Best CRM Software 2023

Written by
Aron Vaughan, Staff Writer
Read more by Aron →

Reviewed by
Corey Noles, Managing Editor
Read more Sales content →

Written by
Aron Vaughan, Staff Writer
Read more by Aron →

Reviewed by
Corey Noles, Managing Editor
Read more Sales content →

What is CRM software?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software stores, organizes, and analyzes business contact and customer information. Within the CRM platform, sales, marketing, and customer service teams automate the collection and organization of customer, lead, partner, and key business relationship data.

The processes and systems that help improve a business’s relationships with their contacts may also be called customer relationship management.

Best CRM platforms

Which brings us to this list. Below are some of the top CRM providers in the market, each with unique features and functions that make them best suited to various use cases. While not exhaustive, the details below should help guide your research. 

• HubSpot is best for companies needing many integration options.
• Zoho is best for decentralized teams.
• Shape CRM is best for flexibility.
• Pipedrive is best for pipeline management and optimization.
• Salesforce is the best CRM for enterprises.
• Oracle NetSuite CRM is the best all-in-one solution.
• Insightly is best for easy-to-read analytics and reporting.
• Keap CRM is best for sales and marketing synergy.
• Copper CRM is the best for security.
• ClickUp is best for project management.
• Less Annoying CRM is the best for simplicity.

Oracle NetSuite CRM – Best all-in-one solution

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Our Rating: 4/5

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Pros

• Most comprehensive business tool on the list
• Full-fledged ERP capabilities
• 360-degree customer view
• Scalability and flexibility

Cons

• Higher-end pricing
• No standalone CRM option

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Key Features

• 360-Degree customer view: Provides a comprehensive, real-time view of customer interactions across all channels, enhancing customer insight and service.
• Sales force automation (SFA): Automates and streamlines the entire sales process, reducing errors and saving time.
• Marketing automation: Enables businesses to streamline campaign management and track marketing ROI effectively.
• Customer service Management: Enhances customer satisfaction by providing tools for managing customer support and improving service delivery.

pricing

Starting from $499/user/year

why we chose oracle netsuite

Oracle NetSuite CRM is as comprehensive as it gets. It’s a remarkably versatile tool, particularly for businesses seeking an all-in-one cloud solution that integrates CRM with financials, e-commerce, and more.

This powerhouse, cloud-based solution provides a 360-degree customer view, enabling businesses to see a full spectrum of customer interactions in real-time. Its advanced features, particularly in AI analytics and collaboration tools, make the platform stand out and clinch a spot in the 4 star range.

Compared to more specialized CRMs like Salesforce or Pipedrive, Oracle NetSuite CRM offers a more holistic approach to business management. It’s particularly well-suited for businesses that require not just CRM functionality but also integrated financial and e-commerce capabilities.

Our ratings

Pricing: 2.5/5

General features: 3.8/5

Core features: 4.6/5

Advanced features: 4/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.8/5

UX: 3.8/5

Rounding out the 4-star range on our list is NetSuite CRM from Oracle. If that name sounds familiar, it should: NetSuite was an internet pioneer back when the internet still ran on dial-up. These days, the brand (now owned by Oracle) continues to offer advanced software and digital technology solutions to businesses around the world. 

NetSuite is noteworthy for numerous reasons, but above all else, they are a comprehensive solution. The CRM portion is only a fraction of the platform—the suite handles enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting and financials, inventory tracking, and more. Organizations looking to use a single system to manage and optimize their entire business infrastructure need look no further.

The overall design of Oracle NetSuite CRM also focuses on providing a comprehensive view of the customer lifecycle. While its interface and usability score moderately, the CRM’s strength lies in its ability to offer a 360-degree view of customers, integrating sales, customer service, and marketing effectively.

This evolution into a comprehensive ecosystem addresses the growing need for interconnected business systems, offering a more efficient and unified approach to managing various business processes.

That said, its greatest strength is also its biggest caveat. NetSuite is a package deal. Signing up for the CRM (or any individual business function) means signing up for the whole platform, so it works best for brands that stand to benefit from an entire workflow overhaul.

Insightly – Best for easy-to-read analytics and reporting

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Our Rating: 3.9/5

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Pros

• Vast analytics and visualization options
• Robust automation tools
• Project management functionality

Cons

• Not as intuitive or easy to deploy as some tools

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The Insightly dashboard.

The Insightly dashboard.

Insightly photo

Key Features

• Advanced reporting: Insightly’s advanced reporting allows users to create customized, detailed reports, offering valuable insights into business performance.
• Dashboard visualization: Insightly provides dashboards for a quick visual representation of business health and metrics, aiding in swift decision-making.
• Sales forecasting: Insightly’s CRM includes sales forecasting features, enabling businesses to predict sales revenue using historical and real-time data.
• Integrations: Insightly integrates with popular software like Power BI and Excel, enhancing its reporting and analytics capabilities.

pricing

Free trial available

Plus: $29/user/month

Professional: $49/user/month

Enterprise: $99/user/month

why we chose insightly

Insightly’s design philosophy in its reporting and analytics features emphasizes simplicity and clarity. The platform allows users to easily create and customize reports, offering an experience that reduces the complexity often associated with data analysis.

Insightly pairs an easy-to-use interface with customizable reporting tools, making it ideal for businesses that need detailed insights without the complexity of more advanced systems. This makes Insightly particularly suitable for small to medium-sized businesses or those with limited resources for data analysis.

Despite the lower price tag compared to other software offering similar tools, it still boasts advanced reporting, allowing users to generate custom, in-depth reports revealing key business performance indicators.

Its dashboard visualization serves up crucial metrics at a glance, aiding quick, informed decisions. Coupled with precise sales forecasting, Insightly paints an accurate picture of future sales revenue. Plus, with smooth integration with platforms like Power BI and Excel, Insightly’s analytics game is seriously amplified.

For businesses that prioritize ease of use and straightforward data visualization, Insightly is a more suitable choice than Salesforce, which, while powerful, can be overwhelming for users new to CRM analytics. HubSpot, on the other hand, offers similar user-friendliness but may not match Insightly’s depth in customization options for reports.

Our ratings

Pricing: 4.2/5

General features and interface: 3.6/5

Core features: 4.3/5

Advanced features: 2.3/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.2/5

UX: 3.8

Insightly might be a brand name you’re unfamiliar with, but rest assured, it has a quiver of features that’s just as full as some of the bigger names on this list. Automation options, project management, and plentiful integration options are just the beginning. What’s not a common bragging right is their robust analytics and reporting capabilities.

In many ways, Insightly doubles as business intelligence, providing extensive flexibility and functionality regarding data discovery and scrubbing; organizing and visualization; powerful analytics insights; and intuitive reporting options. 

In recent years, Insightly has even enhanced its reporting and analytics features, focusing on providing more customizable reporting options and integrating AI-driven insights.

However, compared to competitors like Salesforce or Oracle NetSuite, Insightly’s advanced features like AI analytics and VOIP capabilities could be further developed. While it offers a solid foundation in CRM functionalities, expanding these advanced features could enhance its appeal to larger businesses or those with more complex CRM needs.

Nevertheless, for teams that want to dig deep into the data, find and leverage customer trends, and otherwise prove the value that the sales pipeline has to offer the organization as a whole, Insightly should be at the top of the shortlist.

Keap CRM – Best for sales-marketing synergy

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Our Rating: 3.8/5

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Pros

• Sales and marketing automation
• Helps small teams accomplish more
• Easy to use

Cons

• May not be the right fit for larger, more complex workflows

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Key Features

• Smart client management: Keap’s CRM excels in organizing and updating client information, along with capturing new leads, all in one centralized, searchable database.
• Advanced email automation: Keap’s CRM not only offers email marketing but also delivers personalized, automated follow-ups that nurture client relationships and keep businesses top-of-mind.
• Integrated appointments: Keap seamlessly syncs calendars and sets up reminders, turning the scheduling of appointments with clients into a hassle-free process.
• Billing and payment solutions: Keap stands out with its invoicing features, which provide the ability to create, send, and track invoices, accept credit cards online, and automate payment reminders.

pricing

Free trial available

Pro: $159/2 users/month

Max: $229/3 users/month

why we chose keap

Keap CRM’s overall performance in sales-marketing synergy is impressive, scoring particularly high in core features (89.3 out of 100) and integration and compatibility (91.7 out of 100).

For small to medium-sized businesses looking for a CRM that offers both simplicity and powerful sales-marketing integration, Keap is a more suitable option than Salesforce, which might be overwhelming in complexity, and HubSpot, which may lack some of Keap’s specialized functionalities.

The platform’s automation and integration capabilities have also improved in recent updates.

Our ratings

Pricing: 2.5/5

General features and interface: 4/5

Core features: 4.5/5

Advanced features: 2.5/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.6/5

UX: 4.3/5

Keap CRM is a bit of an oddity in this list. While it’s fully capable of providing top-tier service to larger brands the way Salesforce or Hubspot might, its positioning tends to focus more heavily on solopreneurs and other small businesses.

To be fair, these are often the professionals who need the most support to keep their sales pipelines flowing. Certain “hats” have to be worn in every business—accounts receivable, sales, marketing, operations, logistics, project management, etc.—even when that business is a business of one. The fewer the heads there are in the crew, the more hats on a single head.

Keap aims to help these professionals by giving them somewhere else to put some of those hats, so to speak. Via robust sales, marketing, and financial automation tools, Keap streamlines some of the most difficult, tedious, and repetitious parts of the sales lifecycle.

Solopreneurs especially tend to be specialists in their product, with non-billable tasks being secondary skills at best. Keap gives these individuals and teams a way to get back to the work they do best, and rest easy about the duties that stress them out the most.

While Keap excels in many areas, it could further strengthen its position against competitors by enhancing its AI analytics and AI chatbot functionalities. These improvements would provide even more sophisticated tools for businesses to analyze data and engage with customers, keeping pace with the evolving trends of competitors.

Copper CRM – Best for security

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Our Rating: 3.8/5

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Pros

• Unparalleled Google Workspace compatibility
• End-user simplicity
• Security safeguards

Cons

• Fewer non-Google integrations
• Not optimal for organizations built on Office 365

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Key Features

• Google workspace integration: Copper CRM integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace, allowing users to manage contacts, deals, and tasks directly from Gmail or other Workspace apps.
• Sales pipeline management: This feature provides a visual sales pipeline that makes it easy to manage opportunities and track progress towards sales goals.
• Automated data entry: Copper CRM uses automation to reduce the burden of manual data entry, automatically populating contact and company details.
• Lead and opportunity management

pricing

Free trial available

Basic: $23/user/month

Professional: $59/user/month

Business: $99/user/month

why we chose copper crm

Larger, more established organizations often rely on Microsoft’s suite of apps and platforms to ensure secure collaboration. But Google Workspace is often a much more familiar space for newer brands with younger staff (many of whom used Gmail and Gsuite for their personal accounts). And Copper CRM is unmatched when it comes to Google Workspace interoperability.

Copper CRM distinguishes itself from competitors like Salesforce and Zoho CRM with its deep integration with Google Workspace, offering enhanced security features that are particularly beneficial for businesses heavily reliant on Google services. Unlike Salesforce, which offers a broader range of features, Copper focuses on providing a secure, Google-centric user experience.

Copper CRM’s design is focused on providing a secure yet user-friendly experience. Its integration with Google Workspace enhances security and ensures a seamless user experience, reducing the learning curve and increasing adoption rates.

Depending on your use case, your current workflow, and the level of tech literacy in your organization, Copper CRM could very well be the fastest time-to-value option available.

Our ratings

Pricing: 3.3/5

General features and interface: 4/5

Core features: 4.6/5

Advanced features: 2.3/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.2/5

UX: 4.5/5

Copper excels in seamless pipeline management, offering a visually appealing and intuitive platform to track progress and manage sales goals. Its robust automated data entry feature expedites processes, eliminating the hassle of manual inputs. The platform shines in lead and opportunity management, ensuring no prospect falls by the wayside. With its firm foothold in Google’s ecosystem, Copper CRM stands as a paragon of integration, streamlining operations in a way that feels native to Gmail and Google Workspace users. A true champion for CRM automation and user convenience.

To place higher on the list, it could further enhance its competitive edge by improving its AI analytics and AI chatbot functionalities. These advancements would provide businesses with more sophisticated tools for data analysis and customer engagement.

ClickUp – Best for project management

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Our Rating: 3.8/5

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Pros

• First-rate CRM tool with first-rate PM functionality
• Competitive pricing
• Bonus features include real-time reporting, companion mobile app, and more

Cons

• Requires a bit more training and onboarding to implement

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Make collaborative diagrams with ClickUp whiteboards. Source: ClickUp

Key Features

• Task and project management: ClickUp excels in organizing tasks, allowing you to create, assign, prioritize, and track tasks all within a single platform.
• Collaboration detection: ClickUp’s unique feature helps avoid duplicate work by showing who’s working on what in real-time.
• Goal tracking: With ClickUp, you can set, track, and achieve goals across different teams and projects, ensuring everyone is aligned and focused.
• Custom views: ClickUp allows you to customize how you view your tasks and projects, whether that’s in a list, board, box, calendar, or Gantt chart view.

pricing

Free trial available

Free plan available

Unlimited: $5/user/month

Business: $12/user/month

Business Plus: $19/user/month

Enterprise: Contact ClickUp for a customized quote

why we chose clickup

ClickUp, primarily known for its project management capabilities, has ventured into CRM functionalities.

Unlike specialized CRM tools like Salesforce or HubSpot, ClickUp integrates CRM features within a broader project management framework. This integration offers a unique advantage for teams seeking a unified platform for managing tasks, projects, and customer relationships.

ClickUp’s robust Task and Project Management tools bring a fresh perspective to CRM, prioritizing organization and tracking. The Collaboration Detection feature ensures that no work is duplicated, vital in customer relationship management. Goal Tracking aligns teams with overarching objectives, and Custom Views offer flexibility in visualizing client interactions. ClickUp is breaking down the silos, showing that project management and CRM can coexist and flourish in one platform, making it an unexpectedly fitting CRM choice.

Our ratings

Pricing: 4/5

General features and interface: 4.1/5

Core features: 4.1/5

Advanced features: 2/5

Integration and compatibility: 3.5/5

UX: 4.3/5

This vendor may come as a bit of a surprise, as ClickUp is primarily known as a project management platform. That reputation is well earned (and why it takes the title it does in this list). ClickUp also has a CRM platform, one that fills many of the needs discussed here. 

ClickUp’s foray into CRM features is a recent development, evolving from its core strength in task and project management.

ClickUp already has a noteworthy share of the PM market, and picking up the CRM module can amplify the amount of benefit those teams get out of the vendor. Seeing as most other major brands in the PM space cost significantly more, it’s an excellent way to get powerful software tools without paying enterprise-level subscription fees.

While ClickUp offers excellent task management and customization, its CRM features could benefit from more advanced sales tracking and marketing automation tools. Enhancing these aspects would make ClickUp a more comprehensive solution for businesses looking for an all-in-one platform for project management and customer relationship management.

Less Annoying CRM – Best for companies on a budget

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Our Rating: 3.5/5

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Pros

• Easy to deploy
• Easy to use
• Lower-end cost

Cons

• Limited pre-built functionality
• Less robust integration library

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Key Features

• Simplicity: Less Annoying CRM prides itself on its user-friendly design that makes it easy for small businesses to manage contacts and track leads without unnecessary complexity.
• Customizability: The platform allows businesses to tailor the CRM to their specific needs, with customizable fields, layouts, and reports.
• Collaboration features: The system is designed for team collaboration, allowing multiple users to share contacts, calendars, and notes.
• Affordability: The CRM offers straightforward and low-cost pricing, making it an accessible solution for small businesses.

pricing

Free trial available

$15/user/month

why we chose less annoying crm

In the grand scheme of CRM software, Less Annoying didn’t measure up too well. But that is okay—it’s all about use case. Less Annoying CRM isn’t designed to offer all the advanced features of Salesforce of Netsuite; it’s perfectly happy providing a simple CRM at a simple price. In fact, it does that better than most of the other simple CRMs out there. That’s why it rounds out our list.

Celebrated for its simplicity, this CRM caters specifically to small businesses, demystifying CRM with a user-friendly design. Customizability allows the platform to mold to unique business needs, with bespoke fields and layouts. Its collaboration features foster teamwork, seamlessly sharing contacts and notes. Plus, with its straightforward, affordable pricing, Less Annoying CRM has carved a niche in providing a high-quality, budget-friendly CRM solution. In the ever-complex CRM jungle, Less Annoying CRM emerges as a refreshing antidote.

Our ratings

Pricing: 3.3/5

General features: 3.3/5

Core features: 3.9/5

Advanced features: 1.5/5

Integration and compatibility: 3.3/5

UX: 4.25/5

With a low per-user cost, and intuitive functionality, it’s a perfect choice for teams that don’t have complex criteria for a CRM or sales software vendor to meet. 

If you’re looking to deploy quickly, onboard staff with minimal training, and want to limit your cloud software overhead, Less Annoying CRM fits the bill. And while the list of available customizations and pre-built integrations is smaller than other CRMs in this list, there are no contracts or limitations, making this CRM a strong choice for up-and-coming brands.

Learn more about the best Simple CRM options here.

Key CRM features to consider for your use case

While there are certainly software solutions that are objectively “bad,” the majority of options in any given vertical will be valued by how well they satisfy the intended use case. Trying to apply the tool outside the parameters it was designed for may fail to meet expectations, but that does not necessarily mean the software itself is of poor quality. It’s just a bad match.

Below are some core areas of concern for CRM consumers to consider when shopping around to help them find a tool that aligns with their needs.

ALSO READ: The Different Types of Roles & Responsibilities in a CRM

Contact management

For CRM tools, the most foundational functionality is that of collecting and organizing contact information. At the very least, it needs to be a step up from simply dumping leads into a spreadsheet only to immediately be forgotten. Spreadsheets have their place, but they aren’t optimized for automation or to serve as living records. If a CRM can’t improve on manual data entry, manual data scrubbing, and manual retrieval, then it’s just Excel with extra steps.

Contact management features in CRM and sales software, it should be noted, vary widely from system to system. But the common upgrades to functionality will likely look familiar to anyone who’s been using digital devices in the past two decades:

• Automated data importing
• Data export flexibility (via EDI, CSV, or other formats)
• Integrations with other platforms, apps, and databases
• Filters and search functions
• Analytics and reporting functions

Communication records

By now, nearly everyone is familiar with the “This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” line spoken to customers calling in to a business for support. Having a record of customer/client/lead interactions can be indispensable. And not just for maintaining excellent service, either. 

Using recorded calls, chats, and other communication, businesses can achieve a multitude of important objectives, including:

• Improving effectiveness of staff training, onboarding, company policies, and more
• Compiling data for analytics (which can help identify patterns, predict trends, and even recommend strategies)
• Providing evidence to help navigate legal concerns and protect against loss

If benefits like these factor into your CRM and sales software choices, then be aware that some software includes functionality to support it, while some does not. 

Integrations

Implementing new software systems can be difficult, and onboarding users only becomes more problematic when the system doesn’t play well with existing solutions in the workflow. 

Some CRMs are built as part of a larger platform of business solutions, and are intended to be used as a holistic unit. This is a bit of a trade-off, and some cost-benefit evaluations will be needed to determine if a complete workflow overhaul will net positive or negative returns for the trouble. 

However, if maintaining the stability and functionality of other systems is of equal importance, then finding a CRM that can integrate with them successfully. Depending on what integrations are needed, there may be plug-ins or add-ons available already to users of the tool. 

For less common integrations, some more code-heavy API customization may be necessary. In these cases, it’s a good idea to ask which side of the client-vendor partnership will be building the integration. 

What should be avoided is the addition of a CRM that only further complicates workflows and requires additional manual processes to hold the system together. 

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is a specific example of the integration concerns above, but it merits its own spot on this list due to the amount of overlap between marketing and sales efforts. Like other sales-adjacent functions, there are a lot of advantages to having the CRM trigger automatic tasks such as sending confirmation emails, email nurture campaigns, and more.

Worst-case scenario, similar to what’s mentioned above, is that the new CRM complicates already existing processes, rather than integrating or replacing them. If your CRM or sales software adds another step in the process of, for example, sending outreach emails because staff members have to manually dig for contact info in the database, that’s a net loss.

At the very least, the CRM should leave any existing processes intact and unhindered. Most likely, however, your organization will benefit from some form of integration, or a CRM that includes marketing automation features natively. 

Quotes and invoicing

Next in line for important functions in the sales process that may or may not be handled by sales team members are financials, such as quotes, invoices, and other AP/AR responsibilities. The same philosophy applies here as above. If an all-in-one solution upgrades your workflow, prioritize that aspect in your research.

If integration will suffice, then double-check with vendors for the specific platforms you need to be interoperable. Even if your current process is efficient enough currently, be sure that the CRM doesn’t create additional headaches for anyone in the workflow. 

Data privacy

Cybersecurity is, arguably, a priority for every organization (or, at least it should be). Some verticals deal with higher risk than others, however, and may need additional security protocols for their CRM to protect themselves or even to comply with industry mandates.

This is one that may require consulting with IT, InfoSec, or other I&O staff in the organization. Many of the technical details that factor into whether or not a CRM is sufficiently secure may be outside the expertise of anyone without a background in computer systems, and it’s not one to leave to chance. 

Check with internal SMEs, and leverage their experience to further vet your shortlist of CRMs. It may even be worthwhile to have a 3rd-party vendor risk assessment done for any that meet all other criteria, just to cover your bases.

Project management

This list of supplemental functions that might be relevant would be pretty long if it were comprehensive. All-in-one systems, analytics and reporting, ease of use, pipeline management, and many more might fit here. Many of these have been touched on above, and others are likely known quantities already.

So instead, this part of the list will finish with one final consideration: project management. 

Organizations that have, until now, used less formalized workflow processes may not realize how much of an upgrade a well-designed project management strategy can be. As teams grow, workloads become heavier, and processes become more intricate and complex, tracking things on paper proves a substantial challenge. 

With effective implementation, project management tools can provide visibility and accountability across the board. Better still, it can help staff achieve greater levels of autonomy by giving them the tools needed to stay organized and on top of their responsibilities. 

Some CRM and sales software tools include project management (PM) features in their toolset, while others can integrate with popular platforms via APIs. Either way, for any team larger than a handful of employees, it’s worth discussing the potential value a CRM with PM enablement might bring to the table. 

Choosing the right CRM and sales software

Picking the right software, let alone the right CRM and sales software, is a far cry from guesswork. It takes extensive research and vetting of available options, which can drag the process out for weeks or months.