Best 7 CRM for retail businesses

Running a shop comes with challenges that a CRM system should help you to address. And while it might be tempting to go for the cheapest CRM deal – or choose a free CRM software – real value comes from getting the features you need most, at a price your business can afford.

Retail businesses need a CRM that’s more than just a customer management tool. Nowadays, CRM can help sell through multiple channels, enhance customer loyalty, and give accurate insights to make better business decisions.

In this article, we’ve reviewed the top seven CRM software brands for the retail industry to pick out their pros, cons and costs. 

Having analysed a variety of CRM systems, our expert research team has found monday CRM to be the best CRM for retail thanks to its omnichannel marketing capabilities, letting you connect with customers across email, social media and more – all from one place.

The best retail CRM systems at a glance:

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monday CRM	HubSpot	Pipedrive	Freshsales	Zendesk	Salesforce CRM	Bigin
Best for: Omnichannel marketing	Best for: Retail email marketing	Best for: Dropshipping	Best for: High street retailers	Best for: Appointment scheduling	Best for: Reporting	Best for: Retail side hustles
Price per month (billed annually): £10 per seat	Price per month (billed annually): Free plan, or from £9 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £14 per user	Price per month (billed annually): Free plan, or £7 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £15 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £20 per user	Price per month (billed annually): £5 per user
Features: Huge range of CRM board templates Message board for dashboard collaboration Widgets available for bespoke metrics Unlimited contacts and dashboards	Features: Send 2,000 emails per month 5 active contact lists for outreach Thorough 12-step onboarding process Chatbots, campaigns, and webforms	Features: Unlimited contacts permitted Communication, ecommerce, and accounting integrations Allows unlimited custom fields	Features: Freddy AI tool gives you insights ready-made Communication, ecommerce, and accounting integrations Big library of preset templates	Features: Communication integration for team working Fast-loading dashboard for large datasets 2 million contact limit	Features: Email marketing and analytics Sales processes Seamless customer service Storefront builder	Features: 50,000 contact limit Ecommerce integrations Webforms List segmentation
Storage: 5GB per user	Storage: 5 documents per user	Storage: N/A	Storage: 2GB per user	Storage: 2GB per user	Storage: 10GB per organisation	Storage: 1GB per organisation
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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

monday CRM: best for omnichannel marketing

monday CRM

4.3

monday sales CRM is an all-in-one platform that enables business owners and sales teams to manage all their CRM functions in one central location.

• Free trial? Yes

• Ecommerce integrations offered - rare for a CRM tool
• Excellent customisation means you won't have to redesign your existing CRM process

Summary monday CRM offers well-designed creative tools that make it an endlessly customisable CRM system, perfect for tailoring to clients’ needs. The app also uses a visually appealing traffic light system to help you track customers throughout the pipeline, and has over 200 dashboard templates, making it a particularly stylish tool to use.

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Retailers using omnichannel campaigns see significant boosts in engagement and sales.

According to research by Capital One Shopping, retailers using “omnichannel” campaigns (involving three or more channels) increase customer engagement 250% more than single-channel retailers. Average sales revenue also increased by 9%.

What makes monday best for omnichannel marketing?

monday CRM offers over 200 CRM templates, each of which can be used to optimise a different channel to boost your revenue streams. For example:

• The social media calendar template for planning campaigns
• The social media metrics template for monitoring engagement
• A special Shopify template to develop your online store with monday’s planning tools.

That being said, you won’t be able to share social posts from monday CRM as it doesn’t offer direct social media integration – a significant drawback we found in our guide to the best alternatives to monday CRM. However, downloading the Zapier extension, a workflow management tool, should fill this gap.

monday CRM pricing

We recommend monday CRM Basic for small business users. It permits unlimited users for just £10 per seat, and gives you access to all of the benefits mentioned above.

Here’s the cost breakdown for monday’s plans – although you can see our full monday pricing guide for how these scale:

• Basic: £10 per seat, per month (billed annually)
• Standard: £14 per seat, per month (billed annually)
• Pro: £24 per seat, per month (nilled annually)
• Enterprise: bespoke pricing

What did researcher James Macey say about monday?

``The degree of customisation afforded to users on this platform is quite useful but what makes monday really stand out is how easy they make the customisation. Many platforms require users to dig through settings menus to tailor their product whereas monday lets you edit most things by the click of a mouse.``

Get started with monday CRM

Maximise your customer base and stand out from the retail crowd.

Try for free Try our top-rated retail CRM free for 14 days.

HubSpot Free: best for retail email marketing

HubSpot

4.2

An innovative marketing solution that's completely free.

Read our review of HubSpot

• Free trial? Yes

• Intuitive user interface
• Brilliant email marketing features that make it easy to attract new business

Summary Aimed at SMEs, HubSpot Free is an innovative CRM solution that offers lots of add-ons to supplement its core focus on email and marketing outreach. Because of this, it doesn't have as much feature depth as other products. However, advanced UX-focused tools like its live and historical data sync mean it's an intuitive and affordable CRM choice.

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Even with the rise in social media marketing and social commerce, email marketing is still proving to be a strong medium for retail businesses.

After all, Omnisend reports that automated emails have a 52% higher open rate, 332% click rate and a better conversion rate by 2,361%.

What makes HubSpot Free best for retail email marketing?

Marketing tools are, without a doubt, HubSpot’s bread and butter. Users can get:

• Bulk emails for automated marketing and outreach
• Email analytics to see who’s engaging with your content
• Contact list segmentation to record your customers’ details and send them personalised messaging

The HubSpot email design editor is also very sophisticated. Drag and drop functionality means you can edit every section – including adding videos and images – to design the perfect newsletter, welcome message, or promotional offer.

This focus on email marketing means that if you’re a retailer with lots of new product launches (e.g. cosmetics company), then HubSpot Free will be particularly useful.

However, its biggest drawback is that each email is watermarked. You’ll need to upgrade to HubSpot’s more advanced plan, HubSpot Marketing Hub, to apply your own branding.

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot is our most generous CRM platform for pricing. Its full-featured free platform permits an unlimited number of users – matching most premium options.

For paid-for tiers, you’ll have a choice between three business strategies, each with a Starter plan, as well as the free tier:

• HubSpot Free: £0 per month
• HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter Plan: £9 per user, per month (billed annually)
• HubSpot Sales Hub Starter: £9 per user, per month (billed annually)
• HubSpot Service Hub Starter: £9 per user, per month (billed annually)

What did researcher James Macey say about HubSpot?

``Hubspot has an email design editor. Using drag and drop functionality to add, move, and remove different sections. You’re provided with 5 different templates. Two of which are purely text so they’re not exactly worth using. The other three are: Welcome, Promotion, and Newsletter. Hubspot does intend you to use its email builder as a marketing tool.``

Pipedrive: best for dropshipping

Pipedrive

4.3

Functional CRM platform that's competitively priced.

Read our review of Pipedrive

• Free trial 14-day
• Price from £14 per user

• Integrates with tons of third-party apps
• Intuitive interface focuses on user experience

Summary We think Pipedrive stands out for its huge list of third-party add-ons and integrations – which makes this software a smart choice for small firms with lots of existing resources. The platform’s lowest-tiered plan costs £12.50 per user, per month, and gives you powerful features such as email integration, goal tracking, reporting, and forecasting.

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Dropshipping is an extremely low-maintenance way of selling online. If you’re a small dropshipping business, then you likely want an easy-to-manage sales system – and Pipedrive fits the bill.

What makes Pipedrive best for dropshipping?

We gave Pipedrive full marks for usability and integrations, thanks to its smartly designed interface and huge army of over 300 native integrations.

The platform can be used in collaboration with:

• Ecommerce website builders like Shopify
• Accounting software like Xero and Quickbooks
• Communication tools like Slack and Gmail
• Project management platforms like Asana and Trello

We also found Pipedrive was exceptional for setting up an automated sales assistant using chatbots. It took our users just 1 minute and 20 seconds to set up a chatbot using Pipedrive. Given the high risk of shipping delays involved in dropshipping, this is really useful for answering customer queries or concerns with minimal resources.

Pipedrive pricing

Costing £14 per user, per month for its lowest-priced tier, Pipedrive sits in the middle of the CRM cost spectrum.

Its tiers are nicely spaced in terms of cost, making it a good scalable option for businesses with growth plans.

• Pipedrive Essential: £14 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Advanced: £39 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Professional: £49 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Power: £64 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Pipedrive Enterprise: £99 per user, per month (billed annually)

What did researcher James Macey say about Pipedrive?

``Pipedrive has included integration with Slack, Trello, and Teams within its automation builder. This provides a useful way of streamlining information across multiple platforms. However, it is disappointing that you cannot fully customise the contact information form. This can make the experience less tailored to the user.``

Freshsales: best for high street retailers

Freshsales Suite

4.5

Freshsales' huge list of features means you'll never be caught short when it comes to CRM.

• Free trial? Yes

• Brilliant customer support
• Automated workflows make managing work easy

Summary Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM) organises your customer and sales processes into one easy-to-use platform – from sales and marketing to data management. It boasts a genuinely impressive list of features, including an advanced AI tool, and is unparalleled in terms of the number of capabilities.

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Freshsales was one of our highest-scoring CRM systems for usability, and our number one choice for small business CRM, which makes it an excellent choice for less tech-savvy retailers that are based offline.

What makes Freshsales best for high street retailers?

The platform is really useful for simplifying basic CRM admin tasks. For instance:

• Contact management took just six minutes to input all of our mock customer data into Freshsales’ dashboard.
• The ability to see a contact’s recent activity (and any associated notes), letting you effortlessly engage leads with personalised emails and special offers.
• Its smart automation feature, “Freddy AI”, gives each contact an automated lead score based on your data to calculate whether they’re a lead worth pursuing.

For high street stores, Freshsales‘ ease of use and automation are especially beneficial. In cases where staff are juggling multiple roles, Freshsales lets employees quickly manage customer info and follow up without needing specialised tech skills. In turn, stores can deliver personal services and boost sales without extra hiring or training costs.

Freshsales pricing

Costing £7 per user, per month (billed annually), Freshsales is competitively priced. However, one drawback with Freshsales is that you’ll need to invest in more expensive paid-for plans to avoid its feature limitations.

• Freshsales Free: £0
• Freshsales Growth: £7 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Freshsales Pro: £29 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Freshsales Enterprise: £49 per user, per month (billed annually)

What did researcher James Macey say about Freshsales?

``Freshsales guide their users through the main set-up. This includes the data import, email connection, adding users, and customising the pipeline. Because you’re effectively signposted and given step-by-step direction, it becomes a quick process.``

Zendesk: best for shopping appointment bookings

Zendesk

4.1

Strong business support tools and high-performing features make Zendesk a good option for SMEs providing specialist services

• Free trial 30-day
• Price from £15 per month

• Long list of integrations
• Excellent analytics tools
• Unparalleled support services

Summary Zendesk is a powerful name in the business software market and it has a fantastic array of integrations, spanning across a huge range of categories including analytics and reporting, e-commerce, email and social Media, IT and project management, and tons more. Perhaps Zendesk’s best known feature however, is its excellent support tools. New users at any payment tier can utilise a vast library of handy materials including onboarding and adoption resources, guided learning paths, and on-demand training courses.

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Efficient appointment scheduling can have a significant impact on both customer engagement and sales. According to WiFiTalents, businesses that implement online scheduling see an increase of 20-30% in appointment bookings.

What makes Zendesk best for shopping appointment bookings?

Specialist, user-focused retailers require a CRM software that focuses most on scheduling appointments and organising calendars.

So if you’re a jeweller selling engagement rings or a curator selling high-ticket paintings, Zendesk can nurture your customer relationships with lots of bespoke tools and time management features, including:

• Calendar
• Meeting scheduling
• Meeting reminders
• Integrated email
• Integrated communication apps

You can also view sales opportunities organised into different stages of a pipeline using Zendesk ‘deals’. Adding a new deal is simply a matter of completing a form with the relevant details.

To create an even more bespoke user journey, Zendesk also permits web forms. Web forms are hosted on your website and then filled in by the customer to enable tailored shopping experiences.

Zendesk Sell pricing

At £19 per user, per month, Zendesk Sell is a slightly pricier product than budget-friendly retail CRMs like monday CRM.

However, if you’re an experience-led retailer, you’ll need a premium CRM to offer truly premium customer service.

• 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)
• Zendesk Suite Enterprise: bespoke pricing

What did researcher James Macey say about Zendesk?

``Zendesk has a sleek and responsive interface which is easy to navigate. All the steps for set-up are made quite straightforward as users are given a clear, uncluttered interface.``

Salesforce: best for reporting

Salesforce

3.8

Best-suited to larger sales teams, Salesforce Starter Suite is a high-performing three-in-one CRM product - that comes at a high price.

Read our review of Salesforce

• Free trial? Yes

• Hundreds of prebuilt charts and template options for a quick overview of your sales pipeline
• Our highest-scoring CRM software for organisational tools and contact management

Summary Salesforce Starter Suite is like a box of neopolitan ice cream. It mixes three small versions of its main CRM products: Marketing, Sales, and Service into one tempting combo, offering SMEs an all-in-one customer management solution. Costing £20 per month, per user, it's not the most wallet-friendly option. But our expert researchers give it 3.8 out of 5 overall thanks to its impressive usability and long feature list.

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Salesforce is designed for larger organisations. If your business is a startup or has fewer than 10 employees, Salesforce is not for you.

For retailers with bigger teams and large sales volumes, reporting is a key priority. Therefore, you’ll need to make sure data on things like stock levels, turnover, and inventory value is as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

These types of analytics are crucial for monitoring turnover and ensuring you never run out of products.

What makes Salesforce best for reporting?

Very few retail CRMs do this job better than Salesforce, simply because it has every type of reporting style under the sun. These include:

• Deal reports 
• Activity reports 
• Lead reports 
• Custom reports 
• Recurring revenue reports

If you’re based online, you can also gather email insights and track website visitors. This means Salesforce users are able to know exactly how many people are using your service and what products they are most interested in.

Salesforce pricing

Salesforce has two primary plans for small retail businesses – its Starter Suite and Pro Suite, each with a different level of features and flexibility.

• Salesforce Starter Suite: £20 per user, per month (billed monthly or annually)
• Salesforce Pro Suite: £80 per user, per month (billed annually)

What did researcher James Macey say about Salesforce?

``In Salesforce, it is quite easy to organise the customer service cases. Each are assigned a specific number automatically and the date at which the case was created is automatically recorded as well.``

Bigin by Zoho: best for retail side hustles

Zoho Bigin

4.3

Bigin by Zoho CRM is a cheap and cheerful CRM solution that's designed to carry out basic CRM tasks.

• Free trial? Yes
• Price from £5 per user or free plan

• Data extraction from Facebook and LinkedIn is effortless
• Fantastic for beginners that are just starting out in CRM

Summary Bigin is a pipeline-centric CRM that is built and priced for small businesses. The platform's helps businesses move away from spreadsheets and allows them to get started with a CRM in under 30 minutes. As an incredibly easy-to-use system, it's great for getting started without any training. However, users should be wary that the system is not well-equipped for more advanced CRM functions.

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Side hustles aren’t just a passing trend – they’re a real way people are starting a business to explore their passions, while making some extra cash.

According to statistics reported by Images Magazine, 39% of new UK businesses surveyed started as side hustles.

What makes Bigin best for retail side hustles?

If you’re running a retail side hustle – such as selling your own handmade goods on Etsy or at a local market stall – you need a low-budget, low-maintenance CRM system that can take care of CRM tasks while you are busy with your primary job.

The Bigin platform helps businesses:

• Set up workflow automations in three easy steps, helping you cut down on redundant daily work (e.g. adding new contacts, updating a deal’s progress, and sending welcome emails).
• Use the chart builder to represent pretty much any data point.

Bigin is also above-average at customisation – an area where fellow budget CRM, HubSpot, underperforms in comparison. That’s also why we made Bigin one of our top HubSpot alternatives for SMEs.

Bigin by Zoho pricing

At just £5 per user, per month, Zoho Bigin Express is the platform’s cheapest CRM plan. We think it’s a great deal for retail side hustles with generous allowances including:

• 50,000 records
• Three pipelines
• 10 workflows
• 10 custom fields

Beyond this tier, there are the following Bigin plans:

• Bigin Premier: £10 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Bigin 360: £15 per user, per month (billed annually)

What did researcher James Macey say about Bigin by Zoho?

``Creation of the sales opportunity was very straightforward compared to creating a new contact. This is because it had less preset fields that were clogging the screen. It kept only the most relevant which made inputting data faster. More fields can be added in the options as well.``

How do I choose the right CRM for my retail business?

Identifying the best CRM for retail is a difficult task. Luckily, thanks to our militant work, we’re experts on the subject and know what factors you should consider. These include:

1. The size of your business

Whether you’re an independent startup, an established business, or a small franchise, this will have an impact on your CRM choice. For example, the latter requires managing multiple departments, so you’ll need a customisable CRM that can provide a range of presentation styles, like monday CRM.

On the other hand, smaller, independent retailers should focus on marketing and brand building, so HubSpot might be the better choice.

2. Your budget

The current cost-of-living crisis, plus the increase in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and other costs, has meant SMEs are more squeezed than ever.

Finding a low-cost CRM system, like Zoho Bigin, is crucial if you don’t have a big IT budget to spend.

On the other hand, for those with bigger budgets, premium offerings like Zendesk Suite Team or Professional will be able to grow alongside your business, thanks to larger user allowances.

3. The CRM’s features and functionality

Depending on your priorities, you’ll want to explore how well the CRMs you’re interested in can help you:

• Attract new customers and satisfy existing ones: generating new leads for your business – along with ensuring customer loyalty – is crucial for driving revenue. Email marketing is a must for brand building and encouraging new clicks.
• Take an omnichannel sales approach: you want to create as many revenue streams as possible, both on and offline, so that customers from every possible source can purchase your product.
• Create a B2C support channel: communication is fundamental for CRM, whether you’re dealing with a customer complaint or providing help and support. Publicising promotional offers and discounts is also an important way to increase sales.
• Identify new sales opportunities: CRMs can act as essential storage to keep customer information secure. Through their data analytics tools, you can also use retail CRMs to learn more about who your target audience is and how to reach them.

4. Your product range

Larger businesses with wide product ranges will have bigger sales volumes. If this is the case, you need a platform like Salesforce that can handle large inventories and offers smart reporting tools.

5. Your trading location

If your business is based offline – for example you’re a high street florist – you’ll need a system you can jump onto quickly and make changes to easily. Our top system for usability is Freshsales.

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

Next steps

From budget-friendly solutions like Bigin by Zoho for side hustlers to more advanced, feature-rich platforms like Salesforce for bigger retailers, there’s definitely a CRM out there to fit your unique needs.

For your next steps, start by listing your must-have features and current budget. From there, try out free trials or demos wherever possible to test the platforms out and see which CRM feels right for your daily operations.

Whatever you go for, just remember that the best CRM is one that helps you connect better with customers, simplify your sales, and ultimately grow your business smoothly.