There comes a time in every business’s lifecycle where they need to consider a solution to manage all of their leads, business contacts, and other sales and marketing information. Often, this comes in the form of a customer relationship management (CRM) software. While the best things in life are often free, so are CRMs, at least at the initial stages. That being said, when looking for the best free CRM for your needs, there are a number of factors that you need to consider. With that in mind, here is what you need to look for when choosing the best free CRM for your business.
User and Contact Amount
The best free CRMs are ideal for startups or small and medium-sized businesses. This is because these types of businesses often have a limited amount of business contacts and users that will be needed on the CRM. Most free plans on CRMs do limit these, so it is important to make sure that your company hasn’t grown to the point where it may need to consider a paid CRM solution. To do so, make sure that you have an appropriate amount of contacts and users that a free CRM will allow, so that you can effectively organize your contacts, set up a basic sales pipeline, and use the reporting features available.
Integrations with Third Party Software
If you are considering using a CRM for your business, then it is likely that you already have a number of third party applications that you use for various purposes, including marketing and sales automation, as well as project management and communications. When looking for the best free CRM, you want to make sure that it integrates with any software that you need to have access to your business contacts and internal processes. This can include everything from Slack and Trello, all the way to Mailchimp and Gsuite. Most importantly, you need to make sure that you can import all of the data necessary from these tools so that you can easily cross-reference everything and not have to manually input all of the data from each of these tools into your free CRM.
Consider a Free Trial
If you decide that the best CRM for you is one that is a paid solution, you should definitely first try the free trial. Most CRMs offer a 14 day free trial so that potential customers can really get the most out of the product they are looking to buy. Doing so will allow you to test out all of the above features and make sure that the free CRM you are trying will work as a paid one if needed. If you don’t feel that the CRM is worth the money for you, it may be worth it to just look into the best free CRM solutions, and eschew the paid options entirely.
Ultimately, this is entirely based on the needs of your business. While a free CRM is a great solution, it is not a sustainable model for a business that has a larger number of business contacts and employees. Whatever you end up choosing, looking into the best free CRM options is an important first step in finding the right solution for your business.