Customer relationship management software, or CRM, is used by businesses to manage the relationships they have with their customers. Many businesses use spreadsheets to keep track of information about their customers. However, as they grow they quickly begin to realise how important every customer interaction is and how many ways you can interact with them.

It’s the CRM’s mission to manage these interactions, mining for broader audience data and organising it to work in synergy with the sales pipeline.

CRM is far easier to use than spreadsheets, but still it’s important to choose the right system for your business to enable dramatic improvements to your team’s collaboration and productivity, to increase sales, and to heighten customer satisfaction.

We’ve complied a list of the top 10 CRM systems.

1. Freshsales

Freshsales CRM solution is a great entry point for small and growing businesses, with its simple but powerful CRM platform. The company offers a 30-day free trial, a free plan, and a paid plan that integrates with popular third-party software.

2. Salesforce Sales

Salesforce is a pioneer in the CRM space, managing to lead the competition for more than a decade. And it’s constantly expanding. It has great customisation options and plenty of third-party integrations. It does come with a steep learning curve and can be quite expensive.

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive offers a quick and effective way for small businesses and start-ups to implement CRM, though it lacks some features that larger organisations may need. It works great on mobile devices, and has a simple and intuitive interface.

4. Base

Base is a solid contender for small business CRM and lead management, however it has only a small number of third-party integrations. They provide a 14-day free trial and also free training webinars.

5. Less Annoying

Less Annoying offers a fairly basic CRM solution but is based at a nice price. Everything is straightforward to use and the user interface is super clean.

6. Bpm’online

Bpm’online is better suited to midsized enterprise organisations, offering automated tasks and predictive features, while making it easy to hide unwanted features. However, it comes with a short trial period and can be quite overwhelming to use at first.

7. Insightly

Insightly is a great CRM and lead management solution for small to midsize businesses. It provides email tracking and templates, and has greater reporting capabilities thanks to its powerful BI integration. However, lead assignment rules are only available to higher tier plans.

8. Zoho

Zoho is an awesome CRM solution that offers great value along with a range of robust features. It’s tailored to the needs of small and midsized businesses, and has great integration with Google G Suite, an impressive workflow automation, and offers a free edition that’s available for up to 10 users. However only those with the professional edition get workflow automation.

9. Hubspot

Hubspot is an affordable and easy to use CRM that integrates with popular third-party software, and allows you to automate tasks. All primary CRM features are also free, with some premium free but with limitations.

10. Apptivo

Apptivo is a very customisable CRM solution suitable for small businesses. It has a nice mobile app and works well with OneDrive and RingCentral. However, it lacks third-party integrations.