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CRMs for freelancers are sales and marketing software that help solopreneurs and independent contractors nurture leads, onboard new clients, and manage ongoing projects effectively. For this reason, the top options incorporate core sales pipeline features as well as tools like time tracking, invoicing and billing, and project milestone monitoring. To help you choose the best CRM for your freelance business, we evaluated the top six options and their use cases.
Here are the six best CRMs for freelancers and solopreneurs:
While the above options are great for freelancers and solo operators, Freshsales emerged as the overall best CRM for freelancers, offering the right mix of robust features, affordability, and usability. Continue reading to dig deeper into each CRM option, including their primary use cases, pricing plans, and key features, or skip down to see how we scored each platform.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless otherwise noted.
Features robust contact management and communication tools at an affordable monthly price.
Freshsales is rated as our best general CRM with robust contact management and communication tools, and it offers a free version. Leverage its built-in dialer and live chat to engage with your leads and clients directly from the platform, and automatically log important information during the conversation. Upgrade to its cost-effective plans to send individual or bulk SMS messages via Twilio, ClickSend, and ZipWhip, and add this process to your workflow.
While Freshsales offers free yet robust communication tools for solopreneurs, it has limited native marketing tools. If you’re looking for a CRM with built-in communication features and marketing capabilities, try HubSpot CRM.
Helps freelancers handle customer billing cycles effectively with classic full-stack CRM features.
Zoho CRM is a leading marketing CRM with affordable functionality for customer invoicing and billing. It allows freelancers to automate recurring billing by setting up billing frequencies and payment reminders, and it makes creating and sending tax-compliant, professional-looking invoices easy. For this reason, Zoho CRM is great for freelancers who need help managing timesheets, invoices, and quotes for a high number of clients or ongoing projects.
While Zoho is a top-rated CRM for freelancers, its user interface can be difficult to learn or use. If you want a more intuitive CRM with powerful sales features, take a look at Freshsales.
Helps you grow your client base by keeping tabs on schedules, activities, and engagements.
HubSpot CRM is a popular free CRM that helps you manage client appointments and track interactions. Let your lead book a time that works for both of you and syncs with your calendar via its free scheduler, or coordinate with clients through Facebook Messenger. Upgrade to Sales Hub to monitor your clients’ activities, such as email replies, card payments, and support requests, or pull out revenue reports to see how they respond to your marketing efforts.
While HubSpot offers the best free CRM, its upgrades can get costly for solopreneurs. If you need a CRM with a free version but more affordable premium tiers, try Freshsales instead.
Provides responsive support solutions for freelancers via live chat, email, and phone.
EngageBay is a user-friendly CRM with robust support solutions and glowing reviews from real users. Freelancers who need help in setting up automations and workflows can talk to a 24/7 live representative or request a free demo by scheduling an appointment online. You can also access its email and phone support to resolve issues or browse through its knowledge base to find guides for creating landing pages, email marketing campaigns, and more.
Although EngageBay is easy to use and has excellent customer service, you have to upgrade to a paid tier to receive native call features for client communication. If you’re needing a CRM with robust built-in communication tools in a free plan, check out Freshsales.
Enables handling multiple clients with user-friendly tools for task monitoring and time tracking.
monday.com is a highly customizable work management software that helps freelancers visualize the progress of their projects and deliverables. It features kanban-style boards with color-coded tags so you can view deadlines and project milestones. Its time tracking column helps you monitor the time spent on tasks or access your log history to get a snapshot of the time tracked so you can update clients on your progress and bill them accurately.
While monday.com has robust project management tools, learning its features can be overwhelming for new freelancers. If ease of use and onboarding customer support are important to you, check out EngageBay.
Offers native CRM tools for managing clients and integrates with Google Workspace seamlessly.
Streak CRM is a native Google CRM that lives directly within your Gmail inbox and integrates seamlessly with other Google Workspace products like Sheets, Chat, Drive, and more. Create basic pipelines that you can color-code, and assign deals to specific Gmail contacts and email conversations. Then integrate Google Drive to access and manage files like mockups, client proposals, or project files directly from these pipelines.
Even though Streak is a native Google CRM, it's too basic for some, can be hard to use, and doesn't allow for robust collaboration. If you need a more traditional CRM for your freelance business, check out Zoho CRM instead, which is our leading Google CRM software.
The best CRMs for freelancers and solopreneurs include the following tools:
Store, organize, and manage client information such as contact details, project history, and communication records to build stronger relationships with your client base.
We took a quantitative approach to our freelancer CRM evaluation by defining six weighted categories important to freelancers and solopreneurs. Then, we assigned each category key subcriteria to score how each option performed in that category. Finally, we totaled the weighted scores to give each CRM software an overall rating out of five, including primary use cases.
Freelancers need an affordable but powerful CRM to manage leads, clients, and ongoing projects. For this reason, we assigned the most weight to cost and core features. We also considered ease of use and customizations since freelancers need a platform they can set up quickly and tailor to fit their industry and niche. Lastly, we looked into third-party application integrations and customer support solutions available.
We scored each CRM based on subscription plans, the features offered in any free versions, and/or the availability of a free trial across available tiers.
Here, we evaluated the key functions a CRM needs to have for freelancers to be able to use it effectively, including account and contact management, invoicing and billing, task automation, and time tracking.
We looked into how easy it is to set up and use the specific CRM, especially for beginners. We also checked how comprehensive the knowledge base was and considered real user reviews across certified sites.
With this category, we looked at how each CRM can be modified and tailored to suit the needs of freelancers, with items like custom deal stages or project milestones, multiple views, custom fields, and more.
We evaluated whether each CRM option interacts well with free or paid third-party applications to enhance its functionality.
We considered feedback from verified users and the type of support provided by each CRM through live chat, phone, and/or email.
A customer relationship management (CRM) solution is a platform that helps you organize customer data, optimize daily operations via workflows, and track how leads and deals move into the pipelines. Freelancers and solopreneurs need a CRM for nurturing leads and easily onboarding existing clients, as well as managing ongoing projects and services. A CRM also allows freelancers to stay on top of deadlines, invoices, billings, and other administrative tasks.
Finding the right CRM for your freelancing needs depends on several factors, including your personal goals, the industry you’re working in, the size of your client base, and the resources available. A CRM should help you achieve your objectives and target your clientele, so you should look for a platform that provides a mix of standard CRM tools, customization options for industry-specific needs, affordable pricing, and an interface that’s quick to set up and use.
Freelancers and solopreneurs should look for a CRM solution with robust pipeline and contact management features, as well as nurturing tools for reaching out to leads across various channels. A CRM should also help freelancers manage their daily operations, so features like time tracking, invoicing and billing, document management, and appointment setting could come in handy in streamlining client interaction and increasing customer retention.
Freelancers often only have themselves to lean on, so they need a CRM that helps them effectively and affordably handle client relationships and administrative tasks. The top six CRMs we evaluated provide robust lead generation features and customer management functionality to allow you to stay on top of your work and find and nurture new clients. If you’d like to explore CRM platforms specific to your niche, read our detailed list of industry-specific CRMs.
This article was written by Eze Onukwube and updated by Kezia Jungco.
Eze is a New Orleans-based writer, business software expert, and technologist holding a Master's Degree in communications. Apart from writing comparison guides, his multifaceted writing includes topics as wide-ranging as DevOps, cybersecurity, and more. He is a sports enthusiast who once considered a career in professional sports but says his talents never quite matched his ambitions.
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