What Is The Best CRM Software? Overview of 7 popular CRM systems

Margo Prylypska
5 min readApr 2, 2018

Choosing a CRM system for any business is a process that is quite delicate to see any results and experience growth within the company whether it is a small one or a huge corporation.

The best course of action is to explore what the market has to offer and compare the value of different systems to find the one that will suit your needs.

To make things easier, here is a list of the best CRM software tools:

Zoho CRM — Zoho CRM is our pick for the best CRM software for businesses. It’s packed with features and offers tons of functionality at a competitive price. It successfully automates regular sales operation.

Pros:

• It can automate daily work activities, monitor sales, and engross customers on numerous platforms.

• lead management and account management.

• Include sales forecasting, sales tracking and numerous productivity tools.

• You can also link your customers’ Twitter and Facebook pages to Zoho CRM.

Cons:

• Bugs occur in a few features at times, though it can be solved with some patches.

Hubspot — The HubSpot CRM makes it easy to organize, track, and grow your contact list and sales pipeline.

Pros:

• It’s FREE

• Better Insights. The HubSpot CRM tracks customer interactions automatically, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and making it easier to know when to follow-up.

• No Customization Limits. Most CRMs have annoying customization limits, but HubSpot allows you to customize everything to your brand and your specific sales process.

• Uses the Same Database as Marketing Platform (No Integration Needed).

Cons:

• Relatively New. Since HubSpot CRM is still new, there are many upcoming features that have yet to be released.

• Lightweight. Although HubSpot CRM is great for growing businesses, organizations with large sales teams might find that HubSpot CRM isn’t advanced enough just yet.

Pipedrive — Small business owners like Pipedrive because it is simple and easy to use.

Pros:

• A great advertising solution to get high-quality customers.

• It is easy to use.

• There is also no training required.

• It’s also a highly visual platform, making it easy to quickly navigate the dashboard and get the data you need at a glance.

Cons:

• No provision to send emails/sales campaigns from within the CRM.

• It lacks the sophistication of Lead Scoring or sorting of leads that will reduce the time spent by sales agents to sort through leads.

• Lacks the ability to create custom reports, export and share them with your team.

Odoo — Odoo is an open-source software that focuses on tracking leads, closing opportunities and generating accurate forecasts.

Pros:

• Comprehensive software. Unlike many similar platforms, Odoo handles a range of business needs that covers project management, e-Commerce, warehouse, CRM, billing, manufacturing, accounting, and inventory.

• User-friendly Interface.

• Flexibility. The user can start with basic modules and they can add on new modules in the future when the business expands.

• Easy integration and budget friendly.

• Up-to-date technology. With a marketing approach, the software is always up to date in correlation with the advancements in the technology.

Cons:

• Backward Compatibility.

• Bugs issues occur at times, but it can easily be fixed.

• Usability. Some people have complained about its lack of an idiomatic approach.

Dynamics CRM — Microsoft Dynamics CRM takes a different approach to CRM. The software uses social insights, business intelligence, and campaign management to help your business strengthen relationships with customers.

Pros:

• Most user-friendly interfaces available, with it being incredibly fast, never cluttered and extremely reliable.

• Improves marketing campaigns and, ultimately, boost sales.

Cons:

• Dynamics has of course been optimized for compatibility with MS products and performance does tend to take a slight hit if anything else is used.

Amo CRM — is a user-friendly CRM solution that helps to efficiently manage leads and sales deals. The system is designed to convert first-time contacts into leads and assists in maintaining an organized database and to make smarter sales decisions.

Pros:

• It is easy to use. Amo CRM offers a familiar and user-friendly interface with a minimal learning curve.

• Helps to track all prospects closely.

• Knowledgeable customer support

• Sophisticated customer tracking

• Sales reps can use the system effectively as it is easy to understand its logic.

Cons:

• The vendor could offer a tutorial menu to help newbies. While the system is very intuitive, having an extra training resource would be welcome.

• Currently, you cannot export raw data, such as inbound and outbound calls which limits the software’s reporting capability. Hopefully, it will be introduced in the next version of the app.

Jira — Robust & fairly flexible tool, with extensive functionality, a huge user community, and decent customer support.

Pros:

• Powerful integrations.

• Offers decent customer support.

• Automation of repetitive tasks.

• Real-time reporting.

Cons:

• Lack of phone calls integration

• Lack of integrated knowledge base

It’s not only important to implement CRM but the key challenge is to do it right. To ensure that company can provide the best customer service experience possible the use of customer relationship management (CRM) software should be considered.

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Margo Prylypska

I’m a Sales Professional with over 10 years experience in sales management and commercial development with great interest in IT market and software development.