The Best CRM Systems for Small Businesses in the UK | Top 10 Reviewed for 2023

Finding the best CRM for your UK small business depends on your priorities and needs. For example, you may be looking for a CRM that will give you value-for-money, specific functionality and ease-of-use, or a CRM that can grow with your business as you expand.

To give you an idea of the best CRMs for small businesses in the UK, we’ve tested and reviewed ten of the top CRM systems on the market today to help you choose the best CRM system for your business.Keep reading to see how providers like HubSpot, Zoho, and Salesforce stack up against the competition.

The 10 Best CRM for Small Business UK | Quick Answer

Our research found that Salesforce is the #1 CRM for small businesses in the UK due to its customization, depth, and wealth of support. Here are our top ten options for the best CRMs for UK small businesses:

1. Salesforce – The Best CRM Software for UK Small Businesses 2023 | Start Your Free Trial Today
2. Pipedrive – The CRM With the Best Sales Features | Get Started With a 14-Day Free Trial
3. Zoho CRM – The Best Value For Money CRM | Start Your 15-Day Free Trial Now
4. Monday Sales CRM – The Best CRM for Managing Projects
5. Zendesk Sell – A Great CRM With an Easy-to-Use Layout
6. HubSpot – The Best Free CRM for Small Businesses
7. Freshsales – A Fantastic CRM for Personalizing Customer Engagement
8. Maximizer CRM – An Excellent CRM Choice for Specialists
9. Less Annoying CRM – The Best Cheap CRM for Small Businesses
10. Oracle Netsuite – The Best CRM for Large Enterprises

The Best Customer Relationship Management Software | In-Depth Reviews

1. Salesforce – The Best CRM Software for UK Small Businesses in 2023

Salesforce is one of the leading CRM providers today, and it’s a sophisticated platform that businesses of all sizes can use, including small businesses.

Inside the platform, business owners can view an overview of their organization’s quarterly performance and measure whether they are on track. An assistant will also provide the user with an overview of tasks that are assigned to them. The assistant can also help inform users of any overdue items related to their active deals, so they can easily stay on top of their pipeline.

Along the top navigation bar, you can navigate to individual screens for:

• Accounts 
• Contacts
• Leads
• Opportunities 
• Tasks
• Calendar
• Dashboards
• Notes 
• Reports
• A drop-down list of more options

There are lots of different features that small business owners will find useful. For example, on the opportunities screen, users can get an overview of the current sales opportunities and organize them by status.

Users can toggle the display on the opportunities screen to see how each deal in their pipeline is progressing and get intelligent alerts regarding the status of the deal and for any issues or tasks that they need to complete, such as calling a lead. Additionally, as new deals are closed, users can update their sales forecasting in real-time.

There are different plans available aimed at different-sized businesses. For example, the Essential starter plan has Account, Contact, Lead and Opportunity Management capabilities, including building a customizable sales process – this plan will be suitable for many small businesses.

The plan also includes email integrations with Outlook and Gmail, and the Salesforce app so you can manage your CRM operations on the go. Salesforce has plans for businesses of all sizes, so the CRM can grow with you as your company does.

Pricing 

Salesforce offers different plans for different business areas. For example, for small businesses, marketing teams, and sales teams. For small businesses, Salesforce have four plans available:

• An Essentials Plan costing £20 per user per month
• A Sales Professional Plan costing £60 per user per month 
• A Service Professional Plan costing £120 per user per month
• A Marketing Automation Plan costing £240 per user per month

2. Pipedrive – CRM With the Best Sales Features

Pipedrive is a CRM that’s well-suited for small businesses, and is particularly useful for growing small businesses.

During onboarding, users can customise the platform’s setup by selecting the industry their company operates in, your position, the size of your business and the primary use case for using the platform, allowing you to tailor the system to your own liking.

After setup, users can then choose to import your own data or use test data provided by Pipedrive to get used to how the platform works. In addition, they can then see all their live sales opportunities on the main dashboard organised by their status; this makes it nice and easy to see how leads are moving down a sales pipeline.

On the left-hand side of the screen, users can toggle between screens, including the leads overview screen, another part of the platform that is very useful for companies using Pipedrive, mainly for sales.

On this screen, as you can see in the screenshot below, users can import existing leads into the platform or use Pipedrive to prospect for new business. Users can also use the platform to create web forms, integrate chatbot or live chat to your website, track website visitors and integrate messaging services with the platform.

On every screen, a dog’s head icon is present on the bottom right-hand side of the dashboard; when users click this icon, they can access the Pipedrive knowledge base. Users can also use Pipedrive to send and receive emails, set up and manage new projects and campaigns, manage contacts and view sales insights.

Pipedrive is a very user-friendly CRM, and its sales features make it easy for a business to manage and track its sales pipeline for maximum profitability.

Pricing

Pipedrive has four plans available –

• The Essential Plan priced at £19.90 per user per month
• The Advanced Plan priced at £29.90 per user per month
• The Professional Plan priced at £59.90 per user per month
• The Enterprise Plan priced at £99.90 per user per month

3. Zoho CRM – Best Value For Money CRM

Zoho CRM is a platform used by 250,000 businesses worldwide. It’s a CRM packed with lead, deal, account and contact management features for small businesses to manage their entire customer journey.

The platform also offers omnichannel customer management tools such as email integration, chatbot and live chat integration for a company website, social media tools and self-service portals and lots of reporting options.

The platform is pleasant on the eye, easy to set up, and nicely laid out. The main dashboard contains information on the number of deals a user has open and their individual activities, such as the number of calls they’ve made. Additionally, users can see the number of open tasks they have and the meetings they’ve scheduled.

In the top navigation bar, you can filter between different screens, which are:

• Leads screen to manage existing leads and add new leads
• Contacts screen to manage existing contacts and add additional contacts to
• Accounts to view all of the different accounts that you service
• Deals screen that gives an overview of active deals and their status
• Tasks
• Meetings
• Calls
• Services
• Projects

Zoho CRM contains many features that you may only expect to find with a more expensive CRM. It’s a system well set up for small businesses to enjoy. Zoho CRM seamlessly integrates with other Zoho apps, so if you’re an existing customer, this platform will fit with your current tech platforms.

Pricing

Zoho CRM has five plans available (prices stated in USD as GBP not stated):

• A Free Plan
• A Standard Plan priced at $20 per month
• A Professional Plan priced at $35 per month
• An Enterprise Plan priced at $50 per month
• An Ultimate Plan priced at $65 per month
  

4. Monday Sales CRM – The Best CRM for Managing Projects

Monday Sales CRM is an excellent choice if you’re after a CRM that lets you tailor and customize the platform to your own specific needs, but don’t have a lot of experience doing so.

Inside the platform, users will find features that work well with one another, helping them communicate with customers and leads, manage and close deals and track their sales pipeline. Users can also import existing customer data through various APIs and Excel files.

You start by choosing between three templates, Sales CRM, Partnership Management, or Sales Assets. Each template measures a different set of business metrics.

When users have chosen a template, they can drag and drop various tools and features, such as different dashboards and analytics tools, to set up the CRM in a way that’s most useful to their business needs. The CRM is also full of smart automation features that a user can add directly to the boards they use to automate manual processes and save time.

The CRM also integrates with Monday’s project management platform, making it a great CRM for those small businesses who also require project management solutions.

Overall, the Monday Sales CRM is intuitive, easy to use, and offers a high level of flexibility and customizability.

Pricing

There are five plans available for Monday Sales CRM:

• Individual CRM Free Forever Plan
• Basic CRM Plan £8.50 Per Seat Per Month
• Standard CRM Plan £12 Per Seat Per Month
• Pro CRM Plan £20 Per Seat Per Month
• Enterprise CRM Plan, pricing available upon request

5. Zendesk Sell – CRM With the Best Layout

Zendesk Sell is an intuitive, modern CRM that, similar to Zoho, contains many of the features that a small business would need in a CRM. Users can customize the look and layout of the platform to your own liking. By default, users can see new deals, revenue, tasks, top deals, and more.

If you want to edit what you see on the dashboard, all you need to do is press the ‘+ Widget’ button on the top right of your dashboard to add more items to your dashboard. This level of customization is brilliant, as you can select the information that’s relevant to your small business.

On the left-hand toolbar of the dashboard, users can view individual screens dedicated to:

• Leads
• Contacts
• Deals
• Calendar
• Tasks
• Communications
• Reports

These individual screens make it easy to manage the entire customer journey.

Pricing

Zendesk has four plans available:

• Zendesk Sell Team Plan £15 per user per month (when billed annually)
• Zendesk Sell Growth Plan £39 per user per month (when billed annually)
• Zendesk Sell Professional Plan £79 per user per month (when billed annually)
• Zendesk Sell Enterprise starting at £120 per user per month

6. HubSpot – Best Free CRM

HubSpot’s CRM is one of the most popular CRMs around and is used by a lot of small businesses. It’s easy to for users to get started with the platform, all they need to do is follow the sign-up steps, enter some details about their business, and they’re set. HubSpot’s support team also offers a free onboarding call to help businesses get set up on the platform.

HubSpot can choose whether to set up a marketing, sales, service or operations hub when they’re inside the platform and be taken through the setup process step-by-step when they click on any of the marketing, sales service or operations tabs.

Once set up, users can import their email, messenger platforms, live chat platform, contact forms, and contacts into their account. If you don’t have contacts to import, then don’t worry; HubSpot displays two sample contacts in their CRM so you can see how things work.

Within HubSpot, users can also set up their custom workflows; the amount and type of workflows users can set up will depend on the plan they’re subscribed to. One feature we really like within the custom workflows is the ability to segment different email lists; this allows users to get very specific with the type of contact they want to send certain communications to.

Within the platform, users will also find a dashboard that will show an overview of their active sales pipeline where users can organize deals by their status.

The HubSpot CRM is very comprehensive; its sales solutions integrate directly alongside its customer support features, so you really can manage the entire customer journey through the platform. It also offers a robust free platform with more features than many paid services, so if you’re a small business after a free CRM to get accustomed, look no further than HubSpot.

Pricing

The pricing for different HubSpot plans mainly depends on the features you want your CRM to contain. As mentioned, HubSpot’s free plan contains many of the features that a lot of businesses will need in a CRM. They also offer a Starter CRM suite with pricing starting at £50 per month.

If you’re unsure of the exact features you need or are looking for further guidance, we would advise contacting HubSpot directly so they can recommend a plan that would suit your requirements.

7. Freshsales – The Best CRM for Personalized Customer Engagement

The Freshsales CRM is an intuitive CRM that has a great free plan available alongside other paid plans – great for small businesses. The onboarding and setup only take a few seconds; enter an email address and company information, and you’ll be taken into the platform.

Inside, users will find numerous dashboards and features to explore. The two central dashboards users spend time in are the activities and sales dashboards, and both can be configured to contain the information users need.

In the ‘Analytics’ section of the platform; from there, users can run a host of different reports, from monitoring website behavior to measuring the success of marketing campaigns.

On the left-hand toolbar, users can navigate to the following screens:

• Contacts and accounts
• Deals management, including quotas and forecasting
• Documents
• Sales conversations, including Inbox, Email templates and Sales sequences
• Web analytics and management
• Analytics and chat reports
• Chat features

Freshsales CRM contains impressive features, and we like how the platform is laid out and how easy it is to navigate to the features you need to get to. The fact that they offer a free plan is great for small UK businesses on a tight budget.

Pricing

There are four Freshsales plans available (prices stated are monthly prices in USD as GBP not stated):

• A Free Plan
• A Growth Plan costing $18 Per Month
• A Pro Plan costing $47 Per Month 
• An Enterprise Plan costing $83 Per Month

8. Maximizer CRM – Best Specialist CRM

Maximizer CRM is a specialist CRM aimed at helping sales, marketing, and customer success teams. With an emphasis on sales and growth, Maximizer CRM is beneficial for small and mid-sized companies that are expanding.

The interface of Maximizer CRM contains many valuable features, particularly sales, marketing, and business intelligence tools. For example, users can view their open opportunities, leads, address book and calendar.

Inside the address book, screen users can tailor sales pipelines for different partners or types of sales. Customizable pipelines are one of the platform’s stand-out features and allow sales leaders to personalize their sales process.

Maximizer CRM also contains automation features aimed at helping marketers make the most of their email marketing such as pre-built email templates. Users can also add their branding to emails to give them a more professional look. Some of the other marketing features you’ll find inside the CRM are –

• Campaign templates
• Web to lead forms
• Multiphase drip campaigns

Users can also track analytics of any campaigns they run and use this data for forecasting purposes and campaign predictions, which can all be viewed from within the Maximizer CRM interface.

The sales and marketing automation features, such as email scheduling and the ability to use pre-built email templates, are stand-out features of Maximizer CRM. Sales and marketing teams can use these tools to save time and use the platform’s advanced analytics and reporting features to measure their success and track KPIs.

Pricing

Maximizer CRM has two plans available (prices in USD as GBP not stated):

• Base Edition – $55 Per User Per Month 
• Sales Leader Edition – $75 Per User Per Month

9. Less Annoying CRM – The Best Budget-Friendly CRM

As the name suggests, the Less Annoying CRM is designed with ease of use and simplicity in mind. When users sign up for the service, they’ll come to a beginner’s guide where they can watch in-depth videos showing exactly how each feature the platform contains works.

The ‘Your Workspace’ dashboard is where users spend most of their time with the Less Annoying CRM. On this dashboard, users can add new contacts, companies, events and tasks. Users can also view an overview of their sales pipeline and any due tasks.

On the left-hand navigation bar, you’ll find individual dashboards for your contacts, calendar, reports and settings. The platform itself is straightforward to use and navigate, as the business has just focussed on the core features you need in a CRM; you don’t feel like you’re getting lost in features that you’ll never use, which can sometimes be the case with more complex CRMs.

The platform’s focus on core features is straightforward to use, and if you’re a sole trader or you run a small business, then the Less Annoying CRM contains all the features you need.

Pricing

Less Annoying CRM offers one pricing plan – $15 per user per month. (Price in USD as GBP not stated)

10. Oracle NetSuite – Best CRM for Large Enterprises

Oracle NetSuite CRM is one of the most advanced CRMs available. The platform contains features to help organizations of all sizes manage the entire customer journey, such as sales force automation, customer service management, and marketing automation, plus features to manage quotes, map sales forecasts, and operate partner relations.

The platform is intuitive, and it’s easy enough to navigate between different dashboards. Sales teams will spend most of their time in the activities, leads, and opportunities screens to manage their pipeline.

Marketing teams can use the platform to build, execute and measure marketing campaigns, while customer service teams can use Oracle NetSuite to create reviews and reply to customer communications.

The platform also has useful reporting and analytics features that users can utilize. For example, sales teams can monitor lead-to-close times and lead-generation patterns. Marketing teams can monitor website visitor activity, while customer service teams can monitor metrics such as call volume, call resolution times, and other customer-related KPIs.

Pricing

Oracle NetSuite’s CRM pricing is custom, so you’ll need to contact the provider for a quote.

The Best UK Small Business CRMs | Top 10 Compared

The Key Benefits of CRMs for Small UK Businesses

If you run or have run any type of small business in the past, you’ll know after you have a few customers, maintaining their records alongside prospecting for new business and managing your sales pipeline can get difficult. This is particularly true if you’ve been managing these things manually and are starting to get overwhelmed, and it’s with these areas that a CRM can help.

Here are some of the benefits CRMs bring for small businesses –

CRMs Help Small Businesses Increase Revenue

Most CRMs will give you and your sales teams deep insights into your sales pipeline and how your active deals are progressing and let you organize your active deals by status. Some CRMs, such as Salesforce, will also give individual users alerts regarding individual deals so they don’t miss anything.

With this level of insight, small business owners and sales teams can accurately forecast the number of deals they expect to close, when they expect to close them, and the revenue they will bring in. These factors help small businesses streamline their sales processes and increase their revenue.

CRMs Help Automate and Streamline Marketing Campaigns

CRMs with advanced features such as Salesforce and HubSpot also contain marketing automation tools that small businesses can use to launch marketing campaigns, schedule emails and deliver timely customized communications to their customers and prospects.

These sales and marketing tools help marketing teams automate parts of their marketing processes but also scale their marketing efforts which are key for small businesses that are looking to grow.

Some CRMs also contain features that can help businesses convert more customers and bring more traffic to their websites. HubSpot contains SEO features that can give business owners insights into improving their website’s online visibility. In contrast, Pipedrive contains features that allow users to track how visitors are using and behaving on their websites.

CRMs Help Small Businesses Improve Customer Relations

Good customer relations are one of the foundations of a small business’s success, and CRMs can help small businesses provide timely solutions and a high level of service to their customers. CRMs such as Pipedrive allow businesses to integrate chatbots and live chats into their website so they can manage their customer communications directly through their CRM.

These features are particularly useful for growing small businesses that need cost-effective ways to scale their customer support as their business grows, without solely relying on hiring more customer support staff.

Businesses can also use a CRM to deliver more personalized communications to their customers, such as sharing custom offers and discounts with them as well as cross-selling and upselling existing customers based on their purchasing history.

How We Selected the Best CRMs for Small Businesses in the UK

When deciding upon the best CRMs for small businesses in the UK, we looked at numerous factors, including price, ease of use, functionality, number of plans available, whether the provider offers a free trial and the customer support they provide.

Let’s take a closer look at these factors:

Price

Price will dictate the CRM and the type of plan a small business decides upon. Most CRM providers we looked at offer relatively inexpensive plans for small businesses, but the total a business spends can escalate if they need to add new users to a platform. One reason we chose Salesforce was the range of plans it offers and the fact that it’s a robust platform that can grow with a small business as it expands.

The good news for small businesses with little to no budget for a CRM is that providers such as Zoho Books, Monday, and HubSpot offer free plans that are robust and contain enough features for a small business to get started with a CRM.

Ease Of Use

It’s important that any UK small business looking for a CRM knows if it’s easy to use or not. The good news is that pretty much every single CRM platform we tested was easy enough to use. Some CRMs, such as Oracle NetSuite, have a steeper learning curve, but every provider has materials available that show users how to use different features.

If ease of use is the primary factor a small business is looking for with a CRM, then we recommend Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, or the Less Annoying CRM as providers to consider.

Functionality

Alongside price, functionality will likely be a key consideration for any small business choosing a CRM. The features a business needs will depend on its existing set-up, business goals, customers and growth dynamics.

For example, if a business is implementing a CRM to improve its sales process, it will need to pay close attention to the sales features a CRM contains. Likewise, if a business is looking to improve its customer service processes, it should look at what customer service features a CRM platform offers.

We’ve tried to give an overview of each CRM provider’s key features, with a particular focus on each CRMs sales features. The good news for small businesses looking for a CRM is that each provider clearly lists the features in their CRM platform with each plan they offer.

Number of Plans/Free Plan or Trial

The number of plans a CRM provider offers is a good indicator of the type of businesses that CRM is appropriate for. For example, the Salesforce CRM is suitable for organizations of all sizes as they offer different plans accommodated for different-sized businesses based on the number of users and features offered.

Each provider we reviewed (apart from Oracle NetSuite, which offers customized plans based on a customer’s requirements) has plans suited to small businesses. We also considered the free trial a provider offers – every provider apart from Less Annoying CRM and Oracle NetSuite offers a free trial of their service or a free plan – this is great for small businesses who want to try out different CRMs before committing to a purchase.

Level of Customer Support Offered

We’ve listed the main types of support each CRM provider offers in each provider review section. Small businesses should consider the level of support they think they will require, the number of users using the platform, and how they will implement the CRM into their current tech stack. Generally, if a provider offers phone support along with email and live chat, their customer support will be more comprehensive than a provider that doesn’t.

Small Business CRM FAQs

Looking for more information? Here are some of the most common questions about small business CRMs in the UK: