Free software will keep budgets down – but can you be sure there are no hidden costs? We list the top CRM systems that are actually free to use.
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Freshsales — best overall
Zoho CRM Free — best for client services
HubSpot Free — best for small sales teams
Having the best CRM software can be a lifesaver but, with so many options, finding the best free CRM that matches your specific business needs and objectives can feel overwhelming.
Our expert research team has found the best free customer relationship management (CRM) tools that can do it all with zero hidden fees, whether that’s lead generation, outreach or onboarding.
Each of the above recommendations has been chosen to address SME pain points (like ease-of-use), so you don’t have to waste time figuring out complicated software, plus find a budget-friendly solution that will simplify your customer processes and drive growth.
- Freshsales comes out on top for the generous amount of features available in its free plan, such as an AI chatbot, built-in phone and website visitor tracking.
- HubSpot Free is the best choice for businesses prioritising email marketing campaigns and lead generation, as it includes a built-in email inbox and custom templates.
- Free CRM software works best for microbusinesses and sole traders, but not for scaling businesses that may need more advanced features.
- Most free plans won’t offer accounting tools, unlimited users or social media integration.
- If you’re looking to upgrade your CRM platform, you can expect to pay between £7 and £49 per month for a paid plan.
On this date, all the pricing information in this article was verified as accurate. However, we always recommend confirming any pricing directly with CRM providers before making a purchasing decision for your business.
This article will cover:
After working with SMEs for 20 years, we know the challenges are different from bigger companies – especially when it comes to budget, which can mean missing out on key CRM features. So, with help from an independent researcher, we reviewed 11 CRM systems using five key criteria tailored to small business needs:
- Pricing: what is the best low-budget CRM system?
- Functionality: what features will you get for your budget?
- Usability: is it something you can easily learn how to use?
- Customisation: will you have more creative control over your CRM system?
- Help and support: will you get guidance on setting up your CRM system?
How we evaluate and test free CRM apps We then picked out the top CRM systems with a free plan, and carried out basic CRM tasks to judge how well each performed. These were:
- Feature limitations (e.g. number of monthly emails permitted for free)
- Helpdesk (e.g. what help and support features were available for free)
- Marketing capabilities (e.g. if it is possible to send an email campaign for free)
- Sales functions (e.g. how long it took to upload a list of contacts)
Best free CRM software for small businesses
Based on extensive analysis of the best CRM systems on the market, involving thorough user testing and months of research, here are the top three completely free options we would recommend to small business owners:
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Best for:
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Verdict:
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BEST OVERALL
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Small agencies |
Established businesses with long client lists |
Building email marketing campaigns |
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Freshsales’ feature list is among the most comprehensive in the free tier, covering tools like an AI chatbot, built-in phone, and automated tasks |
Zoho CRM’s free platform has generous reporting tools that beat even some paid tiers |
HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM tool that’s great for marketing and outreach – two areas that are important for business growth |
We’ll take a detailed dive into each of these choices, below. As well as explaining what you get with the free tier, we’ll explain the benefits of upgrading and the costs of the paid plans.
1. Freshsales Suite: best free CRM with up to three users
Freshsales CRM Free
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Free trial?
Yes
- Wide range of customer support channels for onboarding help
- Excellent feature list for website selling, including AI chatbot builder
- Navigational guides and walkthroughs make it easy to master the platform
Summary
Freshsales empowers ecommerce businesses with a comprehensive remote sales toolkit, including website chatbots for automated lead qualification and a built-in phone system for seamless customer communication. While the platform boasts a user-centric interface and readily available customer support, the free plan lacks native email campaign functionality. For businesses requiring robust email marketing features, solutions like HubSpot may offer a more suitable fit.We recommend Freshsales as the best free CRM for small ecommerce companies that sell entirely online, like dropshippers.
Online sellers rely on CRM software to ensure a smooth and responsive customer experience. Freshsales’ advanced chatbot and AI tools enable it to act as a central hub for managing all customer communication from your online store, ensuring that every query or potential lead is responded to promptly.
Freshsales’ free plan offers a generous amount of website and phone sales tools, which is very helpful for businesses on a tight budget. Amongst the specific features for remote selling, Freshsales users can:
- Set up a website chatbot and respond to queries
- Set up an AI chatbot with pre-trained responses
- Take and receive customer calls through the built-in phone
- Track website visitor numbers
- Automate tasks in the workflow template (pictured below)
What do you get with Freshsales’ free plan?
- Ease-of-use: navigating new software can be confusing, particularly given Freshsales’ long list of features. However, its “launchpad” function (shown as a rocket ship in the sidebar) acts as a feature search engine, allowing businesses to find what they need quickly.
- Customer support: users can contact Freshsales’ support via phone and email (neither of which is offered by HubSpot, while Zoho only has email support). Most notably, the Freshdesk help desk is open all day, five days a week, in the event of a CRM emergency.
What don’t you get with Freshsales’ free plan?
- Unlimited users: Freshsales’ free plan has a user cap of three employees. While this works for solopreneurs, growing businesses will need to upgrade to a paid tier to scale their team.
- Email features: Freshsales lacks built-in email templates and doesn’t support sending emails directly from the platform, adding unnecessary admin time for online sellers running short seasonal promotions. As one tester put it: “My email campaign is plain unless I spend time designing it.”
- Omnichannel selling: Freshsales’ omnichannel features are only available on the paid-for tier, Freshsales Growth (£7 per user, per month). If you sell on multiple channels, it may be worth the upgrade to get integrations with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and SMS chat.
- Offers a website and AI chatbot to respond to queries
- Teams can take calls through the built-in phone
- You can track the number of website visitors
- Automates tasks in the workflow template
- Only allows up to three users
- Doesn't offer email marketing features (e.g. ready-made templates)
- Doesn't offer omnichannel selling
In March 2025, Freshsales announced a new functionality to its AI tool, Freddy AI.
Freddy AI now generates bite-sized overviews on Contact and Account pages – showing recent email interactions (with sentiment analysis), latest notes and any active deals, all in one place.
There’s a need for a clearer, faster way to work with customer data, especially for SMEs and ecommerce teams handling a lot of leads. This aligns with the wider CRM trend of creating “at-a-glance” dashboards and summaries that keep workflows simple.
After all, 80% of companies are expected to adopt intelligent automation in 2025, meaning that tools like Freddy AI’s Account and Contact summaries are becoming a must-have for most businesses.
How much does Freshsales cost?
Freshsales Growth is the platform’s lowest-priced paid tier. It offers email marketing and omnichannel tools; both of which are advantageous for expanding ecommerce operations without forking out too much.
- 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)
Pricing correct as of November 2025.
Is Freshsales right for my business?
- If you’re an ecommerce business that sells predominantly through your website
- For teams bigger than three or businesses that need access to email marketing tools
“Freshsales lets us sell without getting in the way of selling. It helps us manage our customers better, so we can focus on what we do best.”
– Simon Shanks, head of sales at Synergy Enterprise Solutions [source]
2. Zoho CRM: best for client services
Zoho CRM Free
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Free trial?
Yes
- Excellent onboarding and support functions to make setup simple
- Scalable range of pricing tiers that won't break the bank if you decide to upgrade
- Excellent contact management features that are also fully customisable
Summary
Zoho Free offers a solid base for managing sales pipelines and capturing leads. Its impressive data and reporting features – it can generate leads reports, deals reports and activity reports – caters to a company's specific sales process. It requires more effort to learn than competitors, with a multitude of features and fields that might overwhelm new users. But for those with the time and resources to master it, Zoho Free is the ideal tool.Zoho CRM delivers powerful data storage and organisation features at a very affordable cost, which makes it the ideal solution for client service firms like plumbers or gyms and fitness centres with up to three team members.
If your sales cycle is highly specific, but you still need a cost-effective CRM, Zoho could be a great choice. Our testers found that Zoho’s customisable layouts can effectively manage client accounts, track billing, and input new contacts or members – all for a low cost.
Zoho’s intuitive account management features meant we were able to easily add new contacts or amend their details. Source: Zoho
What do you get with Zoho’s free plan?
- Organisation: users can quickly set up and customise their sales process in the “Setup” tab by creating a pipeline layout. Customers are then moved through each stage with Zoho’s simple drag-and-drop tool, ensuring no steps are missed.
- Webforms: unlike Freshsales, Zoho lets users embed up to three webforms on their website, allowing service-based businesses to capture leads from potential customers and start building relationships early on in the sales process.
- Onboarding: our testers tried out Set Up Your CRM, a checklist that takes users through the Zoho CRM setup process, and Quick Create, a tool that allows businesses to upload contact information in seconds. Both were deemed helpful for someone new to the software.
What don’t you get with Zoho’s free plan?
- Ease-of-use: Zoho has a steeper learning curve than HubSpot and Freshsales. Its many sections and fields made it easy to get lost during testing, and while help guides are available, some were outdated and inaccurate.
- Quotes: service firms often need to send professional quotes or invoices to prospective clients, and Zoho unfortunately cannot perform either of these tasks.
- Integrations: Zoho CRM (and Freshsales, for that matter) lacks ready-made integrations, such as accounting software. HubSpot, in comparison, integrates with 47 accounting software apps.
- Offers a customisable sales process
- Allows up to three webforms
- Provides onboarding tools (Set Up Your CRM and Quick Create)
- Not user-friendly (steeper learning curve)
- Doesn't provide quotes and invoices
- Doesn't have ready-made integrations with accounting software
Zoho has introduced a number of new updates in Q1 2025, including its new “Team Selling” and “Deal Split” features to improve collaboration. Team Selling allows multiple team members to collaborate on a single deal by giving them the right access and visibility. Rather than just one deal owner handling everything, the whole team can pitch in – adding notes, tracking progress, and sharing key updates seamlessly within the CRM. Deal Split lets you divide the revenue from a deal fairly among team members based on how much they’ve contributed. The two types of splits are:
- Revenue split: for team members directly involved in closing the deal, who get credit based on the actual deal amount.
- Overlay split: for those who influenced the deal indirectly, giving them a share of credit without it being tied to the deal value.
This can be linked to the trend of boosting collaboration and transparency. With 78% of sales leaders in 2024 reporting a “collaboration” drag, plus 50% of CRM projects failing due to a lack of cross-functional coordination, there’s a clear need for tools that break down silos and get everyone working from the same page.
How much does Zoho cost?
Zoho Standard is the lowest-priced paid tier. As with Freshsales Growth, it unlocks access to an email inbox, so it’s worth the upgrade if you use email to communicate with clients.
- Zoho Free: £0
- Zoho Standard: £12 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Zoho Professional: £18 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Zoho Enterprise: £35 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Zoho Ultimate: £42 per user, per month (billed annually)
Pricing correct as of November 2025.
Is Zoho right for my business?
- If you work with clients and need a bespoke sales cycle to match their needs
- If you have a simple sales cycle (e.g. retail) and don’t need a customisable CRM
“Zoho CRM helps me sell the idea of mental health and well-being. It has become an integral part of our business that we would love to keep working with as we grow. This is how optimistic I am about our partnership with Zoho.”
– Daph Bajas, head of sales and partnerships at MindNation [source]
3. HubSpot Free: best for small sales teams
HubSpot CRM Free
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Free trial?
Yes
- Over 100 integrations to slot perfectly into your existing business technology
- Brilliant email marketing features that make it easy to attract new business
- The only free CRM we reviewed that offered social media integration
Summary
HubSpot offers a free CRM plan with lead generation tools (such as social media integration, task automation, and revenue tracking) that make it ideal for sales teams. The free plan allows for a massive number of contacts (1 million). However, data import can be time-consuming and customer support is limited to forums. If you are a tech-savvy sales team needing advanced lead generation tools, HubSpot is a good option.HubSpot is already well-known for its marketing muscle, which is certainly not to be scoffed at. But its free plan packs another secret weapon: lead generation, making it the ideal free CRM for very small sales teams on a budget.
Amongst its smart set of tools for closing deals (none of which are available with Freshsales Free or Zoho Free), HubSpot:
- Integrates with Facebook and Instagram to qualify leads you won’t find elsewhere
- Builds and sends professional quotes, streamlining your closing process
- Integrates with ecommerce platforms to track and report on revenue streams
- Boasts a massive contact limit of one million (compared with Zoho’s 5,000)
What do you get with HubSpot’s free plan?
- Email marketing: HubSpot has an in-built email inbox that sales teams can use to send emails directly to leads and customers. It can also schedule auto responses. For example, a welcome email can introduce new subscribers to a business’ offering. That said, emails sent from HubSpot include HubSpot branding, which may appear unprofessional to clients.
- Integrations: with over 2,000 integrations, HubSpot can link with third-party ecommerce platforms, accounting software, and messaging apps to ensure customer data (like purchase history) is available to everyone, eliminating the need to switch between systems.
- Automations: our testers highlighted HubSpot’s automated workflows (like sending follow-up emails or assigning tasks to sales reps) as being confusing to use initially, but invaluable for resource-stretched sales and marketing teams operating at scale. Ensuring leads are nurtured and followed up promptly will increase the likelihood of conversion.
What don’t you get with HubSpot’s free plan?
- Data import: migrating data into HubSpot was slow (17.5 minutes versus under six for Freshsales) and only worked with single-tab spreadsheets. Excel files also had to be downloaded and re-uploaded.
- Customer support: our testers noted limited on-screen guidance and constant roadblocks. With no email or live chat support, users are left to rely on HubSpot’s community forums, which can be time-consuming and may not offer the exact answers needed.
- User allowance: HubSpot only lets one account user be logged into the platform at any time, which could create difficulties for larger sales teams. Those with three or fewer employees should be able to use the platform without too much hassle, however.
- Integrates with hundreds of third-party platforms
- Has automated workflows
- Complicated data importing
- Lack of customer support
- Only allows one user to be logged into the platform at once
Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform, HubSpot’s deep research connector lets you ask AI questions about your HubSpot data and get instant, useful answers.
So, instead of spending time going through endless dashboards and reports, you can ask things like:
- “Which deals are likely to close this month?”
- “Which customers haven’t been contacted in 90 days?”
- “Where are most of our support tickets coming from?”
It connects directly to your CRM (securely), reads the info, and gives you easy-to-understand insights – a bit like having a built-in analyst that understands your business.
56% of businesses already see chatbot technology as a transformative force, so HubSpot’s latest feature can tap into a new need for chat-based interfaces that allow non-technical users to ask plain-English questions and get real-time answers.
How much does HubSpot cost?
HubSpot Free is designed to perform all the core CRM functions like contact management and email campaigning.
It also has three department-specific packages for sales teams, service hubs and marketers, priced at a flat rate of £18 per user, per month.
However, its separate starter plans are:
- HubSpot Free: £0 per month
- Marketing Hub Starter: £9 per seat, per month
- Sales Hub Starter: £9 per seat, per month
- HubSpot Service Hub Starter: £9 per seat, per month
Pricing correct as of November 2025.
Is HubSpot right for my business?
- If you’re a small sales team with a need for advanced lead generation tools
- If you’re not tech-savvy and want a CRM you can get started with quickly
“Our goal is to grow in the payment sector, reach new markets, and improve our product. I think HubSpot will help us reach our goals because it can support basically every business request that will get us there.”
– Yonatan Bar Or, marketing operations & growth team leader at Papaya Global [source]
What types of businesses should use free CRM software?
The best free CRM is an excellent option for small or microbusinesses, or even for sole traders. These tools tend to lack certain key features, but companies that are just starting out and don’t have lots of team members or a large customer database will find free plans suitable.
Once a company starts scaling, it will need to begin paying for a CRM tool that can support larger growth objectives. For example, a free CRM tends to limit the number of users, while a paid-for CRM will allow an unlimited number of sales reps or marketers to use the platform.
Are there limitations to free CRM software?
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the free versions of business tools aren’t sufficient for long-term use for a growing business. Here are some CRM features that a free tier generally won’t give you:
1. Accounting: accounting features are essential to monitor things like invoice tracking, client budgeting, and billing. Due to how important this area is, most brands only offer it on paid-for tiers.
2. Unlimited users: most freemium tiers put a cap on your employees to ensure that, as your company scales, you are investing more in your providers.
3. Social media integration: social media allows teams to leverage social information to understand and engage customers, gain market insights, and provide better customer service. It is almost never available for free.
4. Reduced customer service: we don’t just mean a help desk – as this list proves, brands like Freshsales have plenty of different customer service options for zero charge. Still, most paid tiers make free users a low-priority for support and lack channels like live chat.
Next steps
A freemium plan is great for startups or sole traders who are just starting out. But business owners should be aware that managing customer relationships is an important aspect of running a company and requires proper investment for long-term growth and success.
With this in mind, we’ve also told you about the best free trials available, so you can test the top brands without jeopardising your budget.
Related reading
Best CRM systems, at a glance
| Freshsales | Zoho CRM | HubSpot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business size | Up to three users | Up to three users | Up to five users |
| Data limit | 1GB | 1GB | 20MB (per record) |
| Integrations | Freshdesk, Freshworks, Zapier, Mailchimp, Google Apps, LinkedIn Sales Navigator | Zoho Creator, Zoho Books, Zoho Campaigns, Google Workspace | Gmail, Outlook, WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Shopline |
| Mobile app? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| GDPR-compliant? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI features | Lead and contact scoring, deal insights, duplicate detection, out-of-office detection, sentiment analysis, chatbots, predictive forecasting, email composition | SDR agent, sales coach agent, field prediction builder, anomaly detection, smart communication insights, email sentiment and subject suggestions | Knowledge base agent, customer agent, content agent, prospecting agent, sales forecasting, AI-generated regex, insights and co-pilot enhancements, meet assistant, list descriptions |
HubSpot is the strongest option for marketing, as its free plan includes a built-in email inbox and customisable templates.
This depends on your team’s needs. For example, Freshsales is praised for its extensive features and suitability for teams with complicated sales pipelines. Meanwhile, HubSpot is a good choice for lead generation and outreach.
Yes. All CRM platforms on this article offer free mobile apps, available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Freshsales and Zoho CRM’s free plans allow up to three users, while HubSpot free has a cap of two users.
This depends on what platform you use. However, free plans typically don’t include unlimited users, advanced features (like email marketing), dedicated customer support (like live chat or phone support) and specialised features such as built-in accounting or full-featured email campaign builders.
