Freshsales provides all the customer relationship management (CRM) features a small business needs to manage leads and deals at a low starting cost. It has a minimal learning curve, and helpful staff and video tutorials are available to support onboarding and answer any other questions you have. Broad third-party integration support, competent communication tools, and flexible reports are additional highlights. Moreover, a straightforward automation builder can help you minimize rote operations, while AI tools provide sales analysis on leads. It lacks some e-commerce and invoicing features available with alternatives, and its upper-tier plans are somewhat pricey, but Freshsales is nonetheless an Editors’ Choice winner thanks to its exceptional usability and dependability. It shares the distinction with Apptivo, which offers unrivaled flexibility and more advanced features, and Bigin by Zoho, which is especially suitable for SMBs with smaller budgets.
In addition to maintaining a basic (but serviceable) free tier that supports up to three users, Freshsales offers a 21-day trial for all its premium plans. I appreciate that the trial doesn’t require you to add a payment method; it’s a truly risk-free experience.
The Growth plan ($9 per user per month, billed annually) unlocks table and Kanban views for accounts, contacts, and deals, along with curated reports and basic workflows. Additionally, the Freshworks Marketplace and API access enable integrations with virtually any tool you can imagine. According to a company rep, this tier also includes VoIP calling with 200 free incoming monthly minutes and the option to buy additional minutes at $0.013 per minute. (Note that you must purchase calling numbers separately, with costs varying based on the number’s location.) However, this plan limits you to just one sales pipeline and doesn’t let you build custom reports.
The Pro plan ($39 per user per month, billed annually) supports advanced workflows, custom reporting, multiple sales pipelines, sales sequences, and 2,000 incoming VoIP minutes. You also get access to the Freddy AI assistant, which can do everything from get rid of duplicate contacts to predict the likelihood that a deal closes to suggest the best next action to move a deal forward.
Finally, the Enterprise plan ($59 per user per month, billed annually) offers audit logs, advanced AI forecasting, custom CRM modules, and more. This plan also unlocks 5,000 monthly incoming VoIP minutes.
Every paid Freshsales plan includes 500 Freshbot sessions per month, letting you manage customer service interactionshase additional sessions at $75 per 1,000 sessions. Those sessions are available for one year after purchase
Freshsales’ base plan costs about what you might expect from most SMB CRMs, including Bigin by Zoho CRM, which has a free tier and offers paid plans starting at $7 per user per month, billed annually. Freshsales’ higher-tier plans, meanwhile, are more expensive than equivalent ones from Apptivo, which charges $25 per month for its mid-tier plan and $40 per month for its most expensive option (both billed annually). Notably, Apptivo offers inventory and product management tools for e-commerce businesses, something Freshsales doesn’t.
Creating a Freshsales account takes just a couple of minutes. Simply enter a username and password (or connect your Google account) and specify the type of business you run. Freshsales works with other software from Freshworks, such as Freshdesk and Freshservice; if you’re already using one of those programs, you can sign into Freshsales with your existing account.
Setup screen (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
Upon your first sign-in, Freshsales directs you to the Contacts page. Other tools, such as Zoho CRM, opt for more task-oriented welcome pages. However, Freshsales provides a setup guide with large buttons that help you perform key tasks, such as importing contacts, along with an option to take an interactive tour. Surprisingly, the setup guide lacks options for connecting your email inbox and importing sales data. These tasks are accessible via a yellow bar at the top of the page (as the interactive tour points out), but it’s small and easy to overlook.
The setup guide includes a button for adding team members, a process almost as easy as creating your account. All you need to do is enter an email address and assign a role. You can enter multiple email addresses at once, though you can assign only one role at a time, forcing you to invite individual groups (like sales reps) separately. Several default roles are available, including Administrator, Sales Lead, and Sales Rep. You can also add new roles and customize the default permissions in the settings section.
Freshsales offers a clean, modern interface with enough color to draw your attention to important areas like contact status without becoming distracting. Everything you need for both day-to-day operations and advanced setup is available from the left-hand toolbar, with clear icons even CRM beginners will find easy to navigate. It’s just as intuitive to use as Bigin by Zoho CRM and Less Annoying CRM, while offering more advanced features than either.
As mentioned, Freshsales integrates with other Freshworks tools, including Freshdesk and Freshservice. Freshbot, a tool that runs automated AI customer service chats and helps you collect leads, is included with all plans. You get 500 monthly sessions to start, with additional sessions available for purchase.
Freshsales also pairs with many third-party appsand productivity categories. Roughly 200 integrations are available, which puts Freshsales in the middle of the pack. Apptivo offers fewer than 100 integrations, while Zoho CRM provides several hundred
If you want to connect a tool that doesn’t have an existing integration, you can use the Freshsales API to create a custom one, with optional help from Freshsales staff. Many other CRMs don’t offer this extensibility; Zoho CRM is an exception.
I benefited from extensive support during configuration, including a video tutorial and a meeting with a staff member who walked me through the most important functions. The support staff was professional, fast to respond, and extremely helpful throughout testing. All plans come with 24/5 supportchat and email support across all plans, along with 24/5 phone support
Freshsales defines leads as people who have expressed interest in your business, contacts as people you’re actively working with, and accounts as companies you work with. Each group has a dedicated section. I focused on the Contacts section here, but similar functionality is available in both the Leads and Accounts areas. B2B companies should concentrate their efforts on the Accounts section.
Freshsales lets you import contacts in several ways, including from a CSV or Excel file, Google Contacts or Outlook Contacts integrations, and other CRMs, such as HubSpot. When I tried importing a CSV file, Freshsales automatically mapped the information to the correct categories.
Importing contacts (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
Integration with Google Contacts and Outlook Contacts makes the process even smoother. Just keep in mind that importing contacts from another CRM requires you to do sotypical of most CRMs, though Zoho CRM provides more seamless migration options
Contacts show up in a spreadsheet with tabs for My Contacts, New Contacts, All Contacts, and Recently Imported (Freshsales calls these Views). You can add other Views, including pre-built ones like Active, Inactive, and Needs Follow-Up. You can also switch to a Kanban format to see all the Views at once.
Contacts page (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
Freshsales contact profiles open in an overlay, letting you view key information about an individual without loading a new page. These organize data in a straightforward way, with a visualization of the customer lifecycle at the top. You can see all of the contact information you imported, as well as sections with detailed records of every interaction you’ve had with them. It’s also possible to customize the layout and information in the contact profile. This functionality is pretty similar to what I’ve experienced with other high-quality CRMs, such as Apptivo and Monday CRM.
You can perform several important tasks within the contact profile overlay, including adding tags, building sales sequences, scheduling meetings, and sending emails. Tags are labels that help sales reps understand the contact. For example, you might add the tag “High Value Customer” to a profile if they’ve purchased multiple products or services from you. Numerous pre-built tags are available, and you can create new ones without leaving the customer profile.
Deals are personalized sales offers that encourage a purchase. You can create one in a couple of minutes by selecting a deal type (like professional services), naming your deal, entering a deal value, and adding products to it. You can do this directly within the contact profile or in the designated Deals section.
It’s possible to schedule meetings through Zoom and Teams integrations from the contact profile as well. Again, I appreciate the clear layout, especially the options to add notes about the meeting and select an outcome. This makes it easy for a new sales rep to pick up where the last one left off.
You can call or email contacts by hovering over their name in the primary contacts area and clicking the appropriate icon or by finding the appropriate icon in the contact profile overlay. Calls go through Freshsales’ VoIP system, which automatically logs the details in the relevant contact and deal profiles. Similarly, emails run through Freshsales’ native composer, with the option to use premade templates or create your own. The system automatically logs emails you send to associated contact profiles.
If you subscribe to the Pro or Enterprise plan, the Freddy AI assistant can analyze leads and generate a Customer Fit score. The AI tool gives you an idea of whether the lead is a good fit and suggests ways to improve your relationship and increase the odds of a sale. However, using sample contacts with minimal information during my tests made it difficult to fully assess the effectiveness of this feature.
The Deals area displays your active deals in a Kanban board called Pipeline. This makes it easy to see how much money is on the table and where each deal is in the sales process. Additional Views (these are also Kanban boards by default) can give you a snapshot of more specific deal information, such as deals connected to a specific territory or user. You can also use the Table or Forecast formats to view deals if those are easier for you to understand.
Building a deal (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
You can click any deal to assign tasks, modify details, schedule meetings, and view progress toward completion. The whole process is easy to navigate, with comprehensive tools to move forward on each deal. On the whole, Freshsales’ Deals area is simpler to navigate than similar areas in tools like Apptivo, and more flexible than comparable areas in Monday CRM.
Kanban view of deals (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
The Conversations section enables you to set up automated integrations with Gmail, Outlook, and Zoho Mail. You can also manually connect email addresses using other systems. Once those connections are in place, Freshsales will automatically log emails from existing contacts. You can also use emails from new leads to quickly build a contact profile. Additionally, you can configure specific email types to go to a team inbox, where multiple team members can view and address them. This is one of the more flexible email systems I’ve seen, outclassing what’s available with Apptivo and Monday CRM.
Pro and Enterprise subscribers can generate emails using Freddy AI. However, you still need to type the first few lines yourself. Zoho CRM can generate emails from scratch. Moreover, the output from Freddy AI often relies on generic marketing terms and may include information that isn’t relevant to your business. You will need to edit them significantly to make them work. This is a common complaint among the AI tools I’ve tested, though Monday CRM’s AI email generator produces impressive emails that need minimal editing.
AI-generated email (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
Freshsales can also send bulk emails, with templates available for things like following up with cold or inbound leads. However, both the templates for mass emails and the tools for designing custom ones are fairly limited. This too is a common shortcoming among CRM tools, so I recommend using a third-party email marketing tool if you want to build dynamic email content.
You can create automated sales sequences that combine emails, phone calls, and SMS messages. Freshsales will automatically send emails and SMS messages, letting you schedule them for an optimal time of day (excluding weekends) and choose groups of people or individual contacts to receive those messages. However, you will need to integrate Freshsales with a service such as ClickSend to access the SMS functionality. Calls, meanwhile, aren’t fully automated; instead, Freshsales will send reminders for agents to call contacts at specific times using the VoIP system.
Accessible through the settings section, the Workflow builder makes it easy for folks with minimal CRM experience (and no coding skills) to create automated workflows for a variety of processes. You can connect these workflows to contacts, leads, or accounts, as well as specific sales activities, such as meetings. From there, customization options are pretty much unlimited, allowing you to quickly create custom workflow tasks. You can also run a test deployment to ensure the workflow you create works as expected.
Workflow creator (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
Although this process isn’t quite as dynamic as the visual automation tools in Monday CRM, it’s still highly effective. Moreover, while Freshsales restricts the number of workflows you can have active at any given time, it doesn’t limit the number of times you can use those workflows. For comparison, Monday CRM limits users on its mid-tier Standard plan to 250 automated workflow uses per month.
Freshsales offers extensive analytics, including several Curated Reports. Some, like the Sales Essentials Dashboard, come with pre-built examples so you can see what they will look like with your data. These templates give you a similar range of reporting options as Apptivo CRM, and far more options than you get with Monday CRM’s starting plan.
Reporting and analytics page (Credit: Freshworks/PCMag)
You can hover your mouse over the right-hand corner of each information block to change the display type. Options include bar graphs, heat maps, and pie charts. Like in other areas of Freshsales, I appreciate that this section is both highly approachable and functional.
If you subscribe to the Pro plan or above, you can create custom reports in a few minutes using pre-built widget templates. Simply select a widget, drag it into the center of the screen, and select the data you want to use. You can drag the widgets to new parts of the screen and add Pages to your report for different data types. You can share each report with your team (including via PDF export for presentations) or keep them private. Freshsales includes designated areas for viewing both private and shared reports.
In Freshworks’ clear and up-to-date privacy notice, the company claims to have “implemented information security policies, rules and technical measures to protect the Personal Data under our control from unauthorized access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorized modification and unlawful destruction or accidental loss. In addition, all our employees and data processors (i.e. those who process your Personal Data on our behalf) are obliged to respect the confidentiality of the Personal Data of all users of our Website and those who purchase our Services.” Freshsales lets you set up multi-factor authentication and single sign-on fairly easily.
Final Thoughts
Freshsales
Freshsales is an easy-to-use CRM with all the tools a business needs to develop relationships with its customers. I especially like its intuitive interface, readily available support staff, and easy contact import process. Freshsales offers advanced analytics tools, too, including custom reports and simple export options for creating presentations. The platform’s decent free plan, unified team email inbox for collecting leads, and effective automations round out the top-notch experience. Its midrange plans are on the pricey side, but Freshsales is an Editors’ Choice winner because it strikes an excellent balance between simplicity and flexibility. Our other Editors’ Choice winners include Apptivo, which is endlessly customizable, and Bigin by Zoho CRM, which offers several extremely affordable plans.
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About Our Expert
Dianna Gunn
Contributor
Experience
I’ve been building websites and marketing campaigns for small businesses since 2010. I also run two businesses of my own: Hired Gunn Writing & Consulting and the Weeknight Writers group. I’m obsessed with testing new tools to improve and expand these businesses, and I’ve written about those I’ve tried for sites like CNET, CodeinWP/WPShout, and WinningWP.
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