customers. The goal of creating positive customer interactions is universal to all organizations, small and large alike.

There are several ways a CRM can benefit your business:

• Centralize customer data to provide an excellent customer experience
• Streamline sales processes with historical data on customer purchases and preferences
• Collaborate easily with cloud-based service for easy data sharing access across your organizations — 87% of CRMs in use today are cloud-based
• Increase customer loyalty with regular communication and personalization, helping you retain more clients
• Segment customer lists to better serve different audiences with the right offerings
• Gain analytical insights that can inform marketing campaigns, product launches, sales, and more
• Automate repetitive tasks like customer communications to continuously strengthen relationships without relying on increased resources
• Ensure stronger data security by keeping all information in one place rather than spread out and setting access permissions
• Capture and nurture new leads without letting them fall through the cracks

The 10 best simple CRMs for your team

With so many CRMs to choose from, even narrowing them down can feel overwhelming. We’ve taken the work out of it for you by briefly reviewing our top 10 simple CRMs for organizations looking to adopt an easy-to-use solution.

1. monday CRM

Best for: Teams of all sizes who want a flexible and user-friendly tool that doesn’t skimp on features

monday CRM is a software designed to be simple to use but flexible enough to manage everything from sales pipelines and contact management to marketing activities and team tasks and projects. From integrations, dashboards, customer profiles at a glance, and time-saving automations to top-rated customer support, monday CRM has everything teams need.

Key features

• Keep customer communications in one place for simple collaboration
• Track employee and sales team performance in a unified dashboard
• No-code automations help you nurture leads and customer relationships
• AI email generator to send out mass emails and keep customers engaged

monday CRM pricing

• From $12/month/seat
• Four plans: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise
• Free trial available
• Find out more about monday CRM pricing here
  

2. Pipedrive

Best for: Small teams who want to see leads and clients in a visual pipeline

Pipedrive CRM uses a drag-and-drop interface for an intuitive and customizable experience. You can use it for lead and deal management, pipelines, calendars, and more. The visual dashboard makes it easy to monitor deal and team progress.

Key features

• Visual sales pipeline to track deals through the sales process
• Integrations with existing work tools like Slack, Zoom, Gmail, and more
• Sales insights and reports to see how your strategy is working

Pipedrive pricing

• From $14/month/seat
• Four plans available: Essential, Advanced, Professional, Power
• Free trial available
• Find out more about Pipedrive pricing here

3. HubSpot CRM

Best for: Teams looking for a combined CRM and marketing solution

HubSpot is known for sleek products that work across marketing, sales, and customer service teams. With HubSpot CRM, teams can visually track leads, their sales pipeline, contacts, email campaigns, and more.

Key features

• Marketing automation tools to align campaigns with leads and clients
• Reporting and analytics tools to gain insights into sales and customer interactions
• Build email template from scratch or with AI for stronger communications

HubSpot CRM pricing

• Free forever plan with basic features
• Paid plans starting from $15/month/user
• Read more about HubSpot’s pricing here

4. Freshsales

Best for: Small teams focused on lead management

Freshsales, a product from Freshworks, is a simple CRM option with custom fields, a live chat widget, and a built-in dialer. With a clean interface and easy-to-read columns, Freshsales gives teams a platform to view dashboards, pipelines, and messaging integrations like SMS and Facebook in one place.

Key features

• Different work views like Kanban, lists, and tables to see clients and tasks
• Build automation for workflows, sales sequences, territory management, and more
• AI-powered sales intelligence insights and reports

Freshsales pricing

• Starting from $9/month/user
• Three plans to choose from: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise
• Free trial available
• Find out more about Freshsales pricing here

5. Less Annoying CRM

Best for: Teams who want to start right away with a simple solution

This CRM with the cheeky name offers a basic dashboard with everything you need in one place, like contacts, calendars, tasks, and pipelines. The software claims to be very simple to use and offers one plan and price without any bells or whistles, however, for some teams, the lack of additional features may make it tricky to work on more complex tasks.

Key features

• Easily organize all your contacts and calendars in one place
• Generate lead reports to track all the leads in your pipeline
• Access the CRM through the web from anywhere in the world

Less Annoying CRM pricing

• $15/month/user
• One plan only
• Free trial available

6. Zoho CRM

Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses looking for a customizable CRM

Zoho CRM helps teams manage customer relationship lifecycles in an easy-to-use solution. With Zoho CRM, users can increase leads, track performance, and engage customers with personalized experiences all in one place.

Key features

• Omnichannel tools to engage customers on social media, email, phone, and more
• AI assistant, Zia, to help predict sales activities, take notes, and automate tasks
• Build and implement sales processes and workflows for your organization

Zoho CRM pricing

• Starting from $14/user/month
• Four available plans: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate
• Free trial available
• Learn more about Zoho CRM pricing here

7. Zendesk Sell

Best for: Teams who want a CRM that can be integrated with a customer support platform

Zendesk Sell, part of the Zendesk suite of products, is a CRM to help sales teams enhance productivity. With real-time pipeline management tools, sales teams can keep track of customers and leads in an intuitive platform. Since Zendesk’s other products are focused on customer service, teams using Zendesk Sell can create a better customer experience.

Key features

• Sales engagement tools to create customized emails, send follow-ups, and more
• Build sales triggers to cut down on manual tasks and automate workflows
• Get visibility into your pipeline with forecasting, analytics, and analysis features

Zendesk Sell pricing

• From $19/month/agent
• Three available plans: Sell Team, Sell Growth, and Sell Professional
• Free trial available

8. Insightly CRM

Best for: Small to mid-sized teams seeking a CRM with project management features

Insightly CRM is a scalable CRM platform that helps teams sell more efficiently by organizing contacts and customer journeys. With Insightly CRM, teams can better address customer challenges to improve experiences with a modern platform that helps organizations grow.

Key features

• Integrate the CRM with other Insightly products for marketing and service for deeper customer insights
• Track leads and opportunities in your pipeline and gain insights into each one
• Automate repetitive and manual business processes

Insightly CRM pricing

• Starting from $29/user/month
• Three available plans: Plus, Professional, Enterprise
• Free trial available

9. Streak

Best for: Small teams who want a CRM to better organize contacts from Gmail

Streak is a simple CRM that helps individuals and organizations manage contacts and leads that come through email with Gmail. With Streak, teams can seamlessly integrate the platform with Gmail to gather email data and better stay on top of messages, follow-ups, and responses.

Key features

• Send customized emails to groups of contacts in your timeline
• Create and share email templates of frequently used messages with your team
• Collaborate on messages in a timeline that includes emails, call logs, notes, files, and more

Streak pricing

• Starting from $49/user/month
• Three plans to choose from: Pro, Pro+, and Enterprise
• Free trial available

10. Vtiger

Best for: Teams looking for a CRM that’s powered by AI for ease of use

Vtiger is an all-in-one CRM that helps teams align their business goals in one place, including sales, marketing, support, and more. With Vtiger, all team members are on the same page by working in an easy-to-use collaborative platform that’s adaptable to different needs.

Key features

• Build a custom pipeline that teams can align on in one view
• Advanced tools for lead routing and segmentation for better sales control
• Oversee all transactions and communications a customer had with your business

Vtiger pricing

• Starting from $12/user/month
• Three plans to choose from: One Growth, One Professional, and One Enterprise
• Free trial available

Essential CRM features to look for

Many platforms come with tons of bells and whistles – not all of which are essential for every business. When it comes to choosing a simple CRM for your organization, there are a few key features you should look for. Make sure these features are front and center in a CRM solution and are clear and easy to use.

1. Contact management

Your business needs a way to manage all customer and prospect details ― email addresses, cell numbers, postal addresses, and so on. A CRM organizes all of this information into one tidy database, letting you easily share information with your team. Most CRMs today are cloud-hosted, so you can use them on the go.

2. Interaction tracking

Sales is a numbers game, it takes multiple touchpoints with a prospect to close a deal. If you record all interactions, team members can see what’s been done. Also, once prospects are converted into customers, your support team can offer more personalized service based on previous interactions. They’re quickly up to speed with requirements and can look after the customer and fulfill the order, follow up, and eventually pitch further orders and upsells.

3. Automated notifications and reminders

A CRM is a one-stop solution for scheduling, reminders, and reviewing prior interaction details. Look for a simple CRM where these tools are simple to use and can be automated so that all these small manual tasks are taken off your shoulders, enabling your team to focus on nurturing leads and building relationships.

 4. Pipeline monitoring

A CRM isn’t just for storing customer data. You’ll also want it to handle other team processes, such as sales funnel management and order processing. Understanding how leads progress through your sales pipeline and when orders will drop lets you plan resources, organize your team, and improve campaigns and sales strategies.

monday CRM: A simple yet fully customizable solution

When talking about a “simple CRM,” it’s important to look at the factors that make a platform simple. A streamlined platform that’s flexible and easy to use can feel a lot simpler than one that’s stripped down to bare bones just to offer the essential features. This is why monday CRM takes the cake.

If you need a little more convincing, take a look at what one user wrote after implementing monday CRM on popular review site, G2:

“monday CRM stands out among CRM solutions due to its exceptional ease of use, powerful automation capabilities, and vibrant visual interface. Its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple to create customized workflows and dashboards, allowing sales teams to streamline their processes and gain valuable insights into their sales performance.”

monday CRM has the unique advantage of being a robust CRM capable of handling complex tasks while still maintaining the feel of a platform that’s simple and straightforward. While it’s loaded with helpful features, it’s also entirely customizable and scalable, meaning your team can focus on the features it needs when it needs them. Let’s take a look at some of the features that make monday CRM a prime choice.

Start instantly with templates

monday CRM comes complete with hundreds of ready-made templates for multiple uses. There are boards for a basic CRM, CRMs for specific industries like real estate, customer onboarding, contacts, and more. These templates can be adapted to fit your business’s specific needs, allowing you to hit the ground running.

No-code automations

Build automations you really need in minutes in monday CRM. Set automations so that tasks can move through a pipeline based on their status, sales teams get reminded to follow up with leads, and customers move through stages right away.

Transparent communication

With monday CRM, all your contacts and communications are kept in one place, whether it’s emails, meetings, notes, or call summaries. This helps your entire team stay on the same page so they can focus on building better relationships and personalizing service based on previous interactions.

A simple CRM can drive real business value

A CRM is an essential tool to help you close sales and deliver an excellent customer experience — no matter the size of your company. While many CRM software solutions are out there, many are too expensive, cluttered, or require a long onboarding period.

Create your own simple and effective platform with monday CRM. Set it up to fit the way you run your business, not the other way around. With monday CRM, you can accelerate your team’s sales and build better customer interactions on a simple platform that scales with your business.

Related articles: CRM for small businesses