The 9 Best CRMs for Sales Teams

Salesperson using sales CRM to make deals in an office

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We have researched the best customer relationship management (CRM) for sales teams, and we rated Zoho CRM, Freshsales, and Hubspot as the best sales CRM platforms on the market. Some of them also ranked top in our best cheap CRM system guide. They each offer features that allow businesses to improve and grow their sales operations.

Our team of sales CRM experts has analysed, ranked, and rated the nine best CRMs for sales based on a set of key factors that are most important to UK businesses. These are lead capture and communication features, price, scalability, and user support channels.

The best sales CRM systems

Before we jump into our reviews of the nine best sales CRMs, let’s find out which platforms made the top three:

  1. Zoho CRM is best for capturing leads because it offers powerful features, such as website visitor tracking, web forms, and social listening, which are great for  enhancing your lead generation strategies.

  2. Freshsales is best for tracking communication with leads because its free plan offers essential lead communication features, such as website live chat and native VoIP, allowing you to connect with your leads right away.

  3. HubSpot is best for converting leads because it offers useful lead conversion features across all of its pricing tiers, such as customisable sales pipelines and quote proposal management, which enable you to convert leads into sales faster.

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Key Features

Social listening

Website visitor tracking

Web forms

Email templates

Customisable sales pipelines

Key Features

Contact, account, and deal management

 Built-in chat, email, and phone

 AI powered contact scoring

 Up to 2,000 bot sessions a month

Key Features

Email tracking & notifications

Canned snippets

Conversational bots

Customisable quotes

Deal pipeline

Key Features

Lead and deal management

Open deal limit (per company)

Customisable pipelines

Custom fields

Leads inbox

Deal rotting

Key Features

Dashboards

iOS and android apps

Customisable notifications

Key Features

Deal management

Multiple pipeline management

Web Forms

Custom fields

Sales pipeline

Key Features

Lead management

Lead assignment and routing

Web-to-lead capture

Lead registration

Customisable sales process

Key Features

Native video conferencing

Video conferencing tools

Email templates

Customisable sales pipeline

Quote proposal management

Add products to deals

Key Features

Customisable sales pipeline

Email integration with tracking

Prebuilt sales dashboards

Call tracking & recording and text messages

Free Trial/Plan
Free Trial/Plan
Free Trial/Plan
Free Trial/Plan

14-day free trial

Free Trial/Plan

14-day free trial

Free Trial/Plan

15-day free trial

Free Trial/Plan

14 to 30-day free trial

Free Trial/Plan

30-day free trial

Free Trial/Plan

14-day free trial

Try Zoho CRM Try Freshsales Try HubSpot Try Pipedrive Try monday CRM Get Quotes Try Salesforce Get Quotes Try Zendesk Sell

1. Zoho CRM: Best sales CRM for capturing leads

Zoho logo
Zoho CRM
4.7
Pricing £0 - £52
Quick overview

Zoho CRM is the best sales CRM for capturing leads, receiving a perfect score of 5/5  for lead capture. It offers features that help generate more leads and ensure smoother lead communication, such as website visitor tracking, web forms, and social listening.

It offers a 15-day free trial, which is beneficial for small businesses that want to give Zoho a try. Its free plan comes with lead capture features that can help you track the demographics, analyse website traffic, and know what they’re looking for. These features are website visitor tracking and web forms.

Its Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate plans come with everything that the free plan has, plus social listening, which allows you to monitor what your competitors and customers say about your service. Zoho’s Plus plan offers every lead capture feature, including a website chatbot, which is great for tracking purchase patterns and consumer behaviour. Because these affordable plans are packed with lead engagement features, it receives 4.6/5 for pricing.

However, Zoho only scores 2.7/5 for lead communication because it lacks communication features until you purchase its Plus plan, which will give you access to website live chat, auto-response, and instant messaging apps. Meanwhile, Freshsales gets the highest lead communication score of 3.5/5, because it offers website live chat, native VoIP, and instant messaging apps, which gives you more chances of engaging with potential customers. However, unlike Zoho, it has a poor range of lead capture features.

But Zoho offers customisation, integration, and management options, making it highly scalable, thus scoring 4.5/5 for scalability.

While the 24/7 live support is only available on its Ultimate and Plus plans, other paid plans come with all the essential user-support channels, such as phone, chat, and email, earning 5/5 for customer support.

Strengths

Strong lead capture and conversion features

Innovative social media features

Wide range of customer support options

Weaknesses

Lacks a lot of lead communication features until Plus plan

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)Starting price per user, per month (billed monthly)
Free £0 £0
Standard £12 £16
Professional £18 £28
Enterprise £35 £40
Ultimate £42 £52
zoho social media workflow
The social media lead generation workflow includes a social listening feature that tracks keywords from Twitter.

2. Freshsales: Best sales CRM for tracking communication with leads

Freshsales Logo
Freshsales
4.5
Pricing £0 - £49
Quick overview

Our research shows that Freshsales is the best sales CRM for tracking communication with leads, because its plans offer features that allow you to enhance your lead engagement strategies with website live chat and native VoIP. It scores the highest lead communication score of 3.5/5 among the top CRMs. It does provide lead capture features that enable you to monitor purchase patterns, such as the website chatbot, scoring 3.2/5 in this category. However, it doesn’t offer website visitor tracking and social listening features on any of its plans. Meanwhile, Zoho scores a perfect 5/5 for lead capture because its plans come with social listening and website visitor tracking.

What’s great is that Freshsales offers a free plan and a 21-day free trial, allowing you to experience its service before signing up. Rates for its paid plans range from an affordable £7 to £49 per user, per month, receiving 4.6/5 for pricing.

Scoring 3.9/5 for scalability, Freshsales offers a custom objects feature on all of its plans, which allows you to customise the system as you see fit. While it doesn’t provide 24/7 live support on any of its plans, its free and paid plans come with all the necessary user-support channels, such as phone, chat, and email, scoring 4.2/5 for customer support.

Strengths

Affordable plans

Offers more digital selling tools than other market leaders

Provides a good level of customisation.

Weaknesses

Lacks a lot of lead capture features

Doesn’t provide an IP restriction security feature

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)Starting price per user, per month (billed monthly)
Growth (for three or fewer users) £0 £0
Growth £7 £9
Pro £29 £35
Enterprise £49 £59
freshsales contact dashboard
The FreshSales contact dashboard makes it easy to categorise leads and contact them afterward.

3. HubSpot: Best sales CRM for converting leads

HubSpot Logo
HubSpot
4.3
Pricing £0 – £4,289
Quick overview

HubSpot is the only CRM supplier to hit a perfect 5/5 score for lead conversion in our research. Its Professional and Enterprise plans offer features such as lead scoring, which allows you to rank leads on the likelihood of becoming a paying customer.

It offers digital engagement features which is great for boosting sales. These are website visitor tracking, website chatbot, and website live chat, scoring 3.7/5 for pricing. However, there aren’t enough features that can generate leads. It doesn't offer social listening, video conferencing tools, or instant messaging apps on any of its plans, which is why it only scores 2/5 for lead communication and 3.7/5 for lead capture. Zoho is best when it comes to lead capture because it offers much more options for sales teams to track prospects. Its plans offer social listening, website visitor tracking, and web forms, scoring 5/5 in this category.

HubSpot’s software lacks the flexibility to customise task types, but it offers a wide variety of integration options, such as social media, which is great for increasing lead engagement. This earns it a 4.3/5 score for scalability. While its plans don’t offer 24/7 live support, it offers useful support channels on its paid plans, such as email and chat, scoring 4.2/5 for customer support.

Strengths

Provides live chat for speaking to leads

Provides extensive reporting options

Provides a great range of tools for obtaining lead information

Weaknesses

IP restriction security feature not offered

Doesn’t provide any social media functionality

Pricing
PlanStarting price per month
Free £0
Starter £27 (annual commitment), £45 (monthly commitment)
Professional £1,404 (pay annually), £1,562 (pay monthly)
Enterprise £4,289 (pay annually)
hubspot chatbot
Setting up Hubspot’s website chatbot was easy, and their support came in handy.

Try our top three sales CRMs for free:

Zoho CRM logo
Our researchers love Zoho CRM's range of sales features
freshsales logo
Freshsales is excellent for tracking communication with your leads
HubSpot vector
Our researchers found HubSpot is great at helping you convert leads

4. Pipedrive: Best sales CRM for data protection

Pipedrive
4.2
Pricing £14 – £99
Quick overview

Pipedrive is the cheapest platform to offer extensive security settings, which is why it’s the best sales CRM for data protection. While it doesn’t provide IP restriction on its most expensive Enterprise plan, all of its lower plans come with security settings for data protection, including custom permission, multi-factor authentication, and IP restriction. This will give your customers peace of mind that all their data programmed on your CRM won’t get accessed by cybercriminals.

However, its lead generation features are only available as an add-on. These are website visitor tracking, website chatbot, and website live chat, earning only 3.7/5 for lead capture and 2/5 for lead communication. Freshsales, on the other hand, scores 3.5/5 for lead communication because it offers much more lead communication features for free, including website live chat, which comes as an add-on on all of Pipedrive’s plans.

But Pipedrive does offer access to its API, which enables you to automate workflows for less manual tasks and more closing deals, thus earning a 3.2/5 score for scalability. While it doesn’t come with email support on every plan, it offers 24/7 live chat support on all of its plans, receiving 4.2/5 for customer support. With these features and extensive security settings, Pipedrive earns an impressive 3.7/5 for pricing.

Strengths

Great security features

Great reporting functionality

Provides a good level of team infrastructure

Weaknesses

Not as scalable as other available platforms

Not very customisable

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)Starting price per user, per month (billed monthly)
Essential £14 £24
Advanced £29 £39
Professional £49 £64
Power £64 £79
Enterprise £99 £129
CRM Pipedrive create a deal
Pipedrive has a really neat and easy interface. It was simple to add contacts and deals.

5. monday CRM: Best value sales CRM

New logo of monday CRM
monday CRM
3.9
Pricing £10 - bespoke
Quick overview

monday CRM’s very-low cost and customisable platform make it the best value sales CRM, scoring 5/5 for pricing in our research. This is why it was also ranked as one of the best cheap CRMs on the market. It’s an easy-to-use version of Excel that can be customised to function like a CRM platform. It enables you to customise its tasks, calendar, and even software integrations.

This productivity app comes with lots of customisable business processes, which allows you to customise workflows and make the software adaptable to your existing processes. These features include custom objects, custom task types, and custom dashboards.

However, it offers a weak range of integration options, earning a scalability score of 2.3/5 because its Individual and Basic plans don’t come with any integration options, such as VoIP, web conferencing, and third-party sales engagement integrations. Meanwhile, Salesforce scores 4.7/5 for scalability because it offers a host of third-party sales engagement, VoIP, and web conferencing integration applications on all of its plans.

monday.com receives 2/5 for lead capture and 0/5 for lead communication because its plans don’t come with many lead communication and lead capture features. It only offers web forms for lead capture and the email templates for lead communication are only accessible on its more expensive, Pro and Enterprise plans. All of its plans do have customer support options, such as community forum and email support. However, phone, chat, and 24/7 live support aren't offered, seeing it score an above average 2.8/5 for customer support.

Strengths

Low-cost platform

Great reporting functionality

Weaknesses

Poor customisation features

Lacks customer service options

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)Starting price per user, per month (billed monthly)
Basic CRM £10 £13
Standard CRM £14 £18
Pro CRM £24 £31
Enterprise CRM Bespoke Bespoke
monday.com deals dashboard
We really liked that monday.com offered us a variety of views of our deals dashboard and colour-coded labels.

6. Salesmate: Best sales CRM for cheap calls

Salesmate logo
Salesmate
3.9
Pricing $12 - bespoke
Quick overview

Salesmate isn’t just CRM software; it doubles as a VoIP platform too, which enables you to make calls from anywhere with its mobile and web apps. This offering of a built-in calling solution makes Salesmate the best sales CRM for cheap calls. It offers local and toll-free virtual phone numbers for 80+ countries with call credits that are charged at $10 per month.

It offers features that allow you to increase sales reach, such as native VoIP, instant messaging apps, and auto-response, scoring 3.5/5 for lead communication and 3/5 for lead capture. But its poor customisation and integration options are what earn it a low scalability score of 2.1/5. Salesforce, however, bags the highest scalability score among the top CRMs. It scores 4.7/5 because it offers a large number of third-party, VoIP, and web conferencing integration applications on all of its plans. Aside from that, it offers customisable business processes tools, such as custom objects, which isn’t available on any of Salesmate’s plans.

However, Salesmate offers email, chat, and a community forum, scoring 3.7/5 for customer support. Despite its lack of customisation options, its 15-day free trial, affordable plans, and effective sales features earn Salesmate an impressive 4.1/5 pricing score.

Strengths

Low-cost platform

Great reporting functionality

Weaknesses

Poor customisation features

Lacks customer service options

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually) Rates are only available in US dollarsStarting price per user, per month (billed monthly) Rates are only available in US dollars
Starter $12 $15
Growth $24 $30
Boost $40 $50
Enterprise Bespoke Bespoke

7. Salesforce: Most scalable sales CRM

Salesforce Logo
Salesforce
3.7
Pricing £20 - £240
Quick overview

With the highest score for scalability in our research (4.7/5), Salesforce is the most scalable sales CRM and is the best for growing businesses. It offers extensive integration features on all of its plans, such as first-party, third-party, and social media integrations, which allow you to build a comprehensive sales system for your customers and leads.

It also offers lead generation features, such as website visitor tracking, web forms, and email templates, enabling you to quickly connect with potential customers. However, those are the only lead communication and lead capture features it offers, scoring 2/5 for both categories. So, without many digital marketing tools on its plans, its expensive rates, and no offering of a free plan, it only scores 1/5 for pricing.

monday.com gets the highest pricing score of 5/5 because its very-low cost platform offers lots of customisation options, such as custom objects, custom dashboards, and fully editable forms, that enable you to scale.

Meanwhile, Salesforce receives a perfect score for customer support because it offers important user-support channels on every plan such as community forum, chat, and email.

Strengths

Offers extensive customisation options

Provides a lot of data visualisation tools

Highly scalable

Weaknesses

Lacks digital selling tools

Expensive rates when compared with other CRMs

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)
Essentials £20 (monthly billing is also available)
Professional £60
Enterprise £120
Unlimited £240
Salesforce call log example
Salesforce allows users to store large levels of information from emails, tasks, call logs, contact information, outreach campaign information, lead information etc.

8. Microsoft Dynamics: Best contact database

Microsoft Dynamics logo
Microsoft Dynamics 365
3.7
Pricing £53.40 – £111
Quick overview

Microsoft Dynamics offers the best contact database, scoring a solid 5/5 in this category. It offers robust business processes and integration options, scoring 4.4/5 for scalability. Setting up a custom automated workflow is made easier because it offers custom objects, custom dashboards, social media integrations, and third-party integrations. While it doesn’t offer chat support, it gives you all the customer support channels, including 24/7 live support on every plan. This scores MS Dynamics 4.4/5 in this category.

Its plans offer contact's communication history, list segmentation, and duplicate detection, which allow you to obtain customer data that gives you contact visibility over customers.

Meanwhile, none of the lead capture features are available on any of its plans, receiving 0/5 for lead capture. Aside from that, instant messaging apps, website live chat, and native VoIP aren’t included on any of its plans, earning a measly 1.2/5 for lead communication. Since there are limited digital engagement features offered, and its rates are a little steep for such offerings, it only earns 1.9/5 for pricing.

Meanwhile, Freshsales receives 4.6/5 for pricing, plus, higher lead capture (3.2/5) and lead communication (3.5/5) scores than MS Dynamics because Freshsales offers much more lead capture and lead communication features, such as web forms, website live chat, and native VoIP on all of its extremely affordable plans.

Strengths

Offers good lead conversion features

Great level of customer-support options

Highly scalable

Weaknesses

Lacks digital engagement features

Expensive rates

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month
Sales Professional £53.40
Sales Enterprise £78.10
Microsoft Relationship Sales £108.34
Sales Premium £111
MS dynamics CRM sales platform
We found Microsoft Dynamics gives very detailed customer profiles that help us gain a granular overview of customer data in one place.

9. Zendesk Sell: Best sales CRM for easy data visualisations

Zendesk logo
Zendesk Sell
3.3
Pricing £15 - £149
Quick overview

Our research shows that Zendesk Sell is the best sales CRM for easy data visualisations, hitting 3.5/5 for data/reports category. While it didn’t get the highest score in our research, it offers you the power of CRM data analysis that helps you monitor your business’ performance. Its API automation solutions allow you to keep your business systems in sync with its pre-made reports, which is great because it allows you to easily build a data dashboard on the platform.

However, it scores low for everything else. It’s 2.8/5 for pricing because, while its lower plans are affordable, its pricier plans don’t come with enough features to help you with your digital sales strategy. Thus, earning 2/5 for lead capture and 1.2/5 for lead communication. Freshsales, on the other hand, scores 3.5/5 for lead communication because it offers more features, including website live chat, which isn’t available on any of Zendesk’s plans.

Meanwhile, every Zendesk plan has customisation and integration options such as custom dashboards, custom objects, third-party integrations and VoIP integrations, which will help you streamline your sales, marketing, and customer service operations, earning a 3.4/5 score for scalability. However, its plans don’t offer phone, email and 24/7 live support, scoring 2.4/5 for customer support.

Strengths

Provides great security options

Offers 30-day free trial

Offers lots of useful pre-made reports

Weaknesses

Offers very few digital selling tools

Very limited customer support options

Pricing
PlanStarting price per user, per month (billed annually)Starting price per user, per month (billed monthly)
Team £15 £19
Growth £39 £49
Professional £79 £99
Enterprise £120 £149
Zendesk contact in first step of Sequence
We liked that Zendesk was very customisable. We could create a sales pipeline, add internal notes to contacts/deals, and create sequences with automated emails and task reminders.

How did we compare the best CRM systems for sales teams?

Our team of unbiased software researchers compared and ranked these CRM market leaders on their performance based on the key factors that matter most for sales teams. These are:

  • Scalability – Our researchers measure if the software gives a sense of sustainability by analysing if the plans can scale along the business journey as it changes in size and volume.
  • Price – Our team of researchers consider the cost and offering of each plan and assess the value of the free options.
  • Lead communication – This is where our researchers evaluate the features included in their plans and if they provide businesses with simple ways to communicate with leads.
  • Lead capture – Our researchers check if their plans come with tools that’ll help businesses obtain customer data for sales opportunities.
  • User support – Our team of software experts find out how extensive their customer support channels are and if users can easily reach them for service.
Verdict

Zoho CRM, Freshsales, and HubSpot are our choices for the three best CRMs for sales as they have more to offer, which gives businesses an edge over their competitors. They provide pricing tiers that work best for small to large-sized businesses as they offer affordable packages, powerful digital sales features, and essential customer support channels. Zoho’s comprehensive system covers features that make it the best for capturing leads. Freshsales, however, offers a more sales-focused CRM platform that comes with features best for tracking communication with leads. HubSpot, on the other hand, provides a great infrastructure for managing sales teams and converting leads.

FAQs

What is a sales CRM?
A sales CRM is a tool that is used to manage the sales pipelines of businesses, enabling you to gather and store customer information. This means you  can monitor and track your pipeline to increase sales and generate more revenue. By centralising your operations,  you simplify sales as  it will be easier for you to track and convert potential customers.
What are the three types of CRM?
The three types of CRM include sales, marketing, and customer service. Sales CRM software provides tools that automate processes, such as task management or opportunity management, allowing you to leverage sales management. Marketing CRM systems enable you to connect with potential customers using marketing campaigns and management modules. Customer service CRM software helps you streamline admin tasks and, at the same time, enhance customer service.
What is the best CRM for sales?
Zoho CRM is the best sales CRM. It offers digital selling tools that’ll help you accelerate your digital sales strategies, and its plans are equipped with features that allow you to engage with potential customers from any digital sales channel
How do sales reps use CRM?
CRM gives sales reps the ability to manage their schedules and make sure that potential leads are prioritised, creating more opportunities to close more deals. Plus, the automation features it offers enable sales reps to easily prepare daily, weekly, and monthly reports. Most of all, it helps them gain valuable customer insights with  their buying patterns and consumer behaviour built into the system.
Is HubSpot better than Salesforce?
In our in-depth research, HubSpot scored an overall 4.3/5, while Salesforce scored 3.7/5, but both offer a highly scalable platform. However, Salesforce comes out on top in our research in the scalability category, scoring 4.7/5, while HubSpot only scores 4.3/5 here. Both offer extensive integration options, however, Salesforce offers more business processes customisation options than HubSpot.
How much does CRM cost?
There are lots of sales CRM suppliers that offer a free trial or even a forever-free plan, including Zoho CRM, Freshsales, HubSpot, but CRM prices vary. The basic plans cost between £6.72 and £49. The standard plans are normally priced between £8.41 and £410. Meanwhile, premium plans have rates that range from £55 to bespoke prices; it depends on the features and add-ons you want to have. Check out our guide to CRM software costs to learn more.
Written by:
Dudez Ignacio body shot image
Dudez Perez-Ignacio is a Content Writer for Expert Market, specialising in writing about phone systems and helping readers learn about innovative communication technology trends and insights, prioritizing value to help drive business growth. Researching and writing about this every day means Dudez is fluent in the complex vocabulary of business phone systems.
Reviewed by:
James draws on his 4+ years experience as a researcher to offer specialized advice on a wide range of categories from CRM to Fleet Management. He believes all businesses can grow if they use the right tools and services.