Top 5 Best CRM Systems in the UK

Selecting a CRM is a big decision in any business

All staff will use it every day. The implementation experience will make or break the project and the costs of license fees and the services of an expert implementation partner will impact on costs.

Your business will need good customer relationship management for sales, marketing and service so you need a platform that is wide enough to handle it all and scalable so that costs and feature unlocks can grow in proportion to your revenue.

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HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is free forever and always and in our opinion is the most user friendly and powerful, scalable platform for business growth.

HubSpot’s user interface is the most intuitive we have ever seen so implementation, training and staff adoption is fast and easier than CRM systems from the past.

The base CRM platform is free! Microsoft did that in the nineties with Windows and they changed the world. HubSpot has certainly changed the landscape of the CRM industry forever.

When you do upgrade to unlock specialised features for sales, marketing and service, the amount you pay is based on the amount of data rather than a cost per user. In 2020 HubSpot introduced a new feature so you can also store as much data as you like for free, and just pay for the data you are actively engaging with.

For the last 15 years many CRM vendors were mimicking Salesforce. Now lots chase after HubSpot.

Limitations

HubSpot’s marketing automation is as good as it gets but the jump in price from starter to professional version is sometimes too much for a small business or start-up.

HubSpot security is second to none but at the moment their data centre is only in the USA. It may not be a fit for enterprise organisations that store volumes of sensitive personal data.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign steamed into the industry in the last few years and shot up the user reviews on G2

In the past, CRM like Salesforce and Email Marketing like Mailchimp were considered separate purchases but HubSpot has changed that. The modern generation are a blend of the two. In the past, your implementation partner  would add value by customising the software.

With HubSpot partners the value add tends to be marketing services.

Other review articles and comparisons might see ActiveCampaign as ‘marketing automation’ and might not even make the list in a CRM shootout. But for a small business looking for an all-in-one solution, it could be a good pick.

You can use ActiveCampaign for as little as $15 per month. A few years ago I’d have passed out! When Marketo and Pardot and Eloqua ruled the email automation industry, the cost to automate customer journeys and funnels would mean that only the firms with considerable resources could play the game. Now any business can feasibly have this in their marketing to convert leads and nurture the database.

ActiveCampaign is the same budget range as small scale local CRM vendors but it has a big user base. Its compatible with other CRM so it can be bolted on just for automation. It boasts an ever-growing app marketplace and is compatible with code free integrators like Zapier and PieSync so it can easily integrate.

Limitations

The CRM and sales features are limited compared to some CRM and perhaps not so intuitive as other platforms. The email and landing page templates are easy to use to but the standard ones are a little basic.

There are no inbuilt tools for social posting and ad management so using it to attract leads is limited. Nurturing and converting leads is where ActiveCampaign excels.

It’s not so polished as some others in this list BUT you can now get a decent CRM with workflow automation for $15 a month!!! I feel faint…

Selecting a CRM is always much easier when you get Advice from an independent CRM consultant. Contact GeminiBlue to book a free consultation

Salesforce

CRM used to be big build enterprise implementations with Oracle or SAP and you’d have servers ran by an IT department in your building. So when Salesforce hit the market in 2004 it changed everything. A cloud based SaaS platform that you could login to from anywhere on any device via the browser.

Salesforce today is the largest CRM vendor on the planet with lion’s share of the CRM market globally. It has been developed, added to and improved over the years and is supported by an entire industry of Salesforce developers and consulting partners around the world. Partnering with the right consultancy will make implementation run smooth and unlock the full value of the platform.

SalesForce allows for custom objects so businesses use developers to customise and build unique tools to create almost anything that can be imagined to add to the platform. At enterprise level Salesforce can support local hosting and the most robust level of privacy and security.

Limitations

You pay per user and it is not priced to be cheap. Once you have upgraded to Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud and/or Service Cloud, and added an email marketing suite like Pardot, it is a monthly license fee suitable for established and enterprise organisations.

For small or young SME, Salesforce is more complex than some newer competitors and could be considered overkill for some firms.

Freshworks

Setting up Freshworks is a delight as CRM for sales teams. It has an intuitive interface the app comes with call recording built in.

Originally called Freshsales it was obviously designed for sales teams but with the drag and drop journey builder, workflows and email templating it has evolved into a good all-in-one system. Working with a partner that well understands sales enablement will pay dividends here. Once its implemented it is user friendly and focuses on productivity.

The basic ‘Growth’ plan includes lead, contact, deal, and account management, a visual sales pipeline, automated lead scoring and SMS integration. All of which is par for the course now with modern CRM.

Freshworks keeps everything simple and easy to use. So implementation and training can keep to a minimum, especially with the right implementation partner. Its open API makes it compatible with anything.

Limitations

For content marketers, the lead attraction tools are basic. We don’t get ad management, social posting and blog hosting so you’ll need to combine with other tools for those.

Zoho

Perhaps India’s answer to Saleforce? Zoho is a highly polished, mature CRM with all the features we expect from a good platform with varying options for small business and enterprise clients.

Zoho’s best apps and add-ons are built by their own developers and they have built a huge amount of features to enhance and customise a solution for your business. As with all CRM, working with a software partner to implement Zoho will be much smoother than attempting self service.

Zoho allows you to build custom objects and can be adapted for delivering your services as well as sales, marketing and service.

A powerful platform with a huge array of bolt on features.

There are a vast amount of choices when it comes to selecting a CRM vendor. See tips how to get started in the blog post How to Choose a CRM With Too Many to Research