Best CRM Software for Small Businesses

Over the past decade, ever since we started working in the CRM space, we've answered the question "Which CRM software should I use?" endlessly. So as if you had just sent us a text message and had asked us this very question yourself, this article will cover what we'd tell you.

When you're in the position to be making the decision to choose a CRM tool, it can seem like there is an overwhelming number of options. But the truth of the matter is the CRM space has changed significantly in the AI-era.

• We used Copper CRM in our business for 10 years (and set it up for 50+ customers during that time too). It used to be our favorite CRM but we recently just switched away to Lightfield CRM because we wanted an AI-first CRM.
• We used Pipedrive for 2 years across 2 companies. While it worked decently at the time, it's certainly an old-school CRM at this stage and certainly not AI-first.
• We used HubSpot for 6 years with a consulting client. We found it had the worst user experience, so much so we dreaded even logging in. Team adoption will be hard with HubSpot, especially in the AI-era.
• We moved away from all of the above tools and now use Lightfield CRM.

With the rise of AI, we started feeling quite limited using Copper as our CRM (and switching to any of the other incumbents wouldn't be much better).

While HubSpot and Pipedrive claim to be AI CRMs now, the reality is they are far from that. They were still built a long time ago, so what you're going to get is a CRM that feels like it has bolted on features.

So as you're choosing a new CRM in this day and age, I want you to think hard about what you're signing up for.

An AI-first CRM will be able to:

• Set itself up (you describe your business processes, it suggests custom fields and all you do is click approve and it configures itself for you in minutes)
• Keep itself up to date (e.g. an email comes in with a new contact at a company, it will suggest this is updated in the CRM)
• Summarize the entire opportunity for you using AI, rather than make you dig through an activity log

With that in mind, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Copper are all going to be limited in that sense.

For us, our Copper became a graveyard. Our team started feeling like it was just "busy work" to keep it updated, and we felt like in the AI-era we could expect our CRM to be more proactive and helpful.

After waiting and waiting, we finally saw an ad for Lightfield CRM (which is indeed built in this AI-era).

When deciding if we should switch, our team re-iterated that they were unhappy and "slowed down" using Copper. It just didn't make sense to continue using it anymore.

So we decided to make the jump and setup Lightfield (which btw, only took a few hours thanks to its AI chat, read our full Lightfield Review).

And yeah 😅 The team is more productive, the AI keeps itself up to date, the interface is beautiful and modern. Overall, we genuinely feel like this the what a CRM should be in the era that we're living in.

If you're using Google Workspace, you're going to get a much deeper integration with Copper, so we don't think it's truly worth considering Pipedrive unless you are using Microsoft 365 (we sometimes recommend Hubspot, but it has issues and also gets wildly expensive quite quickly, more on that below).

We've implemented both Pipedrive and Copper for our customers and they have very similar features. You can easily add leads, create sales pipelines and track activities and notes to help your sales team close deals. Pipedrive has a fairly robust API so integrating with other tools is also possible and will allow you to scale. What you won't get with Pipedrive that we covered above is the automatic aggregating of email attachments/files and of course, doesn't have the Gmail extension.

If compared to Copper, Pipedrive doesn't have that "syncing forward" methodology for emails which means if you exchanged emails with a lead and added them to the CRM after the correspondence started, those emails won't be tracked. This means you'll possibly lose some important data unless you strictly try to add each lead to the CRM before you even reach out.

Setting up Pipedrive to ingest your emails is also a bit of a manual process initially, it won't automatically happen like with Copper. So if you're using Pipedrive, just make sure to do that first because if you forget, you might be wondering why your teams emails aren't showing up in the CRM.

What we like about Pipedrive's workflow automation is that they have a visual editor that allows you to easily create workflows. It's quite intuitive to use which is great for small business owners that are eager to get some automations running to help their team members save time.

Source: Pipedrive

Unlike Copper, Pipedrive's workflow automation will allow you to trigger automated emails to prospects and customers. So for example, want to send an email when a deal enters a new stage in your pipeline? You can set that up with Pipedrive's workflow automations.

One thing to keep in mind is that the automations feature is available on Pipedrive's Advanced pricing tier and beyond.

Pipedrive only offers workflow automations starting on their "Advanced" tier

While Pipedrive started as a CRM for sales teams and have gained quite a big market share in the small business CRM space, they have continued to add on features in order to continue to scale. While this might seem tempting, the problem when tools do this is they become an "all-in-one" tool that is trying to do everything, and therefore doing many things mediocrely.

For example, on Pipedrive's "Most Popular" tier they offer document and contract management—we would never recommend anyone use this feature. There are tools like PandaDoc, who specialize document and contract management and believe us, the experience is going to be much better than anything you'll get with Pipedrive. We believe in using the right tool for the job, and once you get outside of the core CRM features, with Pipedrive you're going to get a bunch of half baked features that are kludgy to use.

Looking further at Pipedrive's Add-Ons they offer "Campaigns", which we'd say avoid and use something like MailChimp that will offer a much more user friendly experience. Instead of using Pipedrive's Projects add-on, use a proper project management tool. Forget their Smart Docs add-on, use PandaDoc or Airtable instead.

If you're deciding between Pipedrive or Copper because of the "many additional features" Pipedrive offers, we're here to tell you that you're going to have a much more stable, less buggy experience with using tools that were built for the job and integrating them with your CRM. Even if you are using Pipedrive, we wouldn't recommend adding on any of these features. In other words, don't let Pipedrive's "Add-Ons" be a determining reason between Copper and Pipedrive, the only time we'd recommend Pipedrive is if you are using Microsoft 365 (not Google Workspace).

We rarely recommend HubSpot CRM for small businesses (under 300 employees). The reason is because it can get insanely experience very fast, making it more than a small business will ever need.

The main reason teams sign up to HubSpot is because they see it's a free CRM or got a very low intro price. But this is just HubSpot's main tactic for getting new customers and hopefully locking them into their suite for years to come.

HubSpot's CRM was built solely as a gateway product, and because of that, they want to make it as easy as possible to get started with their software. Talking: "Free starter plan" and "no credit card down necessary", clever right? Better yet, you can also negotiate a no-brainer of a plan if you want to pull in the full marketing suite as well (for the first year that is...).

We've had customers switch from Pipedrive to Hubspot because "it's a free CRM" and they are now spending $40-60k/yr on Hubspot alone. They have a good way of sucking you in for "free" and then paying for contacts, so you're paying an insane amount for having 20-40k contacts in your CRM (you will have that easily over time).

HubSpot pricing - starts "free" and gets unbelievably expensive once you unlock needed features

HubSpot is often what people end up landing on when they are thinking about getting Salesforce. HubSpot is a better fit than Salesforce for most, but you're going to spend a LOT more on Hubspot than you think you are when first signing up.

If you are considering between using HubSpot or Copper though, you might be surprised by how much can be done with Copper integrations to get it to actually do most everything that HubSpot can do (and more), with a far superior user-interface, and significantly cheaper pricing.

That said, there are a few clear leaders. If you're a small business but serious about implementing a modern CRM that will scale with you, hands down, Lightfield is the best AI-CRM. Read our full Lightfield review.

If you're using Google Workspace and are looking for a traditional CRM solution that is easy to use, has a good UI/UX, and will allow you to scale, look no further than Copper.

If you're using Microsoft 365, then Pipedrive CRM is your next best bet.

With other CRM solutions that you see out there, we'd say stay away, especially as a small business. There is a running joke in the software space, that every software eventually turns into a CRM. Stay clear of the companies that are just trying to add features to their software and focus on solutions that are built as being a CRM first and foremost.