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Customer relationship management (CRM) systems benefit businesses by automating tasks, centralizing customer data, improving collaboration, and providing insights for targeted email marketing. However, selecting the right CRM system from the multitude of options can be daunting. Some CRM systems offer just the features essential for small businesses, while others are robust enough to meet the demands of large enterprises. PCMag has been reviewing solutions from leading and lesser-known vendors for over a decade, helping to ease your decision-making process. Apptivo and Freshsales are our Editors’ Choice winners in the category, respectively, for their excellent flexibility and especially intuitive user experience, but all of the services below are worthwhile options for your business. Make sure to click through to our in-depth reviews of each and read our buying guide for more CRM advice.
Our Top Tested Picks
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at Apptivo
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Bottom Line
Apptivo provides a highly customizable, feature-rich CRM experience with all the tools and analytics your small business needs.
Jump To See More DetailsApptivo CRM Review
- App-based platform enables superb flexibility
- Easily customizable dashboards
- Extremely detailed lead profiles
- Robust deal creation tools
- Extensive analytics
- Integrates with relevant third-party services
- Interface could be streamlined in places
- No AI tools
Freshsales
Bottom Line
With a sensible starting price, a slick design, and plentiful customization options, Freshsales can help your business quickly and seamlessly spin up a highly effective CRM solution.
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- Intuitive interface
- Excellent onboarding support
- Affordable base plan
- Helpful email inbox tools
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at Creatio
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Bottom Line
Creatio’s flexible and easy-to-navigate CRM software supports some of the most advanced AI tools in the industry, though its high price makes it best suited for large organizations.
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- Highly customizable
- Advanced AI assistant
- Detailed analytics
- Uses machine learning protocols to improve data analysis
- Sheer number of features can be overwhelming
- Complicated pricing and expensive for SMBs
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at Hubspot CRM
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Bottom Line
HubSpot’s Smart CRM offers a robust AI assistant and all but the most advanced features you need for a midsize business.
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- Easy to use
- Free version with no time limit
- AI-powered sales assistant
- Supports payment processing
- Restricts several abilities to higher pricing tiers
- Some features have a learning curve
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at Insightly
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Bottom Line
Insightly helps businesses at all levels quickly learn customer relationship management and provides a full suite of capable tools.
Jump To See More DetailsInsightly CRM Review
- Intuitive interface
- Fast setup and onboarding
- Excellent workflow automation tools
- Extensive integrations, with the option to build custom ones at premium levels
- Expensive
- Underwhelming AI capabilities
Starts at $12 Per User Per Month
at monday.com
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Bottom Line
Monday CRM’s easy onboarding, friendly user design, and comprehensive suite of AI and automation capabilities make it a superb choice for teams of all experience levels and sizes.
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- Offers a step-by-step onboarding process that’s perfect for beginners
- Intuitive interface with easy customization options
- Simple yet extensive automation tools
- Full suite of highly effective AI features
- Plans aren’t the best value
- No CRM-based email inbox
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at Salesforce.com
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Bottom Line
Salesforce Starter Suite provides a highly customizable and capable CRM solution for small businesses that eventually plan to upgrade to one of the company’s more feature-rich tiers.
Jump To See More DetailsSalesforce Starter Suite Review
- Best-in-class sales tools
- Easy-to-use interface
- Robust commerce hub
- Minimal setup
- Pricey
- Lacks AgentForce AI chatbot functionality
Best for Advanced Customization
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at SugarAI
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Bottom Line
The powerful Sugar Sell CRM can help businesses streamline sales processes with its extremely flexible interface and insightful AI tools.
Jump To See More DetailsSugarCRM Sugar Sell Review
- Fully customizable dashboards for teams and employees
- Detailed and flexible profiles for accounts, contacts, and leads
- Advanced AI summarization and analysis features
- Focus Drawers allow you to perform most tasks within the dashboard
- Expensive plans with a minimum user requirement
- Integrations with popular tools require a higher-tier subscription
- Can be overwhelming for beginners
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at Zoho CRM
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Bottom Line
Zoho CRM is a powerful, affordable, and highly customizable platform that can greatly benefit large businesses willing to invest time in learning its extensive features.
Jump To See More DetailsZoho CRM Review
- Exceptional depth
- Extremely customizable
- Advanced automations
- Highly detailed analytics and reporting
- Supports more than 1,100 integrations
- Can be overwhelming, especially for new CRM users
- Premium support costs extra
Available
at Less Annoying CRM
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Bottom Line
Less Annoying CRM’s straightforward features, pricing, and user experience make it a good choice for small businesses, though it could use a bit more customizability and depth in a few key areas.
Jump To See More DetailsLess Annoying CRM Review
- Simple, intuitive interface
- Robust mobile apps
- Single pricing tier
- Great customer service
- Kanban view is available only for pipelines
- Limited automation and reporting options
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Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
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EDITORS’ NOTE
July 22, 2026: With this update, we added Monday CRM to our lineup of recommended CRM software. We are in the process of retesting HubSpot Smart CRM.
Best Overall
4.0
Excellent
- App-based platform enables superb flexibility
- Easily customizable dashboards
- Extremely detailed lead profiles
- Robust deal creation tools
- Extensive analytics
- Integrates with relevant third-party services
- Interface could be streamlined in places
- No AI tools
Apptivo CRM is a highly configurable software platform. It splits its feature set into multiple modules, allowing you to combine and arrange them to meet your company’s unique needs. In addition to its core CRM capabilities, the platform supports a range of other business tasks, including accounting, invoicing, and project management. Its lead and opportunity profiles provide all the information you need, and the detailed analytics tools help you dive into the data. Furthermore, all tiers include 24/7 customer support via email and live chat, as well as 24/5 phone support.
Endless adjusters: Apptivo allows near-endless customization, enabling you to configure a wide variety of modules however you want. If you ever run into issues with the setup, you won’t have any trouble reaching a company rep.
The AI-averse: Apptivo lacks the AI-powered tools of competitors. If you don’t want AI features, which can often drive up costs, that can be an advantage.
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Chatbot/Conversational AI
Multi-Currency Support
Pipeline Management
Integrated Email Marketing
Analytics
Custom Dashboards
Email Routing
REST API
24-Hour Support
Phone Support
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(Credit: Freshworks)
Best User Experience
Freshsales
4.0
Excellent
- Intuitive interface
- Excellent onboarding support
- Affordable base plan
- Helpful email inbox tools
Freshsales is an easy-to-use CRM that’s particularly suitable for small businesses and startups, thanks to its extremely affordable starting costs. It does a good job of integrating with other business software and includes an AI assistant that can analyze your contact profiles and help assess the likelihood of a sale. The app provides excellent onboarding support and more sophisticated email marketing tools than most competitors, too. Its analytics and automation capabilities impress as well.
Companies that value usability: Freshsales isn’t quite as complex as other solutions on this list, but that could be a good thing. It won’t overwhelm your sales team with unnecessary features, while the Freddy AI assistant offers various conveniences (communication suggestions, content generation, and sales predictions) that can get you going in the right direction.
Freshworks customers: If you already use other Freshworks apps, such as Freshdesk or Freshservice, you might find it worthwhile to stay within the same ecosystem. These connections can help you perform tasks such as synchronizing customer details across multiple apps.
Document Library
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Chatbot/Conversational AI
Multi-Currency Support
Pipeline Management
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Analytics
Custom Dashboards
Email Routing
REST API
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(Credit: Creatio)
Best for Larger Companies
4.0
Excellent
- Highly customizable
- Advanced AI assistant
- Detailed analytics
- Uses machine learning protocols to improve data analysis
- Sheer number of features can be overwhelming
- Complicated pricing and expensive for SMBs
Creatio is a no-code platform with highly customizable CRM capabilities within its Sales product. Aside from providing granular customer and lead management features, Creatio offers advanced email management, process automation, and reporting tools that can be deployed as needed for your business. Meanwhile, its AI assistant can provide detailed answers to questions about opportunities and generate communications based on those you have already sent out. Creatio organizes all of these features in a slick interface.
Companies that want to embrace AI: Creatio’s AI content generation tools take your past communication materials into account to create correspondence in your style. Just keep in mind that every AI action costs tokens (you get only a finite amount with a subscription and have to pay a minimum of $5,000 per year to get more).
Large teams: If your business can afford Creatio’s seriously high price and fill the required minimum number of seats, its CRM functions and flexibility won’t disappoint. The platform isn’t suitable for smaller companies.
Easiest to Use
4.0
Excellent
- Easy to use
- Free version with no time limit
- AI-powered sales assistant
- Supports payment processing
- Restricts several abilities to higher pricing tiers
- Some features have a learning curve
HubSpot offers a fairly full-featured version of its easy-to-use Smart CRM at no cost for up to two users. This tier has no time limits, making it an excellent choice for those just starting out with CRMs. HubSpot also makes it easy to upgrade to a paid plan as your business grows. Paying more gets you customizable reports, expanded support options, first-party payment processing, HubSpot’s Breeze AI (which can generate reports and blog posts and summarize contact and company data), and more.
Newbies: HubSpot is highly intuitive and capable, making it an excellent option for businesses that want to get started with minimal friction. AI features help simplify the process of generating insights on customers and creating engaging public material.
Growing teams: HubSpot Smart CRM’s free version is extremely competitive. And when you’re ready to upgrade, HubSpot’s robust ecosystem of sales, marketing, and service tools will serve you well (even if they are pricey).
Best Setup Process
4.0
Excellent
- Intuitive interface
- Fast setup and onboarding
- Excellent workflow automation tools
- Extensive integrations, with the option to build custom ones at premium levels
- Expensive
- Underwhelming AI capabilities
Insightly scales well depending on the size of your business, even if its costs are somewhat high. We especially appreciate its intuitive setup process and user-friendly interface. Otherwise, it more than competently handles all components of the sales pipeline, including leads, contacts, opportunities, and projects, with sufficient detail. Insightly’s reporting and analytics tools are approachable and customizable, while its advanced automation builder allows you to tailor the sales pipeline exactly to your needs.
Automators: Insightly offers robust automated workflow tools, allowing you to add an unlimited number of Criteria (triggers) and Actions (resulting processes) to each. You can set actions to occur once during a process or as many times as necessary.
Teams intimidated by CRM:Thanks to its fast and straightforward setup process, Insightly gets you right into the process of customer relationship management without much fuss. And if you need help, it provides 24/7 support for all subscription tiers, with premium options available.
Best for AI Features
4.0
Excellent
- Offers a step-by-step onboarding process that’s perfect for beginners
- Intuitive interface with easy customization options
- Simple yet extensive automation tools
- Full suite of highly effective AI features
- Plans aren’t the best value
- No CRM-based email inbox
Aside from offering work management and help desk products, Monday also develops a full-featured CRM. The platform offers an accessible and competent collection of sales management tools that help you turn leads into contacts before moving them through flexible deal pipelines. The user experience is visually attractive, and the setup process seamlessly takes you through all the necessary setup steps. We also appreciate Monday CRM’s top-notch AI features, which enable you to easily configure automations, derive insights, and more, no matter your existing level of experience. Every plan comes with 24/7 email support, but you can also get answers via the company’s chatbot. Just keep in mind that you must subscribe to a higher-tier plan to unlock Monday CRM’s full reporting capabilities and that you will eventually run out of complementary AI credits.
AI-first businesses with a healthy budget: If your company wants to embrace AI, Monday CRM provides class-leading tools that can build automated workflows, collect notes, generate emails, and summarize interactions. Just make sure your business has the budget to pay for the extra AI credits you will inevitably need once you run through the one-time allotment that comes with each plan.
First-time CRM users: Monday CRM provides an excellent onboarding process, which takes you through the process of setting up your main dashboard and adding both team members and contacts. All you need to get started is an email address.
Best for Salesforce Users
4.0
Excellent
- Best-in-class sales tools
- Easy-to-use interface
- Robust commerce hub
- Minimal setup
- Pricey
- Lacks AgentForce AI chatbot functionality
Salesforce Starter Suite is the company’s entry-level CRM solution for SMBs, providing account, contact, and opportunity management; customizable reports and dashboards; and lead assignment and routing. It does a great job of walking you through the setup process while providing the robust functionality and customization for which the Salesforce platform is known. A comprehensive set of commerce, customer service, and marketing tools rounds out the package. Salesforce Starter Suite allows you to add up to 66 users through the typical setup process. If you require more seats, you’ll need to contact the company directly.
Slack users: Slack is your only option in terms of integrations with Salesforce Starter Suite, but that might be all you need if your company relies on the messaging platform. Once you set up this connection, you can seamlessly access data from one service in the other.
Teams looking for an all-in-one solution: With features that go far beyond customer relationship management, Salesforce Starter Suite can help your small business find, develop, manage, and monetize opportunities in a single app. Top-notch support helps to justify the high price.
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Multi-Currency Support
Pipeline Management
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Analytics
Custom Dashboards
Email Routing
REST API
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(Credit: SugarCRM)
4.0
Excellent
- Fully customizable dashboards for teams and employees
- Detailed and flexible profiles for accounts, contacts, and leads
- Advanced AI summarization and analysis features
- Focus Drawers allow you to perform most tasks within the dashboard
- Expensive plans with a minimum user requirement
- Integrations with popular tools require a higher-tier subscription
- Can be overwhelming for beginners
One component of the larger SugarCRM sales platform, Sugar Sell handily covers all the CRM features that businesses need for B2B and B2C interactions. The entire user experience is extremely flexible; for example, you can customize employee dashboards (even down to the individual level) with relevant data and Dashlets (widgets). Profiles for contacts, opportunities, and tasks also allow for copious amounts of detail. One standout aspect of Sugar Sell’s business profiles is the AI Summary section, which analyzes data to characterize your overall relationship and outline steps for increasing the likelihood of future deals. We also like the Smart Guides feature for building visual training materials that help employees learn your processes.
Businesses that work with both businesses and customers: If your business counts other companies and individual clients as customers, Sugar Sell gives you all the tools and data you need to maintain and grow those relationships. It’s not the most welcoming CRM we’ve tried; however, so someone on your team should ideally have some experience with this category of software before committing to it.
Growing businesses: Sugar Sell’s pricing is more suitable for larger businesses anyway, but the Smart Guides feature is an efficient way to help onboard and train a large number of employees simultaneously.
Best for Free Users
4.0
Excellent
- Exceptional depth
- Extremely customizable
- Advanced automations
- Highly detailed analytics and reporting
- Supports more than 1,100 integrations
- Can be overwhelming, especially for new CRM users
- Premium support costs extra
Zoho offers an extensive suite of SaaS business software, and its CRM offering is a standout tool. Its feature set rivals even behemoth Salesforce. Its latest additions include Zia, an AI-powered analytics engine for spotting sales trends and anomalies, and Canvas, a drag-and-drop interface editor. It doesn’t hurt that Zoho CRM’s pricing is within reach of smaller teams, and its free version is among the most generous we tested.
Customizers:Everyone, from administrators to end users, can customize the ZohoCRM experience to fit their specific needs. For example, you can adjust the data you see on your dashboard when you log in.
Zoho users: If you already use other products within the Zoho portfolio, Zoho CRM is practically a no-brainer. It easily integrates with all of the company’s other apps, allowing different parts of your business to work together seamlessly.
Best for Start-Ups
3.5
Good
- Simple, intuitive interface
- Robust mobile apps
- Single pricing tier
- Great customer service
- Kanban view is available only for pipelines
- Limited automation and reporting options
Less Annoying CRM is an affordable turnkey system for small businesses and sole proprietors. It offers a comprehensive set of essential features at affordable, flat-rate pricing. Ease of use is its key selling point, which is great for companies with limited CRM experience. Furthermore, Less Annoying’s mobile apps are robust extensions of the main site.
People who work away from their desks:Less Annoying CRM is extremely usable on your phone. Its mobile apps let you do pretty much everything you can on the desktop site.
Very small businesses: Budget-conscious companies and sole proprietors should consider Less Annoying CRM due to its highly affordable flat subscription rate. It also doesn’t require a significant learning curve due to its stripped-down feature set.
The Best CRM Software for 2026Compare Specs
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Buying Guide: The Best CRM Software for 2026
What Is CRM Software?
CRM software helps you track and nurture contacts to build customer loyalty and increase sales, from the first marketing touch to a closed sale and on to the next engagement. They are far more capable than spreadsheets for this purpose, especially if your customer list is large or if you want to integrate data from other business services. CRMs can also automate processes, such as creating calendar events, identifying new sales opportunities, prioritizing sales pipelines, and setting appointment reminders. Moreover, this software prevents multiple people from chasing the same prospect.
How to Match a CRM System to Your Business Needs
The most challenging part of choosing a CRM is understanding what a product can do and what your salespeople need. Don’t simply pay for one of the big, all-inclusive CRM software packages up front. Many large CRM packages are often platforms rather than tools, so using and deploying their numerous features can be unnecessarily costly and time-consuming.
Less Annoying CRM dashboard (Credit: Less Annoying CRM/PCMag)
Instead, figure out how to recreate the tools and processes your team currently uses in the CRM software you’re evaluating. You also need to think about your customer. Consider running an online survey or focus group to find the optimal sales experience.
As with any software, it’s critical to take advantage of free trials. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, you can’t fully understand how a CRM solution works until you use it yourself. Be sure to have colleagues from different departments try it out as well, so you can see how it works in various situations. Most vendors offer at least a trial. Some, including HubSpot Smart CRM and Zoho CRM, offer free plans, albeit with limited features and user capacities. These can either serve as a full-time solution for small companies or a long-term trial for larger ones.
What Support Options Do CRMs Provide?
Whether it’s some difficulty with a particular feature, mapping a data import, or the initial setup process, you will likely need support from your vendor at some point. That’s why it’s essential to utilize your free trial period to assess the responsiveness and effectiveness of a service’s support team. Some tips:
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Ensure you understand the level of support you get with your plan and whether it’s upgradable.
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Check out the provider’s support forum. See what questions other customers ask and how long it takes for the company to respond.
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Look for DIY resources. Are self-service tools available for specific issues on a support site? If so, be sure to assess their effectiveness. Search the knowledge base to see what kinds of articles and videos are available.
Can CRMs Integrate With Your Existing Business Software?
Salesforce and other larger CRM platforms have extensive feature sets that are available as modules, each with related features. If the features you need are available, you can configure your entire solution by accessing the relevant modules. However, if something is missing or your sales staff prefers some other product, you might need to turn to third-party solutions.
Native, pre-built integrations are ideal because they minimize the setup process. All of the products on our list work with many of the most popular apps. Alternatively, a developer on your team can build a custom solutionth your vital business services
How Can You Protect Customer Data?
You need to pay attention not only to customer information that originates within the CRM but also to the supporting data from other systems, such as your customer support software. You can’t reliably communicate with customers if your data is inaccurate or unorganized, and that means lost revenue. Ensuring good data quality is a matter of testing and constant vigilance. Depending on the size of your staff, you might need to hire someone to manage all data management tasks, including automating workflows, backup, and protection. If you feel such a hire is in your future, involve that person in your CRM search as early as possible.
Contact list in Zoho CRM (Credit: Zoho/PCMag)
When you work with customer data, security should be top of mind. It’s a warning sign when your CRM doesn’t generate an audit trail whenever someone changes a password, or if it doesn’t let you define access controls for each user. Customer data is extremely valuable, especially now that customers are more reluctant to part with it. Securing it isn’t just about maintaining privacy; it’s about protecting profitable relationships.
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You should ensure that your CRM software integrates with as much of your current IT security stack as possible, such as your identity management system, so your employees can take advantage of single sign-on (SSO) authentication or multi-factor authentication. But you also need to closely evaluate a vendor’s policies to ascertain exactly where your data resides, who is responsible for its safety, and what happens if there’s a problem. Search for any past breaches and how the company responded to them as well.
Do CRMs Use AI?
Yes, AI is increasingly prevalent in these services. Many CRM vendors leverage it to automate tasks, derive insights from data, and offer personalized recommendations. Some services even provide generative AI tools to help steer your communications.
Do CRMs Support Mobile Devices?
All of the services on this offer dedicated apps or let you access their main siteseither case, you can use them to do pretty much everything you can with the desktop site. Don’t commit to a CRM solution until you fully evaluate the mobile experience. For many companies, mobile might be the primary platform
Neil McAllister contributed to this story.
