Top 7 Cheap CRM Systems for 2024: A Complete Guide

Most CRM software providers charge per user, per month, meaning that the cost of CRM can quickly add up. Luckily, there are affordable CRM systems out there, and we’ve tested 13 market-leading platforms to bring you this list of the best cheap CRM systems.

Based on our findings, Hubspot offers the best cheap CRM system. You might be surprised to see Hubspot top the list given its reputation for being pricey, but it has an excellent free CRM tool that’s much more functional than those offered by competitors such as Zoho, and a starting plan that costs just £11 per user, per month, less than the starting price of most competitors.

Known cheap providers such as Monday CRM and Zoho CRM still have a place on this list, and you can find out what they offer in our review.

If you’re short on time, you can find the most suitable cheap CRM software quickly and easily by using our free quote tool. Simply answer a few questions and we’ll match your business with the right CRM company.

1. HubSpot: Most Generous Free Plan

• Free plan: Yes
• Free trial: 30 days

Why we like Hubspot

HubSpot’s free plan is one of the most generous free plans on the CRM market, making it a great cheap solution for small businesses. Here are some of its highlights:

• Website visitor tracking, which can help you keep on top of your numbers
• A chatbot for your website (very rare on a free plan)
• An AI “copilot” that can give sales teams recommendations and insights on leads based on activity (also rare on a free plan)
• Loads of integrations, allowing for great customisation

Where Hubspot could improve

A few shortcomings of Hubspot’s free plan is its lack of customer support options (no phone, chat, or email support) and lack of lead scoring.

However, these missing features are available on HubSpot’s lowest paid plan, the £11 per user, per month Starter Customer Platform plan, which is cheaper than the starter plans offered by Zoho CRM (£12) and Pipedrive (£14).

The free plan also has a two-person user limit, and the Starter plan has a one-person limit, with each additional user costing £14 per month.

2. Zoho CRM: Best Value for Money

• Free plan: Yes
• Free trial: 15 days

Why we like Zoho CRM

Zoho offers the best value for money. Its two cheapest plans cost just £12 and £18 per user, per month respectively, less than Zendesk (£15 and £45) and Pipedrive’s (£14 and £34) equivalents, and features such as lead scoring and options to customise the platform on all plans.

Here’s what’s available on Zoho’s cheapest plans:

• Viewable data on sales reps and pipeline stages, which can show you weak and strong points
• A custom automation builder, which can allow certain tasks to be completed automatically
• Organisation features, including a unified inbox, calendar, task management, and team communication tools
• 250 mass email sends per user, per day

Where Zoho CRM could improve

While Zoho’s cheapest CRM plans are great value, that doesn’t mean they aren’t missing a few features. For example, file storage is limited to 10MB per user on the cheapest plan, whereas Freshales offers 2GB on its cheapest plan. Zoho’s webforms also don’t come with spam prevention, which means your campaigns could be missed by potential leads.

Lastly, when testing, we found Zoho slightly difficult to use, so it’s not the most suitable platform for beginners. A cheap alternative that’s beginner-friendly is Freshsales.

3. Freshsales: Cheap AI Tools

• Free plan: Yes
• Free trial: 21 days

Why we like Freshsales

At £7 per user, per month, Freshsales has the lowest-priced starting plan of any provider we tested. In addition to that, it also offers AI tools for a lower price than its competitors (besides Hubspot). On its £29 per user, per month Pro plan, you’ll get:

• AI lead scoring
• AI content generation for emails
• AI deals insights, to help you pinpoint which leads are ready to convert

For context, similar features are only available on Zoho’s £35 per user, per month plan. Freshsales also offers an AI chatbot builder on all its plans, even the £7 one. It can be used to answer questions from contacts and collect conversations to speed up lead nurturing.

Freshsales is also the easiest-to-use CRM system we tested. Paired with its affordability, it’s a great option for a first CRM system.

Where Freshsales could improve

Although Freshsales might have the cheapest starting plan, there’s quite a steep price jump between the £7 per user, per month you’ll pay on the Growth plan and the £29 you’ll pay on Pro, the next plan up. Competitors Zoho CRM and monday CRM have more expensive starter plans than Freshsales, but you’ll only pay a few pounds extra per month to upgrade with them.

Freshsales also has limited third-party integrations compared to competitors Zoho and Salesforce, which offer thousands. For example, there are no integrations for social media platforms like Facebook, so if you use these channels to capture leads, this will be an issue.

4. monday CRM: Most Customisable Platform

• Free plan: Yes
• Free trial: 14 days

Why we like monday CRM

With a price range of £10 to £24, Monday CRM is the cheapest CRM platform overall (aside from free plans) with its most expensive paid plan only £4 more than Salesforce’s starting plan.

Besides cheap plans, Monday CRM offers a highly customisable platform, perfect for businesses with a unique operational structure. You can get access to:

• A blank canvas of rows and columns, allowing you to customise your dashboard as you see fit
• Customisable sales pipeline, offering you full control over your business’ sales process
• Contact communication history and list segmentation, allowing you to keep on top of your customers at an individual level
• Web forms on all of your pages
• 250,000 actions per month for automating workflows on £24 per user per month Pro plan (Pipedrive only offers 100 on its equivalent)

Where monday CRM could improve

While it may be cheap, Monday does come with a smaller range of features than its more expensive competitors. For example, it’s missing lead scoring on all its plans and marketing features such as drip emails or social media integrations.

It also has quite a small chart library for data visualisations, nothing close to the variety your get with Salesforce or Zoho.

5. Salesforce: Best for Data Visualisation

• Free plan: No
• Free trial: 30 days

Why we like Salesforce

Salesforce isn’t known for its affordability, but its cheapest plan, the £20 per user per month Starter Suite is still cheap enough to earn this giant of the industry a spot on this list. You’ll also get a high level of functionality for the price, including excellent reporting and analytics tools. Here’s some of what’s included:

• A customisable sales pipeline allows you to craft a sales sequence that suits your business.
• Custom reports and a chart builder allow you to visualise and use your data to its fullest
• A user hierarchy and knowledge base that allows a solid grasp of your business’ inner workings
• Loads of integrations allow you to pick and choose tools that suit you
• Chat and email customer support

Where Salesforce could improve

Salesforce’s main flaw is the price. At £20 per user per month, its starting plan is almost double the price of most of its competitors. This isn’t helped by the fact that the next plan up cost £80 per user per month, more than Zoho, Freshsales, and monday’s most expensive plans.

We also found Salesforce quite difficult to use when we tested it. The provider has made efforts to make the platform more intuitive over the past year, but the sheer number of features available on the platform, still make it a tricky tool for beginners.

6. Zendesk: Low-cost Service CRM

• Free plan: No
• Free trial: 14 days

Why we like Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the cheapest customer service CRM systems out there, with its lowest-priced plan costing just £15 per user, per month. For that price, you’ll get:

• An AI support agent that can resolve customer issues independently (five automatic AI resolutions per agent per month, but you can pay for more as needed)
• Automatic ticket routing based on agent status and capacity
• The ability to use Whatsapp and X as customer support channels, in addition to email, phone, and chatbot
• Integrations with several top VoIP systems, including RingCentral, Dialpad, and GoTo

Zendesk’s AI support agent is a great cheap tool for easing the workload of your agents during busy times, and the fact that its included at no extra cost in the starter plan is a rarity in the industry.

Where Zendesk could improve

Reporting features are, unfortunately, quite thin on Zendesk’s two cheapest plans, with no custom reporting or live agent activity views for managers. Unlike with other providers, AI insights are also only available as a paid add-on (£40 per user, per month), even on Zendesk’s most expensive plan.

Zendesk also has virtually no marketing tools, although it does offer a sales CRM platform, separate from its service platform. That means that, unlike Zoho or Hubspot, it can’t be used as an all-in-one CRM platform.

7. Pipedrive: Best for Data Protection

• Free plan: No
• Free trial: 14 days

Why we like Pipedrive

At £14 per user, per month, Pipedrive’s cheapest plan is in the same range as most of the other cheap providers on this list. We like it best for the robust security tools you’ll get on each plan, making it a great cheap solution for businesses that handle sensitive data. Here’s what you’ll get with the entry-level essentials plan:

• Custom user permissions, MFA, two-factor authentication, and custom security rules (more measures than on other platforms)
• A robust contact database, allowing you to detect duplicates and segment them into lists
• Viewable data on both individual sales reps, and pipeline stages
• A unified team inbox and calendar, allowing for efficient teamwork

Where Pipedrive could improve

Unfortunately, a lot of Pipdrive’s best features are reserved for its more expensive plans. For example, you’ll only get access to its AI assistant and some of its automation tools from £49 per user, per month, more than you’d be paying for the equivalent with Zoho CRM.

Pipedrive also exclusively offers sales CRM tools, which means that you won’t get access to many marketing or customer service tools.

How Much Does a CRM System Cost?

CRM software costs anywhere between £12 and £300 per user per month. Here’s what you can expect depending on your chosen tier:

• Entry-level paid plans: Generally in the £10 to £15 per user per month range
• Mid-tier paid plans: Generally £30 to £80 per user, month, although some providers like monday CRM charge even less
• Top-tier paid plans: Generally £80 to £300 per user, per month, although some providers, like Hubspot and Salesforce, charge more, especially for marketing CRM systems

How much you should be spending depends on the size of your business and the functionality that you need. Small businesses with relatively simple needs should pay in the £10 to £50 range, but medium to large businesses can shell out over £1,000 per month (at this price point, fees are usually per month for a fixed number of users).

How Did We Find the Best Cheap CRM Software?