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Best CRM for startups

Cheap seats, fast setup and room to change your process every quarter. 8 picks, ranked by editor rating.

A startup changes its sales process more often than an established company changes its logo. The right CRM for that stage is flexible, inexpensive per seat and quick to reconfigure when the ideal customer profile shifts again.

Founders usually sell first, so the tool also has to work for one person with no time. Automatic contact capture from email, simple sequences and a pipeline that takes minutes to rebuild matter more here than territory management or approval chains.

Our picks: best CRM for startups

Open a profile for the full review, pricing and the link to the official site.

1H

HubSpot CRM

4.5Editor rating

The free CRM that grows into a full marketing and sales platform.

HubSpot CRM is the free core of the HubSpot customer platform, a suite that also covers marketing, sales, service, content and operations software. Every product shares the same contact database, so a form submission, a marketing email, a sales call and a support ticket all appear on one timeline.

Free / $15 per seatFree plan12/12 key features
Best forSmall teams that want marketing, sales and support in one place
View profile See pricing
2F

Freshsales

4.4Editor rating

Phone, email and chat built into the CRM from day one.

Freshsales is the sales CRM from Freshworks, the company behind the Freshdesk help desk. It combines contact and deal management with a built-in phone, email, chat and WhatsApp, so a rep can run a full day of outreach without leaving the product.

Free / $9 per userFree plan11/12 key features
Best forStartups and inside-sales teams that call and email all day
View profile See pricing
3P

Pipedrive

4.4Editor rating

A sales pipeline first, everything else second.

Pipedrive was created by salespeople who wanted a CRM organized around the pipeline rather than around a database. The main screen is a board of deals by stage, and the whole product pushes reps toward one question: what is the next activity on each deal?

$14 per user11/12 key features
Best forSales teams that live in the pipeline view and want speed over breadth
View profile See pricing
4Sf

Salesflare

4.3Editor rating

The CRM that fills itself in for small B2B teams.

Salesflare is a CRM for small and medium B2B companies built around automation of data entry. It pulls contact details from email signatures and public sources, logs emails, meetings and calls, and assembles a timeline for every account without manual work.

$29 per user8/12 key features
Best forSmall B2B sales teams that hate data entry
View profile See pricing
5At

Attio

4.3Editor rating

A flexible, data-driven CRM for modern go-to-market teams.

Attio is a newer CRM that treats customer data like a flexible database. You can create your own objects, attributes and lists, view them as tables or kanban boards, and build reports on any of them, all in an interface that responds as quickly as a spreadsheet.

Free / $29 per userFree plan7/12 key features
Best forStartups that want to model their own data and workflows
View profile See pricing
6C

Close

4.3Editor rating

Built for high-volume inside sales with calling at the core.

Close is a CRM designed for inside sales teams that reach prospects by phone, email and SMS at high volume. Calling is native: reps dial from the browser, calls are recorded and logged automatically, and the power dialer moves through a lead list without manual dialing.

$19 per user9/12 key features
Best forSDR and inside-sales teams that make hundreds of calls a week
View profile See pricing
7B

Bigin by Zoho CRM

4.3Editor rating

A pipeline-centric CRM priced for the smallest teams.

Bigin is the small business edition of Zoho CRM, redesigned around pipelines instead of modules. It gives a small team contacts, companies, deals and activities in a simple interface, and lets you create separate pipelines for sales, onboarding, renewals or any other process.

Free / $7 per userFree plan6/12 key features
Best forMicro businesses moving off spreadsheets for the first time
View profile See pricing
8St

Streak

4.0Editor rating

A CRM that lives entirely inside Gmail.

Streak adds a CRM to Gmail through a browser extension and mobile apps. Pipelines sit above the inbox, each email thread can be attached to a record with one click, and the fields and stages are as easy to edit as a spreadsheet.

Free / $49 per userFree plan7/12 key features
Best forIndividuals and small teams that never want to leave the inbox
View profile See pricing

Compare the picks

CRMEditor ratingStarting priceFree planKey featuresBest for
HHubSpot CRM
4.5Free / $15 per seatYes
12/12
Small teams that want marketing, sales and support in one placeProfile
FFreshsales
4.4Free / $9 per userYes
11/12
Startups and inside-sales teams that call and email all dayProfile
PPipedrive
4.4$14 per userNo
11/12
Sales teams that live in the pipeline view and want speed over breadthProfile
SfSalesflare
4.3$29 per userNo
8/12
Small B2B sales teams that hate data entryProfile
AtAttio
4.3Free / $29 per userYes
7/12
Startups that want to model their own data and workflowsProfile
CClose
4.3$19 per userNo
9/12
SDR and inside-sales teams that make hundreds of calls a weekProfile
BBigin by Zoho CRM
4.3Free / $7 per userYes
6/12
Micro businesses moving off spreadsheets for the first timeProfile
StStreak
4.0Free / $49 per userYes
7/12
Individuals and small teams that never want to leave the inboxProfile

Head-to-head comparisons

HubSpot CRM vs FreshsalesHubSpot CRM vs PipedriveHubSpot CRM vs SalesflareFreshsales vs PipedriveFreshsales vs SalesflarePipedrive vs Salesflare

Related guides

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Other CRM categories

Best CRM for small business

Affordable, quick to set up and broad enough to replace three other tools.

Best CRM for sales teams

Pipeline discipline, activity tracking and forecasting for teams with a quota.

Best free CRM

Real free plans with no time limit, and the catch behind each one.

Best enterprise CRM

Depth, governance and customization for complex sales organizations.

Best CRM with marketing automation

One contact record for campaigns, lead nurturing and the sales pipeline.

Best CRM for Gmail and Google Workspace

CRMs that live inside the inbox and fill themselves in.

Best CRM for inside sales and calling

Built-in dialers, call recording and SMS for teams that live on the phone.

Easiest CRM to use

Short learning curves for teams that have abandoned a CRM before.