Customer relationship management (CRM) systems benefit businesses by centralizing customer data, improving collaboration, automating tasks, and providing insights for targeted email marketing. However, selecting the right CRM system from the multitude of available options can be daunting. Some CRM systems offer just the features essential for small businesses, while others are robust enough to meet the demands of large enterprises. PCMag has been reviewing solutions from leading and lesser-known vendors for more than a decade, so we can help ease your decision-making process. Our Editors' Choice winners, including Apptivo and Zoho CRM, are full-featured and very customizable, but we also highlight other options that might be a better fit for your business. Make sure to click through to our in-depth reviews of each entry below and read our buying guide for more advice on the category.

What Is CRM Software?

CRM software helps you track contacts and nurture them to build customer loyalty and repeat sales. A good CRM makes the information it gathers accessible to other business platforms via smart software integration. In this way, CRM becomes the epicenter of how you manage your customer's journey, from the first marketing touch to a closed sale and on to the next engagement.

Some small businesses use spreadsheets to mimic a CRM's functionality. However, this type of home-brewed solution delivers just a tiny subset of the features you get with a CRM, and it's cumbersome enough that you'll be frustrated once your customer list grows beyond 100 entries.

The best CRM solutions are not only easier to use than spreadsheets, but they also do more than just retain user and contact information. They also automate processes, such as dynamically creating calendar events, setting appointment reminders, prioritizing the sales pipeline, and automatically identifying new sales opportunities. They can even rank opportunities by the likelihood of success. What makes that possible is integrating your other customer data so the CRM can access it, such as from your help desk.

This information is a goldmine of opportunity. It lets you identify prospects for up-sell or cross-sell, convert existing customers to new products or services, target new marketing, or track invoices. The software is also a fail-safe because it prevents multiple salespeople from chasing the same prospect. Choosing the right CRM software dramatically improves your team's collaboration and productivity at the same time that it increases sales.

How to Shop for a CRM System

Choosing a CRM is a significant investment. Knowing how your salespeople operate and having some idea of the features that can help them is where your pricing decision needs to start. Only by knowing what you need and then matching that up against the appropriate pricing tier are you going to get the best deal. But there are gotchas beyond that, too.

For example, the initial setup and training can eat up a chunk of the budget, as can upgrades and ongoing support. Integrating the software with existing systems might call for additional equipment. Does the CRM workflow mean the sales or customer service teams will need new PCs, smartphones, or tablets? These costs can quickly add up.

What's more, many CRM vendors are expanding their products into a variety of areas beyond customer relationships. They're moving towards managing the sales lifecycle end-to-end, with CRM representing the customer journey. The more expansive the tool, the more customization you'll need to make it work for you. That's why carefully evaluating these products is so important.

As with any piece of software, it's critical to take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, you can't fully understand how CRM software works until you use it yourself. Be sure to have colleagues from different departments try out the software, too, so you can understand how successful it is in different situations.

Most vendors offer at least a 14-day trial (which is relatively short; 30 days is better). Some, including Zoho CRM, offer free plans, albeit with limited features or users. These can either serve as a full-time solution for small companies or a long-term trial for larger companies.

(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)

What's the Latest in CRM Software?

CRM software is constantly evolving in new ways to help businesses improve their customer interactions and retention. Sometimes, that means adding new features and technologies into the mix. Other times, it means casting familiar features in a new light. As competing vendors jockey for position in the market, trends emerge that will define CRMs for the next few years.

One such trend is the tendency for customers to prefer cloud-based CRM systems, which have already had a visible impact on the industry. All of the CRM systems in our most recent tests are available as cloud-based subscriptions, and many aren't available any other way. This model, also known as software as a service (SaaS), has several advantages over traditional, on-premises software, including lower upfront costs and greater scalability and flexibility.

Another relatively recent development is social CRM, which integrates social media platforms with CRM software to help businesses monitor, engage, and manage their social media presence and interactions. Social CRM software can also help companies leverage social media data to generate leads, identify influencers, and measure customer satisfaction.

Taking the concept of social CRM even further, omnichannel CRM allows businesses to interact with customers across multiple channels and devices, including phone, email, web, mobile, and messaging apps. It aims to provide a unified view of the customer journey and preferences across all touchpoints.

Another novel CRM functionality is known as a customer data platform (CDP). These systems collect and unify customer data from various sources, such as online and offline transactions, web browsing, social media, and third-party platforms. CDP can help businesses create a single source of truth for customer data and provide a 360-degree view of the customer.

Finally, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is well-represented in the world of CRM systems. Over the past few years, CRM vendors have increasingly used AI to automate tasks, provide personalized recommendations, and generate insights from data. AI can also enhance customer interactions through chatbots, voice assistants, and sentiment analysis. More recently, some vendors have begun experimenting with generative AI, typically based on large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, to further improve these capabilities.

How to Match a CRM System to Your Needs

The toughest part of making a good CRM choice is understanding what the product can do and what your salespeople actually need. Sales is a difficult and often fast-paced profession, which means your employees could actually feel burdened by the very tool you purchased to help them. That'll kill adoption rates, so you need to understand what they need before tossing more technology into the mix.

It's tempting to forgo this homework and simply pay for one of the big, all-inclusive CRM software packages just to have access to every feature. That approach will almost certainly wind up costing you more in both time and money, while probably delivering less flexibility than you'd expect. That's because these large CRM software packages are often platforms rather than tools. The numerous features they advertise are the product of integrating with a host of third-party solution providers, not merely options you can turn on. Third-party integration means not only added licensing dollars but also new costs.

A better approach is to first understand how your employees will use the software. Think about what tools your team is currently using and what processes they follow. Figure out how those tasks map to the CRM software you're evaluating. Consider what some of the most common tasks are. For example, if a tool forces users to dig through menus and submenus every time they want to log a call or email, the tool will complicate their jobs instead of simplifying them. More and more CRM tools combine the email and sales experience into a single, smart inbox or centralized dashboard view to manage all or most daily communications and tasks without leaving the CRM tool.

The ways in which companies interact with customers are shifting rapidly. Most customers still expect to interact with you via email, but social media is fast becoming a game-changing technology for interacting with customers. Understand how your company engages with customers over email and make sure your CRM software actually complements that relationship. A fully optimized CRM should automatically capture data from email interactions, not force your employees to do that manually.

Once you've looked at requirements from the sales team's perspective, flip it around and think about your customer. Maybe even run an online survey or focus group. What is their best sales experience? Once you know that, you can tailor your CRM to fit.

(Credit: Less Annoying CRM/PCMag)

Why Is CRM Data Quality Important?

Data quality should be a key focus of that tailoring process. You need to pay attention to customer information that originates inside the CRM and the supporting data imported from other systems, such as finance or service desk tickets. Ensuring this data is "clean" means it needs to be verifiable, in the proper import format, and directly on-target to the CRM's queries.

A 2024 study published by Validity surveyed more than 600 CRM-using organizations globally. Of those asked, 24% of CRM admins said less than half of their data is accurate and complete, while 31% reported that poor-quality data costs them at least 20% of their annual revenue.

Ensuring good data quality is a matter of testing and constant vigilance. You need to run regular and repeatable tests on your system. Depending on the size of your staff and your CRM investment, the Validity report recommends you should also consider appointing a data management professional as the lead on keeping your CRM data clean. That person should manage the entire data flow, including not just your CRM but any apps connected to it. They should also handle the full spectrum of data management tasks, including automating data workflows, data protection, and backup. If you feel such a hire is in your future, you should pull that person in as early as possible, preferably at the evaluation stage.

Watch Out for CRM Complexity

Complexity is a common blocker to CRM adoption, and some of the products we review have highly customizable interfaces. That means a lot more than simply changing the look. Next to data gathering, a CRM's next-most important function is as a workflow hub. That means you can decide which data you want to collect, who should provide it, when they should offer it in your usual sales flow, and where it should wind up.

Along the way, you can retool your CRM's interface to show only the tools and features necessary to complete those steps. Everything else can stay in the background until it's needed. It can take a good deal of work to get your CRM to this point, and not all the tested products can do it. But taking advantage of deep customizability is one of the most effective ways to make sure your CRM instance is as easy to use as possible. That's step one for successful adoption.

The other end of the spectrum is what to do when things go wrong. Whether it's a software bug or simply some difficulty using a particular feature, you need a responsive support team. You can make that part of your service level agreement (SLA) if you've got one, but you need to do your own verification otherwise:

• Make sure to understand the level of support associated with your pricing tier and whether you can modify it.
• Research the provider's support forum. Check out the kinds of questions that other customers ask and how long it takes for the company to respond.
• Check for DIY resources. Are there self-service tools for certain issues if there's a support site? If there are, be sure to run through them to see how effective they are. Search the knowledge base to see what kinds of articles are there and in a useful format. Make sure this content will be helpful to you.
• Investigate the product's training options. Complex tools usually require some level of training, so see what your service vendor provides. Is on-site, in-person training your only option, or are there online resources, such as well-organized blogs, videos, and recorded webinars?

Make Mobile CRM a Priority

Make sure to take a close look at the CRM solution's mobile app. This should be a separate app, not just a mobile "capability" (which almost always means a mobile-optimized version of the desktop website). In addition, you shouldn't pay extra for it. Mobile devices are an entirely different breed from desktops or laptops. Employees use them differently, and software renders them differently, which means the business processes that involve them will behave differently.

Make sure your CRM software of choice can support the mobile device platform your team uses. Are you providing every employee an iPhone or is yours a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment, which inevitably means supporting multiple platforms? Next, carefully evaluate what the app can do. Some apps offer a read-only view of your sales pipeline or contacts but don't let you make updates until you get back to a computer. Others offer a seamless and responsive experience, letting you do everything on a mobile device that you would on a computer. Don't commit to CRM software until you've used the mobile app in a way you and your team would do on a day-to-day basis. For many SMBs and their agents, the mobile component of a CRM app might be more critical than the desktop version.

Many CRM vendors cater directly to a mobile workforce. Those apps are full-featured offerings with responsive web design and layouts dedicated to a mobile experience. If you have a field sales team that leaves their laptops behind and instead works on their tablets and smartphones, then you need to give them the tools they need, and these kinds of apps fit that bill.

(Credit: Less Annoying CRM/PCMag)

Can CRM Integrate With My Existing Systems?

Salesforce and other larger CRM platforms have huge feature stacks that are available as modules with related features. If the features are what you need, you can configure your entire solution simply by accessing the right modules. But if something is missing, or your sales staff is simply more comfortable using something else, you may need to use software from third-party vendors to fill gaps.

Integration takes two basic forms. The easiest is if the CRM system or the system to which you're trying to connect supports the other as a "native" integration. That means that the company has a pre-built integration module you can just download and use as needed. You'll have the best luck with big-name targets here, as many companies pre-build integrations for companies such as NetSuite or Salesforce, for example.

The other method is rolling your own integration. This is easiest if both systems have an open application programming interface (API). The most common standard here is representational state transfer (REST). With a REST API, you can have developers build a custom integration for you. That option certainly provides the most flexibility and customization, but it can also add significant costs depending on the level of your coding talent.

It's also worth looking at any third-party software you're considering, or indeed any software you already use, to see if there are integrations available from that side. Maybe you already have email marketing software that you love, or you want to connect your cloud storage service, lead management tool, or customer service management platform. As we've mentioned, you'll want to be able to connect your email account and perhaps your calendar, too.

Another excellent example of a value-add integration with CRM would be your product support or help desk platform. Next to your sales staff, your product support professionals probably have the most direct contact with your customers, and the information they gather in the course of even a short conversation can be gold to a salesperson. Problems with one product line can mean upsell opportunities to another. 

Simply knowing that your CRM supports third-party integrations isn't enough, even at the outset of your purchase. The depth of integrations can vary hugely, so you need at least a semi-accurate understanding of the experience you want your salespeople and customers to have, now and in the future. Take your time and map this out as much as you can. You'll vastly decrease the likelihood of a deployment failure and get your staff excited about the new system at the same time.

How to Secure Your CRM Data

When you're working with the sales pipeline and customer data, make sure security is top of mind—especially if you're using a SaaS CRM solution (which means a big chunk, if not all, of your customer data resides in the cloud). You should feel comfortable with the company's security requirements. It's a warning sign when your CRM software lets you select a password but doesn't generate an audit trail whenever someone makes a change or if it doesn't let you define access controls for each user. Customer data is an extremely valuable commodity, especially now that customers are more reluctant to part with it. Securing it isn't just about maintaining privacy; it's about protecting profitable relationships that directly impact your bottom line.

Integration plays a role here, but it's mostly about research. You can make sure your chosen CRM software integrates with as much of your current IT security software as possible, such as your identity management system, so your employees can take advantage of single sign-on authentication. But even more important than that is doing your homework. That means digging deep into the vendor's SLA and ascertaining exactly where your data resides, who is responsible for its safety, and what happens if there's a problem. Doing some Google surfing to see whether this vendor has been breached in the past—and if they have, what their response was—is another good indicator of just what you're getting your data into.

For more on contacting customers, check out the best email marketing software, the best small business CRM software, and the best lead management software.

Molly McLaughlin, Rob Marvin, and Gadjo Sevilla contributed to this story.