5 Best CRMs For Startups and Small Teams in 2025

One of the biggest challenges startup founders face is building strong customer relationships. Keeping existing customers engaged while seeking new business is time-consuming and stressful, especially if you don’t have dedicated software to help. It’s all too easy to drop the ball and miss out on a potential sale or damage your relationship with a key customer.

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform prevents this by automating many of the repetitive tasks involved in sales, marketing, and customer service. It’s a key tool for improving customer interactions and landing new contracts.

While CRMs have a reputation for being expensive, there are many affordable and even free options that are perfect for startups. In this guide, we highlight the five best CRMs for startups and explain what to look for when choosing a CRM for your growing company.

A Quick Look at the 5 Best CRMs for Startups

Here’s a brief overview of our five favourite CRMs for startups:

1. Freshsales: Best all-in-one CRM for early-stage startups
2. Hubspot: Best marketing CRM for startups at all stages
3. Zoho CRM: Most affordable CRM for growing startups
4. Teamgate: Best sales CRM for early-stage startups
5. Pipedrive: Best sales CRM for growth-stage startups

The 5 Best CRMs for Startups Reviewed

We’ve tested dozens of CRM platforms, from premium enterprise-scale systems to affordable entry-level software. Here are our five favourites for startups at various stages of growth.

1. Freshsales – Best all-in-one CRM for early-stage startups

Freshsales is a capable CRM with sales, marketing, and customer service tools, all in a single platform. We especially like it for early-stage startups because of its affordable starter plan and easy-to-navigate user interface, which is great for first-time CRM users.

Freshsales offers automations like contact scoring, behavior-based triggers, and automatic quote tracking so you can reduce the time it takes to close deals. It also uses AI to suggest the next action to nudge leads through your sales pipeline, which can be really helpful for founders who aren’t natural salespeople.

We also like Freshsales because it’s scalable to meet your startup’s changing needs over time. You can add multiple sales pipelines, customise permissions for sales and marketing team members, and even split your sales reps up by territory. Freshsales also comes with nearly 400 integrations, ensuring the platform will work with any software your startup uses.

Pricing

• Free plan: Yes; free for up to three users
• Freshsales Growth (designed for startups and small-to-medium businesses): £7/user/month, billed annually

2. Hubspot – Best marketing CRM for startups at all stages

Hubspot is a marketing-focused CRM with an impressive free plan for early-stage startups and an enormous range of features for growth-stage startups.

The free plan includes unlimited contacts and 2,000 emails per month, contact segmentation, a shared inbox, automated web forms, ad retargeting across social media channels, and much more. Paid plans lean even more heavily into automation, enabling you to track contacts across all your startup’s digital channels so you can deliver highly personalised ads and emails.

One of our favourite aspects of Hubspot is its in-depth reporting tools. These allow founders and marketers to determine which campaigns work and the best path to pursue growth. This is useful for startups in all life stages since it ensures you’re using your marketing dollars effectively.

Hubspot’s advanced plans can get very expensive (from $800 per month), so keep in mind that you may want to switch to an alternative platform once your startup reaches maturity.

Pricing

• Free plan: Yes; free for up to two users
• Hubspot Marketing Hub Starter: £14/user/month, billed annually, or £18/user/month, billed monthly

3. Zoho CRM – The most affordable CRM for growing startups

Zoho CRM is a very capable sales and marketing CRM at a price that’s hard to beat. Plans range from free to £42/user/month (billed annually)—a fraction of the cost of other top-tier CRM systems.

Despite being a cheap CRM, Zoho CRM doesn’t lack features. The software includes sales sequence automations, revenue forecasting, the ability to split your sales team by territory, and a cost, price, and quote system. Its advanced marketing features include tools for creating personalised customer journeys and notifications so you can interact with customers in real time across your digital channels.

Zoho CRM’s user interface doesn’t feel quite as modern as some other CRMs, but it’s still very easy to use. The platform also has hundreds of integrations, ensuring you can connect all the software your growing startup uses.

Pricing

• Free plan: Yes; free for up to three users
• Zoho CRM Standard: £12/user/month (billed annually)

4. Teamgate – Best sales CRM for early-stage startups

Teamgate is a versatile sales CRM with affordable plans for any early-stage startup. The platform focuses on helping you manage deals from inception through contract signing, with visual pipelines and workflow automations to help you keep new clients moving through your sales funnel.

We like Teamgate because it offers actionable tools to help you manage deals in progress. For example, you can set estimated closing dates for each deal, assign tasks to your sales team, and attach contracts and other files within the CRM. Teamgate also stands out for supporting multiple currencies, which is great for startups with international customers.

While Teamgate is primarily a sales CRM, it also includes some marketing features to help you load the front end of your sales funnel. The software includes an auto-dialer, email templates, web forms, and more. However, Teamgate doesn’t offer advanced marketing automations, so it may not be suitable for growing startups looking to rapidly expand their customer base.

Pricing

• Free plan: Yes; free for up to two users
• Team Gate Team: $39.90 USD (~£32.12)/user/month (billed annually)

5. Pipedrive – Best sales CRM for growth-stage startups

Pipedrive is an advanced sales CRM that may be too pricey for early-stage startups on a tight budget but offers a wide range of powerful tools for fast-growing companies.

We like Pipedrive because it enables you to fully automate your sales process with customisable triggers, emails, and rules for moving deals through your pipeline. For example, you can automatically send an email to a new prospective customer when they move into the first stage of your sales pipeline.

In addition, Pipedrive includes built-in task management tools, making it easy to coordinate efforts across growing sales teams. It integrates seamlessly with popular productivity platforms, ensuring work is synced across all the software your startup uses.

We also like Pipedrive’s user interface, which is incredibly intuitive and offers drag-and-drop tools to help you move deals through your pipelines. Mobile apps make it easy for busy sales employees to communicate with potential customers and assign tasks on the go.

Pricing

• Free plan: No
• Pipedrive Essential: £14/user/month (billed annually)

What to Look for in a CRM for Startups

While many CRMs built for mature companies can also work for startups, your new business likely has unique needs that not all general-purpose CRMs address. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key features to look for in a startup-friendly CRM.

Workflow automations and AI

Startup teams are often pressed for time, and automating the repetitive tasks involved in sales and marketing can save a significant amount of work. While most CRMs offer automated workflows, some require upgrading to a pricey top-tier plan to access these tools. We recommend looking for platforms offering customisable automations in their free or entry-level plans.

You can also save time—and potentially boost your effectiveness at getting prospective customers to sign contracts—by looking for CRM systems that use AI. A growing number of platforms offer AI assistants that can make recommendations for how to move a customer through your sales pipeline. So, you always know what to do next and can jump straight in.

Scalable pricing options

A CRM with multiple pricing tiers is crucial for startups since your needs will likely change as your business grows. Early-stage startups might need a free or very affordable CRM with limited features now but a more capable CRM in a year or two. It’s much easier to stick with the CRM you’re already using and upgrade to access more features than it is to switch to an entirely new platform.

So, while choosing the CRM with the cheapest entry-level plan is tempting, you should also consider the cost of its higher-tier plans. Watch out for CRMs that offer very affordable base plans but charge a lot to unlock more features.

Ease of use

One of the main goals of using a CRM is to save time. So, the platform you choose should be intuitive enough that you can jump right in rather than spend weeks learning how to use it.

Look for CRM systems that offer modern, streamlined user interfaces. Remember that even simple-looking platforms can still offer a lot of features and customisation options. They may be hidden just out of sight so that they’re easy to access when you need them but out of the way when you don’t.

Integrations

Most modern CRMs have hundreds of ready-made integrations for popular business software like Google Workspace, Slack, Wrike, and more. That’s important for ensuring data is automatically synced across your startup and you don’t have to waste time manually transferring information between platforms. When choosing a CRM, check that integrations are available for the key software your business is already using.