CRM: A U.S. News Guide

Good customer relationship management (CRM) can help a company grow existing customer relationships as well as forge new ones.

While CRMs are sometimes considered a sales tool, they're much more than that. Many CRMs offer extensive marketing and customer service tools to help draw in new customers and reinforce a company’s existing customer relationships. And even that is just scratching the surface of what modern CRMs are capable of. With different companies offering content management features, analysis enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), and industry-specific customizations, there can be a lot of information to process when choosing a CRM.

On this page, we'll introduce you to the world of CRM software. We'll describe what CRMs are capable of and answer frequently asked questions. You will also find links to our Best CRM Companies of 2021 and Best Free CRM Companies of 2021, as well as a guide to help you choose the best CRM that fits your needs.

Best CRM Companies

After extensive research, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 CRM companies of 2021. These CRM platforms, which are often web-based, offer features ranging from lead management to AI-enhanced chatbots. We've listed the top 10 CRM companies below. Follow the links in the companies' names to read our full reviews. You can also read more about Best CRM Software here.

Best Free CRM Companies

A CRM system is often sold based on the software as a service (SaaS) model where you're billed monthly. While the price of a CRM can run thousands of dollars per month, some CRM platforms are free to use; we've listed the best free CRM companies below. Follow the links in the companies' names to read our full reviews. You can also read more about the Best Free CRM Software here.

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How to Choose and Buy a CRM

There are a lot of considerations that need to be weighed before selecting a CRM. Below is a list of sample questions that you should answer, or at the very least consider, before buying a CRM. For more information, see our guide How to Choose a CRM System.

Some other things to consider include what sort of customization is available and whether there's a mobile app; and if a free demo or trial period is available.

What Is a CRM?

A customer relationship management system is a type of business-to-business software designed to maintain and strengthen a company’s existing customer relationships and help cultivate new ones. It does this via several different methods, such as lead and contact management. Among other things, a CRM gathers all the information for a potential customer, including contact history, into one location. This allows team members to see the contact history of the potential client and where they are in the sales process.

What differentiates a CRM from a complex spreadsheet or simple database are the extra features that have been integrated into the software. For example, a CRM can automatically assign leads to a specific sales person, anticipate when a lead is ready to move onto the next step of the sales process, and even identify new leads based on things like the results generated from a marketing campaign.

CRMs are often cloud-based, although there are some companies that offer on-premises CRMs. You're usually billed monthly, but sometimes you can save money by signing up for a yearlong subscription. CRM costs are often based on the number of users who have access to the system.

How Does CRM Software Work?

A CRM is a data-driven software application that works by organizing and analyzing customer and lead data in real time to better facilitate business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.

Instead of having marketing, sales, and customer service data spread throughout several databases, a CRM organizes the information in an all-in-one platform so everyone in your organization has access to the same information. For example, your marketing team can use a CRM to optimize a marketing campaign with A/B testing or search engine optimization to generate potential new customers. It then passes this information onto the sales team. Once the sales team converts these leads into customers, the customer service team can use the information gathered from the sales team to add context if called upon by these clients to provide support.

Most of the CRM companies in our ratings are cloud-hosted and subscription-based. These two factors mean that companies won’t have to worry about hosting and supporting the software on-premises, which cuts down on labor, hardware, and maintenance costs.

How Much Does CRM Software Cost?

How much a CRM costs is usually based on two things: the number of people who will be using the software and the number of customizations and third-party add-ons. CRM platforms are a subscription-based product and will often advertise their prices on a per-month basis, although companies may offer yearly subscriptions for a lower price.

Another factor affecting the cost of a CRM is whether it's cloud-based or hosted on-premises. Cloud-based CRMs are generally less expensive for companies because they aren’t required to hire technical staff and purchase equipment to host it in their offices.

You will often see CRMs listed as costing a certain amount per user, per month. While an out-of-the-box or standard CRM offering from a company might be affordable, once you start adding extra features and third-party software, the price can begin to snowball. Customization can also greatly increase the cost of your CRM, so make sure to weigh the potential benefits versus the added cost.

Many companies will have a tiered pricing structure in which the most advanced features are reserved for the priciest tiers. These features can range from enhanced customer support (up to including your own customer support representative) to more advanced analysis capabilities and even support for multiple languages.

CRMs may also be split into separate services. A company might offer a sales-focused CRM, one with a marketing focus, and another with a customer service focus. This allows you to choose what features are most important. These services can usually be bundled to save money.

While there are many free CRMs, these can often be limited either in features or number of users. Free CRMs are most beneficial to either small businesses on a limited budget or those using a CRM for the first time.

What Type of CRM Do I Need?

CRMs generally cover three categories: sales, marketing, and customer service. While most CRMs offer some combination of all three, some may focus on just one aspect – most likely sales. Others may choose to split a CRM into three different services, requiring you to subscribe each separately.

The upside of CRMs that cover all three categories is that most of the features you need will be built in. The downside is that some of the top features for an individual category may not be included. This is why it's important to know why you want a CRM and what your goals are. You can choose a well-rounded CRM that gets you most of the way there for all three categories, or choose a specialist CRM that can give you the most sophisticated features in one area. If you have the funds, you can choose a company that offers specialist CRMs in each of the categories, customizing them to your industry and company.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Does a CRM Do?

Most CRMs can accomplish basic tasks like lead management and contact management, but many can also do things like create report dashboards to organize and display information, and some basic automation like sending out emails. There are also more sophisticated CRM applications that can deploy AI-enhanced chatbots to improve customer interactions and service and deploy more advanced automation.

A CRM's capabilities can be expanded with a wealth of add-ons available from many companies. Some companies may only have a couple of third-party integrations. Others, like Salesforce, have thousands of third-party apps to increase functionality.

Why Is a CRM Important?

A CRM is important because it's a data-driven platform that can save businesses time and effort in day-to-day operations. A good CRM ensures everyone has access to the same business-critical information that provides important insights regarding specific customers, sales, marketing, customer service, and emerging trends.

CRMs also can improve team management. For example, because everyone knows what everyone else is working on, leads can be assigned to members of your sales team that have the most time to nurture them. This will ensure that there are no bottlenecks in your sales pipeline.

What Is CRM in Marketing?

A marketing-focused CRM, or in some cases the marketing features built into a more general CRM, can help users perform a variety of marketing-related tasks. These range from search engine optimization to A/B testing on e-commerce based marketing campaigns. CRMs can also analyze the results of the campaigns for you, and more advanced CRMs can make market forecasts. These features can enhance a company’s social media presence and bring in leads that the sales team can then convert into new customers.

What Is CRM in Sales?

A good CRM is a sales team’s best friend. Using lead management and contact management features, a CRM can keep the sales process focused. Potential customers can be assigned to a sales person, and in some cases automatically assigned. All contacts can then be tracked and analyzed so the sales team knows where in the process each lead is and when the lead is ready to move onto the next step in the sales process. Managers are also able to stay in the loop with what their team is doing and notice any trends in real time without having to wait for updates.

The Best CRM Software of 2021

Directory to Other U.S. News CRM Software Guides

For more information on CRM software, please see our pages:

How U.S. News Evaluated CRM Software

We explain what matters most when it comes to CRMs by sourcing experts and professional reviewers. We also provide an unbiased evaluation of CRM software. Our goal is to empower businesses with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions. More information about our 360 Reviews methodology for evaluating CRM software is available here.