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CRM and sales

7 of the best contact management software solutions

Alicia Schneider 11 min read
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Your customers are the core of your business. They propel your business forward and allow your company to grow. That’s why it’s so important to have a clear overview of all your customers and contacts and to keep them organized and sorted.

Contact management software helps you do all that and more. By tracking contact data, interactions, purchases, and communications, you can enhance productivity by gaining insights into customer behavior to provide them with better products and tailored services.

Still, choosing the right tool for your needs can be tricky. Contact management software ranges from simple systems to more robust CRMs that include different tools for optimizing sales. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of your best options, such as monday CRM, for managing contacts on the market today.

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What is contact management software?

Contact management software is a platform businesses use to store, organize, and manage contact information of clients, other businesses, and individuals. Think of it as a digital address book that stores data like names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails. However, unlike an address book, contact management software is capable of a lot more.

Aside from storing basic contact information, tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) software can also track interactions, communications, purchases, and other contact records. This makes contact management software, or a CRM platform, essential for sales, marketing, and customer service teams by making essential contact data more accessible to enhance productivity, improve personalization, and build better relationships.

Features to look for in contact management software

When shopping around for a new contact management software for your team, it’s important to consider the functionalities you’ll need to succeed. When it comes to managing contacts, you often want to look for additional features aside from contact organization to make the most of your database, close more sales, and maintain customer relationships. Here are a few features to look for in contact management software:

  • Contact organization: There should be effective features to easily manage and categorize contacts using groups, tags, and other customizable fields
  • Integration capabilities: You’ll need to use other tools like calendars, email clients, social media, and more to communicate with contacts, so make sure they can be integrated
  • Automation: Automate repetitive tasks like contact follow-ups and notifications to save time on manual tasks
  • Lead management: Look for lead management features to capture and score leads and new contacts so that they can be moved through the pipeline effectively
  • Reporting and analytics: You should be able to generate detailed reports on contact activities, engagement levels, and insights into customer behavior

The top 7 contact management solutions

There are plenty of contact management solutions available, but choosing the right one for your team will depend on different factors, like features, pricing, and ease of use.

To manage contacts effectively, it’s best to opt for a CRM that offers basic contact management tools along with more robust features, allowing you to scale.

Below, we’ll look at some of the best contact management solutions available so you can choose the best one for your business.

1. monday CRM

monday crm contact management software

Best for: Teams that want a visual and highly customizable contact management solution

monday CRM is designed to allow teams to better manage their contacts and boost sales with ease. With its simple-to-use visual interface, monday CRM helps users customize workflows to fit their specific team’s needs. With tons of integration capabilities, collaboration and communication tools, and straightforward automations, it’s a highly effective contact management solution.

Top monday CRM features

  • 27+ work views such as Pipeline, Workload, Timeline, Calendar, and more
  • Automate lead automation on new contacts with monday AI to optimize sales
  • Integrates with popular tools like Zoom, Slack, MailChimp, Google apps, and others

monday CRM pricing

  • Starting from $12/seat/month
  • Four plans available: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise
  • Free trial available
  • Check out more about monday CRM pricing here
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2. HubSpot CRM

Best for: Small to medium teams searching for a free CRM solution

HubSpot CRM, a part of HubSpot’s suite of tools, is a great choice if you’re looking for a forever-free contact management solution. With its ability to track leads visually and manage a sales pipeline, emails and communications, and more, it’s a clear way to manage contacts across the board. That said, the free plan is limited and users searching for more features and capabilities may find HubSpot CRM can get pricey.

Key HubSpot CRM features

  • Strong reporting tools to gain analytics and insights into contacts and related sales
  • Template builder for emails using AI for quick communication
  • Built-in marketing and sales tools to engage contacts

HubSpot CRM pricing

3. Freshsales

Best for: Smaller teams focused on turning contacts into leads

As part of the Freshworks suite of products, Freshsales is designed to help teams simplify their sales processes. Teams can save time engaging contacts with built-in marketing and communication features. With tons of automation features, a simple interface, and dashboards that are easy to use, Freshsales is a good option for teams looking to manage their contacts.

Top Freshsales features

  • AI-powered lead scoring and reporting
  • Automate workflows and communications for better contact engagement
  • Integrated phone calls, emails, and social messaging for unified communication

Freshsales pricing

  • Plans starting from $9/month/user
  • Three plans available: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise
  • Free trial available
  • Read more about Freshsales pricing here

4. Zendesk Sell

Best for: Customer support teams looking for an integrated contact management solution

Zendesk is a well-known name when it comes to customer service software, so its CRM product, Zendesk Sell, is a great solution for teams handling customer requests and inquiries. Equipped with real-time pipeline management features, reporting capabilities, and communication tools, Zendesk Sell is ideal for companies seeking to align their sales and customer service efforts.

Top Zendesk Sell features

  • Email integration to keep communications in one place
  • Call and text contacts directly from the platform
  • Get a complete view of each contact including insights and purchase history

Zendesk Sell pricing

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

5. Insightly CRM

Best for: Small to medium teams looking for a CRM with project management features

Offering a blend of CRM and project management features, Insightly CRM is ideal for businesses and smaller teams that need to manage both projects and customer relationships. Users can easily keep track of contacts, sales opportunities, and milestones in one place and make use of Inisghtly CRM’s reporting and integration options.

Top Insightly CRM features

  • Track leads in your pipeline and get insights on each contact
  • Build workflow automations for reminders on messaging contacts and nurturing leads
  • Convert leads and opportunities into projects and tasks for seamless sales

Insightly CRM pricing

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

6. Pipedrive

Best for: Small sales teams looking to visually manage their contacts and pipelines

Pipedrive is known for its visual sales pipeline management and its user-friendliness. The platform is customizable and features a drag-and-drop interface to help teams track leads and deals, organize contacts, and prioritize tasks. With its visual pipeline, Pipedrive makes it easy to monitor contacts and customers through the entire sales process.

Top Pipedrive features

  • Create, automate, and send marketing emails to always keep in touch with contacts
  • Manage leads and customers in a visual CRM pipeline to close more deals
  • Integrate with 400+ apps and business tools like Slack, Mailchimp, Zapier, and more

Pipedrive pricing

  • Pricing starting from $14/month/seat
  • Four plans to choose from: Essential, Advanced, Professional, Power
  • Free trial available
  • Read more about Pipedrive plans and pricing here

7. Zoho CRM

Best for: Small-to-medium-sized businesses looking for a simple and flexible CRM

Zoho CRM, part of the Zoho suite of products, offers a comprehensive set of features to help teams manage contacts, sales, and marketing initiatives. The Zoho CRM platform is customizable so businesses can tailor it to their needs. Featuring functionalities for analytics, AI assistants, and many integration capabilities, Zoho CRM is a versatile solution for contact management.

Top Zoho CRM features

  • Zia, an AI-powered sales assistant, helps automate tasks and sales activities
  • Rich analytics to gain insights on contacts, leads, and sales
  • Integrates with over 800 apps, like Zoom, Shopify, Google apps, and more

Zoho CRM pricing

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

Optimize contact management with monday CRM

When choosing software, you want to make sure you’re opting for something that’s going to grow with your team as your business evolves. That means choosing a platform that offers more than what your company may need right now, but that won’t clutter your workflows before you get there. With monday CRM, you enjoy a wide range of features allowing you to easily manage, store, and organize contacts in simple and customizable boards, and access more robust features when you’re ready to scale.

Let’s take a look at some of the features that make monday CRM the ideal choice for contact management.

Custom form building to connect with new contacts

monday crm leads form

monday CRM allows you to build your own forms that can be used on your website, in emails, on social media, and on other platforms. This enables you to capture essential contact information and have it transfer automatically to the right board to store data for easy access when it’s needed.

Automations to streamline sales processes

monday crm deals automation

Help your sales team save time on manual processes with custom automations to eliminate repetitive contact management tasks. You can create rules to automatically assign leads, set reminders, get instant notifications on communications, and ensure the right tasks or contacts are automatically forwarded to the right team members.

Detailed data analytics tools to understand contacts

monday crm contact analytics dashboard

monday CRM helps you go steps beyond simply storing and organizing your contacts. With its advanced analytics tools, you can generate reports to better understand the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your contacts to offer more tailored services and close more deals.

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Ensure business growth with the right contact management platform

A contact management platform that fits your team’s needs is sure to help your business grow. When your contacts are better organized and managed, you can focus on building stronger relationships to close more sales, offer more tailored services, and better understand your customers. With monday CRM, you get the benefit of a contact management solution that’s simple to use, entirely customizable, yet robust enough to manage more complex tasks and projects when your business needs it.

FAQs

Contact management software mainly focuses on storing and organizing contact data, while a CRM takes it a step further to include features like automation, marketing functionalities, and analytics.

The best contact management software depends on your needs and preferences, but there are popular options such as monday CRM that offers a more personalized experience.

While you can manage contacts without using software or a CRM, manual methods are less efficient, prone to errors, and don’t offer you ways to automate workflows or scale your work as your business grows.

The content in this article is provided for informational purposes only and, to the best of monday.com’s knowledge, the information provided in this article  is accurate and up-to-date at the time of publication. That said, monday.com encourages readers to verify all information directly.
Alicia is an accomplished tech writer focused on SaaS, digital marketing, and AI. With nearly a decade of writing experience and a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, she has a knack for turning complex jargon into engaging content that helps companies connect with audiences.
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