At a certain point in your business, sales and lead monitoring on a spreadsheet becomes time-consuming. With an increasing number of entries, it eventually becomes hard to keep track of leads, customers, and follow-ups.
Monitoring what stage each lead is in and consistently following up is important for closing deals. To do this when you have thousands of leads gets complicated until you start using CRM software.
CRMOne
Apart from its 14-day free trial, CRMOne offers volume discounts of up to 15% for teams. Its major features, on the other hand, include bulk lead updation and imports, lead management, custom appointment scheduling, and more.
The predesigned sections in AI Funnels, including Headings, Newsletter, Carousels, and other CTAs, do all the heavy lifting for you.
Why we picked it:
- Offers a suite of AI tools & voice agents.
- High Funnel Customizability and mass leads updation.
- Prices could change depending on available discounts.
Who is it for:
- Teams and companies are prioritizing workflow automation.
Highlights:
- Includes AI Voice Agents and AI Funnels to streamline your sales process.
- Draft emails quickly with CRMOne’s AI email writer.
- Pricing starts at $18 with the Launch Plan.
- Other AI features include AI Blog writer, AI Content Remix, and Meta Description Generator.
Recruit CRM
Sales is only what usually comes to people’s minds when we talk about CRM. But specialized CRMs these days are capable of handling multiple core operations in a small business. It offers no-code customized workflows, LinkedIn messages integration, advanced analytics, AI Resume parsing, and more.
Why we picked it:
- To streamline hiring processes and find ideal candidates.
- Great for parsing resumes in bulk.
Mostly Suited For: Recruitment & Hiring
Highlights:
- Seamless integration with Google Workspace, IMAP, and Outlook.
- Find ideal candidates by applying filters, Boolean logic, and radius-based searches.
- Post jobs directly on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Google, etc.
Capsule CRM
Capsule CRM features a clean and easy-to-navigate interface that is easy to train your sales team on. Apart from contact management and sales pipeline, make use of custom fields, email templates, integrations with Xero, Zendesk, and more. Still unsure? Sign up for the free plan and check out all the base features.
Why we picked it:
- Offers a free plan with a free contact limit.
- Features contact enrichment
Who is it for: Startups, small size, and medium-sized businesses.
Highlights:
- Offers a free plan with a limit of 250 contacts, 5 custom fields, and 1 sales pipeline.
- On the other hand, you get a 30,000 contacts limit with the Starter plan (priced at $18/month).
- Base features include Contact History, Activity Log, Outlook & Gmail add-in with to option to upgrade anytime.
Close CRM
Close CRM is another great alternative to Capsule CRM. Along with unlimited contacts & leads, it offers multiple pipelines, advanced activity filters, a centralized inbox, and more. But if workflow automation is your priority, then the base plan(priced at $35/month) won’t be enough.
Highlights:
- Offers a free trial version.
- Features a Power Dialer, an AI email assistant, and workflow features for automation.
- Best suited for email follow-ups
- Allows Global calling compared to via a third-party offered by other CRM software.
Apollo.io
Compared to a traditional contact management system, Apollo.io positions itself as an AI sales platform. Teams don’t usually buy it only for the CRM features, but its 275+ million B2B contact database. This helps businesses, and especially startups, to jumpstart their outreach and cut the time spent on lead qualification.
All you have to do is search for your ideal contact and apply filters like industry and job title. This database not only boosts lead generation and reduces tech stack costs.
Who is it for?
- Teams that want to kickstart their lead generation process and don’t want to spend time acquiring prospects.
Highlights:
- Pricing starts at $49/month/user (billed annually) along with 30,000 AI credits.
- Save time on lead prospecting by accessing contacts from its B2B database.
- Apply advanced filters to find and track your ideal contact.
- Use workflows for sales automation.
QuoteIQ
QuoateIQ is mainly suited for creating & simplifying estimates, invoices, and managing customer contacts. It offers a free 14-day trial on ANY premium plan to anyone through their website. The Customer Self-Quoting & Self-Scheduling features allow your leads to create price estimates and schedule appointments among themselves.
Community Resources: Get access to Facebook groups, Reddit groups, and trusted QuoteIQ partners.
Industries it is suited for:
- Pressure Cleaning
- Lawn Care
- HVAC
- Pest Control
- Painting, & more.
Highlights:
- Get access to tutorial videos to learn every QuoteIQ tool.
- Easily schedule a personalized demo with QuoteIQ.
- Allow your customers to create their own price estimates with the self-quoting features.
When is Google Sheets Not Enough?
Using Google Sheets or Excel is great for tracking leads when you are just starting. But after a certain point, finding a specific contact and updating all leads becomes a big headache.
This is what most startups do in the beginning to save money, but end up regretting it afterward. Hence, it is worth investing in a good CRM software without breaking the bank.
One CRM is not Enough For All Operations.
If you are not using enterprise-level CRMs like HubSpot CRM and Salesforce, it is okay to have more than one CRM. For example, having Recruit CRM deal with the hiring process is different than CRMOne optimizing sales processes.
Final Takeaway
HubSpot and Salesforce are usually the only ones that come to mind when businesses look for CRMs. But other budget-friendly options are sufficient for startups and medium-sized businesses. Just remember to pay attention to your UI preference, as it can be hard to transition and train your sales team later.