Every business needs to keep the relationship with the partners. Even if you are just a blogger, you need to manage the communication with your partners or clients to keep your relationship with them going well. CRM software is a great solution to communication management.

A CRM software allows you to save and manage the contacts of your business partners and customers. You can then easily arrange the meeting schedules, phone calls, to email follow-ups. If you are a small business owner, you might think twice to adopt a CRM software for your business since this also means you need to add more operational budgets. There are several free CRM software out there in case you want to figure out if a CRM software really helps your business.

We have collected some of the best CRM software that offers a free plan. Here is the list.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular online marketing tool used by SMBs. Recently, HubSpot just freed up its CRM tool, allowing you to use it without spending any money. You can add as many contacts as you want. The free CRM of HubSpot is particularly a great option if you mainly use email to communicate with your partners. You can use it to set the email follow-up reminders without any restriction in terms of numbers. You can actually add a phone number to each contact, but you need to upgrade to a premium to make a call.

2. MailChimp

MailChimp is better known as an email marketing service to manage email subscribers and newsletters. Turns out, this tool also has a CRM feature. The CRM feature of MailChimp is designed specifically for a marketing purpose. It allows you to create segments and tags to filter your customers’ data. MailChimp offers a free plan, which is great for businesses in the early stage. With the free plan of MailChimp’s CRM, you can save up to 2,000 customer contacts.

3. Agile CRM

Same as MailChimp, Agile CRM is also a great CRM software for a business in the early stage as it offers a free plan. The free plan of Agile CRM allows you to add way more contacts than MailChimp. You can add up to 50,000 contacts. Plus, you can also add up to 10 users with this free version. Agile CRM is a great CRM software for marketing. It comes with a Lead Scoring feature that allows you to score and rank leads against a scale to help sales reps qualify, prioritize, and purse hottest leads. Here are the features offered by the free plan of Agile CRM:

• Unlimited Deals, Tasks & Documents
• Appointment Scheduling
• Custom Deal Milestones
• Email Tracking
• 2-Way Email Integration
• Custom Deal Tracks
• 2-Way Telephony

4. Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM is a great CRM software you can use to manage your communication with customers and business partners. It also offers a free plan. Compared to the three tools above, the free plan of Capsule CRM offers fewer features. The free plan of this CRM only allows you to add 250 contacts with a storage capacity of 500MB. If you want to figure out how a CRM tool can help your business, the free version of Capsule CRM is worth to try. Features like task management, calendar, and email tracker are available on the free version of Capsule CRM.

5. Streak

If you use G Suite and want to turn your Gmail into a CRM tool, Streak is one of the best tools you can use. Streak works as a browser extension. Once installed, it adds more features inside your Gmail dashboard. You will be able to turn an email into a task, set follow-up reminders, add meeting notes, and so on. At the time of writing, Streak is only available for Google Chrome and Safari. You can use Streak for free, but with limited features. Streak has been used by over 750,000 Gmail users. It is one of the best CRMs for Gmail.

6. Apptivo

Looking for a CRM software with an invoicing feature? Apptivo is one of the tools you can try. This feature (invoicing) is available on all Apptivo plans, including STARTER which you can use for free. With this feature, you can easily create an invoice for your customers. Features like project management, lead list management, contact management are also available on the STARTER plan.

7. Flowlu

Flowlu is another CRM software that offers a free plan. However, the free plan of Flowlu only allows you to add 20 business contacts so this CRM software might is better suited if you run a business-to-business company. The Team plan, the cheapest paid plan offered by Flowlu, allows you to add unlimited business contacts. The free plan of Flowlu also doesn’t allow you to add custom fields.