Whether large or small, every business needs customers. Customer relationship management software, or CRM, can go a long way toward generating new customers while at the same time help a business cultivate and strengthen existing relationships. Salesforce is the most well-known CRM on the market, but there are a ton of Salesforce alternatives that offer a range of customer relationship features. Many do so even at a lower price. We’ve made our selections for the best Salesforce alternatives in 2024. Software such as Freshsales and HubSpot make the list, but read onward for other selections, including selections for the best Salesforce alternatives for a number of different types of companies.
One of the things that makes Freshsales the best Salesforce alternative in our eyes is its tremendous value. It comes in at monthly prices that are lower than, or very competitive with, almost every other CRM on the market, but it still provides a lot of access and capability. Its free plan is good for up to three users and offers a range of features that might be enough for many companies. As you start to work your way up the price plan you’ll get acces to things like AI-powered contact scoring, multiple sales pipelines, custom modules, and dedicated account managers.
There are plenty of reasons your business needs to switch to the Zoho CRM software, and its ease of use is one that stands out for small businesses. Zoho CRM is easy to learn and implement, making it the best Salesforce alternative for companies without a lot of software training resources on-hand. Zoho CRM is also very straightforward with its pricing, and a free trial is even available if you’d like to give it a go before implementation.
Monday.com is more of a project management tool with CRM capabilities built-in, which is why we like it as the best Salesforce alternative for project management. It offers a suite of products designed to flex and scale to your company’s way of working, and allows you to manage everything from strategy to tasks that will help you exceed your goals. You can automate cycles to close more deals with Monday.com, as well as manage contacts, tracking emails, and create sales pipelines.
HubSpot is one of the more versatile and complex CRM software options out there. We like it for collaboration because it’s an advanced CRM that offers sales automation, email sequences, customizable reports, and predictive lead scoring, but it also makes it easy to interact with each other throughout these processes. While access to its more comprehensive features can get pretty expensive, HubSpot has a lot of impressive solutions for sales and marketing teams looking to stay on the same page.
Managing leads is an important part of the sales process, and to establishing a relationship with a customer. The best Salesforce alternative for managing leads is Piipedrive, which offers a lot of lead management support even with its introductory price plans. Pipedrive’s base plan allows for 3,000 open deal, customizable pipelines, a products catalog, a leads inbox, and data import and export. These numbers increase as you go up the pricing scale, as do the features that come with Pipedrive as a CRM service.
Zendesk Sell isn’t necessarily the least expensive monthly CRM software plan out there, but it might be when you consider what you get for a base plan. It comes in at just $19 per month, and it allows access to five agents. This works out to be less than many CRM software options, as a lot of them price their plans on a per user basis. Zendesk Sell offers customizable sales pipelines, email and calendar integrations, task and appointment setting, call tracking and recording, and pre-built sales dashboards.
This article is managed and created separately from the Digital Trends Editorial team.
Andrew has been writing professionally for more than 20 years and has been writing about tech for three of them. His focus at Digital Trends is on deals writing and covering the year’s major sales events. His work in the tech realm also includes contributions to Sporting News, Pocket-lint, and Android Police. In his spare time Andrew enjoys skateboarding, road tripping, and moonlighting as a fiction writer and independent filmmaker.
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