10 Best CRM Tools to Optimize Your Business and Increase its Efficiency

Guest Contributor -

In past years, customer relationship management (CRM) has become an indispensable tool for companies seeking to improve efficiency and create long-term client relationships. It is no longer just an additional tool because no business can exist without it, even in the early stages.

As businesses evolve, the demand for sophisticated CRM tools continues to grow. We've reviewed 5 of the most modern CRM tools that stand out in the market, offering features and capabilities designed to optimize various aspects of your business and drive increased efficiency, has already become more than just an additional tool, and no business can exist without it, even at the early stages

Factors to consider while choosing the software

  • Scalability: ensure the software can grow with your business.
  • User-friendly interface: Opt for intuitive platforms to ease adoption.
  • Integration capabilities: Seamless integration with existing tools is crucial.
  • Customization: Choose software that adapts to your unique business needs.
  • Data security: Prioritize security measures to protect sensitive information.

We have prepared a selection of leading-edge СRM solutions for you to choose the one that fits your business best. Check out the comparison table below. 

1. Xoxoday Compass

Commission automation platform that lets sales teams focus on driving revenue. The best way to motivate your sales team to close more deals is by delivering a frictionless compensation experience. Compass makes that possible by automating commission processing so your sales team gets accurate and on-time commissions.

Key features

  • Commission management: Design a powerful commission experience
  • Performance management: Drive sustained growth with agility
  • Sales gamification: Engage teams with gamification

Pros

  • Digitization of rewards and instant gratification
  • Easy to use and redeem the points

Cons

  • Limitation to customize the platform to meet audience requirement
  • Advanced functions are a little complicated and require assistance from the support team

Free trial: No

Clients’ results in figures

  1. A German luxury auto brand improved their top-line sales:
  • 96.2 % - increase in payouts adoption
  • 11% - increase in unit sales in less than 90 days
  • 92% - adoption of Compass by sales teams
  1. An ed-tech company streamlines sales commission plans and improves sales team engagement:
  • 94% - platform adoption rate
  • 55K points per month
  1. E-Com giant improves their audit team performance with our gamification platform:
  • 80% - increase in incentive program adoption in less than 30 days
  1. The ROI of switching to Compass for automating commissions. 
  • 90% Reduced operations and auditing efforts.
  • 20% Savings on incentive budgets.
  • 95% Reduced commission processing time.
  • 80% Increase in sales productivity.

Companies using this product

Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, Flipkart, Wonder Cement

G2 rating: 4.7

Capterra rating: 4.5

2. Freshsales

A powerful sales CRM that helps sell smarter and close deals faster. Users can build a high-performing sales team and grow the revenue.

Key features

  • 360-degree view of customer’s information
  • Connection with customers where they are
  • Improvement of sales productivity with automation
  • Closed deals and revenue growth
  • Smarter decisions with in-depth analytics and AI
  • Customized CRM to fit users’ needs
  • Defined roles and permission levels to ensure data security
  • Sales from the phone
  • Connection of the CRM with chosen apps

Pros

  • Excellent documentation and free support
  • Diversified into almost every domain that users need from a CRM
  • A clean design that is up-to-date and easy to use
  • Open API allows developing cool things such as event tracking from the website that is attached to a user FreshSales profile
  • Easy access to customer accounts

Cons

  • Poor support and billing communication (you need to follow up on the ticket since the support never proactively tells you the status of the ticket)
  • Auto bill is enabled on the account by default
  • It’s difficult sometimes to find the customers' time zone or simply address to ship their orders

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Blue Nile, a leading online diamond jeweler, reduced their no-show rate to about 20%, and time is money. They faced challenges in understanding customer preferences and delivering a high level of personalization across different touchpoints.

    By implementing Freshsales, Blue Nile gained a deeper understanding of its customers, which enabled them to make relevant product recommendations and enhance the overall purchase experience. 
  2. Humn acquired 10X more customers and is rapidly scaling. Through this busy phase, the time spent on administrative tasks by teams dropped by 20%. Freshsales implementation significantly improved their sales team's utilization and overall efficiency.

Companies using this product

Blue Nile, Trainline, Itv, Klarna, Pearson

G2 rating: 4.5

Capterra rating: 4.5

3. HubSpot

HubSpot CRM has free tools for everyone on the team and is 100% free. With the easy-to-use HubSpot CRM, users don’t have to manually update reports or wonder how the team tracks toward quotas.

Key features

  • Dashboard and reporting software
  • Company insights
  • Pipeline management
  • Hosting, flexible themes, dynamic content, drag-and-drop page editing, memberships, and more — all powered by a CRM platform that allows to build seamless digital experiences for customers

Pros

  • Great fit for start-up companies or small businesses, as the pricing is more fair and other CRM tools can be overkill for a small company
  • The email campaigns and tracking integrated with workflow automation 

Cons

  • Expensive marketing add-on, no option for the solo person. The software is geared to the enterprise
  • Some items can be inaccessible
  • Workflows can be confusing and hard to understand at times
  • UTM parameters are getting stripped from pageviews

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Avison Young Increases CRM Adoption from 23% to 90%
  2. Ving Increases Revenue by 96% With HubSpot
  3. Ceros used HubSpot to achieve 180% deal generation growth through smarter prospecting

Companies using this product

AVISION YOUNG, Ving, Ceros, Netlify, Reddit

G2 rating: 4.5

Capterra rating: 4.5

4. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a robust CRM tool designed to streamline and optimize sales processes for businesses of all sizes. With its intuitive interface and powerful features, Pipedrive helps teams manage leads, track deals, and close sales efficiently.

Key features

  • Sales software
  • Email marketing software
  • Project management software
  • Marketplace integrations
  • Lead generation software
  • Web visitor tracking
  • Documents and templates

Pros

  • Pipeline management 
  • Convenient activity view
  • It pulls in the email and calendar, so it’s easy to set up reminders to follow up with prospects
  • New useful caller app 
  • You can easily customize pipelines for various sales campaigns which helps encourage deal movement forward
  • Pipedrive is very competitive to other more popular CRM tools with better price

Cons

  • May be difficult to understand when using it for the first time; repetitive data entry can get boring
  • Difficult integrating with third-party tools;  most of it needs to be connected with Zapier which is again another subscription
  • The inability to move among contacts in the same list without returning to the main list page is a waste of time

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures 

  1. Automated reminders and follow-ups increase your productivity, eliminating repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Real-time reports show your sales reps and sales managers what business processes to prioritize.
  2. Our customers average 28% more deals in their first year.
  3. Many of our enterprise customers have increased new accounts by double-digits while seeing revenue soar by over 40%.
  4. Grew revenue by 40%
  5. “Using Pipedrive’s CRM is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We’ve seen our annual revenue explode, and the outlook just keeps getting sunnier” – Mitch Workman, Digital Marketing Director, Big Dog Solar | Energy Sector | USA

Companies using this product

SkyScanner, Vimeo, BAKERpedia, CircuitMeter Inc., 360 Payments, 

G2 rating: 4.3

Capterra rating: 4.5

5. Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM solution that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to streamline and enhance various aspects of business operations. CRM helps unite teams around customers, get actionable insights from data, attract prospects, and retain loyal customers. 

Key features 

  • Activity management: Build relationships and grow revenue with a single source of truth
  • Forecast management: Get visibility to stay on track and exceed targets
  • Workflow and process automation: Drive productivity with automated sales processes

Pros

  • Easy to track the status of a lead via the pipeline
  • Incredibly comprehensive reporting
  • Salesforce creates a platform that takes the place of multiple other programs
  • The ability to customize to a degree for the company is nice and the customer service
  • The ability to integrate with other platforms

Cons

  • It sometimes takes much time to search the case
  • There can be lags and errors when looking into tasks

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Wonolo agents decrease handle times 20% with AI-generated replies.
  2. AAA’s personalized service puts 60 million in the driver’s seat. Learn how AAA - The Auto Club Group reduced response times by 10% with automation.
  3. Service visits are costly. Here’s how ADT reduced them by 40%.
  4. Casey’s personalizes messaging 30x faster with real-time data.
  5. Personalization has helped Heathrow’s digital revenue by 30%. Heathrow Airport uses data + AI to provide the best airport service in the world.

Companies using this product

Ford, Gucci, George Mason University, Uber Eats, IBM, Loreal Groupe, NBC, 

G2 rating: 4.5

Capterra rating: 4.4

6. Monday

Monday.com CRM is a versatile and efficient project collaboration and communication solution simplifying project and customer management. It offers a wide range of features and benefits, making it a suitable choice for various businesses.

Key features 

  • Exportable contact database: Allows for easy management and access to contact information.
  • Customization: Users can tailor various aspects of the system to fit their needs.
  • Total visibility: Provides complete visibility of projects and customer interactions.
  • Mobile-optimized: Accessible via mobile devices, enhancing flexibility and accessibility.
  • Lead/Pipeline management: Efficiently manages leads and tracks prospects, clients, and deals.
  • Open API: Facilitates integration with other systems.
  • Efficient collaboration: Facilitates seamless assistance between departments and agents.
  • Out-of-the-box task/Project management: Unique concepts for generating insights on tasks and projects.
  • Reporting and analytics tools: Collects and relates tasks and projects for detailed insights.
  • Integration support: Compatible with systems like Zapier, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc

Pros

  • Suitable for a wide range of operations, from small to large enterprises
  • Streamlined collaboration
  • Efficient for managing both customers and projects on the same dashboard

Cons

  • Might be considered expensive for smaller teams or startups
  • Extensive customization options might be overwhelming for some users.
  • Limited free trial

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Coles 360 was operating as a startup within a highly competitive, established, and rapidly evolving retail media market, so it needed to move fast from day one. In a little over a year, supported by the monday.com team, Coles 360 grew from a few key staff to a team of 70+ media professionals, with new members joining weekly.
  2. Howard Kennedy, a London-based, full-service law firm, boldly aimed to grow the business from £55 million in revenue today up to £80 million within a three-year period.

    The Monday.com team helped them expand the platform across the business by managing specific objectives and key results (OKRs) across all departments.

    Previously, individual teams could focus well on their own priorities and client cases, but they lacked the holistic view needed to connect with high-level strategy and create business impact at scale.

Companies using this product

Canva, Coca-Cola, Lionsgate

G2 rating: 4.7

Capterra rating: 4.8

7. ClickUp

ClickUp is a versatile project management tool designed to improve productivity and team collaboration. Its main features include task assignments, time tracking, goal setting, document management, and integration with other apps. It offers a customizable interface, enabling users to tailor their workspace to their specific needs.

Key features 

  • Task management: Create, assign, and track tasks with various statuses and priorities
  • Time tracking: Log time spent on tasks and projects
  • Customizable dashboards: Tailor views and reports to track project progress
  • Document management: Store and share documents within the platform
  • Goal setting: Set and track objectives for projects or teams
  • Collaboration tools: In-app chat, comments, and file sharing for team communication
  • Integration: Connect with other apps like Google Drive, Slack, and more
  • Automation: Automate repetitive tasks and workflows

Pros

  • Highly customizable with a wide range of features
  • User-friendly interface
  • Effective for team collaboration and project management
  • Integrates with various other tools and platforms

Cons

  • Can be overwhelming due to its extensive features
  • Some users report a steep learning curve
  • Occasional glitches and performance issues

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Optimising, a digital marketing agency, used ClickUp to manage over 100 client projects with a team of 14 staff members. ClickUp was pivotal in helping them keep track of their campaigns in detail, facilitating collaborative work, and providing a clear record of campaign activities.
  2. Health4Everyone, a leading IT social enterprise, saves much time with ClickUp. They used to use a system where at the end of the week, every team member sends in weekly reports via email, which would be analyzed over the weekend. But with ClickUp, they are gradually phasing out redundant reports, thereby saving time, which are now channeled to more productive activities.

Companies using this product

Netflix, Spotify, Booking.com

G2 rating: 4.7

Capterra rating: 4.7

8. Zapier

Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your favorite apps, such as Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp, and over 2,000 more. It allows you to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build the integration.

Key Features

  • App integration: Connects various apps to automate workflows
  • Zaps creation: Automated workflows known as Zaps
  • Task automation: Automate tasks between different apps
  • Multi-step Zaps: Create complex workflows involving multiple apps

Pros

  • Extensive app compatibility
  • Easy to set up and use
  • Saves time by automating repetitive tasks

Cons

  • Can be overwhelming for beginners
  • The free version has restricted features
  • Functionality is limited to the capabilities of the connected apps

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. ActiveCampaign, a SaaS company offering email marketing, marketing and sales automation, and CRM functionality, slashed its 90-day churn rate as low as 6%, using Zapier. Moreover, since implementing auto-enrollment, webinar attendance jumped from an average of 500 to 2,700 per month.
  2. Vector Media, an offline media company helping brands tell better stories through transit and large-format, automated the summary and suggested responses with AI. So, help desk technicians save 5-10 minutes on simple requests and up to 30 minutes on more complex issues.

Companies using this product

Asana, Digioh, Unspun

G2 rating: 4.5

Capterra rating: 4.5

9. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM designed to improve productivity and sales processes. Its main features include lead and deal tracking, email integration, reporting tools, and mobile access. Pros include a user-friendly interface, effective sales tracking, and robust integration capabilities. 

Key features

  • Lead and deal tracking: efficiently manage and track sales leads and deals
  • Email integration: seamless connection with email for improved communication
  • Reporting tools: advanced reporting for sales analysis and forecasting
  • Mobile access: access CRM functionalities on-the-go through mobile apps

Pros

  • Comprehensive tools for managing the sales pipeline
  • Integrates well with other Zendesk products and third-party apps

Cons

  • May be more expensive compared to other CRM options
  • Might be overwhelming for smaller businesses or teams

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Kontakt.io, a leading global provider of Bluetooth proximity technologies, reps now have a 360-degree account view without chasing down more information or switching between applications. This has improved sales and support productivity, resulting in an 18% increase in support request capacity. It has also helped streamline and fast-track the customer onboarding process.
  2. Talbott Teas focused on customer needs thanks to specific strategies they implemented using Zendesk Sell to enhance their sales processes and customer engagement.

Companies using this product 

Uber, Tesco, Lush

G2 rating: 4.2

Capterra rating: 4.4

10. Creatio

Creatio is a tool for automating business processes, from lead generation to repeat orders. In the configurator, there are many templates for each individual business process, and you can also set up marketing SMS and email messages in a couple of clicks.

Key features 

  • Fast support
  • Regular updates
  • Free demo version and test drive
  • No-code editor

Pros

  • Cloud services
  • Convenient chat system for interaction with customers

Cons

  • The lack of integration with social networks

Free trial: Yes

Pricing structure 

Clients’ results in figures

  1. Health e(fx), the largest Affordable Care Act (ACA) solution provider, adopted Creatio CRM to streamline and enhance its sales and customer service processes. One of the standout results was a 30% reduction in operating costs. This was achieved through the improved alignment and efficiency provided by the Creatio platform.
  2. Namu Travel Group, a Central American travel agency, experienced significant improvements after implementing Creatio CRM. Before adopting Creatio, the agency faced challenges with its homegrown CRM system, which contained incorrect or missing data, and struggled with information sharing across different departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and IT. Within just four months, Namu achieved an ROI of 271%.  

Companies using this product 

Uber, Carrefour, Genpact, Frontier

G2 rating: 4.6

Capterra rating: 4.8

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