The secret’s out: behind every “How do they do it all?” SaaS worker is a CRM platform holding their life together. If you’re new to the world of CRMs, then prepare to have your world turned upside down.
I distinctly remember the day I learned about CMRs: I was using a spreadsheet for my contact management, and I felt like other people maintained their networks better by sheer luck. When someone on LinkedIn casually mentioned their CRM, it was like I was given superpowers.
Everyone needs a CRM, but SaaS teams have an above-average need. Delivering a product to a global audience in highly competitive fields requires impeccable organization, constantly improving customer retention, and top-tier relationship management — and some assistance from AI and automation can only help.
But what is the best CRM for SaaS companies? Today I’ll walk you through the most popular SaaS CRM solutions on the market to help you find the best tool for your needs.
Table of Contents
- What Is a SaaS CRM?
- What Is the Difference Between a CRM and a SaaS CRM?
- Benefits of Using a SaaS CRM
- The Best SaaS CRM Software
- Finding the Perfect CRM for Your SaaS Company
What Is a SaaS CRM?
CRM stands for “customer relationship management” system. The term «SaaS CRM» refers to CRM software specifically tailored for software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses.
An effective CRM is make-or-break for SaaS companies because of:
- Customer Retention. 47% of polled businesses said that the use of CRM software had a significant impact on their customer retention.
- User Experience. 85% of customers say they‘re willing to spend more on a SaaS tool if there’s good customer service.
- Long-Term Investment. CRMs aren’t going anywhere. The CRM market size is expected to grow to $262.74 billion by 2032, a 12.6% increase from 2024. This is an investment that will stand the test of time.
To stay competitive, every SaaS company needs CRM software in its corner that helps bring in leads, keep customers happy, and facilitate growth. Here’s what that looks like.
Read our full guide on how to use CRM software here: How to use CRM software.
What Is the Difference Between a CRM and a SaaS CRM?
Customer relationship management tools are generally not specialized for SaaS companies alone, but they understand SaaS needs because most CRMs are SaaS companies themselves. You could say that CRMs are built by SaaS for SaaS (since every CRM uses its own product), even though they market to all businesses.
Long gone are the days of buying new CRM software and installing it on a CD-ROM (or having a technician come install it on your system for you). With a cloud-based CRM platform, you can download software from the cloud and get instant access — but it needs to meet your unique needs:
- Pleasant User Experience. With remote and global teams, SaaS companies need a software solution that every team member will want to use. Dispersed teams can‘t afford to have a CRM that sales and marketing teams don’t actually put their data into.
- Data Powerhouse. Data collection, visualization, and analysis are crucial for scaling SaaS companies.
- Growth Potential. No team wants to jump CRM programs every few years when they outgrow their system. SaaS startups need to choose a CRM that meets them where they’re at now and can keep up with projected growth over the next five and 10 years.
Benefits of Using a SaaS CRM
Underneath the CRM iceberg is an almost overwhelming amount of tools, features, and benefits. Here are the benefits that matter most to SaaS workers.
Reduced Customer Churn
Every business fights customer turnover, but this is an even bigger issue in the SaaS industry because your competitors are just a click away. And according to statistics, it only takes one bad customer service experience for 13% of customers to leave. With the right SaaS CRM software, fewer customers fall between the pixels.
Streamlined Tools
There’s a unique application for every business need, but opening endless accounts, maintaining user profiles, and paying for dozens of different platforms wastes time and money.
A good SaaS CRM solution will consolidate programs with native tools, such as data aggregation, AI, and marketing automation.
Creation of a Centralized Database
Software is a roller coaster world with cycles of explosive growth and devastating waves of layoffs. You need to be as agile as ever to react to shuffling personnel, the mass onboarding of new employees, and restructuring teams.
2022’s Great Resignation increased tech’s employee turnover rate by more than 600%, and that‘s only one of the hiccups we’ve experienced in the 2020s. What‘s next? A SaaS company isn’t future-proof without a centralized database of customer data, leads, and contact information. This is an essential safety net underneath your constantly-shifting employee base.
Data Aggregation and Analysis
Remember the days of manual data entry? Or have you repressed these memories? Now data presents a new challenge: there’s an excessive amount to sift through and interpret. A good SaaS CRM will help enormously.
Your CRM can gather data and make suggestions for enhanced decision-making. This can be big-picture, like revenue planning, or in the minutia of your day-to-day, like letting you know that a lead opened your email and telling you when to follow up.
24/7 Mass Communication
Unlike a brick-and-mortar business, you have a global audience that requires 24/7 communication.
With the right CRM, you get tools for sending emails and text messages to potential customers worldwide based on their personal customer information (without you having to set reminders on your phone or check your notes for the correct time zone). Some CRMs will even display the local weather of your leads to help you personalize your communication.
Reduce Costs
SaaS sales teams that use the right CRM will see reduced costs in many areas: reduced number of lost sales, wasted time, and the cost of paying for a product that isn’t helping you enough.
A new CRM system is a productivity investment, and it’s considered the most valuable software according to financial planners, but you won‘t see ROI immediately. This makes your SaaS CRM decision even more important. Let’s look at the most popular options.
The Best SaaS CRM Software
Marketing automation, lead generation, and an improved sales pipeline are at your fingertips. Here are the top CRM for SaaS companies for you to consider for your business.
1. HubSpot CRM
The best CRM for SaaS companies is HubSpot CRM. It’s free (not just a free trial like the others). It has built-in onboarding, integrates with your existing sales process and marketing automation, and has easy-to-use tools that help with customer relationships and retention.
HubSpot CRM benefits for SaaS companies:
- Connect HubSpot sales tools and third-party apps to sync your data, schedule meetings, etc., and see everything important at a glance in your sales pipeline management dashboard.
- Streamline your email process with email templates, inbox AI, and reminders, plus use the mobile app to work from anywhere.
- HubSpot CRM tracks emails, meetings, and notes to maintain a pristine snapshot of your relationships.
- Improve customer retention with a help desk and support tickets.
- Use the HubSpot Google Chrome extension directly in your inbox to save time, and get a step-by-step orientation so you can integrate this into your sales process immediately
Pricing: Free.
What I like: HubSpot CRM software guides you through the entire lead management process by offering suggestions, providing native AI tools, etc.
The built-in onboarding process makes adoption easy — and team adoption is one of the struggles that SaaS companies face when implementing new CRM software. Good CRMs are easy to understand. Great CRMs walk you through exactly how to get started so you don’t need to wonder how to start pursuing leads and closing deals.
2. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a massive multi-faceted customer relationship management tool for enterprise resource planning (ERP).
Microsoft Dynamics 365 summary:
- Dynamics 365 has many specialized CRM platforms under its umbrella for different focus areas. The areas that apply most to SaaS companies are sales, customer service, and customer insights. You can purchase these SaaS CRM solutions individually or package them together.
- The software is incredibly well-documented and can aid with many interwoven business processes. The mobile app also offers ease while working away from the office.
- Drawbacks: The onboarding process isn’t straightforward like HubSpot CRM. After filling out an intake questionnaire, I was offered multiple free trial suggestions from Microsoft partner programs instead of Dynamics 365 itself. The intake form was very detailed, allowing me to select focus areas like sales engagement, pipeline management, sales forecasting, etc., however being offered multiple free trials of different products makes the next steps unclear. The pricing will also make this inaccessible for some companies.
Pricing: Microsoft Dynamics 365 prices its CRM software per focus area. Microsoft’s customer service CRM starts at $50 a month, sales CRM starts at $65 a month, and customer insights CRM starts at $1,700 a month. You’re able to test all of their CRM tools for free here.
Best for: Each specialized CRM solution from Microsoft (customer service, sales, etc.) is full of tools and features specific to the task at hand. This is a complex solution that can take months to fully implement, and it‘s best reserved for larger enterprises with the budget and time to execute. A streamlined SaaS business wouldn’t use the full extent of the available features.
3. Salesforce Customer360
Salesforce is a familiar face in the SaaS world, offering countless products for building your sales process and tracking data. Salesforce’s Customer360 is a comprehensive tool for managing customer relationships that integrates all of their products into one place.
Salesforce Customer360 strengths:
- AI integration (called Einstein 1) helps make the collected data actionable. For example, you can ask AI to analyze the information tracked by Customer360 so it can parse customer data for you.
- Integrates with powerhouse tools you may already be using, like Slack, Tableau, and Mulesoft.
- The customer interactions tracker allows you to see all of your tracked customer information (like phone calls, emails, etc.) at a glance. The mobile app has the best reviews in the App Store (4.7 stars out of 300k+ reviews) out of any of these CRMs.
Pricing: Pricing information is tricky to find on Salesforce’s website, so I spoke to a customer support associate who told me that the primary CRM Sales Cloud pricing starts at $25 per user per month. A free demo is available. More pricing information can be found here.
Best for: Existing Salesforce customers (who are using their other services) have the most to gain from using Customer360, as it encompasses all Salesforce products and the CRM software integrates with the established systems.
4. Monday Sales CRM
Monday describes itself as a “CRM you’ll actually want to use,” and I feel that comes through their interface immediately. Adoption is essential for a CRM to have an impact, and the user experience feels designed to make busy sales and marketing teams want to want to use their CRM.
Monday Sales CRM summary:
- Monday Sales CRM isn‘t designed for SaaS companies alone, but you can select «software and IT» when signing up and be fed specific software solutions. You’re offered a highly visual sales dashboard, lead management, deal tracking, and more.
- Integrations are available for every area of business and productivity: HubSpot, Gmail, Slack, Asana, LinkedIn, Trello, and more. Browse the automation library or set your own custom automation for emails, reminders, sending summaries of project changes, etc.
- Pricing note: the lowest pricing tier listed is $12 per seat per month, but note that you must pay for a minimum of 3 seats per month. The lowest investment you can make for Monday Sales is $36 per month when billed annually (this price goes up to $45 per month when billed monthly). This confusion is a pain point reflected in customer reviews.
Pricing: Monday comes with a 14-day free plan, and then pricing tiers start at $36 per month billed annually.
What I like: Some CMR software promises you the moon, but then using the software feels just as tedious as learning to fly a rocket. Monday Sales CRM prioritizes user experience and the interface is modern and easy enough to start using immediately without Googling tutorials.
5. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM helps maintain customer relationships while motivating sales reps to input data and climb the leaderboard (called “Motivator”).
Zoho CRM strengths:
- Zoho CRM’s “Zia” feature uses predictive analytics and lead scoring to help you identify bottlenecks in your sales processes and close deals.
- In-depth sales force automation covers lead and deal management, contact management, and workflow automation.
- The unique Motivator feature creates a leaderboard to engage sales reps and motivate them to stay on top of data entry.
Pricing: After free trial, pricing tiers start at $14 a month when billed annually.
What I like: CMR software is only effective when it‘s used by the entire sales team, and Zoho CRM’s Motivator feature is a powerful force for this goal. Plus, at 4+ stars out of 4,000+ reviews on TrustPilot, Zoho CRM ranks high in customer satisfaction (though the highest-ranking CRM is yet to come).
6. Salesmate CRM
With an emphasis on improved productivity, Salesmate is a streamlined CRM. Covering everything from bulk emails to help tickets to customer journey automation, Salesmate covers every step of the sales process.
Salesmate CRM summary:
- While most SaaS emphasize email communication, Salesmate has detailed text and call features. Plus, the mobile app helps you manage leads from anywhere.
- Built-in workflow and sales automation are designed to reduce the hefty amount of time sales reps spend on repeated tasks.
- The Salesmate interface isn‘t as visual as some of the competitors, but at $23 per month, it’s one of the most affordable programs.
Pricing: After a 15-day free trial, pricing for Salesmate starts at $23 per user per month (billed annually).
What I like: The drag-and-drop reporting dashboard allows you to customize your user experience, and activity tracing helps you stay focused and on schedule.
7. Insightly CRM
Insightly CRM is a CRM platform that focuses on pipeline management, workflow automation, and creating a custom interface that‘s tailored to your team’s needs, whether you’re working on desktop or the mobile app.
Insightly CRM summary:
- Insightly CRM has a built-in project management software to consolidate and streamline sales processes.
- Get important data points at a glance with customized opportunities, projects, and leads dashboards, or create custom dashboards pulling specific data and KPIs.
- Many CRM software companies include a reminder of the time zone of your leads, but Insightly CRM includes a unique feature where they also pull the weather data where your lead is living.
Pricing: After a 14-day free trial, pricing starts at $29 per month when billed annually.
What I like: Insightly CRM is a heavily customizable SaaS CRM solution that allows companies to add custom objects, custom dashboards per project and lead, and more to create the exact interface your team needs.
8. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a CRM with an abundance of features that strike a healthy balance between options and user overwhelm.
Nice Pipedrive features:
- At a glance in the right-hand-side expandable panel, you can see a visual representation of how you’re tracking toward your meeting, email, and activity goals. See your progress on the go with the Pipedrive mobile app.
- Pipedrive’s AI lead-scoring feature labels leads that they think you have a high probability of closing and suggests action items for these leads.
- The insights panel takes customer data, sales forecasting, and KPIs and provides graphs and visualizations of your data.
Pricing: After a free 14-day trial, pricing for Pipedrive starts at $14 per month when billed annually.
Noteworthy: At 4.4 stars (out of 1,900+ reviews), Pipedrive has the highest reviews from happy customers.
9. Oracle Sales
Oracle Sales is a complex, detailed, sales-focused CRM solution that aims to improve brand engagement, data collection, and sales efforts.
Oracle Sales summary:
- AI is integrated into Oracle’s platform to help quicken the sales cycle with data-based suggestions.
- Get a detailed predictive analysis using “what-if” models that consider products, territories, seasonality, etc.
- The Oracle website is overwhelming compared to competitors, and with basic information like pricing only available when you talk to sales, it’s the best CRM tool for those in need of a simple CRM software.
Pricing: Oracle doesn‘t list pricing information on its website, and a customer service representative wouldn’t share pricing information with me via chat. TrustRadius lists the lowest tier for Oracle Sales as $65 per month.
Best for: Oracle Sales is best reserved for larger SaaS companies who need enterprise support.
10. Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell is a simple CRM tool that’s highly customizable and leverages AI for handling small tasks, like managing your help tickets.
Zendesk Sell summary:
- You can make calls, send texts, and send emails directly within the platform. You can also work from the Zendesk Sell mobile app.
- Let the reporting center gather important data points and send them out to your sales and marketing teams weekly or monthly.
- Drawbacks: Zendesk’s customer service reviews contain many complaints about product support.
Pricing: After the free trial, the lowest Zendesk Sell pricing tier starts at $55 per month when billed annually.
What I like: The consolidated communication tools within Zendesk Sell make this attractive for SaaS sales reps who are sick of juggling many communication channels.
Finding the Perfect CRM for Your SaaS Company
There‘s a lot on the line when it comes to your SaaS company finding the perfect CRM. Don’t make the mistake of investing in a platform that’s overflowing with features but too headache-inducing for your team to actually use.
It‘s easy to be impressed by razzle-dazzle features, but implementation matters more than anything else for SaaS companies; that’s why HubSpot CRM tops this list of best SaaS CRM solutions. Join now for free and let your new CRM system make your life (and revenue) better.