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Best Sales CRMs of 2024
See how we rank the top sales CRM platforms based on their standout features, pros, cons and pricing
Rayna Perry is a writer based in North Carolina. She holds a degree in public relations from the University of Georgia and has written professionally about B2B technology, personal finance and travel.
Katie Gray is a Chicago-based editor. She started her career writing and editing content about home services before transitioning to home improvement products. She has spent the last year and a half working at a software company, managing content about CRM, project management and other business topics.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software can be a powerful tool for sales teams to use to simplify their day-to-day sales activities, such as communicating with leads and managing contact lists. But with so many types of CRMs on the market, it can be difficult to know which one is right for you and your team.
We at the MarketWatch Guides team set out to help you find the best CRM software for sales management. We interviewed sales professionals, surveyed CRM users and tested nine sales CRM tools. Monday.com came out on top as our overall pick for sales, but the remaining tools may be better for you depending on what you’re looking for. Keep reading to learn more.
Our team has done the work for you. Here’s how we reviewed and rated CRM software.
12
Companies Reviewed
100
Hours Spent TestingOur team personally reviewed every CRM product. We enrolled in trial memberships, attended demos, collected and compared data on costs, user experience, reporting and more.
200
Experts SurveyedWe’ve conducted multiple CRM surveys to collect data on what real customers care about, such as software features, user experience, and customer support.
26
Rating Factors
Compare Our Best Sales CRM Software Picks
Here are our top picks for the best sales CRM providers:
Founded 2012Monthly Cost $15 for StandardTrial period 14-day free trial
Monday Sales CRM Overview
Monday Sales CRM is a cloud-based and user-friendly sales CRM that allows teams to customize their deal pipeline to their unique sales processes. This CRM system has automation tools to help streamline repetitive tasks so teams have more time to focus on closing deals. Plus, email integration with Monday.com keeps all communication details with prospects in one centralized location.
Why Monday.com Stands Out
Stand out Feature: Simple Kanban board views
What We Love: Monday.com’s sales CRM combines sales and marketing features into intuitive task management boards that are easy to customize.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals who want to customize how they track leads and manage tasks
Alternatives:
Pipedrive is another sales CRM that is easy to learn with its intuitive interface and basic functionality.
Zoho CRM offers a similar level of customization with less of a focus on project or task management.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit*
Basic CRM
$15 per user per month
40
Standard CRM
$20 per user per month
40
Pro CRM
$33 per user per month
40
Enterprise CRM
Custom
40
*Contact monday.com for custom pricing if you need more than 40 seats.
Our Take
Monday.com’s CRM is our top pick because it has a highly customizable interface to handle sales, marketing and task management in one place. You can use its project management boards to set up your sales pipeline according to your exact preferences.
When we tested monday.com’s sales CRM, we were particularly drawn to the “Start from scratch” option. You can use this option to set up your sales pipeline board if you don’t want to choose from a pre-built template. You can create steps for each part of the sales process and group contacts into segments based on what stage they’re in. You can also visualize the pipeline with a Kanban board, Gantt chart, table, list or other view.
View of a custom monday.com board with tasks organized into groups
One downside we did notice as we tested the CRM was that it struggled to handle large contact lists. Our long list ended up looking similar to a spreadsheet. While we couldn’t change how this list presented as a spreadsheet, we could customize what information it included, adding to monday.com’s customization capabilities.
Pros:
Customizable tabs for contacts, deals and other information
Customizable boards to manage your tasks and sales
Multiple board views to visualize your sales pipeline
Cons:
More focused on managing tasks and sales than storing contacts
Upgraded plan required for mass emailing
Salesforce
Best for Scale
4.6
Founded 1999Monthly Cost $25 for StarterTrial period 30-day free trial
Salesforce Overview
Sales teams that have a more involved and complex sales cycle may want to consider using Salesforce as a CRM. Salesforce is a leading CRM tool that has advanced features like multiple pipeline tracking, deal monitoring across multiple channels, sales forecasting and more to help teams identify the most valuable opportunities.
Why Salesforce Stands Out
Standout Feature: Detailed contact information cards
What We Love: Salesforce has a robust feature set as a full-service CRM that can handle essentially anything related to sales.
Who It’s Best For: Experienced CRM users who need to manage a large volume of contact data
Alternatives:
HubSpot can also handle large amounts of data, though it places more emphasis on marketing and communication features.
Zoho CRM offers more customization with multiple ways to visualize the sales pipeline.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Starter
$25 per user per month
Unlimited
Professional
$80 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$165 per user per month
Unlimited
Unlimited
$330 per user per month
Unlimited
Einstein 1 Sales
$500 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Salesforce is a widely known sales CRM that ranked as the most used CRM in our recent survey of 200 sales professionals. It’s best suited to large sales teams with advanced needs. When we tested the Salesforce free trial, we immediately noticed the sheer volume of features that the platform offers. For instance, it can create in-depth customer listings that include lead scoring and activity tracking as well as miscellaneous notes to refer back to as you nurture them.
View of a Salesforce contact profile
Regardless of your comfort level with CRM software, Salesforce will likely come with a learning curve. In fact, it took some time for us to understand how contacts and leads were organized. However, Salesforce representatives were proactive about reaching out to us to offer help once they saw that we had signed up. Plus, customer support is readily available via phone and chat.
Pros:
Ability to handle large contact lists
In-depth contact information cards
Responsive sales representatives
Cons:
Robust feature set that may be more than small teams need
Somewhat steep learning curve
Hubspot
Best for Combined Marketing and Sales Features
4.4
Founded 2006Monthly Cost $20 for StarterTrial period Free forever plan, 14-day free trial
Hubspot Overview
HubSpot’s Sales Hub is a feature-rich sales CRM that is great for growing sales teams. They offer a wide range of features and capabilities on the free and lower-tier plans. This helps even small teams leverage advanced features like a visual sales pipeline, automated lead data enrichment, email integration and notifications, meeting scheduler and lead management and prospecting tools.
Why HubSpot Stands Out
Standout Feature: Meeting scheduling tools
What We Love: HubSpot combines contact and lead management with email and other marketing efforts.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals looking for one software to handle all of their sales and marketing tasks.
Alternatives:
Monday.com is another full-service CRM that combines sales with task management tools rather than marketing tools.
Zoho CRM offers built-in email marketing features like HubSpot does, but it has more sales pipeline customization and visualization.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Free
$0 per user per month
5
Starter
$20 per user per month
Unlimited
Professional
$100 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$150 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
HubSpot combines sales and marketing so that you can organize your contacts and communicate with them in one place. When we tested the platform ourselves, we found the initial setup flow to be easy to follow. We created a sales pipeline and customized the stages within a few steps.
View of the setup flow for the HubSpot deal pipeline
We were also impressed with the meeting scheduling tool. Within HubSpot, you can create a meeting scheduler page with your availability. You can then share it with your contacts. Once they find and select a mutual time, the meeting gets scheduled and added to your calendar automatically. The additional marketing features are also robust. You can create and manage email, text, social media and advertising campaigns.
That being said, since the platform is so comprehensive, it’s only natural that it comes with a learning curve. While initial setup is easy because there’s guidance, it can be difficult to customize the platform after that. Another downside to HubSpot is that it offers various products, pricing structures and bundles, which means you may need to speak to a sales representative to get a clear understanding of how much HubSpot will cost you.
Pros:
Combined marketing and CRM features
Helpful guided onboarding
Ability to create meeting scheduling pages
Cons:
Not many guidelines to help with customization
Tricky pricing information
Freshsales
Best for Sales Analytics
4.7
Founded 2016Monthly Cost $11 for Growth planTrial period 21-day free trial
Freshsales Overview
Freshsales from Freshworks is a dedicated sales CRM known for its robust omnichannel support for sales teams to reach out to leads via phone, email, chat, SMS, Zoom and messaging apps. They have also added AI-powered tools like Freddy AI that will score contacts to help team members prioritize leads so they can close more deals.
Why Freshsales Stands Out
Standout Feature: Drag-and-drop report builder
What We Love: Freshsales makes sales reporting simple with a drag-and-drop report builder.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals who want to be able to track performance in addition to managing contacts
Alternatives:
Salesforce offers robust reporting features for large contact lists if you’re willing to take on a steeper learning curve.
Insightly offers similar analytics functionality for teams that want to build custom dashboards rather than custom reports.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Growth
$11 per user per month
Unlimited
Pro
$47 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$71 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Freshsales is a CRM from software provider Freshworks. Freshsales’ reporting functionality stood out to us immediately. We found it easy to drag and drop widgets of text, charts and other elements into a blank template to build a custom report.
View of the Freshsales report builder with drag-and-drop widgets
Aside from its reporting features, Freshsales offers a simple interface for transaction tracking. The transactions tab organizes ongoing deals either by their stage in the sales pipeline or by the month they’re predicted to close. You can add a large volume of deals into this tab, and it can handle them with ease without glitching or getting disorganized.
However, something we noticed with the tool was that it often prompted us to connect Freshsales to other Freshworks products. For instance, trying to make a call from a contact listing prompts you to connect to Freshcaller. If you’re already using other Freshworks products, it makes sense to add the Freshsales CRM into the mix. But, if you have other software tools, make sure that Freshsales can integrate with them.
Pros:
Custom report builder
Simplified contact organization
Transactions tab with pipeline and forecast views
Cons:
Few native communication features
Limited integrations if you’re not using other Freshworks products
Zoho CRM
Best for Customization
4.8
Founded 2005Monthly Cost $20 for StandardTrial period Free forever plan, 30-day free trial
Zoho CRM Overview
Zoho CRM can help sales teams streamline their workflows and close more deals. With robust sales automation features to help with productivity, the Zoho CRM platform can help sales reps generate and manage leads and identify the most valuable prospects with automated lead scoring. The deal pipeline visualization feature gives teams an overview of all deals in progress so nothing slips through the cracks.
Why Zoho CRM Stands Out
Standout Feature: Easy-to-use email tools
What We Love: Zoho CRM has a customizable interface to create boards for visualizing your sales pipeline and organizing your contacts.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals looking for an easy-to-customize CRM with a focus on contact management rather than task tracking
Alternatives:
Pipedrive offers similar functionality with slightly less emphasis on customization.
Monday.com offers a similar level of customization but with more features for task and project management.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Free
$0
3
Standard
$20 per user per month
Unlimited
Professional
$35 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$50 per user per month
Unlimited
Ultimate
$65 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Zoho CRMis another highly customizable tool for sales teams with a vision for how they want their sales pipeline to look. It has a user-friendly interface that we found to be easy to navigate and set to our preferences. Deal tracking, in particular, is intuitive with several board views to visualize deals and see other key information at a glance.
Custom views of the Zoho CRM deal tracking dashboard
Apart from this, we liked Zoho’s built-in communication features. The SalesInbox groups and categorizes incoming messages, so you can see emails from current leads in one section and emails from inactive contacts in another. As for phone calls, Zoho CRM’s call scheduler puts upcoming sales calls on your calendar.
There are a few limitations that we noticed while testing the tool that potential users should keep in mind. Because Zoho CRM is so customizable, you should expect a slight learning curve as you learn how to navigate through the personalization settings. Additionally, the CRM’s AI-powered tools are only available in the top two pricing plans. You can transcribe calls, make product recommendations and more with AI in the Enterprise and Ultimate plans.
Pros:
Intuitive user experience
Customizable deal tracking boards
Native emailing and call scheduling tools
Cons:
Learning curve related to customization
AI features only included in the top two plans
Pipedrive
Best for Beginners
4.7
Founded 2010Monthly Cost $24 for EssentialTrial period 14-day free trial
Pipedrive Overview
Pipedrive is a user-friendly sales CRM built to help sales teams track and monitor their deal pipeline. This cloud-based solution has robust customization capabilities, a visual sales pipeline and lead and contact management to optimize sales processes and support more deal closings. The platform also features advanced AI-powered tools and in-depth analytics to further optimize sales performance.
What We Love: Pipedrive is a user-friendly CRM with basic capabilities, making it popular among CRM beginners.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals looking to implement a new CRM quickly without an overwhelming setup process
Alternatives:
Zoho CRM offers more customization for teams that are willing to put in the extra effort to set up a CRM to their exact preferences.
Less Annoying CRM is another simple CRM for teams that are less interested in sales pipeline visualization.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Essential
$24 per user per month
Unlimited
Advanced
$39 per user per month
Unlimited
Professional
$64 per user per month
Unlimited
Power
$79 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$129 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Given how basic the Pipedrive platform is, we recommend it for beginners who do not have a ton of experience with CRMs. When we tested the tool, we found setup to be easy. We built our sales pipeline and edited the custom fields using Pipedrive’s pre-built templates and suggestions without too much trouble.
Another pro is how robust the contact cards are. Each contact listing includes a historical activity timeline that tracks everything that’s happened between you and them. You can also add notes to refer back to later. When it comes to communicating with these contacts, Pipedrive doesn’t offer many native tools. However, it does have integrations with common email, SMS and voice apps.
View of a Pipedrive customer activity timeline
Another feature we noticed was forecasting to predict sales, revenue and more. That being said, you can only access this capability with the top three plans. If you have the Essential or Advanced plan, you’ll have to decide if forecasting is a high enough priority for you to upgrade for.
Pros:
User-friendly interface with templates and suggestions
Detailed activity tracking in contact listings
Easy to build and visualize the sales pipeline
Cons:
Email, SMS and/or voice integrations likely required for client communication
Limited reporting and forecasting in the first two plan tiers
Insightly
Best for Reporting Dashboards
4.4
Founded 2009Monthly Cost $29 for PlusTrial period Free forever plan, 14-day free trial
Insightly Overview
Insightly CRM is a cloud-based platform engineered to assist businesses in efficiently managing contacts, tasks and projects. It comes equipped with tools for tracking leads and opportunities, integrating emails, as well as project management capabilities that promote streamlined workflows and improved team collaboration. The user-friendly interface of Insightly along with its customizable features has made it the go-to choice for small to medium-sized businesses seeking an effective CRM solution.
Why Insightly Stands Out
Standout Feature: Dashboards for activity, leads, opportunities and projects
What We Love: Insightly is a simple CRM that sticks to the essentials with useful dashboards to check your progress at a glance.
Who It’s Best For: Sales professionals who want simple CRM features balanced with in-depth dashboard reporting
Alternatives:
Freshsales offers similar analytics capabilities if you want more customization.
Less Annoying CRM is another simple CRM if you are less focused on visualizing the sales pipeline.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Free
$0 per user per month
2
Plus
$29 per user per month
Unlimited
Professional
$49 per user per month
Unlimited
Enterprise
$99 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Insightly offers a simple interface with basic features. It puts a particular focus on its reporting dashboards. You can start with Insightly’s pre-built dashboard templates and then customize them with drag-and-drop editing.
View of the Insightly opportunities dashboard
Aside from reporting, we found that the rest of the tabs offer sales CRM basics. You can organize contacts, leads and opportunities into three lists, but there aren’t many ways to visualize the sales pipeline. Contacts and opportunities are limited to a list format, but you can place leads into a Kanban board.
Pros:
Simple user interface
Advanced reporting dashboards
Dedicated lists for contacts, leads and opportunities
Cons:
Not many advanced features
Limited views for visualizing the sales pipeline
Less Annoying CRM
Best for Simplicity
3.7
Monthly Cost $15Trial period 30-day free trial
Less Annoying CRM Overview
Less Annoying CRM is a web-based customer relationship management platform, offering a simple, user-friendly design that can be set up in minutes.
Why Less Annoying CRM Stands Out
Standout Feature: Simplified workspace with task lists and quick reports
What We Love: Less Annoying CRM’s easy-to-use interface combines contact management and task tracking essentials.
Who It’s Best For: Small sales teams looking for just essential CRM features
Alternatives:
Pipedrive offers similar ease of use with better sales pipeline visualization and other more advanced features.
HubSpot offers a better experience for large teams that need more contact management and native marketing features.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Less Annoying CRM
$15 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Less Annoying CRM lives up to its name as a user-friendly CRM with just the essentials for teams that don’t need all the bells and whistles. Doing a scan of the platform, we noticed that reporting is fairly basic and that there is no option to visualize your sales pipeline in a Kanban board or similar view. However, it supports a task list and intuitive calendar that can help you stay organized as you interact with your customers.
View of the Less Annoying CRM main workspace tab
If you’re looking for a way to manage client data without spreadsheets, Less Annoying may make sense for you. If you’re looking for a way to visualize your sales pipeline, it may not be the best fit. The same goes if you want advanced AI, reporting or communication features.
Less Annoying keeps pricing simple with one plan at one price. And, while the tool is aimed at small businesses, larger businesses aren’t excluded. Less Annoying offers special onboarding for enterprises while still sticking to the same price of $15 per user per month.
Pros:
Simplified platform for teams that only want the essentials
Designed with small businesses and small sales teams in mind
One simple pricing plan
Cons:
No way to visualize the sales pipeline
Not ideal for teams that need advanced features, such as AI and reporting
Zendesk
Best for Sales Goal Setting
4.0
Founded 2007Monthly Cost $25 for TeamTrial period 14-day free trial
Zendesk Overview
Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM with standout features like lead generation, sales activity tracking, deal and contact management and advanced reporting and forecasting tools to help keep teams on track. Additional features like bulk outreach, power dialer, email and task sequences and automated workflows boost team productivity while supporting better sales performance.
Why Zendesk Sell Stands Out
Standout Feature: Zendesk Reach features
What We Love: Zendesk Sell offers useful functionality for finding leads and setting goals.
Who It’s Best For: Sales teams wanting to measure progress toward goals while managing customers and leads in one centralized place
Alternatives:
Monday.com offers board view customization if you’re looking for a way to visualize your sales pipeline.
Pipedrive offers a simple interface that requires less of a learning curve.
Plans and Pricing
Plan
Price
User Limit
Sell Team
$25 per user per month
10
Sell Growth
$69 per user per month
Unlimited
Sell Professional
$149 per user per month
Unlimited
Sell Enterprise
$219 per user per month
Unlimited
Our Take
Zendesk Sell is Zendesk’s CRM offering, alongside its well-known customer service product. When we tested the free trial, we noticed that Zendesk takes a unique approach to goals, allowing you to set and monitor ones related to overall sales as well as particular accounts.
View of Zendesk Sell sales goals
Zendesk also has a unique outreach tool to help you find potential leads. The Zendesk Reach tool searches company websites to find names, roles, emails and other details for potential leads to reach out to. To test it, we searched for MarketWatch and got a list of current employees. While there’s no guarantee that the tool will be able to find specific information for every professional out there, it seems to be a more tailored search method than simply Googling or scouring LinkedIn.
A few downsides we noticed were that Zendesk doesn’t provide ways to help you visualize your contacts and deals in stages. Additionally, the platform itself came with a slight learning curve, requiring some time to adjust to how information is organized and structured.
Pros:
Goal setting for overall sales and specific contacts
Zendesk Reach tool to find potential leads
Ability to pair with Zendesk for Service for a complete customer experience solution
Cons:
Not many ways to visualize the sales pipeline
Slight learning curve
What To Look for in CRM for Sales
We interviewed sales professionals to determine some of the most important features they use within their CRM systems. Many cited the ability to create and visualize a sales flow or pipeline. Communication and document integrations were also mentioned.
Aside from these interviews, we also conducted a survey with 200 CRM users. We learned that customization, unique features (e.g., AI tools), integrations and customer support were the top factors they considered for a CRM.
Below, we take a look at some of the features the above sales professionals and CRM users mentioned.
Sales Flow
Aside from contact management, creating a sales pipeline can be one of the most game-changing uses for a CRM. Defining the typical steps or stages of your sales process can tell you where customers fall in the process and how quickly they move through the pipeline. This can help you close deals faster so that you have more time to nurture other leads.
In addition to creating your pipeline, you should also be able to visualize it. Some CRMs offer more visualization options than others. Consider which options are important to you as you review the available ones for the providers in our review.
CRM Provider
List View
Table View
Kanban View
monday.com
✅
✅
✅
Zoho CRM
✅
✅
✅
Pipedrive
✅
❌
✅
Freshsales
❌
✅
✅
Salesforce
✅
✅
✅
HubSpot
✅
❌
✅
Insightly
❌
✅
✅
Zendesk Sell
✅
✅
✅
Less Annoying CRM
❌
❌
❌
Communication Integrations
If they don’t have native communication features, many CRMs have integrations for email, call and text services to contact customers in the sales pipeline. In our survey of CRM users, 57% of respondents said email was their main method of contacting prospects, while 32% said phone calls and 10% said texts. Regardless of how you contact customers, ensure easy integration, as it is key to a smooth implementation process for a CRM.
Integrations that work for your team are the No. 1 most important feature to consider when looking for a CRM. The whole purpose of a CRM is to streamline efficiencies, so if you’re still having to go to multiple different platforms just to execute one task, you’re defeating the purpose.
Tap Haley, Director of Business Development in IT Consulting
We took a look at each provider’s integration marketplace to see what they offer. While this table is by no means exhaustive, it breaks down some of what you can expect for email, voice and SMS integrations among the best sales CRMs.
CRM Provider
Email
Phone/SMS
monday.com
Mailchimp
ActiveCampaign
JustCall
RingCentral
Twilio
Zoho CRM
Zoho Mail
ActiveCampaign
Mailchimp
RingCentral
Aircall
Twilio
Knowlarity
JustCall
Vonage
Pipedrive
Mailchimp
ActiveCampaign
Brevo
MailerLite
Constant Contact
Aircall
JustCall
Textline
RingCentral
Twilio
Freshsales
Freshmarketer
Mailchimp
Freshcaller
Freshmarketer
JustCall
Toky
Salesforce
ActiveCampaign
Mailchimp
Klaviyo
Aircall
Twilio
Vonage
HubSpot
Mailchimp
MailerLite
Zoho Mail
Textline
CloudTalk
RingCentral
Aircall
Vonage
Insightly
Mailchimp
Zoho Mail
FreshMail
Constant Contact
Klaviyo
Aircall
RingCentral
Twilio
Vonage
Zendesk
GetResponse
Mailchimp
ActiveCampaign
Twilio
Vonage
Aircall
CloudTalk
RingCentral
Textline
Less Annoying CRM
Mailchimp
Blitz Sender
CallHippo
Intulse
Invoco
JustCall
MyRepChat
Simplii
It’s always best to check a provider’s current integrations to see if you can connect your go-to apps. They might still be available even if they didn’t make this list.
Document Integrations
In our recent survey, the majority of respondents said that the average sale requires between five and nine documents. That range, multiplied by hundreds or thousands of customers, makes it easy to see why document storage is important for sales CRM systems.
All of the providers on our list integrate with Google Workspace, but it’s important to look out for native features, such as e-signatures, document storage space and customizable document templates. Many CRMs also have the ability to attribute documents to specific customers within the database. Here is a breakdown of some document-related features that providers offers:
Using a sales CRM system can make all the difference in your day-to-day workflow. The benefits of CRM software go beyond just saving you time. The right software can help you nurture leads, close deals, increase customer lifetime value and more.
All of the providers on our list offer contact management and sales-focused features, but monday.com came out on top for its added task management tools and customizable interface. Zoho CRM and Pipedrive also feature customizable and easy-to-use sales tools. Freshsales, Insightly and Zendesk Sell stood out for their reporting and analytics features.
Larger businesses may find more robust CRMs, such as Salesforce and HubSpot, to best fit their needs, while small businesses that only need the essentials should consider Less Annoying CRM.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sales CRM
CRM stands for customer relationship management. A CRM is software that helps teams manage those customer relationships with tools to organize contact information, visualize the sales pipeline and communicate with contacts.
Sales CRM software can be useful if you want to keep track of important customer data in one place rather than relying on a mix of spreadsheets and calendars. CRM platforms can also help you visualize your sales flow and track your customer interactions.
Sales CRMs have their uses for virtually any sales team. Large companies and small businesses in every industry use CRM tools to manage their customer database and monitor their ongoing sales.
CRM software pricing can vary widely. Depending on the plan you choose, sales CRM software can cost anywhere from $15 to $500 a month per user. Some providers also have free forever plans with basic features and limited users if you’re on a tight budget.
How We Test the Best CRM Software for Sales
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help businesses bring in new customers and nurture current ones. With different businesses come different business goals and CRM needs. So, the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours evaluating 13 providers to determine who each CRM is best for. We looked at big names, such as Salesforce and monday.com, as well as small providers, including Liondesk and Less Annoying CRM.
We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using CRM or had used CRM within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:
User Experience (15%)
Features (30%)
Pricing (30%)
Customer Support (15%)
Reputation and Credibility (10%)
Visit the full CRM methodology page for more details on our rating system.
If you have feedback or questions about this article, please email the MarketWatch Guides team at editors@marketwatchguides.com.