Top 10 free, paid and open source CRM software suites for business houses and startups

One of the most basic requirements to make your business run well is to have a very good relationship with your clients and customers. The same is applicable, not only for small businesses and start-ups but also for big business houses. As long as you are having a limited number of clients or customers, things are easier to maintain a good relationship with your clients. But wait, our business will grow big, and it will not be possible to recognize every customer personally! What to do then! How to manage a good relationship with the clients, and handle their problems! Yes, there are CRM software suites. But, what is it! Let us know!

Customer relationship management or CRM software are available in the market, and some of them come with a price tag, while others are available for free. If you are a business owner, you must know the ways to use a CRM software, and article here will not teach you how to use it. But if you’re looking for the best downloadable CRM software, here are a few of the best CRM software, which you can use to boost your business.

Before proceeding with the names of the CRM software, you must know the various kinds of CRM software, which are available in the market, and the one which you should go for.

Just like other software, there are a number of great paid CRM software suites, which you can go for if you do not want any kind of hassles, and want to get complete peace of mind, without worrying about paying some pennies extra.

On the other hand, there are free and open-source CRM software, which you always go for, if you are having a start-up. You have to play around with an open-source CRM software in order to install them, and it is worth giving the time learning that instead of paying some pennies for that. The open-source CRM software also comes with an open gate, where you can modify the software to fulfil your needs, though unit development knowledge for that.

On the other hand, there are some free CRM software, which comes with a limited set of features, and in order to get the advanced features, you may have to pay some pennies to satisfy the developers and fulfil your needs.

Free, paid and open source CRM software suites

Now let’s move on to our 1^st CRM software suite.

Really Simple Systems (Free / Paid)

Really Simple Systems is one of the best CRM suites, which is highly optimized for start-ups and can help you work with a limited number of employees, without the need of paying extra for more employees for big and well-established businesses. Really Simple Systems offer almost everything, which you need, to run your business from the very beginning. In the beginning, you can get the option to set two users to use the CRM, and 100 megabytes of storage, which is quite enough to get emails from the customers and clients and handle various requests and queries.

If you face any kind of problems, Really Simple Systems has a great customer service team, who can always help you to make you get rid of all your troubles. According to some users, the CRM suite might be difficult for you to use at first, but it is worth learning the way to use it, as it will surely be an achievement for you in the long run. If at any time, you might need to get more features, you can always upgrade it, to use the full potential of the CRM suite, for managing your business hassle-freely.

XRMS (Open Source)

For those business owners, who are looking for an open-source alternative, for customer relationship management, XRMS is the best tool for them. Though being open source, the suite comes with a lot of features, which you will need, which include human resource management, integration with computerized telephone services, SFA, and many others. XRMS is the best small business CRM, which can even handle big businesses, provided you pat for the extra set of extra tools and human resources to use the full potential of the software.

Just like other open-source software, XRMS also doesn’t offer you everything just like a piece of the pie. Though working with XRMS at the beginning might not be as easy as pushing a switch, but with time, you can easily handle the software at ease. If you’re not having a lot of development knowledge, you might need to hire a developer, who can help you integrate XRMS with your business, and enjoy the full potential of the CRM suite.

For those inquisitive minds, XRMS is built with PHP, ADOdg, Microsoft SQL and MySQL, in which most of the developers out there are comfortable with. Thus, the cost of setting up is not going to be very high, if you hire a 3^rd person for integrating it with your business.

SugarCRM (Open Source)

The SugarCRM is by far one of the best CRM tool, yet open-source, and is known to almost all the business owners even if they don’t use it. It is one of the best CRM suites, as it keeps updating itself with time, and offer almost all the features, which you want from a CRM suite. From handling customer queries to HR management, you can do almost everything under the hood, with the help of this mighty SugarCRM. Now you can get a great user interface, which is quite rare in open-source software. It also offers a great interface for handling everything from mobile, and many other things, which are highly important for your business.

The SugarCRM also comes with a business analytics tool, on the correct usage of which, can help you understand the business trends, to enhance your business with salesforce service cloud. The sales analytics tool, part of the business analytics tool, can also help you boost your sales, and eventually your profit. SugarCRM can also integrate your business with social media, which can help you understand the trends, and build the most appropriate business strategy. Built with MySQL and Microsoft SQL, and PHP, it will not be as hard as moving a rock, learning to use it and integrate the same with your business.

SuiteCRM (Free / Paid)

Are you looking for a great CRM software, which offers the best customer service! SuiteCRM is going to be the best CRM software suite for that. It comes with a paid customer service support and is based on the open-source SugarCRM platform. Thus, you can enjoy all the features of SugarCRM in the following CRM suite, which makes it mandatory for those, who are looking for great customer support.

The SuiteCRM is actually a stripped-down version of SugarCRM, and it is made in a way, such that the software suite becomes easier to install by all kinds of users. It also fulfils the requirement of almost all the business houses out there, removing the unnecessary features, which are just available for being a piece of open-source piece of software.

FreeCRM (Free / Paid)

If you have just started your business, and do not want to invest a lot of money for purchasing a paid CRM software suite, the FreeCRM is the best alternative for you, and you can handle 100 users with it. A hundred users is a lot for start-ups, and it also has the capability to handle 10,000 contacts, which you will hardly cross, being a start-up. Thus, you can get all the basic features, and in case you’re feeling low, you can always upgrade to the pro version, with just a few dollars every month.

FreeCRM, though the name suggests, is not free forever. But, if you have started your own business, you can use the FreeCRM software suite, free for one year, and after that, you will have to pay for it. It just offers you the opportunity to use it free for one year, when you might not be having enough profits, and then start paying for it, once your business gets a momentum. The software is completely web-based, which means you can manage everything from your web browser, which is a pretty good thing. You just need to connect it to the hosting, which might need you to contact a web developer, if you are not expert in tweaking the web host.

vTiger (Open Source)

Now, India has got something to count on, as vTiger is a customer database software for small business, or a CRM tool, whatever you may call it, built in our country. It has a set of world-class clients in the 1^st world countries, and Aegon USA, Nokia are a few to name. Though, built in India, the mighty vTiger is open source CRM suite, which also has a number of other web-based products, which include marketing automation, sales automation software, customer service handling software and many others.

With the help of vTiger, you can find a number of great customization options, and everything is possible to control through the web, which makes the user interface very friendly for almost all kinds of users out there.

vTiger can integrate with a number of other programs, which include Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft word, or even Thunderbird, to make your business and customer relationship management a piece of the pie. Thus, if you are looking for an open-source CRM for outlook, which most users want, go for vTiger.

CiviCRM (Open Source)

If you are having a non-profit organization or is part of a public sector unit, CiviCRM is the best CRM software suite, you should go for, which is distributed under the Gnu Public License, which means it is completely open-source in nature. For ease of usage, the CRM suite is integrated with Joomla and Drupal, so that the users can use the CRM suite with ease, with the web-based platform.

As the following customer management software is meant for non-profit business organizations and very small-sized businesses, the software is made very easy, such that normal users can integrate it with their business platform, without the need of hiring a 3^rd person, for the purpose of doing the same task. Though, the software being open source in nature, you are at liberty to add new features, provided you have a lot of coding knowledge and use it to make it the most suitable one for your business.

ZohoCRM (Free / Paid)

ZohoCRM is another great customer management system, which comes with almost all types of features, which you will need from a CRM app. The software is free, just like FreeCRM for one year, and it allows you to handle 10 users at the time, which is also pretty great for most start-ups out there. It can also handle 25,000 records at the same time. After one year, you can always keep on using ZohoCRM with just a few dollars per month, which unlocks you a plethora of extra features.

ZohoCRM also comes with a mobile app, such that everything can be handled with the help of your smartphone in the pocket. Compared to other CRM suites, which you can find in the market ZohoCRM might not match with them as far as capabilities are concerned, but if you want a limited set of features, which ZohoCRM offers, you can always go for the limited capabilities, as it comes with a small price tag, as well. ZohoCRM is a great CRM software for healthcare and comes with features to maintain business relationship management, like a pro.

Xtuple (Open Source)

Xtuple is a LINUX based free CRM software suite, which also comes with an enterprise edition, for which you will have to pay some extra fees. The CRM suite is free for as a small business CRM, but you can also use it for your enterprise, provided you are happy with the limited set of features, which the free version come with. The CRM suite is also highly customizable, making it match all the requirements for your business.

Though it is a CRM software, it also comes with Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP tools, making it the one-stop destination for all your business requirements, and data warehousing. Thus, if you want to pay for a single software to get everything for your business from customer relationship management to resource planning, Xtuple is the one, which I will highly recommend.

Bitrix24 (Free / Paid)

If you are looking for an online CRM, and that too with a number of pricing options, I will recommend Bitrix24. The CRM suite comes with a very beautiful user interface, which is handy for most users, and it is highly suited for start-ups and big business owners. The free version in case of most of the CRM suites come with irritating limitations, but Bitrix24 is not one among them. The pricing and the availability of services, along with the flexibility make Bitrix24, one of the best in its class.

With the help of the free version of Bitrix24, you can handle 12 users, pretty well for start-ups, and get 5 GB of storage. The 5 GB of storage can be used by you in any way, which is a pretty good deal. On the other hand, if you want more storage, once you cross a certain threshold, you need to be a small amount of money every month to get over the limitations and get 50 GB of storage, and that too with the ability to handle more users or employees, whatever may it be. If you are unable to integrate the CRM tool with your business, Bitrix24 can also help you with the process of installing the same on your server for a nominal one-time fee.

All the CRM software suites, which are mentioned here are based on the web, which means will not have to search for CRM software for Mac, Windows, LINUX and other platforms separately. On the CRM software suites mentioned here, are highly rated by the clients, who use it for their businesses. But if you want to get more facilities, without having to worry about spending a few more pennies, you can go for Microsoft Dynamics CRM online SAS package, which can provide you with a lot of features.

There are a number of other CRM software suites, and you can also go for IBM CRM solution, which is also a great option. This article is just a comparative study of various free, paid an open-source online CRM software suites, which you can go for. You should choose the best one, depending upon your budget, the tasks, which you need. If you are not happy with any of the small business CRM software suite mentioned here, you are at liberty to try out a new one.

If you found this information related to CRM software helpful, do not forget to comment your opinion below. If you want a separate CRM software comparison chart, also let me know. Do not forget to mention the CRM software suite, which you use for your business.

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