Top 3 CRM Software for 2022: Our Comprehensive Review

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Importance of CRM Software
3. Hubspot CRM
   • Features
   • Pricing
   • Pros and Cons
4. Pipedrive CRM
   • Features
   • Pricing
   • Pros and Cons
5. Freshsales CRM
   • Features
   • Pricing
   • Pros and Cons
6. Comparison of the Top 3 CRM Software
7. Conclusion
8. FAQ

Best CRM Software: A Comprehensive Review of the Top 3

Introduction

In today's business world, customer relationship management (CRM) software has become an essential tool for companies of all sizes. CRM software helps businesses keep track of their customers' behaviors, which is crucial for taking care of customers and increasing sales. However, with so many CRM software options available on the market, it can be challenging to choose the right one for your business. In this article, we will review the top 3 CRM software options available: Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Freshsales.

Importance of CRM Software

Before we dive into the review of the top 3 CRM software options, let's first discuss why CRM software is essential for businesses. Most businesses rely on Excel spreadsheets to track sales, customer data, and create reports. However, this approach can lead to scattered data across various people, spreadsheets, and systems, making it complicated to use the information and collaborate on sales. This is where CRM software comes in. CRM software gathers data into a centralized form, giving everyone in your business access to all the information they need from a single platform. It manages your contacts and helps in communicating with your potential buyers and customers. In addition to this, CRM software allows teams to automate various tasks that increase sales and revenue.

Hubspot CRM

Taking the third position on our list is Hubspot. Hubspot is a leading CRM software that offers software and support to help companies grow better. This CRM is best for marketers because it is a full-featured all-in-one CRM platform that allows businesses to increase leads and accelerate sales.

Features

The reason why we have our heart on Hubspot is because of its robust features, which takes its functionality to the next level. Its Pipeline management tools help you create your sales process ideal and keep you focused on important deals. You can add, delete, and edit deal stages and properties without the help of IT and assign tasks to your teams to push your deals forward.

Hubspot also does not disappoint when it comes to email marketing. It provides email integration to trigger email campaigns, log responses, and update contact records. You can set up email workflows that automate various tasks like email sends and contact list changes.

To manage your projects, HubSpot offers Projects, which is one place for all your tasks, files, and communication. It allows you to stay organized and effective at the same time by allowing you to assign owners, set due dates, and add attachments for every task in a project.

If you take a look at reports, HubSpot has changed the game by housing all the metrics in one place. You can create custom reports based on your reporting needs, which gives you more flexibility to analyze all the activities. So you can evaluate your performance and figure out what is working and what is not, which helps you make data-driven decisions while planning.

Pricing

One of the best things about HubSpot is that it offers different plans to fit every budget. Firstly, it offers you a free plan, which has basic tools for organizing contacts, lead communication, and appointment scheduling. But we don’t recommend the free plan because the feature set is very limited.

Besides a free package, HubSpot also offers 3 paid packages. Firstly there is a Starter plan for $50 monthly, which includes 2 paid users. If you want to add more, you will have to pay an additional $25 monthly. It includes all the features available in the free plan plus more features like live chat, meeting scheduling, conversation routing, stripe integration, and more.

Its second tier is the Professional plan, which is for $500 included with 5 paid users. For an additional user, you will be charged $100 per month. Including all the features you get in the Starter plan, this plan unlocks various more features like sales automation, custom reporting, phone support, and more.

Its highest tier is HubSpot Enterprise, which is for $1200 monthly with 10 paid users. You need to pay $120 per additional user. In addition to all the features in the professional plan, it offers hierarchical teams, sales analytics, predictive lead scoring, and more.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Robust features
• All-in-one platform
• Great email marketing tools
• Easy to use
• Powerful reporting features

Cons:

• Limited features in the free plan
• Expensive for small businesses

Pipedrive CRM

Next on our list, we have Pipedrive, which ranks 2nd among the best CRMs. Pipedrive is a powerful CRM solution for sales activities that allows sales teams to keep track of their leads, focus on the right deal, and is easy to use.

Features

You can manage your entire sales pipeline by updating deals through dragging and dropping. You can also add custom stages and fields to match your sales cycle. With Pipedrive, you don't need to manually search social media for contact on a lead or to keep a complex spreadsheet to know the worth of deals in your sales pipeline. Pipedrive will take care of that.

Its smart contact data features allow you to get an idea of leads based on data available online and via social media profiles. Users can send quotes, proposals, and contracts, as well as create eSignatures with the help of SmartDocs. It also offers integrated email marketing, with the help of Mailchimp CRM integration, you can send customized emails to a defined list of customers.

What we really like about Pipedrive is that despite being a sales tool, it provides a complete picture of everything in the CRM system as well as detailed project information that can be accessed by clicking on the project's name.

Again, Pipedrive does not disappoint us when it comes to dashboards. You will be able to combine your data into customizable dashboards to get a full picture of your business. And you can even share these dashboards with anyone in the world.

Heading over to the reports section, there are report templates that you can simply use, and you can just dive right in and start customizing them, or you can just build a new report from scratch. It is to create comprehensive reports and keep track of your goals that are customized specifically to your business. These customizable reports can be used to track any custom metrics relevant to your business like tracking numbers of new deals, the average age of deals, and recurring revenue.

Pricing

Although Pipedrive has many advanced features, ease of use remains one of its best features. Having said that, when we look at pricing plans, its Essential plan costs $15 per user per month, which has simple features like lead and deal management, customizable pipeline, deal reports, and 24/7 live chat support. This plan is mainly for startups who want to get organized and set up simple sales processes.

Heading toward the next tier, we have an Advanced plan for $29 per user monthly. It has all the features of the Essential plan along with some additional features like customizable email template, email scheduling, visual dashboards, workflow Automation, and more.

When you move up, then there is a Professional plan which costs $49.90 per user per month. This plan unlocks some great features like smart docs, autofilled templates, eSignature, and one drive document integration.

And the last one is the Enterprise plan which costs $119 per user monthly. This plan offers you unlimited customization. It includes everything in the previous plans plus security rules, phone support, and implementation program.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Great dashboards and reporting features
• Smart contact data features
• Integrated email marketing
• Affordable pricing plans

Cons:

• Limited features in the Essential plan

Freshsales CRM

And finally, here comes our highest-rated CRM, Freshsales. Freshsales is an all-in-one Al-based CRM for email activity, email capturing, lead scoring, and so forth. It is the best CRM choice overall for small teams because it offers fundamental features at an affordable price and can be used immediately after signup.

Features

Users can manage their leads with automatic lead nurturing features and track their sales pipeline with the help of advanced analytics, which shows potential value, progress, and expected timelines. It has artificial intelligence (Al)-powered bot that turns website visitors into leads by engaging them in real-time conversations.

In addition to its lead management capabilities, it provides more than 30 direct integrations, including messaging tools, project management, marketing, and finance apps. Not just that, Freshsales allows you to send, manage, and track emails. You can manage your company's email conversations, send effective outbound campaigns, and improve sales performance. It also allows you to connect your email inbox to Freshsales so you can send emails easily to your contacts and record their responses. You can also manage your campaigns within the CRM.

Again, as everything is easy to use in Freshsales, it's quite simple to create reports in Freshsales. It has powerful analytics functionalities which help its users to make data-driven decisions. Freshsales' powerful reporting features build visual reports to evaluate your sales by time, measure your sales cycle and velocity, and monitor your team's activities and performance. Additionally, it allows you to uncover insights into your business metrics by creating custom reports, dashboards, and keep track of your progress. And the best part is that it has a clean and easy-to-understand interface, which is perfect for beginners.

Pricing

Freshsales offers a free plan for unlimited users, which has some basic features like a task, an in-app phone, lead and deal management. Then there is a Growth plan for $18 per user per month. With all the features in the free plan, it has some upgraded features which include visual sales pipelines, sales sequences, custom reports, and much more.

After that, Pro plan is for $47 per user monthly, which has everything in Growth plan along with some advanced features like multiple sales pipeline, Whatsapp Business, and time-based workflows.

Heading on to a more expensive plan, Freshsales offers you an Enterprise plan for which you will have to pay $83 per user, billed monthly. It has more advanced features as compared to Pro plan.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Affordable pricing plans
• Artificial intelligence (Al)-powered bot
• Powerful reporting features
• More than 30 direct integrations

Cons:

• Limited features in the free plan

Comparison of the Top 3 CRM Software

Conclusion

In conclusion, choosing the right CRM software for your business can be a daunting task. However, by reviewing the top 3 CRM software options available, we hope to have made your decision-making process a little easier. Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Freshsales are all excellent options, each with its own unique features and pricing plans. Depending on your business needs and budget, you can choose the one that suits you the best.

FAQ

Q: What is CRM software? A: CRM software is a tool that helps businesses keep track of their customers' behaviors, which is crucial for taking care of customers and increasing sales.

Q: What are the top 3 CRM software options available? A: The top 3 CRM software options available are Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Freshsales.

Q: Which CRM software is best for marketers? A: Hubspot is the best CRM software for marketers because it is a full-featured all-in-one CRM platform that allows businesses to increase leads and accelerate sales.

Q: Which CRM software is best for small sales teams? A: Pipedrive is the best CRM software for small sales teams to help them stay organized, manage their sales pipeline, and track progress towards sales goals.

Q: Which CRM software is the best overall? A: Freshsales is the best CRM software overall for small teams because it offers fundamental features at an affordable price and can be used immediately after signup.