The 9 Best CRMs for Marketing and Creative Agencies

Our number one pick for the best CRM platform for marketing agencies is HubSpot. It's on the pricier side, but it comes with a load of features, and the platform's scalability is a great fit for growth.

A CRM (customer relationship management) system is key to successfully running a creative agency. CRM systems are designed to increase productivity, efficiency, and collaboration. You can carry out all of your business processes and tasks from one place. 

We’ve utilised our decade-long expertise in the CRM industry to bring you the best CRM system for your agency. Read on for our handpicked choices or you can use our comparison tool, all you have to do is give us some brief details. You’ll be matched with the best CRM systems for your business, and receive no-obligation quotes from trusted suppliers. 

Prices correct as of February 2023

1. HubSpot

Best for scalability

Suitable for larger marketing agencies

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot’s pricing plans are complex, so we’re not going to go into too much detail about them here (plus, we do that at length in our comprehensive guide to CRM costs in 2023). Still, this table (with annual prices per user) is a useful indicator as to what your creative agency can expect to pay with HubSpot.

As you can see, the fairly significant outlay that HubSpot’s more advanced tiers and packages require means it’s unlikely to be popular with your accountant. But, for the finest marketing CRM software in the US, and a system that comes with almost unrivalled pedigree, HubSpot is worth both your money and your time.

You can try HubSpot free for 30 days.

2. monday.com

Best for managing creative projects and teams

Suitable for small creative agencies

monday.com pricing

Though monday.com’s slick, stylish interface boasts undeniable appeal, there’s no hiding the fact that it’s more limited than many of the other CRMs for marketing agencies here. Happily, though, that’s reflected in a pricing range that should be palatable to even the smallest of businesses

Our advice? Forgo the ‘Basic’ plan ($8 per user, per month), and opt straight for the ‘Standard’ package ($10 per user, per month).

Why? Well for one, the ‘Standard' plan comes with intuitive timeline and calendar views, and Gantt charts for data visualization – plus monday.com’s famed ‘Kanban-style’ workflow display. Your project dashboards will also look better, work better, and integrate with a wider range of the productivity tools your business already relies on.

A 14-day free trial is available across monday.com’s first three plans.

3. Freshsales

Best for customer support

Suitable for creative agencies that are new to CRM

Freshsales also boasts the finest customer support of all the creative agency CRM systems we looked at. It comes with 24/5 phone and live chat service, plus all the email and social media support you’d demand from any self-respecting CRM.

There’s also an impressively extensive knowledge base available online, where you can watch tutorials, read articles, and participate in tutorials to make sure you're getting the most out of Freshsales' system.

4. Sendinblue

Best for SMS and email marketing

Suitable for growing marketing agencies

Sendinblue pricing

Sendinblue provides a basic version that’s completely free, and supports unlimited contacts. However, this plan restricts you to just 300 email sends a day, so it offers nowhere near the kind of scale you’ll need as a growing creative or marketing agency.

That’s why we’d recommend upgrading to at least Sendinblue’s ‘Starter’ plan ($22 per user, per month, 20,000 sends included). It strips away the free plan’s stringent daily send restrictions, and introduces email support. Better still, you can add features for A/B testing, and easily increase the amount of email sends you’re allowed.

Sendinblue’s ‘Premium’ CRM tier nets your agency multi-user access and telephone support – and you’ll be able to send up to one million emails per month, too. You’ll certainly want to be on this plan if Facebook ads and retargeting are part of your agency’s strategy, though at $58 per user, per month, it is a little pricey.

The ‘Enterprise’ plan will get you 20+ landing pages and superlative customer support, but is really only for larger digital marketing agencies, or those that require a more technical (and highly customizable!) CRM solution. You’ll need to head to Sendinblue’s website to request an accurate quote for this plan.

You're halfway through our list of the top 9 CRM systems for advertising agencies in the US.  If you'd like to start comparing providers already, simply hit one of the buttons below to use our free quote comparison tool.

5. Copper

Best for G Suite compatibility

Suitable for agencies that already rely on Google applications

Copper pricing

While Copper does offer a more budget-friendly pricing tier (‘Basic’, at $23 per user, per month), we’d recommend that ambitious advertising or creative agencies steer clear – that plan supports a maximum of just three users.

Your best bet is Copper’s in-demand ‘Professional’ plan. At $49 per user, per month, it’s affordable – and you’ll unlock unlimited bulk email sends, workflow automation, and activity reporting to boot. Your agency will also need this particular plan to benefit from Copper’s integrations with several key tools, including Slack, Zapier, MailChimp, DocuSign, and QuickBooks.

The ‘Business’ plan ($99 per user, per month) adds a leaderboard and goal tracking, and allows you to build your own embedded integrations.

6. BenchmarkONE

Best for larger teams

Suitable for agency teams of 10+

BenchmarkONE pricing

In keeping with its CRM competitors, BenchmarkONE's pricing tiers do take the number of contacts you're allowed to store in your system into consideration. However, it does take things up a notch by using this number as the primary base of its prices instead of the number of features you're allowed access.

From a set of fixed number of prices, you can then choose to use its Lite or Pro tier. The former allows for basic contact management and marketing automation while the latter is a full CRM system and integration with Gmail and Outlook.

BenchmarkONE also offers another tier, Agency, which packs all of its features, including CRM and marketing dashboards, which are exclusive to it. It allows you to store and manage more than 100,000 contacts, but regardless of the number of contacts you're keen on having, BenchmarkONE's pricing for this tier is custom.

7. Citrix Podio

Best for low-cost pricing plans

Suitable for agencies on a shoestring budget

See what we mean about that interface?

And we haven’t even got to the best bit yet – that Citrix Podio is one of the most affordable CRM systems going. So how much will it cost you?

Citrix Podio pricing

As well as a free plan for up to five team members, Citrix Podio offers your agency the flexibility of two paid tiers.

The ‘Plus’ plan ($11.20 per user, per month). It adds more diverse user roles and read-only access – ideal for collaborating with freelancers and agencies outside your own. You’ll also score automated workflows, which streamline your workload and make hitting deadlines a cinch.

Finally, the ‘Premium’ plan ($19.20 per user, per month) offers serious value (if you need further proof, just check out how much most of the other ‘premium’ plans on this list are billing!). Feature-wise, this particular premium plan benefits from visual reporting tools and interactive sales dashboards, plus advanced workflow automation capabilities. Very nice!

8. Funnel CRM

Best for simplicity of design

Suitable for aesthetically-conscious marketing agencies

Funnel CRM pricing

Funnel CRM is priced slightly differently to many of the other CRM systems for marketing agencies here. Rather than paying per user, per month, you’ll pay just a flat monthly fee.

With Funnel’s ‘Standard’ plan, that’s just $10 per month. Your creative agency will benefit from Gmail integration and an unlimited number of contacts and deals, plus email templates – though you’re restricted to just a single user.

For this reason, we’d recommend the ‘Pro’ plan. Priced at an affordable $39 per month, it costs just $20 per month to add each new team member to the system.

If you choose to pay annually, the ‘Pro' plan itself will cost you $37.50 per month. Admittedly, that's not much of a difference, but the price to add new team members drops to just $2 per month. That makes Funnel a seriously cheap CRM system – especially if you’ve got one eye on your agency’s pursestrings, and another eye on scaling up.

9. CompanyHub

Best for automation

Suitable for fast-paced advertising agencies

CompanyHub pricing

CompanyHub's cheapest plan, ‘Productivity’ ($15 per user, per month), is surprisingly feature-rich – email templates and scheduling are among the highlights, while its web-to-lead capture capabilities are some of the most capable we’ve seen.

As is always the case with CRM, though, your agency will want to be on a minimum of CompanyHub’s ‘Automation’ plan ($24 per user, per month). It introduces custom reporting and logic, with more advanced tools and technology for structuring your business’ contacts and deals.

At $42 per user, per month, CompanyHub’s high-end pricing plan, ‘Accelerate’, represents the pinnacle of customization. However, if dynamic webforms, territory management, and one-click quote proposals don’t appeal to you, you can probably skip this one.

Unfortunately, Company Hub doesn't offer a free plan like some of its competitors. However, it does offer a 14-day free trial for you to see if it's a good fit for your business.