5 best healthcare CRM software for small businesses

But there are few industries more specialist than healthcare. You need to market your practice all while providing sensitive, personalised, and – most importantly – confidential customer service. Whether you’re paying for a CRM tool or using free CRM software, when it comes to healthcare contact management you can’t afford to put a foot wrong.

Our number one healthcare marketing CRM software is HubSpot. Outstanding customer support and management tools mean it can implement a seamless patient-centric approach.

Our second choice is Zendesk for Service. It’s a great healthcare-specific CRM that can act as the ultimate database for storing patient information and private medical records.

At Startups, we’ve been researching CRM systems for half a decade. Our latest round of testing revealed that, surprisingly, some of the most popular platforms are completely unsuitable for SMEs based in healthcare.

Below, we’ve weighted industry-specific challenges and needs alongside our own user testing, to identify the best healthcare and pharma CRMs for small businesses.

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BEST OVERALL
Hubspot	Zendesk for Service	Pipedrive	monday CRM	Sugar Market
Best for: Patient outreach	Best for: Pharmacies	Best for: Labs or clinics	Best for: Practices with lots of services	Best for: Health insurance providers
Price per month (billed annually): Free Plan, or from £18 (flat rate)	Price per month (billed annually): £39 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £14 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £10 per seat	Price per month (billed annually): £800 (flat rate)
Free trial? ✓	Free trial? ✓	Free trial? ✓	Free trial? ✓	Free trial? X
Features: Send 2,000 emails per month 5 active contact lists for outreach Thorough 12-step onboarding process Chatbots, campaigns, and webforms	Features: 1,000+ apps and integrations Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support Ticketing system Onboarding assistance	Features: Unlimited contacts permitted Communication, ecommerce, and accounting integrations Allows unlimited custom fields	Features: Huge range of CRM board templates Message board for dashboard collaboration Widgets available for bespoke metrics Unlimited contacts and dashboards	Features: Unlimited email limit 10,000 contact limit API editor Cloud-based software
Is it GDPR-compliant? ✓	Is it GDPR-compliant? ✓ (with a third-party extension)	Is it GDPR-compliant? ✓	Is it GDPR-compliant? ✓	Is it GDPR-compliant? ✓
Start Free Trial	Start Free Trial	Start Free Trial	Start Free Trial	Compare Quotes

Read More About CRM

This page is part of a larger series on CRM. Read more about the top CRM systems in our full guide:

Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

HubSpot for marketing tools

Best for patient outreach

HubSpot email editor

4.2 out of 5

• Usability
  3.9
• Customisation
  2
• Functionality
  3.5
• Pricing
  3.7
• Help and Support
  2

Investment in marketing is usually not a high priority for healthcare providers. Personalisation is also a no-go, as medical data is hard to publicise safely.

Luckily, HubSpot is working to drag healthcare marketing into the twenty-first century. The platform has carved a niche for itself as having one of the most powerful advertising toolkits – as we outline in our detailed review of the HubSpot app.

Attracting new patients to your practice is easy thanks to HubSpot’s SEO elements. Even on its free plan, you’ll get:

• Topic suggestions to increase your search engine rank
• Webforms
• Chatbots
• Website visitor tracking
• Social media integration

Smart automations like list building, workflow automation, and call-to-action (CTA) features also serve to maximise outreach without you needing to stretch resources. This is most helpful for those with smaller teams of less than 10 people.

For higher-value leads, you can also craft personalised campaigns using HubSpot’s premier marketing email design editor.

And, if you don’t think things are working as planned, you can use HubSpot analytics to analyse traffic and see how you might need to adapt your communications or content.

HubSpot pricing

Here’s how HubSpot’s costs break down:

• HubSpot Free – £0 per month
• HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month
• HubSpot Sales Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month
• HubSpot Service Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month

HubSpot Free is the platform’s most popular plan. For zero charge you’ll get more marketing features than many premium CRMs offer.

We recommend HubSpot Marketing as the best option for patient outreach.

It costs £17 as a flat rate (billed annually). Generally speaking, it offers all of the no-cost features provided by the free plan, with the added bonus of no HubSpot branding.

Zendesk for Service for customer support

Best for pharmacies

Zendesk internal messaging app

4.1 out of 5

• Ease of use
  4
• Features
  3.5
• Integrations
  5

Patients require clear and immediate communication with sales representatives whenever issues arise.

This is more important in healthcare than in any other industry, as the associated risks can literally be life threatening.

The Zendesk for Service package is focussed on customer support, and enables:

• Customer support tickets
• Reporting and analytics tools
• AI-powered automated answers for customer enquiries
• Onboarding guidance for new Zendesk users

Zendesk for Service is also exceptional at contact management – the process of recording contacts’ details and their interactions with your practice.

The platform has a very generous storage limit of 2GB per user. Account managers can stow a patient’s entire history in Zendesk’s internal database, and keep in-depth notes about their appointments or purchases.

Our testing team of experts was able to import medical records in just 1 minute and 49 seconds, thanks to a unique Zendesk feature called smart lists. You can even use list segmentation to filter data based on set criteria such as age or service use.

We think Zendesk’s strong customer service focus, and outstanding contact management tools, mean it is well-matched for those requiring detailed datasets, such as pharmacies.

One thing to note is that you’ll need to download the Zendesk GDPR compliance plugin to ensure your data storage is safeguarding sensitive medical information.

Zendesk for Service pricing

• Zendesk Suite Team – £45 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Zendesk Suite Growth – £75 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Zendesk Suite Professional – £89 per user, per month (billed annually)

Pipedrive for security

Best for labs or clinics

Pipedrive dashboard

4.3 out of 5

• Pricing
  4.1
• Customisation
  3.1
• Features
  3.9
• Team Infrastructure
  3.9
• Customer Support
  4.2
• Scalability
  3.2

Of the 167 healthcare practices surveyed in HISS’ 2021 Healthcare Cybersecurity Survey, 29 reported a monetary loss as a result of a cyberattack.

We gave Pipedrive full marks for security features – the highest result of any other brand we looked at.

Even on the lowest-tiered plan, Pipedrive Essential, you’ll get:

• User permissions
• Multi-factor authentication
• Security emails, triggered by suspicious user behaviour

The Pipedrive app is also fully GDPR compliant. Your data processing contract with the platform means that Pipedrive will only process patient records based on your instructions as the data controller.

This boosts your practice’s credibility, and ensures you are protecting privileged medical information.

But that’s not the only area that Pipedrive excels in. In our ranking of the top small business CRM systems, we found that Pipedrive is the top CRM for usability.

New users will find the platform’s clean interface easy to understand thanks to a tidy visual pipeline and intuitive navigation buttons.

Pipedrive pricing

• Pipedrive Essential – £14 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Advanced – £29 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Professional – £49 per user, per month (billed annually)

We like Pipedrive because it’s a scalable platform with lots of payment tiers. That means you can count on Pipedrive as a long-term investment that will grow with your practice – so you won’t need to waste time switching platforms.

Read our Pipedrive pricing review for a more detailed breakdown of the platform’s additional perks and hidden fees.

monday CRM for customisation

Best for practices with multiple services

monday CRM Kanban board view

4.3 out of 5

• Ease of use
  4.5
• Features
  4.5
• Integrations
  4.0

Most healthcare providers have a large number of service offerings, creating a complex system to organise.

Finding a CRM software that can streamline your many different ways of working is therefore a great way to improve efficiency in your practice.

monday CRM is our highest-scoring sales CRM for customisation. You can play with virtually every aspect of your pipeline thanks to monday’s large arsenal of editable tools.

These include:

• Customisable sales pipeline
• Custom fields
• Custom dashboards
• Custom task types
• Custom objects

Because of this, we think monday is just what the doctor ordered for managing multiple departments. For example, if you’re a physiotherapy clinic with a variety of services, from acupuncture to chiropractic.

The app’s interface is also very smartly organised. Whatever stage your task is in is colour-coded with an attractive traffic light system, so you can easily spot patients that are in need of a check-in.

Still, that’s not to say that users are without help. You’ll be given recommendations for the best templates and guided through the setup process via helpful pop-up notifications.

monday CRM pricing

Here’s the cost breakdown for monday’s plans – though see our note below on how this scales:

• Basic – £10 per seat, per month (annual billing, minimum 3 users)
• Standard – £14 per seat, per month (annual billing)
• Pro – £24 per seat, per month (annual billing)
• Enterprise – bespoke pricing

monday CRM has a unique pricing structure that can be confusing for new users. Our full guide to monday.com pricing will tell you everything you need to know about the platform’s costs.

Sugar Market for open source

Best for health insurance providers

3.5 out of 5

• Pricing
  1
• Customisation
  5
• Usability
  4
• Functionality
  3.5
• Help and Support
  3.5

Open Source Software (OSS) is any software that users can modify, edit, or study. It is popular in the healthcare market as it tends to be more robust, secure, and flexible – all key features for more specialist sectors.

Sugar Market is one of the most powerful OSS systems because its parent software, SugarCRM, boasts an open application programming interface (API). Put simply, you can use an API to design complicated CRM processes, rather than relying on preset templates.

For example, if you wanted to design a system that saved specific figures from a patient’s latest medical report, like blood pressure results, you can do that using Sugar Market.

OSS is particularly handy if you’re in a heavily regulated area of healthcare like insurance, as you’ll need to adapt your CRM often. The caveat here is that, naturally, coding knowledge is a must.

Sugar Market is also excellent for customer engagement. Patients are increasingly looking for more control and understanding over their medical check ups or treatment. Sugar Market users can utilise:

• Member surveys
• Member and provider management
• Appointment reminder emails
• Integrations with any business software

Sugar Market pricing

Unsurprisingly, this giant of a marketing platform has a large price tag attached to it of £800 per month (billed annually).

If you have the spare capital, then SugarCRM is worth it for a tech-savvy health company in need of endless CRM functions.

It’s such a powerful system that you are essentially hiring another member of your team – and it’s definitely cheaper than that.

How can a CRM for healthcare marketing change my practice?

Keeps track of appointments, notes, records, history 

Data storage is a fundamental aspect of healthcare administration. CRM for healthcare marketing can store patient documents and appointment histories in a centralised dashboard view. Analytics tools can then be used to guide your firm’s CRM planning.

Helps to find new patients through social media  

Targeting new audiences can be difficult for healthcare providers. The best CRMs in the healthcare industry will integrate with your social media accounts so that from one easy location you’ll be able to publicise your practice, attract new patients, and drive profit.

Communicates with patients through email marketing

CRM for pharma or healthcare can also be used to send appointment updates and information on special offers using direct email marketing campaigns.

Enables virtual care with support tools

Healthcare CRM software tools like the Zendesk Support Suite make it easy to be available across any channel – including phone, chat, email, text and mobile. That way, your patients can reach you whenever and wherever they need you.

Protects patient data for ultimate confidentiality

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework for the collection and processing of individuals’ personal information.

It can be tricky to meet GDPR requirements. An easy shortcut is to first ensure that your CRM software is fully compliant before purchasing.

How do I choose the right CRM for my healthcare practice?

If you’re a small business healthcare provider, then security and confidentiality are two of the most important considerations for choosing the right healthcare CRM software.

There’s also:

• Customisation
• Marketing
• Data management and storage

How do I choose the right marketing CRM for my healthcare practice?

If you’re specifically looking for marketing tools, HubSpot is the ideal CRM solution for small business users.

How we test CRM systems for UK small businesses

At Startups, it's important to us that the product recommendations we make to small UK businesses are useful, accurate, and based on thorough product testing.

We tested 13 CRM systems across seven main categories of investigation and 13 subcategories – all in all, we covered 84 areas of investigation. Next, we gave a ‘relevance weighting' to the final product category scores - this ensures the products' final ratings perfectly reflect the specific needs and requirements of Startups readers.

Our main testing categories for CRM systems are:

Features: the functionalities and capabilities provided by the CRM software, including contact management, lead and opportunity tracking, and task and activity management.

Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using the CRM software.

Customisation: the ability to tailor the CRM software to suit the specific needs and processes of the organization, including customising fields, layouts, and workflows.

Scalability: the ability of the CRM software to accommodate the growth and changing needs of the organization, such as the capacity to handle a growing customer database.

Price: the cost associated with using the CRM software. It includes factors such as licensing fees and subscription plans.

Team Structure – Sales CRM: determining if a platform makes it easier to manage large sales teams, including team dashboards and team hierarchies.

Usability – Small Business CRM: assessing the simplicity of the interface, the ease of navigating through menus and options, and the overall user experience.

The Startups product testing process

Verdict

HubSpot takes the top spot for healthcare marketing features. As it’s a free tool, SMEs can take advantage of HubSpot as an add-on to their healthcare CRM system.

• Our top healthcare CRM is Zendesk for Service. Its strong focus on contact management provides the ultimate organisational package. We particularly recommend it for pharmaceutical SMEs that need to store a lot of information, like billing details.
• Pipedrive is our favourite healthcare CRM for security. Its sophisticated safeguarding tools ensure patient information is fully protected – important for clinical labs or those dealing with confidential test results.
• monday CRM is our best healthcare CRM for customisation. It has an endless list of bespoke tools that makes it easy for users to design patient-centric dashboards. We recommend it for health agencies or those with lots of service offerings to organise.
• SugarCRM, while costly, is a hugely-powerful open source CRM – great for those based in specialist or regulated areas, like health insurance.

At Startups, we know it’s difficult to find the brand that caters for your specific customer strategy – especially when getting it wrong can be just as costly as purchasing nothing.

That’s why we’ve designed a free online quote comparison service. In just one minute, you can use to get matched with bespoke deals on the top CRM systems out there.

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