Although it may be one of the most popular CRM platforms out there, HubSpot CRM alternatives have boomed in number and quality. It's clear to see why. The digital world gives us the potential to reach the majority of the world, which makes the right CRM software an essential part of your toolkit. But the fact that HubSpot has a big name doesn't mean it's right for everyone. Business leaders are constantly on the hunt for alternatives that better suit their specific needs.
That's why this article is going to focus on CRM software for small businesses aiming for growth. From the most basic, user-friendly options to the expensive industry-leading solutions, all of them have their place in the lifecycle of a growing business. So, let's take a look at them one by one, get a feel for their features, and find out what companies they're best suited to.
1. Bitrix24: The all-in-one for small businesses
Notable features:
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AI-powered assistant CoPilot
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Unified communications
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Excellent CRM automations and workflows
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Unrivalled native integrations
Best for:
Bitrix24's CRM is a beacon for small businesses looking for the full package. At a seriously affordable price point, you get a comprehensive HubSpot CRM alternative that competes with the best. Hook your customers in with website forms and use automations to segment your audience into customizable groups. With Bitrix24, you can launch automated email marketing workflows, set up data-driven sales pipelines, use interaction history to offer individualized customer support, and unify your communications channels under one roof. And a revolutionary AI assistant is there to ease the job. CoPilot will help you generate new ideas for marketing campaigns, create texts, and even transcriptions for your calls. And all of this is inside the software.
Bitrix24 - Best Free Alternative to Hubspot CRM
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An all-in-one business platform, Bitrix24 links your CRM to your project management, collaboration tools such as calendars and shared documents, and a complete contact center through integrations. This allows you to seamlessly sync data in real time, seriously cutting down your team's tedious tasks and significantly reducing the margin for error. That same data channels directly to an analytics bank where you can draw out detailed reports, insights, and trends about your leads, clients, and sales. The result is a personalized, professional service for your customers and a happy, motivated team.
Customer reviews about Bitrix24:
"After testing several CRMs, Bitrix24 provided an outstanding number of features with the ease of use that we need in our accounting firm. Due to our frequency of use, we had to engage customer support to integrate apps that we use. The ease of implementation was simple as 1-2-3." - G2.com
"Ok, I have been using Bitrix24 for several years now... sometimes for little things, some other times just for testing and understand how the product has been changing over the time, but right now is a true hidden jewel for me. This CRM delivers everything in one package, I can run almost my entire company on it. CRM, Prospects, Projects, Intranet, Workflows, Phones, Unified Communications, etc. If this piece of software adds accounting and financials to the packages, it would be a one-stop solution for every entrepreneur. I think that the most valuable feature I ever see on this tool is the fact that the CRM processes are truly customizable... I mean, most of the CRM systems let you customize small things like the field name, some behaviors and some other little stuff (almost meaningless), however, Bitrix24 lets you change everything to fit from a single person orden processing to a multilanguage sales operation, super easy, and if you need to try different angles, you can create multiple pipelines with different configurations... As i said before, I have tried Bitrix24 in the past, also worked with most of the popular ones (from Microsoft to Zoho and NoCRM) and since i rediscover the new features and funcitionalitis from Bitrix 24 im not looking aymore You can try it for free and send me a comment about it." - Capterra.com
2. Salesforce: A powerhouse among CRM solutions
Notable features:
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Fully customizable to every enterprise
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Comprehensive customer journeys
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A good range of third-party integrations
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Conversational AI
Best for:
Salesforce has long been the go-to CRM software for multinational enterprises across the world, but more and more small businesses are beginning to use it. With complete freedom to set up your customer journeys and database segmentation exactly the way you want, it offers pro-level customizations that you can scale up as you grow. Salesforce is also specialized in after-sales support and sales analytics for top companies to refine their strategies.
Unsurprisingly, all those tools come at the expense of usability. Entire companies exist simply to demystify this extensive HubSpot alternative, customizing every little aspect to provide the best service. However, if you're considering HubSpot CRM alternatives as a platform that will see you grow, the time and cost you invest now will pay dividends in the future.
Customer reviews about Salesforce:
"I liked it a lot and it was easy to learn to manage it according to my needs, to take advantage of them and save me time." - Capterra.com
"Having read these reviews I should have listed before I signed up. They give the worse customer service . I signed up for 4 years but now I regret my decision. I have not even started yet and an internal error cause them to charge me for 3million texts . Despite repeatedly asking for rectification they keep charging my credit card. No one answers my emails . the initial sales person has disappeared. The manager does not reply . All they say is that they are looking into it . You can tell how good a company is by the way it handles its problems." - Trustpilot.com
3. Zoho CRM: An AI-powered CRM for SMEs
Notable features:
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AI-driven sales automation
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Inside flow personalization and automatization
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Easy, but professional pipeline management
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Integrated multichannel communications
Best for:
Zoho is a well-priced, feature-rich HubSpot CRM alternative aimed at SMEs looking to make their mark. Zoho provides an AI assistant, Zia, who offers lead scoring, sales analytics, and even sentiment analysis for smaller companies to get the edge on their competitors. Like Bitrix24, you can communicate with your customers via social media and email via your CRM and analyze your efforts for future improvement.
But while Zoho produces a wide range of other apps, you need separate subscriptions for each one. This means you'll pay extra to integrate your Zoho CRM software with your project management tools, for example, which can lead to spiraling costs as you grow your business.
Customer reviews aboutZoho CRM:
"Zoho projects have a number of great features, but one of my favorites is the option to personalize the parameters for the project management. In addition to being incredibly simple to operate, the customization function meets the vast majority of the needs that my firm has in regard to project management." - Capterra.com
"I am a small business owner and have found most of these social sites, are just too much money and they do not deliver results. Until I found ZOHO Social. I can create and customize a beautiful ad that targets the exact audience I want. I could not be happier with ZOHO Social for helping my business get on the map and noticed!!
Thank you ZOHO for helping me achieve my dreams!" - Trustpilot
4. Pipedrive: An eye-catching CRM software solution
Notable features:
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Great user interface
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Simplified sales pipelines
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A good range of third-party integrations
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Fast customer service response
Best for:
After a series of feature-packed HubSpot CRM alternatives, Pipedrive is a good choice for companies who don't need all the bells and whistles, and lack the expertise for more complex CRM solutions. That's not to say it's a below-par option. You still get email tracking features to see who has opened and clicked on your messages, as well as a bunch of third-party integrations to enhance your CRM software.
But Pipedrive stands out for its simple, attractive user interface which puts it in the category of CRM systems for SMEs. It's quick and easy to learn so you can onboard new sales agents quickly. Similarly, Pipedrive's simplicity means anyone can use it, even if they don't have experience using CRM platforms — ideal for when you need your workers to wear many hats.
Customer reviews about Pipedrive:
"In its capacity as a customer relationship management (CRM) system for our sales staff, it has proven to be rather effective. Although rather elementary, the lead assignment workflow automation is quite accessible and user-friendly." - Capterra.com
"It offers a lot of features that can be used to help manage customer relationships, track sales, and organize marketing campaigns. It is a great tool for managing customer relationships because it allows you to keep track of all customer information and interactions in one place. It is not very user-friendly, especially for those who are new to the software. Also, it is quite expensive and updates can be slow. However, if you are willing to invest in the software, it can be beneficial for managing customer relationships, tracking sales, and organizing marketing campaigns" - Capterra.com
5. Insightly: Connecting customer relationships and project management
Notable features:
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Native connections between your CRM and project management tools
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Good integrations with third-party apps to complement your business tools
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A customizable interface so it adapts to each business
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Easy navigation inside the software
Best for:
Here are some customer reviews about Insightly:
"It meets our needs. that might not sound very glowing, but it is meant to be. It does what we need it to do. It is very customizable without being too complicated. There are more integrations possible through app connect. I wish I had time to build these out.
We have the support plan. They are responsive and helpful." - G2.com
"Insightly CRM is itself a very reliable tool which allows the user to gain the most of the advantage with its easy to use features and efficient tools. We can also easily integrate it with other tools to improve the overall productivity. Chrome extensions are bit of a clunky addition which further complicated the working procedure so mostly avoid it." - Capterra.com
6. Nimble: A CRM with a focus on social media
Notable features:
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Powerful links to your socials offer excellent customer insights
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Simplified, but effective contact management
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A CRM with a unified communications hub
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Broad extension integration
Best for:
Nimble is designed to bring real-time insights from all your social profiles so you can identify potential leads and make your communications fast and personalized. While some community managers need to monitor multiple apps at once, Nimble specializes in sending every communication to one place so you can be on top of things with minimal effort.
Perfect as a small business CRM, Nimble is simple to learn and use, so you can quickly set up a professional online presence without the learning curve of other HubSpot alternatives. However, the focus on building relationships does mean that integrations are fairly limited. Similarly, while the core features are strong, features that complement the best HubSpot CRM alternatives, such as task management tools, are quite thin on the ground.
Here are some customer reviews about Nimble:
"It gives me all the contact information on a person I could ever want, so especially in that regard it is immensely helpful!" - Capterra.com
"Nimble is a CRM platform that helps businesses manage their customer relationships. It's a powerful tool that can help businesses keep track of their customer data, interactions, and communications. Overall, I've found Nimble to be a valuable asset in managing my business's customer relationships. It's easy to use and has a ton of features that are very helpful in managing customer data." - Capterra.com
7. Freshsales: AI-powered contact scoring and insights
Notable features:
Best for:
Jumping on the AI-powered revolution, Freshsales removes the burden of manual lead scoring by using algorithms to prioritize the most promising prospects. It also encourages simplicity in communication with native integrations to phone and email services. Email tracking data shows you how well your communications are performing so you can adapt and improve your messaging, and integrated analytics allow you to gain insights into customer behavior, monitor sales metrics, and track team performance.
Like Bitrix24, Freshsales comes with a free version so you can give your CRM software a whirl without breaking the bank. But unlike Bitrix24, you need to splash out on extras and add-ons to get the full package, and they don't come cheap.
Customer reviews about Freshsales:
"Overall experience is good. Now that we are on an enterprise plan, support is good. When we were not enterprise client, the support was often slow. I miss if/than functionality in workflows. That would greatly reduce the manual work when setting up the workflows and adding new conditions. Another thing that I do not like is the policy and the pricing related to the marketing contacts. All plans have the limitation of 1000 marketing emails per month. This can be quickly exceeded especially if you are sending newsletters to your contacts." - Capterra.com
"For me personally I use the analytics part for freshsales the most, I like how flexible it is to use and the advantages of creat new data driving decision from it. The email campaign capability also do help me and my team Target the right targets at the right time. The best thing I would say is for sure the ease of use just with a simple clicks and filtering you are set you and ready to go." - G2.com
8. Keap (formerly Infusionsoft): Advanced marketing automation for savvy e-commerces
Notable features:
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Product listings and payment processing for e-commerce
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Extensive sales and marketing automation tools
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Solid contact management capabilities
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User-friendly interface is also available for smartphones
Best for:
Keap goes above and beyond the basic CRM functions, allowing users to craft a full e-commerce lifecycle, from generation to post-purchase engagement. Excellent marketing automations allow you to offer a personalized service in a timely manner, resulting in increased conversions and loyalty without a major increase in effort. With a modular design, you can add or remove features as you scale up, giving you everything you need without unnecessary clutter.
These advanced features come with a higher price tag, especially compared to other CRM systems for SMEs. This makes it more suited as a stepping stone between affordable CRMs and top-end solutions such as Salesforce. Similarly, if you don't have expertise in automations, the features on offer can be overwhelming, making more streamlined tools more appropriate.
Customer reviews about Keap:
"Keap is our primary customer relationship management tool, and it stores not only marketing and sales data but also details on our customers' accounts, such as their plans, employees, invoices, subscriptions, and more." - Capterra.com
"I love that Keap provides a guided experience for you so that you're not paying for a program you don't know how to use! The online support has been phenomenal and unmatched from any other program I've worked with before." - G2.com
9. Agile CRM: Combining sales, marketing, and customer service
Notable features:
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Neatly streamlined sales processes
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Marketing automation and insights to craft campaigns
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Dedicated customer service functionalities
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Saas is cloud-based and available for use on smartphones
Best for:
Agile by name, agile by nature, this is an affordable HubSpot CRM alternative with an impressive range of features for your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. By connecting three departments on one customer relationship management tool, information is shared, meaning your sales team can adjust their pipelines based on customer service feedback and your marketing campaigns can focus on items that are selling well (or not!).
With so many features in one place, the learning curve can indeed be a bit troublesome for teams that aren't used to handling CRM platforms. At the same time, anyone with experience using the best tools may find that Agile CRM lacks advanced features, such as analytics and reporting, workflow automation, and AI insights.
Customer reviews about Agile CRM:
" I really want to like it. Such a good price for great features and a good UI. But some glitches prevent me from using it any longer." - Capterra.com
"the biggest benefit that this software has given me has been to optimize everything that has to do with the world of sales and marketing, generating the reports I need to demonstrate in the company how useful our strategies are, what aspects to improve, and generate our own leads, all in a very organized way and as its name says "agile". - Capterra.com
10. Apptivo: The adaptable small business CRM
Notable features:
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A modular design for full adaptability
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Effective project management tools
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Plenty of native integrations and add-ons
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Easy process customization
Best for:
Apptivo is a top HubSpot CRM alternative that even rivals Bitrix24 for the range of features it has. Sure, you can take advantage of decent contact management tools including web forms to generate leads, multiple sales pipelines, custom field mapping, and deal management. However, Apptivo adds a healthy selection of marketing features like email templates and click tracking, email sequencing, and automations.
Depending on what you need, you can add on or remove extras such as supply chain management and helpdesk support, making Apptivo a smart solution for growing retail businesses. Of course, all of these extras come at a cost, but the modular design allows you to limit what you pay.
Customer reviews about Apptivo:
"Cloud-based product is easy to use from anywhere, including mobile device. We required significant system customizations and most were successfully implemented. While we have trouble resolving issues using Apptivo's general Tech Support chat function (probably due to our breadth of customizations), our PM and Apptivo's technical team always provide good support when we have issues to address!" - Capterra.com
"It's very easy to change everything, add new fields and sections, rename evertyhing, create custom views. Support is great, there is a chat feature and someone always responds pretty much immediately. It was simple to setup and import client records too" - G2.com
11. ActiveCampaign: One of the best softwares to create an email campaign
Notable features:
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Various automation features
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Included templates for email marketing
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Data integration and trend metrics
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Calendar sync
Best for:
This CRM is great for small businesses with an active email marketing campaign. It's designed for the customer service and marketing teams and has many features to help you create your campaigns. With machine learning, you will have data with possible responses and predictions about the possible leads. The software includes templates to help you create your customer journey from scratch. ActiveCampaign also has all the necessary features to create an email campaign, including email scheduling, autoresponders and automated funnels.
Customer reviews about ActiveCampaign:
"My leads and contacts are in safe hands with Active Campaign. Quietly on autopilot, this super charged assistant works tirelessly to build my mailing list. It waits patiently until I visit once more to send my newsletters and special campaigns. So glad I have Active Campaign in my corner." - Trustpilot.com
"I really love the automations - they are easy to use, yet very powerful. They help me send more relevant content to my subscribers and keep track of their engagement. Plus there's a big selection of ready-made "recipes" to choose from, so they can be created quickly. A particular favourite feature is the ability to redirect the subsciber to a different part of the automation, depending on their actions. It's simple to test or troubleshoot the automations too, so you know they are achieving the intended result." - G2.com
12. EngageBay: All needed features for a small business in one
Notable features:
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Marketing automation features
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Customer segmentation
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High level of customization
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Responsive customer support
Best for:
EngageBay is a software that will help you automate various parts of your business, including marketing campaigns and customer support channels. Another great feature of this software is its forms and landing page to collect lead data. Your created campaigns can be customized and segmented based on the parameters you choose to gather correct and helpful data.
Customer reviews about EngageBay:
"EngageBay has exceeded my expectations. This program is truly starting to get my business going. I enjoyed my sales guy and everything he told me has been true, yes that's a first. The Customer Service people are great, they are there all the time and have really helped me along. The price was much less than the competition, and if you get the All-in-One set up, they do not nickel and dime you for more modules as its all in that package. I give EbgageBay 100% for all they are doing." - Capterra.com
"I was looking for a CRM that had the robustness of HubSpot but not the large price tag. EngageBay delivers. From Twilio integration, Sequences, Workflows and Automation - everything works for less than you would think. Especially for that scenario where yo only need, one seat that needs full CRM functionality." - Trustpilot.com
Bitrix24: The king of HubSpot CRM alternatives for small businesses
There you have it, ten excellent HubSpot alternatives for small businesses — all with their unique flair. But while all of them have their place in the market, we feel Bitrix24 comes out on top of the pack for most small, growing businesses.
With a massive amount of essential and advanced CRM features from even the lowest price points, Bitrix24 is adaptable enough to serve your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. What's more, aside from being one place for your lead management, CRM automations, and inventory, Bitrix24 has a unique amount of extra tools to boost your CRM, including:
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Web building software with CRM forms to pull in leads
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Multi-channel communications to manage contacts via phone, email, chatbot, and social media
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Comprehensive automated workflows to create bulletproof sales pipelines
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Sales and performance analytics to continually improve your customer journey
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Secure cloud access to your CRM via desktop and mobile
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AI-powered assistant CoPilot will help boost your productivity and provide new ideas.
Bitrix24's per-team, rather than per-user pricing structure means you can confidently grow without suffering from the extra costs of new profiles. So, if you're looking to expand your business, sign up for Bitrix24 today.
Bitrix24 - Best Free Alternative to Hubspot CRM
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FAQs
Why should small businesses consider alternatives to the HubSpot CRM?
While HubSpot offers a robust CRM, exploring alternatives can provide small businesses with diverse options that might be more aligned with their specific needs, budget, or desired functionalities. So what is the biggest reason to switch from HubSpot to another software?
The pricing structure of the HubSpot CRM. HubSpot offers several "Hubs": Sales, Marketing, and Service. Each of the "Hubs" has its own distinctive pricing and features. After buying several subscriptions to access the best features (or one specific feature presented in one of the hubs), the pricing increases in an instant. At the same time, you are buying numerous features you will never use. This issue not only highlights the overpay for a product but also overloads your workspace.
Another problem you might face when using HubSpot is missing tools and integrations that are not presented in the software. While having all the features and using the majority of them, you might think that there is nothing to explore. While in reality, there are tools that are not offered by HubSpot, like distinct sales procedures or progressive social media integration.
What features should small businesses prioritize when selecting CRM software?
Small businesses should prioritize the next features when selecting CRM software:
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Ease of use
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Scalability
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The range of software features
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Customer data management
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Customer Support accessibility
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Integration capabilities
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Cost-effectiveness based on your budget
Can switching to a different CRM software disrupt current business operations?
Switching CRMs can pose some challenges. However, with proper planning, data migration, team training, and a well-structured implementation plan, disruptions can be minimized and managed effectively.
Are HubSpot CRM alternatives more cost-effective?
While HubSpot offers a range of pricing options, many alternatives may provide more cost-effective solutions, especially for small businesses. Bitrix24, Pipedrive, and Nimble all fall below most HubSpot price points in return for similar features.
