After the words and spreadsheet docs, one of the widely used software by a variety of companies is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. This software assists in managing customer profiles for sales, marketing, and support activities. It comes with features like workflow automation, contact management, and more.
Below we have calculated the cost of CRM and compiled a list of cheap CRM packages of various CRM software.
How much does a CRM cost
On the surface, it seems that CRMs have just one cost where you have to buy the system and implement it, but with the need to integrate other applications and customizations for your particular business processes, the cost easily swells up.
CRM cost for small businesses comes around $10 to $50, which mostly are free or basic plans. A small business or one of the best CRM systems for startups can expect features like contact management, sales tracking, and reporting tools.
Whereas for mid-sized businesses the CRM solution has to be more advanced to manage their growing needs. The cost for this segment comes to around $100 per user per month. Here the mid-sized businesses get advanced automation, elaborative reporting, limitless customization, and a wide range of business tools. These businesses primarily focus on scalability, advanced analytics, and customization.
Lastly, the cost of a CRM is much higher for a larger business as larger capabilities like advanced security features, extensive customizations, AI, and predictive analytics, and integration with a wide range of enterprise applications are required. In these feature-rich categories, the most expensive solutions start at $150 and easily scale up.
CRM pricing models
A variety of CRM pricing models are available and widely adopted. These are:
Free plans
Not all but a few CRMs provide free plans that comprise contact management, email tracking, and task organization. HubSpot free or freemium CRM is the leader in this category making it ideal for small businesses or best CRM systems for startups.
Tiered pricing
Most of the CRMs offer a tiered pricing structure for their subscription-based models. These often unlock various advanced features for small to mid-sized businesses like upgrading storage, inventory management, integrations, and more.
Professional and Enterprise plans
These are high-valued packages that are designed for companies ready to expand fully to CRM. There are features that include deeper analytics, workflow customization, custom automation, and artificial intelligence at an added cost.
CRM pricing factors
There are a number of factors considered when CRM companies are aiming to set up cheap CRM packages, that often come down to a cost. These variables are:
Number of users
Each plan offers a maximum and minimum number of users. Thus there are per-user rates for each plan.
Deployment type
CRM has two deployment options. These are on-premises, where you buy the software, and store the data on your premises and the other is on-cloud. In the on-cloud deployment model, you buy the software and store your data in shared cloud storage. This makes upgrading or downgrading the storage as you require.
Features packages
Each tier includes various features. With high-priced tiers offering advanced features like AI generative and predictive capabilities.
Integration costs
Setting up certain integrations requires additional costs, these can be third-party integrations that you have to buy. Or you might require assistance from CRM developers to implement integrations.
Data storage
Some CRMs make you buy data storage like SuiteCRM which offers you to buy hosting or if you’re going for on-premises or cloud-based storage you’ll require that.
Customizations
Customizing CRMs comes at an additional cost requiring the technical expertise of CRM from the CRM experts.
Ongoing maintenance
CRMs have ongoing maintenance costs related to data management, customization, employee training, and technical support.
CRM software cost for Businesses
CRM software cost is not just the cost of buying a CRM or subscribing to a certain package teir that you’ll pay monthly or yearly. It also includes the following costs:
CRM Implementation
Finally when you’ve decided on which CRM you're going for, what package suits you, and more, it is time to implement that CRM solution company-wide. The implementation plan depends on a variety of factors the company, the complexity of the CRM, and your setup.
Setup and data migration fees
Once the CRM software is bought, it's time to configure its settings to your requirements. This ensures that you get the right ROI from the CRM. Furthermore, there might be additional costs to migrate the data from a legacy system or another CRM that your company might have been using earlier.
Training
After setting up CRM, it's time to move teams to CRM. In this adoption phase, you will first need to train your staff. The additional cost is the time it will take for your teams, and users to get used to it. In a bigger company, you might want to roll out in phases, teams-wise for a smooth adoption. However, in a smaller team, you can roll out the CRM company-wide at once and it will be much quicker and more efficient.
Integrations
After the company-wide adoption of CRM, you might observe that you require a few integrations and customization to structure your operational efficiency. For these customizations and integrations, you can take the assistance of expert CRM developers.
Affordable CRM software
Below we have compiled inexpensive CRM software for small businesses to large corporations.
Salesforce Starter Suite
Salesforce is an affordable CRM software and has the best email communication tools to offer in the market. Its features include sending emails from the system, showing email insights, and generating auto-responses for thank you or order confirmation emails, etc. This makes engaging an extensive list of leads and customers a breeze.
Other features include scheduling meetings, reminders, and a calendar to keep track of your schedule. With elaborative contact management, you can set custom fields, list segmentation, and organize contacts, and information effectively.
Drawbacks:
The starter suite doesn’t include sales features.
Suited for:
Small teams and startups that prioritize email communications, like e-commerce, consultation firms for order confirmations, appointment scheduling, etc.
Price:
Affordable CRM software for small businesses, Salesforce Starter Suite, comes at around $25/user/month. For large corporations, consider buying a Salesforce sales cloud that starts around at $165/user/mo. You can view other Salesforce package prices here.
SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM is an open-source CRM, making it a highly cost-effective option for businesses of all sizes. Unlike many other CRMs with hefty price tags, SuiteCRM offers a free and open-source version that provides a solid foundation for managing customer relationships. This eliminates the need for recurring subscription fees, significantly reducing the overall costs.
SuiteCRM boasts a range of features like contact management, sales and marketing automation, and customer support. It offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the system to their specific needs and workflows.
Furthermore, SuiteCRM can be easily scaled to accommodate the business growth.
Drawbacks:
Technical expertise required for advanced customizations and integrations
Suited for:
SuiteCRM is an excellent choice for businesses looking for cheap CRM software, that gives maximum ROI. They further require customization for specific business workflows, and have access to CRM experts.
Price:
SuiteCRM is open source and thus is free to download, but has added costs for hosting, customizations, and integrations.
Zoho Professional CRM
Zoho CRM offers a comprehensive feature list and has a perfect customer service score. Zoho CRM’s professional platform sits kinda in the middle when it comes to finding affordable CRM software. It is packed with sales functionalities like visual pipelines, quotes, and invoices. It facilitates the quick generation of stock reports and invoices.
For subscription or service-based business, you can track transactions, subscriptions, and monitor expenses with customizable dashboards, to improve operational efficiency. In addition to this, it enhances operational efficiency with activity reports, meetings scheduled, ticket support, and workflow automation for data display.
Something that other affordable CRMs, in the free category, don’t offer is tailoring the sales pipeline. Zoho offers this customization to accommodate different business processes. There’s also the option to add custom fields during data import and other customizations based on project requirements.
Drawback:
Limited file storage of 20MB, per user and 10GB for the entire organization.
Suited for:
It is an affordable CRM software for small businesses and medium growing enterprises that are sales-driven. They will greatly benefit from features like data visualization, and extensive sales and contact management tools.
Price:
While Zoho CRM does offer a forever-free plan, the other packages like the standard package start at $14/user/mo annually.
HubSpot:
HubSpot offers the number one cheap CRM package. The free plan comes with a range of features, like contact management tools, and static and dynamic contact lists. You also get organizational features such as reminders and appointment scheduling for appointment management.
With HubSpot, it's not difficult to make well-polished emails that can be easily scheduled and automatically sent by the HubSpot email scheduling and tracking tool. Furthermore, you can generate auto-responses saving you a lot of time.
Drawbacks:
- A limited number of users, up to 2 (can be scaled with paid packages)
- Insufficient storage, 5 documents per person.
- Restricted customization with only 10 custom fields and no custom tasks or objects.
- The social media marketing feature is only available to paid plans.
Suited for:
HubSpots free plan is an inexpensive CRM software for small businesses startups and freelancers that have a small team, limited financial and technical resources, and need a simple tool to streamline sales pipelines. However medium to large businesses having simple processes and looking for highly intuitive interfaces can opt for HubSpots paid cheap CRM packages.
Free CRM Versions: A Feature Comparison
| Feature | HubSpot CRM | Zoho CRM Free | Salesforce Starter Suite | SuiteCRM Free |
| Contact Management | ✓ Basic | ✓ Basic | ✓ Basic | ✓ Basic |
| Contact Segmentation | ✓ Limited | ✓ Limited | ✓ Limited | ✓ Basic |
| Sales Pipeline | ✓ Basic | ✓ Basic | ✓ Limited | ✓ Basic |
| User Limits | 2 Users | 10 Users | 5 Users | No User Limit |
| Storage Limits | Limited | Limited | Limited | No Storage Limit (Requires Self-Hosting) |
| Customizations | Limited | Limited | Limited | Extensive |
| Integrations | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Mobile App | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Importance of affordability
Affordable CRMs don’t mean low-quality or inefficient cheapest CRM tools. It means having an affordable CRM, implying that you should be able to not only pay for the upfront costs but additional costs of implementation, training, ongoing maintenance, and customizations.
Not only having affordable CRM software for small businesses but also for big businesses that have various recurring costs.
So when choosing cheap CRM packages keep affordability in mind.
Selecting the Right CRM for your organization
The above-mentioned list gives you a starting point as to where to start your research when searching for cheap CRM packages. To make the right decision for your organization. Consider the following:
Identify needs
Make a list of all the problems, and operations that you are aiming to streamline via a CRM system. Keeping those problems upfront, look for a CRM that solves them.
Compare different options
Once you’ve narrowed your options to 2-3, you can compare and contrast different features that come in your range of affordable packages and then pick one. If you’re confused about options you can take a CRM consultation from experts and they can assist you.
Evaluate CRM integration with the existing system
Some CRMs have limitations when it comes to integrations. You need to check if CRM integrates with your existing system or if the existing system integrates with CRM.
Consider scalability and future growth
A key consideration is to be mindful of the CRM growing and scaling as your company grows.
User-friendliness and support
In order to make your team adopt your CRM quickly and smoothly your CRM must be user-friendly and intuitive. It should also provide support where required.
Conclusion
After going through all the affordable CRM software, we can confidently say that all plans offer the most value for money in terms of features. Other options also provide an impressive list of features but with added costs.
While considering these packages, going after the cheapest CRM software will not be entirely wise. Carefully consider your budget, identify your specific needs, and evaluate options like Salesforce Starter Suite, SuiteCRM, Zoho, and HubSpot, you can find affordable CRM software.
Need help finding the right CRM and implementing it effectively? Consider our team of CRM experts from RT Dynamic who can assist you with the following CRM services.
Implementation
Seamlessly integrate the chosen CRM into your business processes, and add other third-party applications.
Customization
Tailor the CRM to your unique requirements and workflows.
Integration
Connect your CRM with other essential business tools.
Training and support
Provide comprehensive training to your team and ongoing support to ensure successful CRM adoption.
Contact us today and let’s find inexpensive CRM software for your business.
