Best CRM Systems in 2025: Top 3 for Small Businesses

Every CRM system on the planet promises you the world. They claim your business will be more successful, your team will be more efficient, and everything will just work better. But here’s the reality: there are roughly 3,000 different CRM systems in the world today. I’m talking globally – the USA, Europe, Asia, and beyond. It’s a massive, overwhelming jungle of choices.

But out of this enormous selection, you need to pick just a few. That’s exactly what I’m going to help you with in this article. I’ve compiled my top three CRM systems for small businesses in 2025.

I didn’t go with a top five or a top ten. I deliberately chose just three systems. Why? Because if I were running a small business – and I actually am, though I already know which CRM I use (spoiler alert: it’s Salesforce) – I wouldn’t want a massive list of options. I’d want someone to come to me and say, “Here are three options, here are the pros and cons, and for your specific situation, choose this one.” That’s exactly what you’ll find here.

By the end of this article, you’ll know which three CRM systems I consider the absolute best on the market for small businesses today. I’m comparing these three systems across several key parameters that I believe are most critical for small businesses: 

First: Cost of Ownership. I’ll look at three components: 

• Implementation costs.
• License costs.
• Maintenance costs.

And I’m not just talking about direct monetary costs, but also the cost in attention and time your team needs to dedicate to the system. If someone in your organization has to spend time managing a system, that’s the same as you taking money directly out of your pocket and paying for it. I’ll assign a 5-star rating for cost, since it’s hard to tell exact costs for all types of companies. 

Second: Ease of Implementation. I’ll rate this on a 1-5 scale, where 1 means it’s impossible to implement without outside help (like hiring a consultant like me), and 5 means even a child could figure it out.

Third: Ability to Customize and Scale. When we start out, we need simple things. Maybe we just want to track leads from a website form, follow deals from a trade show, or monitor project stages for window installations. But as we grow, we want to add quotation automation, connect to our ERP system, integrate with our website, or even add customer support functionality. I’ll evaluate how well each system can grow with your business.

Curious which ones made the list? Let’s dive in and see which CRM might be your perfect match!

#1: Salesforce  

I’m putting Salesforce in first place because it’s the most widespread and popular CRM system in the world.

About  

Salesforce has been around since 1999 when Marc Benioff and his team founded it as the first cloud-based CRM system. The company is still led by the same team today, and that’s sometimes a problem. Times are changing, and the “old school” founders aren’t always keeping up with the changes.

However, because Salesforce has been on the market for so long, it has out-of-the-box integrations with virtually everything that exists. When any company develops a new product – whether it’s a marketing tool or a business application – the first system they’ll integrate with is Salesforce. 

That’s exactly why this product is in first place and why I’m a Salesforce consultant. It’s the most widespread product and therefore the easiest to work with.

Cost   

Salesforce offers multiple pricing tiers, but for small businesses, we’re focusing on the Starter Pack at $25 per month per user. This is far beyond the scope of this article, but if you’d like a full review on the Salesforce Starter Pack, let me know in the comments. I’m deliberately not discussing their Professional suite at $100+ per month because if you’re a small business just starting your CRM journey, you definitely don’t need it. The Starter Pack has everything you need and more.

The Starter Pack includes features like accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases (which are support tickets in Salesforce terminology), and even email marketing capabilities, which, in my opinion, are not very usable. But on paper, they’re included in the price.

And this feature-rich interface can be a problem. There are too many tabs and settings. It’s not immediately clear what Opportunities exactly mean, how to set up their stages, what fields do, or how to modify them. You’ll likely need a consultant – maybe just for a day or two – but expect to pay around $800-$1,500 for that day of guidance.

Finally, you’ll definitely need to invest time in Salesforce, especially in the first year. Plan for at least two full working days per month of someone’s time just for basic maintenance and administration. This is an absolute minimum.

This makes me rate Salesforce’s cost of ownership at 3 out of 5.

Ease of Implementation

Now let’s talk about ease of implementation. I rate Salesforce at 2 out of 5 for ease of implementation. I can’t say it’s impossible to implement it yourself – it’s doable if you’re technically savvy – but Salesforce is the most complex system to implement on this list. You’ll definitely need a consultant. I don’t recommend Salesforce for those who struggle with computer literacy.

Scalability

This brings me to my final score for this CRM and the reason I’ve put it in first place: its scalability. Scalability is an ability to grow the CRM along with the growth of your business. Salesforce earns a strong 5 out of 5 here.

Salesforce pays you back for the complexity of implementation and ownership. You can essentially stay with Salesforce forever. If you start simple with basic tracking and reporting, Salesforce fits perfectly at a reasonable cost. Yes, it’s hard to set up, understand, implement, and explain to employees. The user permissions system is particularly challenging. But because Salesforce is such a popular, large platform, you can grow with it indefinitely.

Need customer support tracking? Add Salesforce Service Cloud – no data migration required. The Starter Pack even includes basic Service Cloud functionality, allowing you to register customer cases, track them through stages, escalate issues, and create simple automations.

You can upgrade from Starter to Professional to Enterprise to Ultimate to their AI-powered Einstein edition (though I have strong opinions about their AI). The point is, you never have to migrate your data or rebuild your processes. Everything transfers seamlessly through upgrades.

#2: PipeDrive  

Pipedrive is perfect for companies that need a very simple CRM system focused on lead tracking, calendar management, and pipeline management.

About

Pipedrive is a cloud-based sales CRM platform founded in Tallinn, Estonia, on June 21, 2010, in Tallinn, Estonia. In November 2020, the company achieved “unicorn” status – valued at over $1 billion – following a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners. Today, Pipedrive serves more than 100,000 customers worldwide, providing tools that help sales teams manage leads, track deals, and automate workflows to drive business growth.  

Now let’s talk about why Pipedrive is on this list. Pipedrive has created the best email integration I’ve ever seen and an outstanding Kanban view – in other words, a visualization of the pipeline where you can drag deals through stages. In terms of user-friendly interface, I’ve never seen a better CRM. It is, in my not-very-humble opinion, the most intuitive system on this list.

Cost

Pipedrive offers plans from $14 to $99 per user monthly. The fundamental differences between plans aren’t significant from what I can tell. For basic sales tracking, the $14 plan is sufficient. You can integrate forms and upload contacts and potential deals – it’s perfectly adequate.

But that’s for basic sales functionality. Don’t forget that Pipedrive is a venture capital firm, it will try to trick you into upselling potentially useless features, like project management, which is basically a copy-paste of their sales pipeline.Don’t get tricked. 

Ease of Implementation

This is the simplest system to implement. You don’t need a consultant, so there are no implementation costs. You barely need to dedicate time to system maintenance. I’m giving Pipedrive a strong 5 out of 5 for this.

If you properly communicate to your team how to track deals and define your sales stages, the system is essentially self-managing. It has an intuitive interface and an excellent timeline showing all deal and client interactions. I can’t say anything negative about the user experience.

Scalability

In my opinion, Pipedrive is not adapted for medium-sized teams because it has significant customization limitations.

You can customize it somewhat, but this isn’t a CRM platform – it’s a ready-made, “out-of-the-box” CRM. You take it as it is, maybe add some fields, but you can’t fundamentally rebuild it. This isn’t a business process constructor; it’s a pipeline management system with excellent features, and it does that job very, very well.

If growth and scalability don’t concern you or if you’re not planning to become a technology giant or unicorn company, Pipedrive is an excellent choice. But if you grow significantly, you’ll eventually need to change systems. 

I recommend Pipedrive to most small companies, especially those with 1-5 people in sales. It’s actually simpler than Excel for sales management because it integrates email and presents everything in one timeline. You won’t forget anything, and you can set reminders – it’s a fantastic system for simple sales processes.

#3: Bigin by Zoho CRM  

This one made it into my list almost by accident. I originally planned to include Zoho CRM – a platform I have a complicated history with, having once been an official partner. While planning this article, I stumbled upon their subsidiary product called Bigin.

After registering and playing around with the platform, I was pleasantly surprised by how similar it feels to Pipedrive. Yes, Pipedrive has a slightly more polished interface, but Bigin offers many interesting features that Pipedrive simply doesn’t have, or has them as paid or third-party add-ons. That’s exactly why this could be a very compelling option for many businesses.

About

Bigin is a product of Zoho Corporation, a privately held Indian multinational technology company founded in 1996. Headquartered in Chennai, India, with a significant presence in Austin, Texas, Zoho is known for its suite of over 55 cloud-based business applications, including Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and Zoho One, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

The company has achieved remarkable growth without external funding, serving over 100 million users across more than 180 countries. Zoho emphasizes user privacy, maintaining a strict policy against monetizing customer data, and focuses on sustainable, long-term growth strategies.

Cost

Bigin has an incredibly democratic pricing policy, and it starts at zero. It’s completely free for up to 500 records total – that means contacts, accounts, and deals combined. For a small company, this is more than sufficient to simply start recording and tracking clients. I honestly think this is an excellent starting point.

From there, they have various paid plans, but here’s what will likely happen: you’ll eventually end up not with one of their standard Bigin plans, but with Zoho One – their subscription to all Zoho products. This is a fantastic offer because they have numerous applications, like Zoho Invoice. 

In fact, I use Zoho Invoice myself for our Dutch entity. We used to use Xero, but since our accountants switched to local Dutch software, we started issuing invoices simply through Zoho Invoice. It’s completely free, and we’re happy with it. Despite my often critical comments about Zoho (which I’ll address in a moment), this particular tool works remarkably well.

In terms of costs, Bigin is a clear 5 out of 5.

Ease of implementation  

To give you an illustration, when I was testing Bigin for this article, I connected our existing telephony system in literally one minute. I clicked two buttons, read the instructions, and boom – telephony was integrated. You click a button, your phone rings, you pick up, and it connects you to the client. This is incredibly convenient because it shortens the distance to follow-up calls. You don’t need to do anything complex – just click and call.

This inevitably increases the number of calls and client touchpoints, which is excellent for business development.

I believe this system is very straightforward. You won’t need a consultant or anyone else. You can simply install it for free and start learning. From all the options I’ve presented today, this is probably the cheapest product both in terms of money and total cost of ownership.

However, after playing around with Bigin, I noticed the user interface isn’t perfectly polished. Sometimes there are too many unnecessary fields, and small details aren’t well thought out. For example, unlike Pipedrive, when you save a task, it doesn’t automatically populate the task subject – – like “call.”.  You want to record a call? You click “new call,” but the subject doesn’t auto-populate.

These small details somewhat complicate the implementation process. That’s why I’m giving it a solid 3 out of 5.

Scalability

This is where things get interesting and complicated. On one hand, Bigin lives within the Zoho ecosystem, so theoretically you can click a button and migrate to the full Zoho CRM platform. But we need to talk about Zoho CRM separately. It’s a large ecosystem with many different products. As I mentioned, I have a complicated relationship with it because on paper, it’s an excellent product. In reality, Zoho suffers from poor UX design. Many small details aren’t well thought out, and there are numerous subtle, barely noticeable bugs.

From my experience, Zoho has poor customer support. When we encountered problems and wrote to them, the response wasn’t from a senior person – it was some junior representative. I suspect they’ve now replaced even these junior staff with an AI, though this is speculation based on my past experience.

I want to be clear – I’m obviously biased toward Salesforce, but I genuinely liked the Bigin product despite my Zoho reservations. 

In any case, despite the support issues, Zoho is a product with an enormous number of features that could potentially allow a company to scale significantly. I believe you can implement almost anything on Zoho. When I looked at how they’ve built things, I was genuinely impressed. 

However, my past experience and conversations with a few of my previous customers who still use Zoho make me rate scalability at 3 out of 5.

Summary and Recommendations  

To conclude, there is no perfect solution for everyone. In my opinion, in 2025, there are three best options for small businesses: Salesforce, Zoho (or Bigin), and Pipedrive.

Choose Salesforce if:

• You want a system you can grow with indefinitely.
• You have some technical capabilities or a budget for implementation help.
• You prioritize long-term scalability over immediate simplicity.

Choose Pipedrive if:

• You’re not technically savvy.
• You want immediate simplicity and usability.
• You’re willing to potentially change systems later as you grow.
• You have 1-5 people in sales and need straightforward pipeline management.

Choose Bigin if:

• You’re a medium-sized business seeking a Salesforce alternative.
• You want maximum value for money with comprehensive functionality.
• You’re looking for lower implementation costs but don’t mind some complexity.
• You specifically want the Zoho One subscription with multiple business applications.

All three systems will accomplish their core mission for small businesses in 2025. I’ve spoken in very general terms here because different businesses have different use cases.

If you’re not sure which CRM is right for your business, reach out to us at Muncly. Our work is backed by solid CRM consulting experience – just take me, for example, with nearly 10 years of implementing different systems. I’ve tested many CRMs, seen them in action, and know their strengths and weaknesses. We’ll help you make the right choice for your business!