The 7 Top Free and Open Source CRM Software Solutions that Offer the Most Value

Creating a customer is no longer a sole business purpose. Fire or ice, brands need to even work on relational intelligence in order to lead with a sense.  Basically, it is the connection that can make a brand more durable and assure a competitive edge. Customer relationship management (CRM) is an act, a process, and also a capacity to win customers and lead the market.

In this article, we will first help you understand CRM and then walk you through the 7 top Free and Open Source CRM software solutions.

What is Customer relationship management?

Leaders are those who run parallel with their customers’ preferences. So, do not undermine your relationship with your customers. Instead, shift customers into a more positive bond with the brand, and with the company. The tip here is to pick up your customers’ signals by developing a relational radar.

When it comes to maintaining a better relationship with your customers, you need to work on several factors and functions that can help you manage and analyze every touch point of your potential and existing customers throughout the lifecycle. Tracking granular data of your existing and prospective customers can help you maintain a personalized relationship with your customers. The goal is to eventually improve customer service relationships and enhance customer experience. With this comes customer retention, new sales, and business growth. To get this business attitude, your aim should be to be liberal with customers.

Can the process of CRM be automated?

Yes, Customer relationship management (CRM) software enables a business to perform limitless business intelligence in an organized process without being stymied by friction resulting in a better relationship with customers. The math behind having a better relationship with your customers is workable with CRM software.

Although CRM is not new, the rapid evolution of mobile and social media interactions is forcing many businesses to refresh their customer engagement strategies by managing their data well. Several industry-specific CRM solutions are available today. Chatbots, machine learning, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality are the key trends contributing to a better CRM solution today.

Yes, managing customer relationships is critical these days for many obvious reasons. Some of the top customer relationship management software solutions available today can help you resolve this mystery.

Workaround

Managing the often complex sales processes that drive deals to business is a huge task.

Let us see the six crucial steps in the sales process:

• Prospecting
• Preparing or qualifying the leads
• Approaching
• Presenting - Extend value by understanding their wants and desires
• Handling Objections & Closing
• Post-sales support

Studies indicate that many companies are slow in prospecting, identifying, and processing their leads.

The entire process is like playing baseball, where, in order to hit the ball, you don’t have to swing so hard. But, at the same time, if you miss it, you are in trouble. It is all about the timing.

“Missing a lead is worse than losing a lead”

In short, the process demands a bit of alertness.

Simply start using a customer relationship management (CRM) software solution.

In order to track, manage, and engage intelligently with every sales opportunity very closely and with precision, the team should be equipped with a tool that can get their task run smoothly without any friction.

Have a look at the below image;

With CRM, the sales process gets shrunk to only 3 stages due to the automation of several processes.

What are the factors of a good CRM software solution?

Good CRM software moves beyond customer service to customer experience and can perform and automate various functions involving sales force, marketing, location-based services, contact center, workflow, lead management, and analytics. It also uses the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to capture every touch point, analyze them, and create all possible patterns to retain them. Such software can enhance customer value, business value, and experience value.

What are the types of CRM?

#On-premise CRM ( Self Hosted, License based )

This type of CRM is usually adopted by huge businesses that deal with complex data and a huge level of customer associations. Interested businesses purchase licenses to hold the software on the company’s own servers. It generally involves a huge cost and a prolonged installation process. On-premise CRM works under a restrictive licensing agreement.

#Cloud-based CRM ( Cloud Hosted, Subscription based )

Otherwise, it is called SaaS (software as a service) or on-demand CRM. This system allows an organization to use the CRM without having to license, install, or manage it. The service is completely hosted by a third party. Users will have minimal operational control.

#Open source CRM ( Self Hosted, Free License )

As with CRM software, we have been seeing many major players and their software models. Although they prove to be technically excellent with best-in-class features, including machine learning capabilities, artificial intelligence, etc, many of such top-performing software come with a huge cost tag and licensing agreement. For a cost-conscious organization or for an organization that looks to customize the software as it desires for any purpose, this could be beyond its scope. The only solution is to have the Open source CRM software solution.

Are Open Source CRM Software Models Free?

Open-source CRM models may not be completely free. Buyers will be required to sign a license, which indicates the terms for using and modifying the software. Just an open-source model does not guarantee free software. Users can be charged for software services and other support systems.

So, a Free CRM can be;

• Open Source

             (OR)

• Freemium

Free and Open Source CRM Software

Free and Open source CRM software offers unlimited, totally functional customer relationship management and users can customize it to their requirements. With free and open source software, you have the advantage of avoiding the huge licensing costs of proprietary software. Another major advantage is that it is totally secure. Also, users can tailor the software to their needs (as the name clearly suggests, anyone can modify, enhance, or add value to the software to make it more workable and efficient). Above all, free and open source CRM software can be technically excellent and very cost effective and many of them are free for unlimited users.

This can be:

• Cloud-based
• Self-hosted

What is a Freemium CRM?

Freemium CRM offers the basic version for free for a limited period and for limited users. As the name suggests, some of the model’s services are free. There is a limitation to storage, contacts, and other extra features. Typically, it is a combination of both free and premium models, and they are mostly cloud-hosted. The idea is to let the users test out the CRM for free for a limited time, and if they wish to continue, they need to pay. In most cases, this becomes a natural next step.

What are the Key features to look for in a CRM solution?

Operational

• Sales automation
• Marketing automation
• Customer service
• Field services
• Digital commerce
• AI-driven functions

Collaborative

• Email integration
• Social media integration
• Mobile

Analytical

• Real-time data collection
• Real-time analysis (consolidate and mine and analyze)
• Reporting
• Robust Dashboard

Functional

• Security
• Efficiency
• Scalability
• Ease of use

After going through the comprehensive details about CRM, let us have a look at the information about the most popular one in this category: Creatio CRM.

Creatio CRM:

Designed to cover the all-embracing CRM needs of businesses, Creatio CRM is a no-code, user-friendly customer relationship management platform that enables midsize and large organizations to streamline and control their operations. The software helps align the sales, marketing, and service teams to improve end-to-end process efficiency. The software’s innovative sales tools allow businesses to analyze and track the sales pipelines by stages, win/loss rate, best reps, etc., and automatically identify areas that need improvement. It offers extensive service tools, enabling businesses to accelerate response times, personalize customer communications across channels, and enhance overall customer experience. Creatio CRM offers everything a business needs to adapt to evolving customer expectations and market trends and build a customer-first organization, including workflow optimization, predicting best customer strategies using the power of AI and ML, and a no-code platform to create or customize features as needed.

(Source: Creatio)

Key Features:

• Comprehensive CRM tools to boost productivity and collaboration on a unified platform.
• 360-degree customer view and AI/ML-enabled insights based on customer-specific data to help deliver personalized customer experiences.
• End-to-end workflow automation across multiple business functions and channels.
• Unlimited no-code customization to develop unique business applications with Creatio CRM and customize the software’s core modules like UI/UX development, workflow automation, data modeling, integrations, and more.
• It offers extensive real-time analytics and reporting with built-in analytics, KPI monitoring, and reporting tools. Further, it allows the design of custom dashboards and vertical-specific business intelligence applications with no code.

Moving further, here are the 7 Best Free and Open Source CRM software available in the market that will help you to determine the right CRM software for your organization.

1. SuiteCRM
2. Hubspot
3. Agile CRM
4. Zoho CRM
5. Bitrix24
6. Freshsales
7. Capsule

Have a look at this comparison chart before we take you through each system:

SuiteCRM (Free Open Source & both cloud and Self-hosted)

Developed by SalesAgility, SuiteCRM is the most popular free and open source CRM software. SuiteCRM is free to download for an unlimited number of users. The solution works both on-premise and in the cloud and provides complete access to the code and database.  With nearly 5 million+ users, SuiteCRM is currently available in 70 languages.

Striking Features:

Sales: From lead management to complete control over your accounts and contacts, SuiteCRM provides a 360-degree view. All activities are well organized, and the software allows you to get the most out of your sales funnel.

Marketing: SuiteCRM for marketing allows you to generate campaigns, manage emails, and automate every marketing task easily. It also makes it easier to create new leads and nurture them in real time. Generating leads directly from social media platforms is much easier with SuiteCRM.
Workflow automation: SuiteCRM comes with powerful workflow automation enabling maximum efficiency of your business functions and processes. 

Manage accounts; record and track bugs; schedule meetings, tasks, and calls; manage campaigns; contact management;  contract management; document management; events management;  lead management; project management; real-time reporting; and workflow management.

Apart from these customer relationship management features, SuiteCRM also offers third-party integrations, add-ons, and customization with utmost security.

This free and open source CRM makes it easy for you to manage all your communication with your prospects, customers, social media followers, co-workers and partners.

Easy and quick analytics help you to detect areas of improvement.

The self-service portal allows you to manage customer issues easily.

Suite CRM is easily customizable to suit your needs. It integrates with a list of other software easily. The software is robust, fully featured, and scalable. With a number of utility add-ons, the CRM speeds up several processes smoothly. You can even send and receive WhatsApp messages directly in SuiteCRM.

If you are looking for a quick login, the software allows you to do so with one click.

SuiteCRM is safe to use and offers complete value for a much-lowered cost.

Have you ever tried SuiteCRM? If yes, share your experience with us.

Hubspot (Free & Self-hosted)

Hubspot CRM is 100% free forever and an easy-to-use tool. Investment in Hubspot CRM for your sales and marketing automation process holds remarkable potential for improving business productivity. Users can easily streamline their business process and reduce the inertia involved in each stage, leading to a better customer relationship with this top-rated Free CRM Software.

“GoodFirms particularly recommend HubSpot CRM for startups, small businesses and B2B companies who are keen to integrate their sales and marketing processes”
 

Striking Features:

Sales: Whether you are a team of one or a thousand, Hubspot allows you to work with 1,000,000 contacts at a time.

By leveraging AI, this software sales software that software allows you to have a real-time view of your entire sales funnel on a visually clean dashboard. Users can automatically track customer interactions and log every granular data that will contribute towards your sales growth. Also, users can chat with prospective customers in real-time with a number of sales productivity, and pipeline management tools that are free to use with Hubspot CRM.

Marketing: Trimming the turn-around time of each of your marketing activities leads to huge time and cost savings. Hubspot’s CRM enables streamlining and optimization of your marketing programs efficiently and in real-time. Customized information about your recent conversation with a customer, social media activities, emails, and other activities are easily listed right within the CRM dashboard. Filter and save for a custom view and easy access for the future.

Turbo-charge your marketing activities with Hubspot CRM with campaign, email, and contact management with live chat, and bot.

Workflow automation: Hubspot CRM automates almost all the time-consuming tasks you do every day and every minute. This accelerates the process and sets a level of accuracy.  

Analytics: Analyzing and modeling customer behavior can contribute to a better understanding of your customers. It helps you collaborate efficiently with potential customers and offers them contextual data to generate better sales. Hubspot CRM is designed to help you carry out a set of analytics about your customers.

The software enables automated Login, real-time metrics, and best integrations. Moreover, every module of Hubspot CRM is powerful on its own and more powerful when combined with the other modules.

Have you ever tried Hubspot? If yes, share your experience with us.

Agile CRM (Free & both cloud and Self-hosted)

Trusted by 15000+ customers, Agile CRM is an all-in-one, affordable, and next-generation customer relationship management software. The company has been periodically adding new features to make it friendlier and more efficient. Agile CRM is one of the most popular free and open source software packed with features that are essential to push your business forward.

(Source: AgileCRM)

Striking Features:

Sales: Agile CRM automatically tracks and updates contacts in real-time. With a 360-degree contact view, the CRM lets you work on high-value tasks and conversions. Right from appointment scheduling to post-call activities, the software stands as an essential tool to perform and automate all your day-to-day sales activities. Users can close more sales with a single-page contact management facility and automate scheduling, manage tasks with a drag-n-drop facility, and collaborate easily with Agile CRM. 

Marketing: Whether acquiring new customers or maintaining existing customers, a functional CRM will be a huge help. Agile CRM automates key functions of a marketing team, streamlines the process, and increases efficiency. It can be operated right from a mobile phone. With effective analysis, it lets you run marketing campaigns that actually get results.

Agile CRM is compliant with Google Tag Manager (GTM), so tracking your marketing goals with GTM is simple with this software. Moreover, the Chatbot facility stands as a highlight of Agile CRM.

Agile CRM is GDPR compliant. It lets you answer customer questions via live chat and has built-in email templates. Users can even generate automated emails and social campaigns right within the CRM. Other key features include scheduling appointments with a synced calendar.

The facility of mobile CRM and multi-software integrations makes this free and open-source software a popular, powerful, and free CRM system for acquiring, maintaining, and serving customers.

Have you ever tried Agile CRM? If yes, share your experiencewith us.

Zoho CRM (Free & both cloud and Self-hosted)

Zoho CRM is multi-channel CRM software that allows users to engage with prospects, automate sales and marketing functions, and close more deals quickly and economically. Currently empowering nearly 250,000+ businesses worldwide, this free and open source CRM tool helps build and maintain exceptional customer relationships. Moreover, Zoho CRM Plus is a tool that enables you to operate sales, marketing, and customer service, all from one centralized online platform, facilitating the delivery of exceptional experiences to every customer.

Striking Features of Zoho CRM :

Sales: Zoho CRM will put you in complete control of your customers and sales leads on the go. It is very easy to track your contacts, share information and follow them up in a timely manner without any friction. With easy integration of your email system with Zoho CRM, it gets much simpler to identify and share trends that matter to your contacts, spot opportunities, and increase efficiency with less time spent. The software allows you to combine social media interactions with your sales process. All you have to do is just connect, engage, and make the sale.

Marketing: Zoho CRM eliminates unnecessary interruptions by structuring your marketing activities and makes you more productive. 

Analytics: Analytics help you visually identify future opportunities and anomalies. Zoho CRM’s real-time intelligent predictive AI tool enables its users to gain insights about various trends, including customer interactions, preferences, trends, activities, interested marketing campaigns, social media interactions, email responses, and much more about your customers. Also, Zoho CRM’s SalesSignals feature lets you understand and analyze other performances, including marketing campaigns, field sales performance, and much more, to help you make informed predictions on future trends.

AI assistant: Zia is an intelligent conversational AI assistant that insanely notifies Zoho CRM users and comes in handy to manage several business functions on the go. Ask anything like, “Get me the number of leads this month,” “What is the revenue to date this year,” and much more.

Integrations: Zoho CRM is integrated with several other software and tools, thereby aligning you well with other productivity functions required to propel your business forward.

Live Chat: Segment your visitors and chat with them in real-time easily with Zoho CRM. 

Apart from the above-mentioned features, Zoho CRM is packed with powerful AI features to help you reach out to your customers and leads at the right moment and engage with them relevantly across every channel without any friction.

Have you ever tried Zoho CRM? If yes, share your experience with us.

Bitrix24 (Free & both cloud and Self-hosted)

Bitrix24 is a comprehensive free and open source customer relationship management software solution with automation capabilities. It is available in both on-premise and cloud formats. Unlike other CRM software, the free version of Bitrix24 supports unlimited users and 5 GB of online storage.

(source: Bitrix24)

Striking Features:

Sales: When it comes to sales, managing all your daily activities, right from sorting your customers, targeting, creating quotes, generating leads, communicating with them, managing their interactions on social media, etc, have to be done with utmost efficiency. With a feature-rich set of automotive facilities and an intuitive interface, the Bitrix24 CRM enables its users with a 360-degree view to organize and track all interactions with existing and potential customers, clients, partners, and other contacts easily and efficiently. Moreover, the software also supports the users with a free AI-powered sales assistant CoPilot.

Analytics: To track your conversions and impressions, you need your CRM to perform analytics on a regular basis. Bitrix24 CRM provides superior analytics service and pretty much everything you need to predict the future moves of your customers and their preferences. 

Security: With two-factor authentication, Bitrix24 is a safe CRM offering the utmost security to data.

Marketing: Bitrix24's marketing tools and features offer distinct facilities to automate every aspect of marketing easily.
One of Bitrix24's unique features is its Integrated call center. The chat widget makes it easier to automate several customer touchpoints. The software is also available as an app, enabling complete mobility for its users.

In short, Bitrix24 is a reliable, free and open source CRM that is workable across industries and roles and serves the need for mobility, productivity, collaboration, automation, management and measuring them effortlessly.  4,000,000+ members are already using this software. The self-hosted version of Bitrix24 comes with API, CMS, and source code. Users can easily customize and integrate the software with other tools. For convenience, Bitrix24 also has the mobile version.

Have you ever tried Bitrix24? If yes, share your experience with us.

Freshsales (Free & cloud-based)

Freshsales is a fully featured AI-powered, free and open source CRM software. Freshsales CRM Sprout is a free forever startup plan. Performing both your sales and marketing activities with utmost transparency is the need of the hour. Freshsales CRM allows you to automate workflows simply, effectively, and efficiently.

Striking Features of Freshsales CRM:

Sales: Freshsales offers total visibility of your sales pipeline by automatically capturing your visitors and leads and assigning them the right sales member. Reach out to your leads with the right offering and make informed calls to action, all within one single interface. Gain 360-degree customer view, access their social profile, schedule appointments, track tasks, and follow your leads in a more structured way with Freshsales CRM. The software allows you to view all your contact details, including phone conversations, email conversations, social media interactions, etc, all in one single dashboard.

Marketing: Freshsales CRM allows you to know your visitors in real time and launch your marketing campaigns using behavior-based segmentation without missing a beat in a more productive way. With a chronological timeline view of each activity, it gets easier to pick up the moment and act quickly with Freshsales CRM. 

Analytics: With Freshsales, you can analyze your interactions with your leads and customers and forecast them with in-depth reports. Trendline report is one such analytical report generated by Freshsales that gives users better visibility of the progress of their sales strategies.

Integration: Freshsales integrates with many of your favorite apps. 

Freshsales mobile app allows you to perform all your sales and marketing activities from anywhere and at any time.  

Have you ever tried Freshsales CRM? If yes, share your experience with us.

Capsule (Free & cloud-based)

Capsule CRM has a modern, fully functional, and intuitive interface. This cloud-based CRM is ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses and startups to manage customers, leads, vendors, partners, and other contacts. It is easy to use, free, and open source CRM, and its users rate it well. The software currently comes with an AI Assistant.

Striking Features:

Sales: With Capsule CRM, users can manage their complete sales pipeline, including tracking deals, sharing quotes, and following them up with easily organized emails, notes, and documents, all in one place. It lets you create tasks and assign them with complete control of all deadlines and achievements. Its integration with multiple tools is yet another important aspect of multitasking sales activities. With configurable filters, users can generate reports with real-time data. 

Marketing:Capsule CRM’s marketing automation features are strong, and this puts the software on par with some of the best-paid CRMs, such as Salesforce and Infusionsoft. From following your contacts on social media platforms to managing your campaign deadlines, Capsule CRM helps you be more productive with all your marketing activities.

Integrations: A really important aspect of Capsule CRM is its integration with G Suite. Other than this, this free and open source CRM integrates easily with Google Apps and a range of third-party tools, like MailChimp or Zendesk, accounting tool Xero, document signing tool like Right Signature etc. Its Gmail add-on allows users to store their email conversions easily right within Capsule CRM.

Combine Teams & Roles is yet another unique feature of Capsule CRM that lets users segment team members and assign roles to have more control over data access.

Some of the bright updates that make this CRM ideal include a better calendar, improved navigation, drag-and-drop, and a week-wise review of your tasks.

Capsule CRM is available on mobile platforms and also on Smartphones.

Have you ever tried Capsule CRM? If yes, share your experience with us.

The CRM software solutions mentioned above are no doubt the best and have their unique features. But, if you are looking for a CRM that can fit your future needs, then Salesforce CRM is the one-stop solution. After all, the majority of the future customers are predicted to be millennials and Gen Zs. Convincing them to commit to a product is not going to be easy unless you have built-in systems to automate functions to help you efficiently handle the process. Salesforce CRM can be the right choice as it is fully customer-focused. 

Salesforce CRM

Conclusion

Customer relationships feed business growth.

The global customer relationship management market is likely to touch USD 262.74 billion by 2032. A huge level of demand for the CRM solution is currently coming from both big and small companies. The capacity to carry out businesses with ease can be the biggest advantage of CRM software. The new genre of customer experience is highly challenging. Moreover, the ability to complete sales cycles quickly and cost-effectively and the ability to retain customers for the future are forcing companies to embrace the available CRM solutions in the market.

Customer relationship management - CRM is one of the fastest-growing software in the market. It can be said with certainty that good customer relationship management software solutions will continue to retain

their hegemony today and for a better part in the future. The largest share will be taken over by the free and Open Source CRM software solutions.

Well, if you have yet to adopt a CRM, it is high time you get it. Almost 91% of the businesses today are using CRM. While evaluating the best CRM software solutions, it is ideal to go by your requirements and business goals. If you are already using a CRM solution, look for options to go mobile. 

If you have already used any of the above-listed software, then do not hesitate to share your opinion with us.