If your customer details are in one spreadsheet, your deal progress is tracked in another, and team communication is scattered across chats and emails, you're likely to miss opportunities and lose sales. Your business can benefit from a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which acts as the central nervous system. It is a strategic tool for managing customer interactions, streamlining workflows, and fostering collaboration across functional teams.
This guide will go through CRM basics and take an in-depth look at 12 of the best examples of customer relationship management software to help you find a good fit for your team.
Types of CRM tools
Before diving into specific tools, it helps to understand the main categories of CRM systems. Knowing what each type is designed for will help you clarify your own business goals and evaluate which tools are the best match.
Operational CRM
This is the most common type, focused on automating and streamlining day-to-day business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service to manage the entire customer lifecycle.
Analytical CRM
This type focuses on analyzing customer interactions and data to provide actionable business insights. It helps you understand customer behavior, identify sales trends, and make smarter, data-driven decisions to improve customer retention.
Collaborative CRM
This CRM is designed to break down departmental silos by sharing customer information seamlessly between your sales, marketing, and customer support teams for a unified customer view.
There are more than these three types of CRMs. For a deeper dive into the different types of CRM software, read The Ultimate Guide to Types of CRM Software: Features and Examples.
Customer relationship management examples
A modern CRM strategy goes beyond simple contact management or lead management. It involves a holistic approach that uses technology to build and maintain strong customer relationships. Here are some key examples of how businesses put customer relationship management into practice.
Read more: What Is Lead Management? Definition, Benefits, and Best Practices
Track customer behavior
Customer relationship management systems are central hubs for tracking every customer interaction, from website visits and email clicks to purchase history and support tickets. This allows businesses to understand customer preferences, anticipate needs, and identify friction points in the customer journey. By analyzing this data, sales and marketing teams can personalize their outreach and create more effective, targeted campaigns.
Create personalized customer experiences
Personalization is key to gaining loyal customers, and CRMs make it possible at scale. By using the rich data within the CRM—such as past purchases, browsing history, and demographic information—businesses can create highly personalized experiences. This includes tailored product recommendations, customized marketing emails, and relevant content that speaks directly to an individual customer's needs and interests.
Implement marketing and sales automation
Sales and marketing efforts are intimately connected. CRM platforms typically offer both marketing automation and sales automation to boost the productivity and effectivness of both teams. CRM tools can automate repetitive tasks such as sending welcome emails, nurturing leads with targeted content drips, and customer segmentation for specific campaigns. This saves time and ensures that potential customers receive timely, relevant communication that guides them through the sales funnel.
Automate feedback collection
Instead of manual outreach, businesses use CRMs to automate the collection of customer feedback at key moments in the customer journey. This is often done through automated surveys like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer loyalty or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys sent after a support interaction or purchase. This provides a constant stream of valuable insights that can be used to improve products and services.
Make data-driven decisions
The data collected in a CRM is a goldmine for making smarter business decisions. By analyzing metrics on sales performance, marketing campaign effectiveness, and customer behavior, managers can spot trends, forecast future revenue, and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach moves decision-making from guesswork to a strategic process based on facts and patterns.
Top CRM platform examples at a glance
Before we dive into the detailed reviews, here’s a summary table to help you compare the top CRM tools at a glance.
Top 12 CRM software examples
Lark
Best for: Teams seeking a unified workspace that combines an afforable customizable CRM with world-class collaboration and project management.
Lark enables teams to build powerful and highly customizable CRMs in minutes using Lark Base, a no-code data management platform. It offers a full range of features to manage the entire sales cycle, from lead capture to deal closure on mobile, web, or desktop. Sales teams can monitor their metrics with live dashboards, visualize their pipelines with Kanban view, track opportunities through every stage, and gain a true 360-degree view of each customer while on the go.
The platform also excels at automation, streamlining repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails, updating records, and notifying team members of key events. It also features real-time, easy-to-build dashboards for analytics and AI-powered functions for generating summaries, recommending lead assignments, and analyzing sentiment.
Unlike most competitors, Lark was built from the ground up as a single, integrated platform. The CRM, chat, calendar, and project management tools are all part of the same platform. This means the team can greatly benefit from higher operational efficiency. When a sales rep can update a deal's status and simultaneously message their manager for approval within the same window, the sales cycle naturally shortens. When a project manager can see the original sales notes attached directly to their project board, customer onboarding becomes smoother and more effective. Lark's value is in cutting the time and effort spent between tasks—a benefit that traditional CRMs simply cannot offer.
Use case example:
A fast-growing digital marketing agency uses a Lark Base template to quickly create a custom CRM. They capture new leads using a Lark Forms, which feeds directly into the CRM and a lead is assigned to a dedicated rep.
When a deal is marked as "won," the team member use the mobile CRM on the spot to trigger an automation that notifies the assigned project manager and creates a dedicated group chat for the project. This ensures a perfectly seamless handover from sales to onboarding. All customer communication, from initial emails to meeting notes automatically generated by Lark Meetings, can be linked directly to the customer's record in the Base, providing a single source of truth for everyone on the team.
Starter plan: Free forever plan that includes 11 powerful tools for customer relationship management. The plan supports up to 20 users and comes with 100GB of storage, 1000 automation runs, AI translations, and more.
Pro plan: $12/user/month (billed annually) for up to 500 users. It includes everything in Starter plus group calling for up to 500 attendees, 15TB of storage, 50,000 automation runs, and more.
Enterprise plan: Contact sales for custom pricing. Supports unlimited users and includes even more automation runs and advanced security, compliance, and management features.
The free forever plan is great for small teams as well as businesses looking to try out the essentials. Lark's Pro and Enterprise plans offer great value for money too, especially for businesses that uses multiple tools. For example, a team of 100 using Slack, Google Workspace, and Zoom can $25,200 by switching to Lark.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Best for: Large enterprises with complex, multi-stage sales processes and a large budget for a sales CRM.
Image source: salesforce.com
Salesforce is the market leader in the CRM space, a platform known for its depth, scalability, and a vast ecosystem of apps. Its greatest strength lies in its ability to be tailored to virtually any business process through custom objects, advanced workflow automation, and the massive AppExchange marketplace. For enterprise teams, it provides a suite of powerful features like advanced sales forecasting, detailed pipeline inspection, and AI-driven insights.
However, this power comes with complexity and a high total cost of ownership, as most businesses require specialized implementation partners and dedicated administrators to get the system set up and maintained, which can add significant costs on top of the license fees.
Use case example:
A global manufacturing company uses Salesforce to manage its complex B2B customer database. They leverage Enterprise Territory Management to automatically assign accounts to the right sales reps based on geography and industry specialization. Reps use Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) to generate accurate quotes for complicated product bundles, and automated approval workflows ensure that any special discounts are signed off by management before being sent to the client.
Pricing:
Starter Suite: $25 per user/month (billed annually) for basic CRM functionality.
Pro Suite: $100 per user/month (billed annually), which adds rules-based lead scoring and collaborative forecasting.
Enterprise: $165 per user/month (billed annually), the most popular edition, which includes workflow and approval automation.
Unlimited: $330 per user/month (billed annually) for advanced AI capabilities and 24/7 support.
Agentforce 1 Sales: $550 per user per month (billed annually) .
HubSpot CRM
Best for: Businesses that are heavily focused on inbound marketing.
Image source: hubspot.com
HubSpot has built a comprehensive platform around its widely-used free CRM, operating on a "Hub" model that allows businesses to add specific functionality for marketing, sales, and service as they grow. The platform's greatest strengths lie in marketing automation, providing an excellent suite of tools for email marketing, landing page creation, ad management, and SEO.
While the free CRM is a powerful entry point, businesses will quickly encounter limitations that encourage upgrading. The challenge is the significant price jump to the "Professional" plans, which also include mandatory, multi-thousand-dollar onboarding fees, creating a high cost barrier for many growing companies.
Use case example:
A B2B SaaS company uses HubSpot to attract and manage leads. The marketing team creates blog posts and landing pages to capture leads, who are then nurtured with automated email sequences. Once a lead is scored as "hot," it's automatically assigned to a sales rep who uses email templates and a meeting scheduler to connect. All interactions are logged, giving both teams a complete view of the customer journey.
Pricing:
Free Tools: A robust free CRM with limited features and HubSpot branding.
Starter Customer Platform: Begins at $15 per seat/month (billed annually).
Zoho CRM
Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are using other Zoho apps.
Image source: zoho.com
Zoho CRM is an established player in the CRM market, offering a vast array of features—from sales automation and process management to omnichannel communication and an AI assistant named Zia—at a very competitive price point. The platform is highly customizable and integrates with the wider Zoho suite of over 50 business applications, including Zoho Books for accounting and Zoho Campaigns for marketing. This allows businesses to run nearly their entire operation on the Zoho ecosystem, making it a powerful and cost-effective choice for small businesses.
Use case example:
A real estate agency uses Zoho CRM to manage its client and property pipeline. Web forms capture new leads, which are automatically assigned to agents based on property location. Agents use the mobile CRM app to update information on the go, and the agency uses Zoho's Blueprint feature to ensure a standardized, high-quality sales process for every client.
Free: Available for up to 3 users with basic functionality.
Standard: $14 per user/month (billed annually), including scoring rules and workflow automation.
Professional: $23 per user/month (billed annually), adding inventory management and sales forecasting.
Enterprise: $40 per user/month (billed annually), which includes the Zia AI assistant and advanced customization.
Ultimate: $52 per user/month (billed annually) for advanced business intelligence and analytics.
Freshsales (Freshworks CRM)
Best for: High-velocity sales and marketing teams in the SMB space looking for an intuitive CRM.
Image source: freshworks.com
Freshsales, part of the Freshworks ecosystem, is known for its user-friendly interface and focus on simplifying sales processes. Its standout feature is Freddy AI, an artificial intelligence assistant that provides intelligent deal insights, automated contact scoring, and chatbot automation to help teams work more efficiently. With a built-in cloud telephony system and omnichannel engagement capabilities, it offers a comprehensive solution for sales and marketing teams looking to leverage AI for a competitive edge.
Use case example:
A tech startup's sales team uses Freshsales' AI to automatically score and prioritize inbound leads based on engagement. Reps use automated email sequences to nurture prospects and a built-in dialer to log calls directly in the CRM.
Pricing:
Free: Available for up to 3 users with basic contact management and a built-in chat, email, and phone system.
Growth: $9 per user/month (billed annually), which adds web forms and basic workflows.
Pro: $39 per user/month (billed annually), which includes Freddy AI features and support for multiple sales pipelines.
Enterprise: $59 per user/month (billed annually) for custom modules and advanced customization.
Zendesk Sell
Best for: Sales teams that prioritize a clean, intuitive user interface.
Image source: zendesk.com
Zendesk Sell is a sales-focused CRM that excels in usability and fostering collaboration between sales and support teams. It features a modern, easy-to-navigate interface that helps sales reps stay organized and track their activities without unnecessary friction. Its key differentiator is its native integration with the rest of the Zendesk product suite, which provides a unified view of the customer across their entire lifecycle, from their first interaction as a sales prospect to any subsequent support tickets they submit.
Use case example:
An online subscription box company uses Zendesk Sell and Support together. The sales team manages B2B deals in Sell and can see a prospect's past support tickets for context. After a deal closes, the support team can view the full sales history in Zendesk Support, enabling them to provide better, more personalized service.
Pricing:
Sell Team: $19 per agent/month (billed annually) with up to 2 sales pipelines and core CRM features.
Sell Growth: $55 per agent/month (billed annually), which adds sales forecasting and a product and price book.
Sell Professional: $115 per agent/month (billed annually), which includes lead and deal scoring and task automation.
Sell Enterprise: $169 per agent/month (billed annually) for unlimited pipelines and advanced sales insights.
Pipedrive
Best for: Small to medium-sized teams that need a simple and highly visual tool for sales pipeline management.
Image source: pipedrive.com
Pipedrive is a CRM solution built by salespeople, for salespeople, with a philosophy centered entirely around the sales pipeline. It provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that helps reps visualize their deal flow and focus on the specific actions needed to move deals forward. While it excels at core pipeline management, more advanced functionalities like lead generation and marketing automation often require purchasing paid add-ons, which can increase the total cost of ownership.
Use case example:
A consulting firm uses Pipedrive's visual pipeline to track deals from inquiry to contract. The sales manager can see deal stages at a glance and filter by rep to monitor performance. The system prompts reps to schedule their next activity for each deal, ensuring no opportunity is forgotten.
Pricing:
Lite: $14 per user/month (billed annually) for basic pipeline management.
Growth: $39 per user/month, adding email sync and automation.
Premium: $49 per user/month for lead generation and routing, custom scoring, and more.
Ultimate: $79 per user/month, which adds phone and email data enrichmnet.
monday.com CRM
Best for: Teams that want a highly visual and customizable CRM.
Image source: monday.com
Built on top of the company's popular Work OS platform, monday.com CRM has a unique, project-management-centric feel. The interface is highly visual, using customizable boards, columns, and various views (like Kanban and Gantt) to manage everything from leads and contacts to complex post-sales projects. This makes it an excellent fit for teams whose sales process involves detailed, multi-step projects after a deal is closed, such as agencies, consulting firms, and service-based businesses.
Use case example:
A creative agency tracks new business on a "Sales Pipeline" board. When a deal is won, an automation creates a new project on their "Client Projects" board, transferring client data. The project team then manages tasks and timelines on that board, and can even share a view with the client for progress updates.
Basic: $12 per seat/month (billed annually) for unlimited pipelines and contacts.
Standard: $17 per seat/month (billed annually), which adds automations, integrations, and two-way email integration.
Pro: $28 per seat/month (billed annually), including sales forecasting, email tracking, and sales analytics.
Enterprise: Custom pricing for enterprise-grade features, advanced analytics, and heightened security.
Insightly
Best for: Project-based businesses, such as consulting firms, agencies, and construction companies, that need a single platform to manage the entire customer lifecycle.
Image source: insightly.com
Insightly is a unified platform that combines a robust CRM with built-in project management features, allowing for a seamless transition from a "won" sales opportunity directly into a project. This integrated approach eliminates the common and often painful disconnect between sales and delivery teams, ensuring that projects start on the right foot with all the necessary context and customer data carried over automatically.
Use case example:
A software development firm tracks deals in Insightly's sales pipeline. When a contract is signed, the sales rep converts the opportunity into a project with one click. This automatically creates a project workspace with predefined tasks, allowing the development team to start work immediately with full access to the original sales notes.
Pricing:
Plus: $29 per user/month (billed annually) for core CRM and project management capabilities.
Professional: $49 per user/month (billed annually), which adds workflow automation and lead assignment rules.
Enterprise: $99 per user/month (billed annually) for advanced features like product, pricebook, and quote management.
Apptivo
Best for: Small and growing businesses that need highly customizable business applications.
Image source: apptivo.com
Apptivo is a flexible and affordable "business in a box" solution, offering a collection of over 65 integrated applications that cover not only CRM but also project management, invoicing, help desk, and inventory management. This modular approach allows businesses to start with just the CRM functionality and add other applications as their needs evolve, making it a highly tailored and cost-effective system for businesses that want to manage multiple functions from a single platform.
Use case example:
A freelance consultant uses Apptivo to run their entire business. They track new work in the Leads and Opportunities apps, manage tasks in the Projects app, and log hours in the Timesheets app. When finished, they generate an invoice directly from the Invoices app, which pulls all the necessary data automatically.
Pricing:
Lite: $15 per user/month (billed annually) for 18 core business apps.
Premium: $25 per user/month (billed annually) for 46 apps, including e-commerce and marketing tools.
Ultimate: $40 per user/month (billed annually) for 57 apps, adding advanced automation and email sequencing.
Enterprise: Custom pricing for the full suite of 65+ apps and dedicated support.
Creatio
Best for: Mid-sized to enterprise-level companies that require a CRM for automating business processes.
Image source: creatio.com
Creatio is a unified platform that combines a CRM with a powerful no-code/low-code engine for business process management (BPM). This combination allows businesses to design, automate, and optimize not just their sales and marketing workflows, but virtually any business process, using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. It is a highly flexible solution for companies that find the standard workflows in other CRM systems too rigid for their specific needs.
Use case example:
A financial services company uses Creatio's no-code designer to build a custom workflow for its complex customer onboarding process. The system guides clients through documentation and verification steps, automatically assigning tasks to different departments and providing managers with a real-time dashboard to monitor progress.
Pricing:
Growth: $25/user/month
Enterprise: $55/user/month
Unlimited: $85/user/month
Oracle NetSuite CRM
Best for: Large, established businesses that need a CRM integrated with a Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
Image source: netsuite.com
NetSuite CRM is an integral module of the broader Oracle NetSuite ERP platform, not a standalone product. Its primary strength is providing a comprehensive view of the customer by unifying front-office CRM data (like leads and opportunities) with back-office ERP data (like orders, inventory, shipping, and financials). This makes it an good solution for businesses where the sales process is tightly linked to physical inventory and complex fulfillment and financial operations.
Use case example:
An electronics distributor uses NetSuite CRM for its sales operations. When creating a quote, a sales rep can see real-time inventory levels directly in the CRM. Once an order is placed, the information flows seamlessly to the finance and warehouse systems, automatically triggering invoicing and fulfillment without manual data entry.
Pricing:
Pricing is not publicly listed and is customized based on the modules, user count, and company size.
How to choose the right CRM software for your business
With so many powerful options, selecting the right one can feel like a challenge. The best approach is to focus on your team's specific needs and workflows. Here is a simple framework to guide your decision.
Assess your core needs
Start by identifying your primary goal. Are you focused on visualizing and managing a straightforward sales pipeline? A tool like Pipedrive might be a great fit. Is your growth strategy built around inbound marketing and content? HubSpot is designed for that. Do your sales cycles result in complex projects that need to be managed post-sale? A combined CRM and project management tool like Lark, Insightly or monday.com could be ideal.
Consider your team's workflow
The best CRM is the one your team will actually use. A system that is overly complex or unintuitive, like Salesforce can be too cumbersome for smaller businesses and suffer from low adoption. Consider where your team already spends its time. An intuitive, integrated environment where team members are already communicating and managing projects encourages consistent use of the CRM features because they are part of the natural workflow, not a separate chore.
Calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO)
Look beyond the advertised monthly per-user price. Be sure to factor in potential hidden costs. Does the platform require a mandatory onboarding fee? Will you need to hire an expensive consultant for implementation, as is common with Salesforce? Does the base price seem low, but all the essential features you need are paid add-ons, like with Pipedrive? Contrast these complex pricing models with the transparent, all-inclusive pricing of a solution like Lark, where the free tier is genuinely functional and the paid tiers offer a predictable, linear increase in value without surprise fees.
Plan for scalability and integration
Finally, think about the future. Will the CRM you choose be able to grow with your business? Does it integrate with the other tools you rely on? Some platforms create a powerful but closed ecosystem that can lead to vendor lock-in, making it difficult to switch to a different tool later on. Look for a platform that not only scales but also offers flexibility through robust APIs and a commitment to open integration.
Conclusion
A modern CRM should be more than a static database for storing customer data. It should be a dynamic workspace that facilitates the actions, conversations, and collaborations that build strong, lasting customer relationships.
While many of the tools on this list offer a powerful CRM, Lark offers something different: a complete, collaborative ecosystem where the CRM is seamlessly woven into the fabric of your team's daily work. It’s not just about managing relationships; it's about providing your team with all the tools they need to build and nurture those relationships, all in one place.
Frequently asked questions
What are the 4 types of CRM systems?
The four main types are Operational CRM, Analytical CRM, Collaborative CRM, and Strategic CRM.
What are some examples of CRM software in customer service?
Several CRM platforms specialize in or offer strong modules for customer service, such as Zendesk, HubSpot Service Hub, Freshworks, and Salesforce.
What are some examples of tools of CRM (customer relationship management)?
CRM software often includes tools such as a central contact database, a visual sales pipeline, workflow automation, and reporting dashboards.
