The Best HubSpot Alternative CRMs for SMBs

Key Takeaways:

• There are several decent alternatives to HubSpot that offer distinctive features depending on your business needs (we walked away from HubSpot's aggressive price increases and sales tactics in early 2023).
• Zoho CRM, Freshsales, Pipedrive, Zoho Bigin, Salesforce, Less Annoying CRM, and Keap are some of the most notable HubSpot alternatives. (we go into these below)
• Consider the credibility, cost-effectiveness, user-experience, security features and level of customization to pick the best-fit CRM tool for your business.
• Be mindful of legal and cyber security risks and make informed choices.

Decoding HubSpot Alternatives: A Closer Look

No doubt, HubSpot is a powerful CRM tool offering a host of features.

However, it may not be the ideal fit for all businesses due to certain limitations. Therefore, it is essential to explore alternatives to find the best fit.

From painful experience: The free HubSpot plan is great, but you'll quickly outgrow it and get hit with big bills. Then you'll either pay over the odds or spend ages migrating all your data to a new platform. It's best to put some time in upfront to make the right CRM choice early!

Here are the top seven HubSpot alternatives worth considering:

1. Zoho CRM

• Advantages: Better customization options, lead information personalization, extensive contact management, and lead scoring features.
• Best for: Businesses where most employees interact with customers. Retail businesses could significantly benefit from its features.

2. Freshsales

• Advantages: Wide range of features including top-notch organization tools and customization options like custom fields, tasks, and dashboards.
• Best for: Larger teams needing access to specialized tools - as in transport and logistics businesses.

3. Pipedrive

• Advantages: User-friendly interface, secure and straightforward navigation. It offers an excellent chatbot feature as well.
• Best for: Small businesses less accustomed to dealing with tech, such as offline retailers or cleaning businesses.

4. Bigin (Also by Zoho CRM)

• Advantages: Allows CRM customization for your business, including generating custom reports on the free plan, unlike HubSpot. Also, it offers a sophisticated automated workflow feature.
• Best for: Small businesses with pre-established sales processes, such as firms in the legal or healthcare sector.

5. Salesforce

• Advantages: Excellent reporting features, ideal for monitoring and improving your sales performance.
• Best for: Businesses with larger teams, especially those having a specialized CRM or sales team.

6. Less Annoying CRM (LACRM) - Yes that is it’s actual name!

• Advantages: Excellent contact management features and a better data import process than HubSpot.
• Best for: SMEs conducting sales activities like cold-calling, especially B2B firms needing complex dataset management.

7. Keap

• Advantages: Provides robust help and support tools, including onboarding assistance on all plans.
• Best for: Those businesses which can afford a powerful CRM software that can manage itself independently.

Legal Considerations

Implementing CRM software implicates certain legal considerations to ensure the safety and integrity of customer data. It includes fulfilling obligations under data protection laws, GDPR compliance, and proper data usage agreements. Here are some tips:

• Data Processing Agreements: Formulate a clear data usage policy, setting out how customer data will be used, stored, and protected. Always ensure clear communication with customers about how their data will be used.
• Data Protection Laws: Abide by all local and international data protection laws applicable to your business. It is crucial to review these laws before implementing a CRM software.
• GDPR Compliance: If your business operates within the EU, or if you hold data of EU citizens, compliance with GDPR is mandatory. Check whether your chosen CRM software supports GDPR compliance.

For drafting, reviewing, and negotating your legal agreements to maintain legal robustness in your business operations, consider signing up to Genie AI. Genie AI’s AI Legal Assistant could prove invaluable in offering AI-powered automated drafting and reviewing services.

Concluding Thoughts

Selecting the right CRM software for your business needs detailed understanding of business needs. A careful and in-depth analysis of the features, benefits and shortcomings of various CRM tools will help you make an informed decision.

Additionally, ensuring legal and security considerations while opting for a CRM tool will reduce risk and secure your business operations. Always strive to build strong legal foundations for your business while scaling up technology use.

Do you need help with legal aspects of your tech implementation? If so, consider our AI-powered legal assistant at Genie AI.

Sign-up to get aid in drafting, reviewing, and signing legal agreements. Let’s simplify your journey towards digital transformation!

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