Choosing the right CRM tool is no longer optional — it’s essential for building stronger customer relationships, increasing sales, and driving long-term growth. With dozens of platforms offering features such as automation, analytics, and AI-powered insights, finding the right solution can be a challenge.
In this guide, we’ll explain what CRM tools are and highlight their key benefits. We sign up to each one of these platforms and dedicate our time to exploring and testing their features to help you choose the best fit for your business.
What Are CRM Tools?
Definition of CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a software system that enables you to store all your contacts, deals, and sales data in one place. It helps with organizing processes, automating tasks, and creating reports, optimizes your time, and prevents you from losing valuable information.
In a single platform, you are going to have registered from the first visit someone made to your website to their latest purchase. It helps to turn leads into customers by providing a more personalized experience, for example, by identifying relevant products and content for each person.
A CRM records and analyzes calls, emails, and other document information, which is also used to develop reports about sales and marketing performance. You can use this to have new insights and increase revenue.
Why Businesses Need CRM Tools
We believe CRM tools are essential to businesses because they give you the means to store, organize, and keep track of every interaction you have with your prospects and customers. A good CRM helps companies to engage with their leads and increase sales.
According to a Kixie report 91% of companies with 10 or more employees are using CRM software. They affirmed that $8,71 is the average return on investment (ROI) for each $1 spent with a CRM. The report also pointed out that CRM implementation can increase 29% in sales revenue.
Key Benefits of CRM Tools
Centralized Customer Data
Having a good communication system among different departments and inside the organization is a challenge for big, medium, and small companies. However, when you have the proper CRM tool, it becomes easier.
As it's possible to centralize the reports and customer data in one platform, it avoids miscommunication. It's possible to keep track of customer interactions and assign tasks to the right people who will be able to check what has been done before.
Sales and Marketing Automation
Using a CRM platform can boost your and your team's productivity considerably. The software gives the possibility to automate simple tasks, which saves time, enabling you to focus on more important matters, like developing strategies.
Besides, in a single platform, you can choose who has access to customer data, so the sales, marketing, and customer support departments can analyze it to enhance results. Instead of spending time searching for all the information in multiple places, everything is concentrated in the CRM. The platform even provides performance reports, which can offer interesting insights.
Improved Customer Experience
As you diminish errors and offer better resources to your team with a CRM platform, customer satisfaction improves. As a consequence, your business ends up retaining more customers, as this is directly connected to the capabilities of offering good service.
Data-Driven Insights
The best CRM software provides efficient marketing and analytics features, which are a great asset to identifying the weak points of your company, getting insights, and finding the best solutions, leading to selling more.
How to Choose the Best CRM for Your Business
Some basic features should be considered before deciding which CRM platform you are going to use. Pay particular attention to the ones below.
Sales Tools
A CRM system must allow you to record every sales history from each one of your contacts. In the implementation process, you are going to do it manually, but after it, the CRM must be able to integrate with other tools to keep track of your leads and customers' activities automatically.
A CRM should enable you to create a personalized pipeline as well. Each company has its particularities and it includes a journey that the customer usually follow to complete a purchase.
Creating a personalized pipeline helps your sales and marketing team to identify the buyer stages, and implement the best strategies to close deals.
Marketing Integration
The data CRM stores are very valuable when it comes to marketing, counting on a platform that has marketing features integrated into it makes the process much more efficient. You will be able to develop, manage campaigns and analyze them aligned with the sales process.
Observe if the CRM you are choosing allows you to integrate with your website, email, SMS, and social media. It will help your sales and marketing team to work in sync, make better use of the data, and consequently increase revenue.
Lead Scoring
Leads have several characteristics that enable you to divide them into many categories. Each one is in a different deal stage, some are more likely to make a purchase than others. Choosing a CRM that uses artificial intelligence to detect selling opportunities will help you to close more deals.
You just need to set the criteria that indicate a lead has a high potential to turn into a customer, then the software will send you a notification when it identifies selling opportunities.
Task Management
Another essential feature of CRM systems is enabling you to create and assign tasks, set deadlines, and follow up on how each activity is done. Through it, you will be able to manage your team better, offer them more precise feedback, and help with insights.
It's also easier for everyone in the team to organize their time, identify what needs to be done, and which are the priorities.
Mobile and Accessibility
Nowadays, smartphones are used as computers, and having a CRM that offers a mobile app will facilitate things for you. Its app should enable you to track activities, add and edit information, and send messages to your customers from your smartphone.
Data Management
A good CRM platform must allow you to manage data in the best way, creating contacts lists, keeping track of their history, and recording each action they make when interacting with your business.
It also has to give you the ability to customize the sales process, so you can manage the deal stages in a way that better suits your company, segment your contacts, create tags, and much more.
Storing the data isn't enough, it needs to be easily found and strategically organized to enhance productivity, and avoid missing opportunities. Pay attention if the CRM system you choose offers that.
6 Top CRM Tools to Consider in 2025
1. Brevo
How useful is a CRM tool that offers a wide range of features, but doesn't have a user-friendly interface? It's like having a feast in front of you, but not being able to enjoy it. Thankfully, that isn't the case with Brevo.
The platform puts together not only essential features to manage customers, but also offers a well-organized dashboard that facilitates the onboarding process, even if it's your first time using a CRM.
One of the main functions of a CRM is enabling you to store, organize, and segment all of your company's contacts, such as customers, partners, and leads, in a single place to facilitate management and avoid losing important data about them.
With Brevo, you can bulk upload your contacts by importing them from a file or syncing with one of the 150-plus apps that can be integrated with Brevo.
The platform offers high-quality segmentation tools that we find very valuable when it comes to building sales and marketing campaigns to target specific audiences. You can use one of the Brevo templates to optimize the process. For example, create a segment with contacts who have opened or clicked an email campaign in the last 30 days, and they will be added automatically to this list.
The conversion-optimized forms allow you to develop strategies to grow your databases. You can fully personalize them using a drag-and-drop editor and embed the form on your website or landing page.
Brevo also allows you to create email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push campaigns, and no design experience is required. Once they are ready, you can schedule them to be sent at the best time for each recipient. Brevo analyzes their opening patterns to determine when they are more likely to open your message.
With the sales tools, you can track deals, create personalized pipelines, and assign and manage tasks to prevent losing business opportunities. Every customer interaction is registered and automatically synced with your contact database, so the whole team can have access to previous interactions when negotiating with customers. Each contact has a profile that shows all their interaction in one timeline.
Highlighted features:
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Simple to use
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Segment your contacts
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Assign tasks for your team members
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Add deadlines
Attach documents and notes to each contact
2. JivoChat CRM
CRM tools JIvoChat
JivoChat CRM stands out for allowing you to manage communication with your target audience on a single platform. Our CRM stores every interaction customers and leads have with you, whether it's by email, live chat, or through your social media channels. It's possible to add multiple users, assign roles, and control their access. This way, you and your team can collaborate to deliver efficient customer support.
All tickets from all channels are automatically saved in JivoChat CRM, which helps to increase sales by 29%. The onboarding process is simple and quick. It takes only 10 minutes to install and start using the app.
You can schedule calls, emails, and meetings, create and assign tasks, and build a whole customized pipeline that fits your customer journey. It's possible to import your current contacts from files or other apps as well.
We also believe it's essential to have ways to measure performance and track your marketing and sales strategies. Therefore, the JivoChat CRM has a set of analytics features where you can check working hours, response time, the number of unread messages, and the reasons for refusals.
The option to integrate the JivoChat app with Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, and install our own live chat and chatbot features on your website is one of our main advantages. Aligned with CRM, you can count on tools to send automated responses in diverse platforms, and diminish the response time, which prevents you from losing sales opportunities.
Highlighted features:
- Schedule calls, emails, and meetings
- Create customized pipelines
- Centralize communication
- Track reports
- Integrate with multiple apps
- Mobile app
3. HubSpot
CRM tools - HubSpot
HubSpot provides you with an AI-powered CRM that aims not only to store data but to use artificial intelligence to provide you with smart analysis and insights. With the data agent, which is still a beta version, it's possible to ask questions about your customers, and the AI will search through the CRM, calls, emails, documents, and the web to find the answer.
Adding contacts to the platform is very simple. You can sync with other apps like MailChimp, Outlook, Zoho CRM, and Google Contacts, import from a file, or just copy and paste. Then, you have the option to segment your contacts as you wish.
You can create active segments that automatically update their members according to the criteria you set up. That's an interesting feature to send marketing messages based on customer behavior. There is also the option of creating static segments. In this case, however, they aren't updated automatically, which means if new contacts meet the criteria, they won't be added to the segment unless you do it manually.
With HubSpot, you will be able to keep track of customer deals from progression to revenue attribution and develop personalized workflows. It also allows you to add your team members to the platform, assign roles, and control their access permissions.
There is a centralized data log that shows every action taken by your co-workers, automation, integrations, and AI. We also value the fact that HubSpot allows you to integrate with over 1,800 popular business apps using third-party and HubSpot-built integrations.
Highlighted features:
- Centralized dashboard
- View of your entire sales pipeline
- Unlimited users
- Company insights
- Deal tracking
- Meeting scheduling
4. Pipedrive
CRM tools - Pipedrive
The basis that will enable you to use a CRM effectively is adding your contacts, as the CRM is the place where you will manage the interactions with them. Pipedrive makes it easier for you to add them. You can make it manually by filling out a form, or sync with Google or Outlook contact lists.
We also believe that the best CRM tools should enable you to schedule activities and keep track of your deals using a single dashboard to optimize your work.
Pipedrive offers that you can schedule calls, demos, follow-up messages, and see them on a calendar, so you don't forget any appointment. If you use an external calendar, you have the option to sync with it as well.
Creating personalized pipelines is easy with Pipedrive. You will be able to build visual representations of every deal, which allows you to analyze them strategically to plan what you need to do next.
Used by over 100,000 companies in 179 countries, Pipedrive also has an AI-powered sales assistant that can analyze your team's performance and make recommendations. Besides, this CRM can be integrated with over 500 apps.
Highlighted features:
- Track communications
- Automate tasks
- Receive customize reports
- Integrate with other apps
- Set activities reminders
- Centralized dashboard
5. Freshsales
CRM tools - Freshsales
Freshsales stands out for being an AI-powered CRM. The platform counts on an AI assistant, Freddy, who will give you insights about your contacts, like the contact score that evaluates how likely a lead is to close a deal.
This CRM also provides you with several tools that enable you to store, gather, and organize data about your target audience. This way, you can create 360°profiles to understand your customers better and determine when and how you should interact with them.
When someone from your team accesses a contact profile, they will be able to see important information about the customer, including contact details, recent conversations, activities, deals, meetings, and tasks related to them.
Within the profile, you can click on the buttons "SMS", "Email", or "Call", and get in touch with the person right away, without switching tabs. It becomes much easier to control everything in a single dashboard.
With this CRM tool, you can perform bulk actions as well, such as sending emails, adding tags, updating fields, or building a sequence. We liked that Freshsales enables you to use the Kanban view to visualize your contacts and deals and group them in the categories of your choice.
It's also possible to build personalized workflows by using one of Freshsales' templates or creating one yourself. Another advantage is that you can integrate the platform with over 1,200 enterprise apps, such as Slack, Shopify, and Google Analytics.
Highlighted features:
- 360º view of your customers
- Custom sales activities
- Create contact lifecycle stages
- Automate tasks
- Integrate with several tools
- Activity timeline
- AI-based deal insights
6. Zoho CRM
CRM tools - Zoho
Zoho CRM aims to help you streamline, monitor, and automate your business processes. With a user-friendly interface, you can create multiple pipelines with different stages based on your company's needs, and keep track of your deals through them. Building a pipeline is simple; all you need to do is name it, choose a layout, and add stages, like qualification, value proposition, and price quote.
If you already use another CRM, Zoho allows you to import your existing data from it to facilitate the onboarding. You can also import contacts from files or add them manually. We liked that Zoho gives you the option to choose how you want to visualize your list of contacts, using Kanban view or chart view, for example.
Another interesting feature is the Teamspaces, where you can create multiple spaces for your teams for them to work separately, and control what data they can access. To help improve productivity, you can create workflows by defining rules and conditions that will trigger specific actions, so your team can focus on more challenging tasks. The workflow insight reports will show you how they are performing.
Zoho CRM also has an AI assistant, Zia, who can develop modules, reports, and workflows in a few seconds. Zia scores prospects and identifies the ones who are more likely to close a deal, putting them as priorities. She can also analyze data and make predictions, detect anomalies, and recommend products to customers based on their behavior.
Highlighted features:
- Fast implementation
- Reach customers across multiple communication channels
- Real-time notifications from customers’ interactions
- Automate tasks
- Trigger instant actions
- Real-time reports and insights
- AI-powered sales assistant
