• Best CRM for collaboration across departments: Freshsales
  • Best for social media and online marketing: Zoho CRM
  • Best CRM offering visual pipelines: Pipedrive
  • Best CRM provider for project management: Insightly
  • Best CRM offering a robust free version: HubSpot
  • Best CRM for enterprise sales teams: Salesforce

Enterprise CRM software are customer relationship management platforms specifically designed for midsize to large organizations. With the right software, businesses can automate a series of sales and marketing related tasks, such as deal tracking, client engagement and team management.

Some of the most notable providers include Freshsales, Zoho CRM and HubSpot for their scalability, cost efficiency, and marketing and sales features. The providers mentioned below organize and track current and past client activity through custom workflows and pipelines with advanced tech features and AI tools. They’re meant to help teams, departments and entire enterprises access the same up-to-date information through visually digestible dashboards.

Top enterprise CRM software comparison

The top general enterprise CRM software offer a variety of core features, like contact and account management, basic reports and dashboards and activity tracking. After building pipelines and reports in the software, information and activity updates can be shared through the CRM’s integration functionality with other applications, both native and third-party. This way, there is visibility to accounts and pipelines across teams and entire departments.

Software
Pipeline management
Custom dashboards
Native app integrations
Free tier
Starting price*
Freshsales
Yes
Yes
Limited
Yes
$9 per user per month
Zoho CRM
Yes
Limited
Yes
Yes
$14 per user per month
Pipedrive
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
$14.90 per user per month
Insightly
Yes
Limited
Yes
Yes
$29 per user per month
HubSpot
Yes
Limited
Yes
Yes
$20 per two users per month
Salesforce
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
$25 per user per month

* Pricing is based on annual subscriptions.

Freshsales: Best CRM for collaboration across departments

Our rating: 4.3 out of 5

Freshsales logo
Image: Freshsales

Freshsales allows teams and entire departments to collaborate and communicate from one dashboard through AI-powered tools. The task management tools and multiple dashboard views allow universal access to the same up-to-date information, just organized in department-specific ways. Even in the free tier, you can assign tasks and project deadlines while tracking individual and team progress.

Pricing

  • Free CRM: Free for up to 3 users and offers email templates, a sales dashboard and more. Users access basic contact and account management, tasks, data import and export, email templates and more.
  • Growth: $9 per user per month, billed annually, or $11 per user when billed monthly. This tier includes everything in the free level plus two-way email sync, parallel calling, SMS integration and more.
  • Pro: $39 per user per month, billed annually, or $47 per user when billed monthly. Users get everything in the Growth level plus Freddy AI insights, 50 custom roles, territory management and more.
  • Enterprise: $59 per user per month, billed annually, or $71 per user when billed monthly. This plan includes all available features, including those mentioned as well as audit logs, extract APIs and a dedicated account manager.

Features

  • Freddy AI: AI-powered assistance that helps find potential clients, draft emails and provide insights.
  • Custom dashboard: Plan and organize an entire sales process with drag-and-drop cards.
  • Reporting: View graphical reports and simple dashboard to easily understand business metrics.
Example of Freshsales dashboard.
Figure A: Example of Freshsales dashboard. Image: Freshsales

Freshsales pros and cons

ProsCons
21-day free trial.Capped integration with Google.
Robust AI-powered tools.Only 6 reports per dashboard.
Built-in phone, chat and SMS features.No workflows offered in the free version.

Why we chose Freshsales

Freshsales is a popular AI-powered and easy-to-use sales CRM. It’s intuitive interface, competitive pricing and end-to-end process management make it an affordable and easily implemented solution. Businesses can create smart campaigns to generate leads, organize prospecting and turn sales conversations into closed deals with data-backed decisions.

Freshsales’s overall affordability and lead management features make it a well-rounded sales CRM, but if you’re wanting a tool with even more advanced marketing and lead generation functionality, consider Zoho CRM.

For more information, head over to our independent Freshsales review.

Zoho CRM: Best for social media and online marketing

Our rating: 4.3 out of 5

Zoho logo.
Image: Zoho

Zoho CRM is great for customer-facing teams due to its robust social selling tools. It offers native integrations with Facebook and X to help post and interact with clients from within the CRM platform. After upgrading to its paid tiers, you access forecasting insight along with more robust social media management and email marketing features.

Pricing

  • Free CRM: Free for up to 3 users and comes with lead and document management and a mobile app.
  • Standard: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $20 per user when billed monthly. Users can access email insights, sales forecasting and multiple currencies.
  • Professional: $23 per user per month, billed annually, or $35 per user when billed monthly. This tier includes all Standard features, plus assignment rules and unlimited custom reports and dashboards.
  • Enterprise: $40 per user per month, billed annually, or $50 per user when billed monthly. This plan introduces all AI-powered tools, plus email segmentation, auto-response and more.
  • Ultimate: $52 per user per month, billed annually, or $65 per user when billed monthly. Ultimate grants access to all mentioned features plus access to Zoho Analytics.

Features

  • Workflow automation: Save time by creating workflows that perform mundane manual tasks.
  • Quotes and finance: Generate branded quotes, invoices and purchase orders that users can track and manage.
  • Territory management: Label and categorize clients based on preset criteria so they’re assigned and routed to the right sales reps.
Zoho CRM sample sales order.
Figure B: Sales order receipt and finance details with Zoho Inventory. Image: Zoho CRM
ProsCons
15-day free trial.Free plan has no social integration.
Robust sales forecasting.8/5 customer support.
24/7/365 data security.User reports of difficult UI.

Why we chose Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a CRM tool built for customer-facing teams. Its most notable features include its omnichannel marketing, journey orchestration and process management. Users can hyper-manage operations with powerful analytics and insights. It’s also a scalable solution that can help businesses of any size, from startups to larger enterprises, with their extensive custom solutions and integrations.

Zoho CRM’s core offerings, along with their added marketing and reporting capabilities, are competitive. If you’re a smaller business and want a similar tool with a free plan to test first, consider Freshsales.

Read our detailed Zoho CRM review for more details on this provider.

Pipedrive: Best CRM offering visual pipelines

Our rating: 4.3 out of 5

Pipedrive logo.
Image: Pipedrive

Pipedrive offers a highly visual drag-and-drop interface, making it great for reflecting sales and marketing processes. Creating these kanban-like pipelines makes it easier to manage new leads and existing clients from one place. Pipedrive is intuitive software for individuals to navigate and identify potential sales opportunities.

Pricing

  • Essential: $14.90 per user per month, billed annually, or $21.90 per user when billed monthly. The Essential plan includes people and organization management, product catalog, sales assistant and more.
  • Advanced: $27.90 per user per month, billed annually, or $37.90 per user when billed monthly. The Advanced plan offers all Essential features plus automations, two-way email sync, group emailing and more.
  • Professional: $49.90 per user per month, billed annually, or $59.90 per user when billed monthly. This tier supports all Advanced features and contacts timeline, free Smart Docs add-on, automatic assignment and more.
  • Power: $64.90 per user per month, billed annually, or $74.90 per user when billed monthly. The Power plan includes all Professional offering plus phone support, 500 custom fields and more.
  • Enterprise: $99.00 per user per month, billed annually, or $119 per user when billed monthly. This tier offers all mentioned features plus up to 180 active automations, unlimited teams and unlimited custom permissions.

Features

  • AI sales assistant: Analyze past sales activity and generate performance forecasting with AI.
  • Email inbox: Integrate existing email provider to send and receive messages directly in the CRM, plus preset templates and click tracking.
  • Document management: Access Smart Docs through the higher paid tiers or select it as an add-on to send and track quotes or proposals.
Pipedrive email template.
[Figure C] Sale email template with auto-populate feature. Image: Pipedrive

Pipedrive pros and cons

Pipedrive’s pros and cons entail some competitive facts around Pipedrive’s pricing and support as well as some limitations with advanced features on lower paid tiers.

ProsCons
14-day free trial.No free-for-life option.
24/7 support.Limited marketing tools.
Affordable paid tiers.Limited lead segmentation for sales.

Why we chose Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a straightforward sales CRM that focuses on building competent sales pipelines for tracking deals and managing leads. Businesses can automate their sales process with kanban drag-and-drop tools, making it an easy platform to navigate and customize. Pipedrive also offers resources on how to implement the tool according to your niche industry, like automotive sales, call centers, banking or B2B/B2C organizations.

Pipedrive’s pipeline builder is pretty clear-cut and visually appealing, so if you’re wanting a similar intuitive interface for creating sales processes at a lower cost, check out Freshsales.

For more in-depth insight, read our Pipedrive review.

Insightly: Best CRM provider for project management

Our rating: 4.3 out of 5

Insightly logo.
Image: Insightly

Insightly offers robust project management functionality through modern cloud-based software. Sales features like project pipelines, integrations with productivity apps and milestone tracking make it easy to monitor the full sales cycle. So once opportunities are identified and then converted into projects, enter and track post-sale activities from the same pipeline.

Pricing

  • Free CRM: Free for up to two users and 2,500 records.
  • Plus: $29 per user per month, billed annually. The Plus plan includes lead and task management, the mobile app, Google and MS 365 integrations and more.
  • Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually. This tier offers all Plus features as well as 100 custom fields, unlimited role-based permissions and lead assignment and routing.
  • Enterprise: $99 per user per month, billed annually. The Enterprise plan offers all mentioned features plus unlimited customizable real-time insight cards, pricebooks and quotes, validation rules and more.

Features

  • Lead management: Capture and score new and existing leads by housing details with set criteria.
  • Opportunity management: Build custom pipelines with reporting creatures to get insight into what’s driving the business forward and identify potential risks.
  • Process automation: Reduce redundant tasks and scale faster with emails, reminders and onboarding stages.
Insightly project and progress tracker.
Figure D: Insightly project and progress tracker. Image: Insightly

Insightly pros and cons

Insightly’s pros and cons include their impressive integration marketplace as well as some shortages with community support and resources, compared to other providers.

ProsCons
Over 1,000 app integrations available.User support costs extra.
Offers monthly billing.Doesn’t offer certification programs.
14-day free trial.Only access community forums with premium plans.

Why we chose Insightly

Insightly is another full-featured CRM platform with key customizations that assist businesses in driving revenue and elevating their customer experience. Its solutions include sales, marketing and customer service. With the help of useful integrated third-party apps, businesses can adapt their current tech stack of sales or marketing tools into Insightly with no code.

Insightly offers a range of products and solutions that can be natively integrated with their CRM tool. So if you want similar functionality from another provider that can scale up even more for larger enterprises, consider HubSpot or Salesforce.

For more information on this CRM software, read our independent Insightly review. 

HubSpot: Best CRM offering a robust free version

Our rating: 3.9 out of 5

HubSpot’s robust free version offers up to 5 users a variety of sales and marketing tools. Organize and engage with clients through the dialer, live chat and email tools, and manage activity within a custom dashboard. Sync this information across an array of third-party integrations. If you’re new to implementing a CRM in a business or want to deploy an easy-to-use CRM across an organization, HubSpot is a good choice.

Pricing

  • Free CRM: Free for up to 5 users with contact management, quotes, live chat and more.
  • Sales Hub Starter: $15 per seat per month, billed annually, or $20 when billed monthly. The Starter plan includes all free tools plus simple automation, e-signature, conversation routing and more.
  • Sales Hub Professional: $90 per seat per month, billed annually, or $100 when billed monthly and one-time $1,500 onboarding fee. This plan includes all Starter features and prospecting workspace, platbooks, forecasting and more.
  • Sales Hub Enterprise: $150 per seat per month, with an annual commitment and one-time $3,500 onboarding fee. Users of this plan receive all Professional tools plus advanced permissions, predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence and lead form routing.

Features

  • Contact management: Integrate with Gmail or Outlook for inbox insights and automatic list segmentation.
  • CRM reporting: View report types like deals created, monthly revenue, website traffic and social media interactions.
  • Email marketing: Schedule emails with customized templates, track activity and opened messages and more.
HubSpot lead generation reporting page.
Figure F: HubSpot lead generation reporting dashboard. Image: HubSpot

HubSpot pros and cons

HubSpot’s pros and cons cover their user support access, real reports of intuitive user experience and even how their premium tiers might be considered costly to other providers on this list.

ProsCons
Offers a variety of free tools.Costly higher support tiers.
24/7 email and chat support.No free trial.
Intuitive user interface.Add-ons start at $25 per month.

Why we chose HubSpot

HubSpot’s free CRM is top rated since other free plans typically lack a lot of core CRM features. Some of HubSpot’s free features include dashboard and reporting, company insights, an AI email writer, live chat software and a meeting scheduler. HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise plans are great for larger organizations looking for a powerful CRM solution, but they do require a one-time onboarding fee.

HubSpot’s free CRM tool is robust, but the premium tiers can be costly. If you’re wanting a more affordable premium tier with more advanced tech or support features, consider Freshsales or Zoho CRM.

Head over to our HubSpot review for more details on this provider.

Salesforce: Best CRM for enterprise sales teams

Salesforce logo.
Image: Salesforce

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Salesforce offers extensive data features to help organizations make calculated decisions when it comes to their sales process. Create a variety of custom CRM reports that display analytics and real-time sales forecasts. The external and internal communication tools and sales activity tracking make it a great option for organizations with complex sales processes.

Pricing

  • Starter Suite: $25 per user per month, billed annually. Users get account, contact, lead and opportunity management, as well as the mobile app, email integration and more.
  • Professional: $80 per user per month, billed annually. The Professional plan includes all that’s found in the Starter Suite plus Sales Cloud, full offline functionality and more.
  • Enterprise: $165 per user per month, billed annually. This tier offers opportunity scoring and deal insights plus data synchronization and harmonization.
  • Unlimited: $330 per user per month, billed annually. The Unlimited tier includes all features mentioned above plus developer pro sandbox, lead scoring and five campaigns per opportunity.
  • Einstein 1 Sales: $500 per user per month, billed annually. This tier includes all Salesforce CRM features like collaboration tools via knowledge shares and Slack and more.

Features

  • Application integrations: Sync the CRM with over 7,000+ apps such as Mailchimp, DocuSign and Slack.
  • Forecast Insights: Predict future sales metrics by comparing current forecast performance to a comparable previous period and monitoring trends.
  • Lead scoring: Capture inbound leads from the organization’s website and automatically have them scored based on demographics or behaviors.
Sample Salesforce revenue forecast report.
Figure E: Sample revenue trend and forecast report. Image: Salesforce

Salesforce pros and cons

Salesforce’s listed pros and cons mention some standout integration features and even some real user reports regarding user support.

ProsCons
30-day free trial.No free-for-life option.
7,000+ app integrations.Most expensive option.
24/7 chat support.Users have reported slow support.

Why we chose Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM solution built on an AI platform. Salesforce markets itself as an all-in-one platform for buyer and sales engagement, team collaboration, analytics, performance management and CPQ and billing. While still a pricey option, Salesforce’s scalability and user support allow it to be implemented by anyone, especially enterprises.

If you’re wanting a similar tool with extensive AI-powered tools and powerful integrations, check out Freshsales for a more cost effective solution.

For more information, check out our full Salesforce review.

How do I choose the best enterprise CRM software for my business?

This list we’ve created includes the top general enterprise CRM providers in the market, but now you need to narrow them down to find the software that best fits your business goals and budget. Next, consider requesting quotes or demos from the providers that pique your interest, or sign up for the free versions. This way, you can begin communicating directly with the provider’s sales team and start implementing the software into your existing customer management process.

Below are sample questions to consider asking when researching CRM software:

  • What is the total in-market expertise for your industry?
  • Is the CRM scalable and detailed enough to fit your business size?
  • Are their services within your budget? Do you want a free CRM first?
  • Does the CRM offer the core features you need, such as list segmentation or a mobile app?
  • Does the CRM software integrate with tools you already have in your tech stack?
  • Is the CRM open-source?

DOWNLOAD: Get a deeper understanding of how CRM can help small businesses grow.

Review methodology

I scored each provider against a rubric with outlined criteria and subcategories of CRM industry standards. Using that rubric and an in-house algorithm to calculate an overall star rating, I then assigned each CRM software an ideal use case.

Here is a breakdown of the scoring criteria I followed:

  • Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
  • Core features: Weighted 25% of the total score.
  • Customizations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
  • Integrations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
  • Ease of use: Weighted 10% of the total score.

Customer support: Weighted 10% of the total score.