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Zoho CRM is a cloud-based platform known for its strong lead nurturing capabilities and omnichannel marketing features. It offers a balance of sales and marketing tools, powerful customizations, and a free-for-life version. However, most useful features are in paid tiers, and they're not the best for overall usability. So, we’ve put together an independent review of the top six Zoho CRM alternatives and competitors to help you find the best CRM software.
Here are the best Zoho CRM alternatives for salespeople:
If you’re still wondering whether Zoho CRM is right for you, read through our independent Zoho CRM review. Otherwise, see our list of the top Zoho CRM alternatives, which named Freshsales the overall winner and the best for customization and ease of use. Skip down below to see how we evaluated each CRM, including their use cases, pricing, and key features.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted.
Offers an intuitive pipeline with sales features like AI forecasting, live chat, and a built-in phone.
Freshsales is our top-rated overall CRM and offers intuitive yet robust tools for sales and marketing teams. Generate and identify your leads via its web forms and AI-powered predictive lead scoring in its Growth plan. Then, engage with them through live chat or built-in telephony, and integrate with Freshmarketer to create multichannel marketing campaigns. You can also customize your touchpoints with sales sequences to move deals through your pipeline.
While Freshsales is the top Zoho CRM alternative, it's missing some social media functionality. If you need more social marketing features, check out EngageBay, which offers a social suite.
Provides free tools for sales, marketing, and service with the option to upgrade as you scale.
HubSpot CRM is rated our top free CRM for salespeople and our best free Zoho CRM alternative thanks to its robust free-for-life option with a visual pipeline and basic marketing features. You can also integrate seamlessly with HubSpot's free marketing and service hubs for added features like help desk functionality. Upgrade to paid tiers for advanced tools like predictive lead scoring, custom reports, sales forecasting, and revenue tracking.
While HubSpot is a comprehensive sales and marketing platform, its paid tiers can be pricey for small teams or solo-users. For more cost-effective paid features, check out Freshsales.
For a deeper dive on HubSpot CRM and how it compares to Zoho, check out our HubSpot vs Zoho CRM comparison. Otherwise, head to HubSpot's website below:
Helps you manage your online presence with its built-in social media tool and marketing suite.
EngageBay All-in-One is an integrated marketing, sales, and service platform with a free social media tool. Optimize your lead nurturing strategy with its social suite and monitor your feeds from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Capture leads by assigning keywords to its social listening tool to know when people are talking about your brand. Then, follow their accounts or reply to their posts directly from the CRM, and add them to your database.
Even though EngageBay offers an attractive free option paired with social media tools, it lacks basic automations. If you need a CRM that offers workflow automation even in its basic tier, check out Bitrix24, which is also one of our best social CRMs.
Provides an online platform for internal communication among sales and marketing teams.
Bitrix24 is sales tracking software that offers a unified platform to manage your team’s internal communication while maintaining relationships with external partners. Centralize activities, conversations, and announcements on its online workspace, where members can interact with each other. Extend your collaboration and invite your clients, suppliers, and partners in extranet workgroups to discuss projects and set appointments together via chat and video conferencing.
While Bitrix24 is an excellent CRM for customer-facing teams, its free plan lacks advanced marketing features. If you need a Zoho CRM alternative with strong built-in marketing features, try HubSpot CRM, which is one of our best collaborative platforms.
Allows you to purchase tools for web tracking, document management, campaigns, and more.
Pipedrive is an intuitive CRM offering a highly visual sales pipeline with drag-and-drop functionality. It also syncs calls, appointments, and emails across devices and allows reps to see where their prospects sit in the sales funnel from any device. Among its standout alternative features to Zoho CRM are its available add-on upgrades like Smart Docs for document management and LeadBooster for generating, scoring, and engaging with your leads.
Although Pipedrive offers flexibility with its a la carte add-ons, customizing via mix-and-match upgrades can be costly. For a strong CRM with pre-built tiers and strong customizations, look into Freshsales.
Offers visual project management pipelines and task management to streamline client projects.
Insightly CRM is a cloud-based platform that helps teams increase their productivity with project management tools accessible through its simple interface. Included in these tools are a separate project management pipeline as well as ongoing project task management, which Zoho CRM doesn't offer. Manage your sales process with its visual pipeline and free project management tools, and upgrade for advanced tools like custom milestones and task tracking.
Even though Insightly is a good alternative for project management, its free tier only includes two users and lacks some sales functionality. For a fully-featured free version, check out HubSpot CRM, which also offers a project management tool.
The best alternative software for Zoho CRM include these tools:
Interact with your leads and customers across multiple platforms like phone, live chat, email, surveys, and social media.
Zoho CRM is a powerful platform that strikes a balance between sales and marketing, but for some, all of Zoho’s functionalities aren’t needed or are difficult to use. To help you choose the right one for your business, we gave each Zoho CRM alternative an overall score based on six weighted criteria. The CRM that scored the highest overall was named our winner, but each option has a valid alternative use case to Zoho. Read our evaluation criteria below:
In our evaluation, we placed the highest weight on cost, core features, customization options, and integration with third-party apps. We also reviewed the ease of use and the customer support solutions offered for each CRM.
We evaluated pricing across tiers, free trial periods, billing options, and/or free forever plans offered.
We examined each CRM’s core offerings, like omnichannel lead management, workflow automation, and social media lead generation.
We assessed each CRM software's capacity for customizing reports and dashboards, modules, sales pipelines, web forms, and languages and currencies.
Here, we looked into how each alternative option syncs with third-party apps for social media management, email marketing, productivity, and more.
We considered how intuitive and easy to use the software is, including the accessibility of their knowledge bases. We also checked how verified users rate each alternative option on review sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius.
We evaluated the levels of customer service included in each CRM and how it’s provided via live chat, email, and phone. We also assessed real user reviews on Capterra and G2.
While many consider Zoho to be the best CRM software available, it won’t tick every box for every organization. Or, you may not want to pay for an upgraded tier to unlock only another feature or two. Zoho will also cost you in time to customize it the way you need it. Fortunately, there are many solid CRMs in the market, all offering an array of features at different price points. Our list of the best alternatives should help you find a solution to fit your exact needs.
Jen is a Pittsburgh-based contributing writer for Selling Signals specializing in CRM software buyer's guides. As a freelancer, she also writes about hospitality and tourism sales, including sales and marketing tech and travel content. When she isn't on assignment, Jen catches up on her many newsletter subscriptions, watches no-code tutorials, and spends time with her family.
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