The 5 Best Free CRMs for Businesses and Associations

Using a CRM has many uses, but most of them offer prices that are far from suitable for all budgets. For an association, a VSE or even an SME, it is not obvious, or even not possible to spend several tens or hundreds of Euros each month for a quality CRM. Fortunately, we have made a small top 5 of the best 100% free CRMs for you!

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What is a CRM (or GRC) in marketing?

Before seeing our free CRMs, let's go back to the basics. What is a CRM?

A CRM or "customer relationship management" (CRM in French) is the term commonly used to refer to the tools that allow companies to track and manage their interactions with customers. CRMs help businesses build stronger connections with their target audience, which drives sales and brand loyalty over time.

CRM software helps with organization, efficiency, time management, and making sure you've done the right thing to win over your customers. Although the concept of CRM software has been around for almost 30 years, this technology has only recently begun to attract additional interest, with the rise of UX (customer experience).

When people talk about “CRM”, they are often referring to customer relationship management as a software solution. However, we can decline the term CRM a little even if the principle remains the same:

The goal of “customer relationship management” as an overall concept is to use strategies, processes and technologies to improve business relationships and grow sales and revenue.

What does CRM software do? 6 advantages

CRM software often has a number of features. You can log customer contact information, manage emails, phone calls, and social media interactions, and even track customer behavior on your site.

CRM solutions are also good at gathering other information about business activity and storing details about customer preferences.

Essentially, a CRM gives companies all the essential information about the behavior of (potential) customers. With a 360 degree view of every interaction with a consumer, you can have much better conversations with them. The benefits of CRM software are:

Why use a CRM platform?

CRM for a sales team

Implementing a CRM solution for sales is probably the most common and obvious use case. It is also surely the most effective. As soon as the team starts using a powerful CRM that benefits their sales process, their performance improves. The system helps them manage leads and turn them into customers, build customer loyalty and maintain company reputation.

Additionally, most CRMs provide accurate analytics, which can also be applied in different ways. With analytics, salespeople better understand which strategies work and which don't. This allows them to adjust their tunnel and general workflow to achieve the best possible result.

CRM for project management

CRM systems also facilitate the process of managing different teams. Managers benefit from analytics just like their staff. They can measure employee productivity and see how well they are achieving their individual and collective goals. This allows them to find new ways to motivate their teams whenever they need it.

CRM for Marketing

CRM can fit naturally into the marketing workflow, improving lead generation and optimizing remarketing campaigns. And that might be one of the biggest reasons startups need a CRM.

Marketing automation is considered to help generate more leads 80% of the time. As for the conversion rate, it's almost the same.

Another benefit for marketing is improved email campaigns. Some CRM systems offer the possibility of sending personalized e-mailing campaigns using the data collected. Also, the CRM allows users to keep tabs on the engagement rate and results of a particular newsletter or campaign.

A CRM for HR

What can a CRM do for human resources? One word: a database. In the case of HR and recruiters, CRM functions as a huge store of data regarding employees, candidates, and potential team members.

The CRM system can also help them speed up the recruitment process and track staff performance.

Within the framework of an association, it is this part which can be quite interesting. This can help manage everything related to members, partners and more.

CRM for Customer Success

In a typical customer support team, none of the employees can be assigned to a particular customer. Still, they need to keep track of all customers, their purchases, and their issues so they can respond to incoming inquiries in the most efficient way possible.

The CRM functions as a data center, storing all customer records and linking all necessary data. Different tools can direct the same customer through different sources: email, tickets, social media, or phone. All this information will be automatically linked to a record in the CRM. It's fast, secure and it makes things a lot easier later on.

Using CRM systems has been proven to give agents a better understanding of customer data, which helps them improve customer satisfaction and retention. It is obvious that such tools allow a much more efficient management of customer service than a simple spreadsheet or other.

Who might need a free CRM?

Association

For an association, it is often very difficult to pay large sums, especially for a CRM. In general, these are satisfied with the minimum to manage their contacts and their various databases. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of things to manage, such as volunteers, partners, members, etc. In other words, it would be better to use a real CRM tool, rather than tinkering with spreadsheets . Not only does this make it possible to comply with European standards on data collection, but it also makes life easier for the members of the association. Updating and managing data will be much more efficient and simple on a CRM. In other words, everyone wins in using a free CRM for an association.

TPE

For a very small company as for an association, the means are not always enormous whereas the needs are. Depending on your sector of activity, the CRM will have more or less interest but will allow you to manage in a few clicks all the aspects that we have discussed since the beginning of the article. If really, you have very important needs and you absolutely need a professional and very advanced solution, you will have to consider doing a trial period on a paid tool. Otherwise, normally a free tool can be enough for you to manage serenely.

SME

At the heart of an SME, it becomes more and more interesting to use a good CRM tool. The workforce is increasing and it is therefore becoming important to streamline methodologies and different processes between team members. Nevertheless, there are still SMEs which are not necessarily convinced of this and which prefer to work “on the fly”. Inevitably, to convince his reluctant superior, it will be easier to first try a free tool before possibly moving on to a professional solution.

big companies

For larger structures, the use of a CRM is not a question. Just look at the different points that we mentioned above. For all its services to work together 100% seamlessly, you need a quality CRM. In any case, for this kind of business, it will be better to turn to a professional and paid tool, or take advantage of a free trial version. The various free CRM tools that we will discuss later are not really suitable for use in a company with very powerful needs.

Which is the best 100% free CRM software to choose? Our top 5

Hubspot, a reference & free CRM

In the world of CRM, Hubspot needs no introduction, they can easily be considered experts in the field. In addition to the various more professional solutions they offer, Hubspot also honors us with a 100% free CRM tool. We find all the features that we can expect from a classic CRM:

The advantage over other large CRMs is that this is not a trial version. It's a true free version with no time limit or obligation to purchase. Nevertheless, we clearly feel the fact that this version is made to push you to upgrade to the higher version, which is paid for at 41 € per month.

Bitrix24, the powerful but complicated free CRM

Bitrix24 is a complete platform for companies that need to manage their daily tasks, projects and CRM. Moreover, it offers a lot of features, such as a contact center and website creation. Unlike some tools, it doesn't work in Gmail, but has an integration that syncs your emails with the platform.

Its free CRM system provides all the tools your sales team needs to manage pipelines: sales funnel, sales reports, 360-degree view of the customer, repeat sales support, and sales automation. Bitrix also provides customer support through email, phone, live chat, social media, and other messaging tools.

The problem with Bitrix is ​​that it is very difficult to use. Indeed, the interfaces of the different features are really not great. Nevertheless, if you are ready to sacrifice a little of your patience to save money, it is a totally relevant solution.

Bitrix's free plan offers unlimited users and 5 GB of storage. To upgrade to a paid plan, prices start at €39/month.

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Agile CRM, the free SaaS CRM

Agile CRM is a cloud-based service for desktop and mobile, focused on sales automation and the business side more generally. Its sales CRM offers integration with Gmail that lets you access CRM tools from your inbox.

It allows you to put your appointment calendar online and automate all the elements of your sales funnel. Additionally, you can access comprehensive contact views, deal follow-ups, lead scores, real-time alerts, and in-depth analytics. In other words, everything you need to know about your prospect's journey is available on Agile.

Agile is free for up to 10 users, and its paid plans start at $8.99 per month, with more users and advanced resources. However, for this free version, there is no customer support, you are on your own. If you are ready to fend for yourself to save precious Euros, this is a solution widely conceivable.

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Streak, the online CRM tool integrated into Gmail

Streak CRM is a tool that works in Gmail too. It allows you to build simple funnels and track your sales processes. This tool is completely customizable, so you can control your data as you see fit.

Streak offers all the basic CRM features on its free plans, with limited moves in your sales journey and bulk emailing. For more advanced features, it will be necessary to buy a plan whose prices start at 15 dollars per user per month.

The problem with the free version of Streak is that it prevents you from sharing the information with your team and it doesn't have customer support. It is a tool to consider only if you work solo or if you are alone in charge of all the management of the contact database in an association for example.

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Assoconnect, the CRM dedicated to associations

As we have mentioned at several times, a CRM can also be suitable for an association, due to its needs for contact management, membership, etc. Assoconnect responds concretely to this request with a very complete CRM for the associative field. Obviously, as it is intended for associations, Assoconnect offers a totally free version, but with quite limited functionalities, mainly focused on collections and payments. With this “Freedom” offer, you will be able to manage memberships, donations, ticketing and online payments from A to Z.

It's a shame that they don't offer more features in their free program, given their target audience. Nevertheless, the paid plans which allow you to manage many more things (databases, emailing, website, accounting), are not overpriced. And obviously, as with most tools that offer free versions, it's to push us to switch to the paid plan, we know that.

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