10 best CRM examples and their use cases for SMBs

Examples of CRM software for small businesses

These 10 best small business CRM examples should make it easy to find the best CRM platform for your business. Understand the options available, and the pros and cons of each.

1. Freshsales: All-in-one CRM for small businesses

The best CRM for small businesses, Freshsales gives you everything you need to accelerate your revenue with context-driven sales. It helps streamline your sales processes from generating leads and prospecting to closing deals and maintaining good customer relationships.

Freshsales is feature-packed for small businesses, including a visual sales pipeline, automation via workflow, built-in email, phone, and chat for contextual engagement.

Here’s a quick overview of the essential features that Freshsales offers:

Contact management: See all the information you have on your contacts in one comprehensive screen. This includes a chronological timeline of interactions you’ve had across email, chat, phone, SMS, social media, and website forms, helping salespeople understand the customer journey.

Intelligent workflows: You can automate repetitive tasks and the most complex business processes effortlessly, reduce manual dependency, and save time to sell more.

Pipeline management: You can customize pipelines unique to your sales process and visualize deals progressing through different stages. Create multiple pipelines based on the sales team. Assign probability across stages, track your deals’ conversion, and forecast revenue.

Email management: To get the most out of Freshsales, you can connect your inbox and Freshsales with two-way email sync and send emails from within the CRM. Send personalized bulk emails, schedule emails, create email templates, track email metrics, and receive real-time email alerts without shifting multiple tabs.

Built-in phone: Get in touch with your prospects and customers without purchasing additional calling software. Freshsales enables you to purchase local and toll-free numbers across countries, create personalized welcome messages, and display the caller's name, company, and phone number for inbound sales calls.

AI-powered assistant: Identify and prioritize the most sales-ready prospects with scores assigned by Freddy AI based on positive and negative signals. Get insights on the next best actions that’ll drive deals to closure. 

Pros:

• Intuitive and easy-to-use UI

• High ROI and easily scalable

• AI capabilities

Cons:

• Increases in price as user base and feature requirements grow

• Missing features for large enterprises

Use cases:

Lead generation, sales automation, customer engagement, inbound marketing, outbound sales

2. Salesforce Essentials: Highly customizable small business CRM

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM software offering extensive features to manage sales and marketing processes. Salesforce CRM Sales Hub allows your business to build and maintain meaningful customer relationships and drive sales growth. Salesforce Einstein AI features help efficiency and productivity. While Salesforce is a great CRM solution, small businesses may not use the advanced capabilities. This is where Salesforce Essentials comes in.

Salesforce Essentials is a sales CRM for small businesses that only has the essential features needed to sell smarter and more efficiently. With built-in automation, companies can boost productivity and grow revenues. Salesforce Essentials includes key features such as:

Lead management: Track, filter, and qualify new prospective customers. Route hot leads to the right reps and view the impact of your marketing campaigns on your sales pipeline.

Lightning flow automation: Automate and manage any business process with a point-and-click Process Builder tool.

Account and contact management: Get a complete view of your customers, including activity history, key contacts, customer communications, and internal account discussions.

 Pros:

• Scalable platform

• Extensive knowledge base and training resources

• Customizable architecture

• Powerful reporting and analytics

Cons:

• Many features require integrations

• Limited features on Salesforce Essentials

• Salesforce can be expensive, especially for small businesses

• Complex to set up

• Requires extensive training

Use cases:

Sales automation, business process automation, lead management, account-based marketing, business intelligence

3. HubSpot: Best small business CRM for digital selling

HubSpot CRM software helps teams attract leads, manage their pipeline effectively, nurture customer relationships, and close more deals. You get a user-friendly interface, seamless integration options, and robust communication tools. HubSpot Sales Hub is their sales CRM solution that can help small businesses with sales automation. Key features include: 

Contact management: Manage leads effectively. See all customer interactions and access contact details in one central location.

Sales automation: Ensure your team is on top of the sales process. Set up a series of workflows and follow-up tasks for efficient sales execution.

Sales pipeline management: Make tracking sales pipelines a breeze. Add deals, set up deal stages, assign tasks, and monitor progress in your dashboards.

Document management: Build a library of helpful sales content. Share documents from email, and understand what content closes deals.

Pros:

• Customizable and intuitive UI

• Access to extensive training resources

• Integrates with other HubSpot and third-party apps

Cons:

• No native chatbot

• Features like forecasting and sales playbooks are only available on higher plans

• Limited customization options

• Scaling with advanced features can become expensive

Use cases:

Inbound marketing, sales automation, lead management, outbound sales

4. Zoho: Best small business CRM with workplace suite

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based CRM platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your sales process. Establish and nurture significant customer connections through automation, analytics, and personalized interactions. Zoho CRM is adaptable and user-friendly, ensuring it can evolve with your growing business. Other Zoho solutions on the platform, such as a native email client and ERP, can be attractive to small businesses. Zoho also offers Bigin, a simplified CRM tool developed for small businesses and startups. Key features of Zoho CRM include:

Industry templates: Customize your CRM with ready-to-use templates ranging from software consulting, real estate, education CRM, and other industries.

Sales automation: Automate mundane activities in the sales processes and empower your sales reps to concentrate on creating and nurturing leads, plus closing deals.

Sales reports & forecasting: Forecast revenue and assign targets for your team. Identify bottlenecks using real-time data and boost your team's performance. Predict future sales revenue and make better decisions for resource allocation.

Customizability: Use custom fields, buttons, and layouts to capture various information from your prospects, create custom views, and even localize the language and currency to fit your business.

Integrations: Offers a wide range of integrations with helpdesk software, helping bridge the gap between the sales and support teams.

Pros:

• Intuitive and user-friendly interface

• Built for entrepreneurs and microbusinesses (Zoho Bigin)

• Cost-effective pricing (Zoho Bigin)

• Vast integration capabilities

Cons:

• Customization can be complex

• Limited AI features

• Integration with other Zoho solutions to unlock advanced features

Use cases:

Industry-specific sales automation, complex business process automation, contact management, sales productivity solution

5. Pipedrive: Best CRM for sales pipeline management

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM with a simple design that prioritizes usability above everything else. 

It provides comprehensive lead management, communication, and sales automation capabilities for SMBs. The ease of implementation also makes Pipedrive an attractive solution. It offers the following key features:

Lead and deal management: Get an overview of each contact and deal, including pipeline progress, ownership, communications, and activity history.

AI sales assistant: Receive suggestions based on the salesperson’s past performance and discover where to improve and what to focus on next.

Pipeline management: Customize your sales pipeline stages and track deals as they move through the sales process

Pros:

• Intuitive interface, easy to use

• Extensive sales pipeline management capabilities

• Effective email and communication tracking features

• Supports most popular third-party integrations

Cons:

• Limited reporting and analytics capabilities

• Limited marketing automation features

• No free plan

• Not an all-in-one solution that can extend to marketing or support

Use cases:

Sales automation, pipeline management, sales reporting, sales productivity

6. Microsoft Dynamics 365: Best CRM for fast-growing small businesses

Microsoft Dynamics is an AI-driven CRM for enterprise business. Its various modules can assist your organization across revenue operations. From elevating sales performance and personalizing customer experiences, to automating accounting processes and enhancing supply chain flexibility. It offers the ability to consolidate data and streamline workloads, all while maintaining flexibility and adaptability. Like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics is predominantly used by mid-market or enterprise businesses. However, SMBs with complex use cases or ambitious growth targets can find value in the solution. Key functionalities include:

Reporting and analytics: Microsoft Dynamics analytics and reporting capabilities enable businesses to gain insights into their operations and customers.

Sales forecasting: Forecasting tools enable businesses to predict future sales revenue and identify trends accurately. 

Automation: Streamlines business processes and reduces manual data entry by automating routine tasks, such as lead nurturing and sales pipeline management.

Project management: Plan and manage projects, allocate resources, and track progress.

Project management: Plan and manage projects, allocate resources, and track progress.

Pros:

• Integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products

• Extensive customization and scalability

• Robust analytics and reporting

Cons:

• Complex and time-consuming implementation

• Pricing structure can be expensive 

• Resource-intensive for CRM admins

Use cases:

Business intelligence, business process automation, sales force automation, sales reporting

7. Close: Best CRM for small business sales reps

Close is a CRM system that prides itself on being built for salespeople by salespeople. It’s simple, secure, and fast to set up. The simplicity and ease of use lead to a shorter onboarding time for sales representatives. Some key features include:

Communication channels: Utilize email, SMS, and call features to accelerate sales.

Sales automation: Automate simple, time-consuming tasks to free up your sales team.

Reporting: Use advanced analytics and reporting to make data-driven decisions and increase revenue.

Integration: Integrate your existing systems with your CRM to boost efficiency.

Pros:

• Easy-to-use sales automation capabilities

• Flexible integration options

Cons:

• Complex pricing structure

• Limited CRM customization options

Use cases:

Sales automation, pipeline management, sales reporting, sales productivity

8. Copper: Best small business CRM for Google users

Copper is an easy-to-use CRM that helps small businesses manage more sales leads and grow customer relationships. Copper integrates with Google Workspace, mapping all emails and other interactions to the right contact. This integration streamlines contact and file management through Google Drive, Calendar, and Gmail making. It is an ideal solution for businesses deeply entrenched in Google Workspace. Here’s what Copper offers:

Google Workspace integration: Copper’s CRM integration with Google works seamlessly with Gmail, Calendar, and Drive. You can add leads, track email conversations, find files, and manage tasks from the same tab.

Workflow automation: Copper automatically assigns time-based tasks when leads are entered or updated. You can also automate emails on the platform.

Sales pipeline management: Copper helps visualize the sales pipeline so you manage deals efficiently and track deal progress with customizable stages.

Mobile app: Helps access customer data, manage leads, track deals, and collaborate with teams on-the-go.

Pros:

• Seamless Google Workspace integration

• Robust task and workflow automation

• Effective email tracking and management

• Clean UI and easy to use

• APIs and integrations for third-party apps

Cons:

• Limited customization options

• Has relatively low contact limits

• Limited reporting and analytics capabilities

• G Suite-focused CRM

• Not an all-in-one solution

Use cases:

Sales productivity, sales automation, email outreach, pipeline management

9. Insightly: Best affordable small business CRM alternative

Insightly is a modern, affordable CRM solution encompassing sales, marketing, and service. It’s easy to use, simple to customize, and scales with companies as they grow. Insightly helps teams build sales pipelines, convert deals, increase productivity, and form lasting customer relationships. Some of its key features are:

Lead management: Helps efficiently capture details, manage contacts, and prioritize the best leads.

Sales pipeline, insights, and opportunity management: Get insights into what’s moving your business forward and where the risks are. Manage opportunities in customizable pipelines with real-time visibility into deal progression.

Workflow Automation: Automate tasks and processes, reduce manual errors, and enable faster scaling with email, reminders, and onboarding stages.

Customization: Intuitive customization to mold the CRM to your unique business needs – no expensive third-party developers required.

Pros:

• Feature-packed base plan

• All-in-one platform

• AppConnect for connecting data sources and apps

• User-friendly interface

• Affordable pricing

• Robust project management capabilities

Cons:

• Lacks some advanced functionalities

• Limited scalability

• Very limited AI features

• Limited ability to derive context on customer behavior

Use cases:

Sales automation, business intelligence, project management

10. Monday.com: Best sales process management CRM for small business

Monday.com is a simple yet highly customizable CRM that can be tailored to your business needs. Automating sales processes, follow-up, pipeline management, and reporting can be done effortlessly on the platform. The feature set makes it a great fit for most SMBs. Some key features to be found are:

Centralized communication: Track communication with your customers from one place. Log any lead or contact-related activity like calls, meetings, notes, and more.

Performance tracking: Keep track of your pipelines, targets, and team performance with dashboards, sales forecasting, and activity tracking.

Automation: Automate notifications, lead assignments, and more. Use existing templates or create your own workflow to automate manual work.

 Pros:

• Clean UI and easy to use

• Quick setup

• APIs and integrations for third-party apps

Cons:

• No free plan

• Not a specialized CRM

• Too many customization options can be overwhelming

Use cases:

Sales automation, business process automation, project management, sales operations

Benefits of CRM for your business

Irrespective of the CRM you choose to go with, the solution can have a tremendous impact on your business. Small businesses that use CRM have noticed improved productivity and sales growth. A CRM software for startups and small businesses also makes it easier for you to engage customers and build relationships. This helps ensure customer satisfaction, so they continue to do business with you. The data collection enabled by CRM and AI-powered insights can help you unlock business opportunities and drive strategy. It’s much easier to perform consistently when you use a CRM to manage your business.

Concluding thoughts: How to choose the best CRM for your business

We hope these 10 CRM examples will help inspire your search for the best CRM. It’s important to consider the strengths and weaknesses each option provides in the context of importance to your business. Once you have a shortlist of CRM options, getting a demo or signing up for a free trial can give you a clear picture of how your sales use cases will be covered by the solution. Other factors to consider would be internal stakeholders and their requirements, implementation, and sales team adoption.