Are your teams resisting new software?
You’ve found the perfect system, but getting everyone on board feels like an uphill battle. It makes centralizing data almost impossible.
This resistance leads to low adoption, making your investment a waste. It keeps your data fragmented and your costs high.
According to Flowlu, 83% of senior executives reported staff reluctance in using new CRMs. This friction directly undermines your goals of cutting costs and improving efficiency.
The key isn’t just finding a powerful CRM. It’s about finding a system your team will actually use to centralize data.
In this guide, I’ll show you user-friendly CRMs that solve this exact problem. We’ll explore the best crm software for centralizing data and cutting costs.
You’ll discover tools that are powerful yet intuitive, helping you achieve high adoption rates and see a real return on your investment.
Let’s find your solution.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salesforce → | Mid-sized businesses | |
| 2 | HubSpot → | Mid-sized businesses | |
| 3 | Zoho → | Mid-sized businesses | |
| 4 | Pipedrive → | Mid-sized businesses | |
| 5 | Ontraport → | Mid-sized businesses |
1. Salesforce
Struggling to centralize customer data and cut costs?
Salesforce offers an all-in-one CRM, Starter Suite, bringing sales, service, and marketing tools together on a single, easy-to-use application. This means you can manage leads, contacts, and opportunities, unifying support channels for improved efficiency. Moreover, the platform includes AI to generate email campaigns, simplifying your marketing efforts significantly and boosting pipeline.
This is how you streamline operations.
Salesforce allows you to unify all your data from any source, powering personalized customer engagement at scale with trusted AI and automation. This enables you to boost pipeline, win rate, and revenue through Sales Cloud, connecting your teams and simplifying the sales process. You can also cut service costs by managing customer support cases faster across every channel, combining human and AI agents.
Additionally, Agentforce creates a digital workforce that supports employees and customers 24/7, freeing your team for more critical tasks. The Salesforce Platform further allows you to connect your teams and data with apps built in clicks, not code, fostering significant productivity gains and data-driven insights. The result is increased client trust and smarter operations.
Key features:
- Centralized Data Hub: Unifies customer data from various sources, enabling personalized engagement and data-driven decisions across sales, service, and marketing departments.
- AI-Powered Automation: Leverages AI agents and generative AI for tasks like email campaign creation and case routing, significantly boosting productivity and cutting operational costs.
- Integrated Solutions: Offers comprehensive tools for sales (Sales Cloud), service (Service Cloud), and marketing, accessible through a single, easy-to-use platform like Starter Suite.
Learn more about Salesforce features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Salesforce stands out as the best crm software by offering scalable solutions that centralize customer data, automate tasks with AI, and provide actionable insights. Its integrated sales, service, and marketing tools, combined with Agentforce and Data Cloud, address core challenges for mid-sized businesses looking to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, all without complex implementation.
2. HubSpot
Struggling with fragmented customer data and inefficient workflows?
HubSpot offers an AI-powered customer platform unifying marketing, sales, and service software, enabling your teams to achieve significant growth. This means you can centralize customer data and automate routine tasks.
This integrated approach helps mid-sized businesses overcome the pain points of scattered information and manual processes, allowing you to focus on improving customer experiences at scale.
Here’s how HubSpot transforms your operations.
HubSpot provides a complete customer platform, integrating Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations, and Commerce Hubs. This eliminates the need for multiple disparate systems.
For instance, the Sales Hub leverages AI to help you build pipelines and close deals faster, while the Service Hub uses AI to scale support and drive customer retention. Additionally, the Smart CRM unifies your customer data, teams, and tech stacks, allowing you to create more personalized customer experiences efficiently.
This comprehensive suite helps you generate leads, automate campaigns, manage content, and even handle B2B commerce, all within a single, easy-to-use platform that delivers quick ROI.
It truly simplifies your entire customer journey.
Key features:
- AI-powered Customer Platform: Unifies marketing, sales, and customer service on one AI-driven platform for streamlined operations and faster ROI.
- Integrated Hubs: Combines Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations, and Commerce Hubs to centralize data and provide a unified view of your customers.
- Breeze AI Agents: Extends your team’s capabilities with AI-powered specialists for scaling support, automating prospecting, and accelerating content creation.
Learn more about HubSpot features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: HubSpot stands out as a best crm software solution by consolidating crucial business functions into an AI-powered platform. With 258,000+ customers acquiring 129% more leads and closing 36% more deals after one year, it’s designed to streamline operations, cut costs, and drive significant growth for mid-sized businesses.
3. Zoho
Struggling with fragmented customer data and rising costs?
Zoho offers a comprehensive CRM platform designed specifically for your customer-facing teams. This means centralizing all your customer data.
You can streamline complex business processes, building strong relationships with your customers. Your existing systems often lack modern automation, but Zoho steps in.
Here’s how to simplify your operations.
Zoho CRM solves these issues by unifying your customer data into one robust platform. It helps break down silos between departments, increasing overall organizational efficiency.
You can organize, automate and simplify your HR processes, plus deliver great customer support with their helpdesk software. It also allows you to automate processes, improving efficiency tenfold. This ensures business growth is easy to track because all your data is synced, and you can truly scale without manual data entry.
The result is enhanced sales efficiency and improved customer retention.
Key features:
- Centralized Customer Data: Zoho’s comprehensive CRM platform unifies all your customer information, allowing for streamlined tracking of sales and investments.
- Process Automation: Automate routine tasks and complex business processes, significantly boosting your team’s productivity and overall organizational efficiency.
- Scalable Solutions: Designed for businesses of all sizes, Zoho allows you to customize and adapt the platform to your evolving needs, ensuring long-term growth.
Learn more about Zoho features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Zoho offers a powerful, all-in-one suite that saves costs, as evidenced by a 30% saving compared to old CRMs. Its ability to unite all data into one platform, coupled with robust automation, makes it the best crm software for mid-sized businesses seeking to centralize customer data and boost productivity by up to 80%.
4. Pipedrive
Struggling with CRM complexity and fragmented customer data?
Pipedrive offers robust sales automation and lead management features that centralize your customer data. This means you can track your sales pipeline, optimize leads, and automate your entire sales process.
For IT directors and operations managers, this leads to significant reductions in manual administrative tasks, allowing your team to focus on closing deals and improving customer retention. Here’s how Pipedrive simplifies your workflow.
Experience streamlined sales with Pipedrive.
It empowers you to gain instant access to real-time sales reports and insights. You can visualize your sales funnel with custom pipelines and even get AI-powered suggestions on deals to pursue, leading to more predictable revenue. Furthermore, you can customize Pipedrive to match your unique sales processes, eliminating bottlenecks and manual admin. Plus, with calendar sync and call scheduling, your team’s daily activities are easily managed within the CRM. It helps streamline communications through two-way email sync and customizable templates, ensuring no opportunity is missed.
The result is enhanced sales efficiency and data-driven decisions.
While focusing on sales efficiency, remember that overall business operations involve many aspects. My guide on employee transport management systems offers insights into optimizing a different area of your operations.
Key features:
- Centralized Data Management: Easily organize customer data, interactions, and sales activities in one simple tool, providing a comprehensive overview for rapid action.
- AI-Powered Automation & Insights: Automate your sales cycle, lead routing, and follow-ups while leveraging AI for smart suggestions and real-time performance analytics.
- Customizable Sales Pipelines: Adapt your sales funnel with a visual, kanban-style dashboard and custom fields to precisely fit your business needs and track progress effectively.
Learn more about Pipedrive features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Pipedrive is a powerful, user-friendly solution designed to centralize customer data and automate sales processes. With its customizable pipelines, AI-powered insights, and extensive integrations, it stands out as the best CRM software for mid-sized businesses seeking to enhance sales efficiency, improve customer retention, and make data-driven decisions while cutting costs.
5. Ontraport
Struggling with fragmented systems and spiraling CRM costs?
Ontraport integrates your marketing, sales, and support operations within one unified platform.
This means you can easily centralize customer data and streamline workflows, which is crucial for mid-sized businesses balancing features with budget.
Here’s how to simplify your operations.
Ontraport helps you eliminate silos by managing every step of your customer journey in one place. You can automate marketing campaigns, track sales leads with drag-and-drop pipelines, and manage customer communications through a shared inbox. This approach allows you to deliver personalized experiences that attract and retain customers without complex integrations.
Additionally, Ontraport’s robust CMS allows you to create online courses or customer portals without coding, while the customizable OntraportDB centralizes all your data for sales, marketing, and payments. This comprehensive suite allows you to harness the power of your data, providing actionable insights for decision-making and seamless scalability. The result is professional-grade power, managed by anyone, at a fair price.
Key features:
- Unified Platform: Integrates marketing automation, CRM, and customer support within a single system, eliminating data silos and simplifying operations for mid-sized businesses.
- Scalable & Secure Database: Features OntraportDB, a central, customizable, cloud-based relational database that supports millions of contacts and ensures PCI DSS Level 1 compliance.
- Automated Workflows & Customization: Provides visual campaign builders, drag-and-drop pipelines, and custom objects for tailoring business processes without requiring code.
Learn more about Ontraport features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Ontraport provides enterprise-grade CRM capabilities designed for mid-sized businesses, integrating sales, marketing, and support into a single, scalable platform. With robust automation and data centralization, it helps reduce complexity and cost, making it an excellent choice if you’re searching for the best crm software to drive growth and efficiency.
6. nimbl
Are you drowning in too many “best” CRM options?
nimbl offers a children’s prepaid debit card and app, helping your children develop crucial money skills through earning, saving, and spending. This means you can track, manage, and control their spending with ease.
This unique approach addresses the pain point of teaching financial literacy effectively, allowing you to empower your children with essential money skills for a secure future.
It’s time for a smarter solution.
nimbl solves this by centralizing financial education through an app that offers robust spending controls, flexible savings features, and real-time notifications. I think this helps your children learn by doing, allowing them to manage their own money.
For instance, you can set up and automate weekly or monthly pocket money, saving you time and removing the need for cash. Plus, with instant top-up, you can transfer money to your children wherever they are. Additionally, you can set chores or goals as “tasks,” rewarding your child when completed, building motivation and responsibility.
The result is enhanced financial efficiency and improved money management for the younger generation.
While we’re discussing user management, understanding best community management software can help businesses boost engagement and ROI.
Key features:
- Instant Top-Up: Transfer money to your children instantly, offering convenience whether they’re out shopping or far away.
- Digital Pocket Money & Tasks: Automate regular pocket money transfers and set chores, habits, or goals, rewarding completion to build motivation.
- Spending Controls & Alerts: Set daily, weekly, or monthly spending limits and receive real-time notifications on all your children’s card usage.
Learn more about nimbl features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: nimbl uniquely positions itself as the best crm software for managing children’s finances, emphasizing financial education, controlled spending, and saving. Its dual parent and child app, combined with features like tasks and instant top-ups, make it a practical tool for teaching money habits and ensuring a secure financial future.
7. Nutshell
Struggling to centralize customer data and cut costs?
Nutshell offers a comprehensive platform for sales, marketing, and customer engagement, which helps you organize contacts, leads, and conversations. This means you can find the info you need quickly, avoiding costly data silos and wasted time.
It allows your team to easily add, gather, and store customer information, ensuring all crucial data is readily accessible. This helps mitigate the pain point of information overload and makes the system much easier to adopt for your team.
Here’s how Nutshell simplifies things.
Nutshell provides flexible pipeline management, offering multiple ways for your sales reps to view, manage, and prioritize leads effectively. You also get guided templates, making pipeline building easier than ever.
Additionally, sales automation features reduce busywork by automating lead assignment, lead advancement, and task reminders, enabling your team to focus on building relationships rather than manual processes. This is huge for boosting efficiency.
Plus, with marketing and email automation, you can create web forms that automatically add leads to pipelines, set up email sequences to increase reply rates, and manage email marketing directly within your CRM, centralizing your efforts. The result is a unified approach to customer management, without needing expensive custom integrations.
All the features you need!
Speaking of leveraging data, understanding how to simplify your product data and boost engagement through embedded analytics software can be incredibly valuable.
Key features:
- Contact management: Easily add, gather, and store customer information, ensuring your team can quickly find important and up-to-date details for every person and business.
- Sales automation: Automate routine tasks like lead assignment and task reminders, allowing your sales team to reduce busywork and focus more on building valuable customer relationships.
- Marketing and email automation: Streamline your marketing efforts with web forms that add leads automatically and email sequences that increase engagement, all managed directly within your CRM.
Learn more about Nutshell features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Nutshell’s focus on user-friendliness, comprehensive sales and marketing tools, and robust automation makes it an ideal best CRM software for mid-sized businesses. Its ability to centralize data and automate tasks can help your staff save significant time, as evidenced by one user who reported a 50% time reduction.
8. Close
Tired of slow, cluttered CRM systems?
Close CRM is built for speed and ease of use, centralizing all your sales activities.
This means your team can finally escape the endless tab-switching and focus on what truly matters: closing deals.
It’s time to streamline your sales process.
Close solves common CRM challenges by keeping everything you need in one place. You’ll make calls, send emails, manage follow-ups, and track your pipeline directly within the platform.
Here’s how: Close offers powerful automations that handle administrative tasks like tracking sent emails and logging calls, freeing your sales reps to focus on selling. This eliminates manual data entry, saving your team significant time. Additionally, Close integrates with any tool in your existing stack, ensuring a cohesive and efficient workflow, leading to doubled revenue for thousands of users.
The result is increased productivity and better customer relationships.
Speaking of streamlining various business operations, my guide on best catering management software explores tools for that specific industry.
Key features:
- Unified Communication: Manage phone calls, emails, and SMS all in one spot, ensuring no customer communication falls through the cracks and simplifying your team’s workflow.
- Sales Automation: Automate admin tasks like email tracking and follow-up reminders, allowing your team to concentrate on core selling activities and boost their closing rates.
- Seamless Integrations: Connect Close with other essential tools in your tech stack, creating a centralized system that supports your entire sales and customer engagement process.
Learn more about Close features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Close is specifically designed for small businesses and startups, offering an intuitive, fast platform that centralizes customer data and automates sales tasks. Its flexible pricing and ease of use make it the best crm software for mid-sized businesses seeking to enhance sales efficiency and improve customer retention without complex implementations.
9. Copper
Struggling with scattered customer data and clunky CRM systems?
Copper helps you keep all your relationships organized, track deals, and manage projects in one central place. This means you can easily see your entire customer journey.
Your existing systems might lack modern automation, but Copper addresses this by allowing you to build workflows that keep everything moving. This simplifies operations and streamlines your processes.
Here’s how to centralize your customer data.
Copper solves the problem of information overload by integrating directly with Google Workspace. You can manage contacts, deals, emails, and tasks from within Gmail and Google Calendar, eliminating constant tab switching.
This tight integration means less context switching and more productivity, allowing your team to focus on relationship-building rather than administrative chores. You can also automate tasks, such as logging calls and SMS automatically, so accounts are always updated, or triggering emails when you move an opportunity to the next stage. Plus, with customizable pipelines and detailed reporting, you gain actionable insights to predict revenue and track team activity.
The mobile app ensures you stay connected and can move relationships forward from anywhere, while robust integrations with tools like PandaDoc, DocuSign, and QuickBooks ensure your sales process is seamless.
This all results in improved efficiency for your team.
While we’re discussing ways to cut costs and improve efficiency, you might also be interested in my guide on best forestry tools for other industries.
Key features:
- Google Workspace Integration: Manage contacts, deals, and tasks directly within Gmail and Google Calendar for a seamless workflow.
- Automated Workflows: Create recurring tasks, automate email series, and log activities without manual effort, saving time and improving data accuracy.
- Customizable Pipelines and Reports: Visualize sales processes with drag-and-drop pipelines and generate custom reports for data-driven decisions.
Learn more about Copper features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Copper stands out as a strong contender for best crm software, especially for mid-sized businesses heavily invested in Google Workspace. Its seamless integration, automation capabilities, and project management features centralize customer data and enhance sales efficiency, reducing implementation complexities.
10. Keap
Struggling to manage your growing customer base efficiently?
Keap helps you organize your customer information and streamline your sales process. This means your team can focus on selling and serving customers, not administrative tasks.
Keap helps you centralize all your customer data and communications, making it easier to track interactions and personalize outreach, ensuring no lead falls through the cracks.
Here’s how you can simplify operations.
Keap offers a unified platform to manage contacts, sales, and marketing efforts. This consolidates tools, saving you time and money.
You can automate repetitive tasks like follow-ups and lead nurturing, allowing your sales team to devote more time to high-value activities. This directly boosts their productivity and helps close more deals.
Additionally, Keap provides robust reporting and analytics features that give you a clear overview of your business performance. This allows you to identify trends, optimize strategies, and make data-driven decisions that propel your growth forward.
Speaking of streamlining operations and boosting growth, you might also be interested in my guide on best small business ERP software.
You’ll unlock your business potential.
Key features:
- Centralized Customer Management: Streamline customer data and communication, ensuring a holistic view of every client interaction for improved engagement and personalized outreach.
- Automated Sales & Marketing: Automate lead nurturing, follow-ups, and email campaigns, freeing your team to focus on high-value tasks and close deals more efficiently.
- Performance Analytics & Reporting: Gain valuable insights into sales pipeline, marketing effectiveness, and customer behavior through detailed reports for informed decision-making.
Learn more about Keap features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Keap is an ideal best crm software solution for mid-sized businesses aiming to consolidate customer data, automate tasks, and gain actionable insights. Its integrated approach simplifies complex operations, enabling your team to boost efficiency, improve customer retention, and make data-driven decisions that drive growth.
Conclusion
Tired of scattered customer data?
Choosing the wrong system doesn’t just waste money; it complicates your goal of centralizing data. It’s the roadblock keeping your teams working in silos.
The right tool makes a monumental difference. A Nutshell study shows effective CRM use can increase sales productivity by 34%. That efficiency directly impacts your revenue, making this choice absolutely critical for growth.
Here is my top recommendation.
From my evaluation, Salesforce is the clear winner. Its platform is built to centralize data and uses AI to cut your operational costs.
I was impressed by its ability to unify data from any source, powering personalized engagement with trusted AI. This makes it the best crm software for achieving data-driven insights.
I highly recommend you start a free trial of Salesforce. See firsthand how it can unify your sales, service, and marketing teams.
You’ll see a real business impact.
