CRM Tools: Make the Right Choice
This list of best open source CRM tools with diverse USPs is designed to help you choose the most suitable one for your business.
Customer management is a top priority for businesses since it helps them build a strong reputation in the market for their brand. Along with building a loyal community of customers, it also helps in increasing conversions, getting repeat orders, and upselling.
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are purpose-specific digital tools for managing all key customer-related tasks, right from initiating communications and sending proposals, to managing leads, analysing a product’s life cycle, and maintaining records for developing the most relevant marketing and sales strategies.
Businesses, especially startups and small enterprises, can gain immense benefits by adding these tools to their IT stack. However, the price tag may act as a barrier for such budget-conscious businesses. While there are free CRMs available in the industry, they are generally riddled with issues like questionable performance, instability, lack of integration, and very limited features. It can be challenging to find free or affordable CRMs that assure real-life business benefits. You can solve this challenge by opting for an open source CRM that is free, easy to work with, scalable, and supports seamless integration with your present technology stack. To make the choice easier for you, here is a list of best open source CRMs with diverse USPs. Depending upon your business, industry, and customer management needs you can pick the most relevant tool.
SuiteCRM
Loaded with rich features, SuiteCRM is designed to help beginners come on board with a minimum learning curve.
At the same time, its seamless integration with third party business systems enables users to sync it with
their present/future IT stack, and enjoy diversified benefits across different departments and activities.
Key features and benefits
Some of the key features of this tool include extensive customisation, business-grade features and performance, rich analytics, in-depth reports, and an unlimited number of contacts and leads.
The tool helps gather the key data of customers to strategically plan relevant conversations and sales pitches that align best with their profile, budget, and current requirements.
Bitrix24
Being open source, Bitrix seamlessly syncs with a variety of applications, including proprietary ones. It ships with diverse features including, but not limited to, sales tracking, email marketing, and feature records.
With 7,000,000+ active users, including some of the leading brands, this freely available open source CRM enjoys huge popularity. While a paid version with more features is available, the basic free version is powerful enough to meet all the key business requirements of startups and small businesses.
Key features and benefits
Some of the key features of this tool include Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and workload planning functionalities.
Easy client management, seamless collaboration, and uninterrupted communication with internal/external stakeholders are some key benefits of this tool. With some learning, businesses can also enjoy advanced features for creating more personalised experiences for their customers.
CiviCRM
Along with being free, this open source tool facilitates and simplifies development tasks. Its diverse nicheoriented functionalities include case management, fundraising, and more.
This tool is seamlessly compatible with popular content management systems like Drupal, WordPress and others. Depending upon your technical proficiency you may need a reasonable learning curve to use the tool efficiently.
Key features and benefits
Along with an unlimited number of CRM emails and users, the tool also excels when it comes to industryspecific capabilities. Accurate mapping, deep campaign analysis, extensive integrations, and superb features to manage donors and fundraising flow, are some of the major features of this tool. Rich reports and analytics make it easier for organisations to review their strategies, identify gaps, build on their strengths and make revisions if necessary. This tool is designed to support the needs of the civic sector, NGOs, and other non-profit organisations.
Vtiger
If you are looking for a no-frills, easyto-use CRM that concentrates solely on customer management, then Vtiger is the tool to go for.
With a globally distributed active customer base, Vtiger periodically upgrades its capabilities and security to help you get the best benefits out of the latest developments, while avoiding the latest cyber threats.
The simple documentation helps you operate it efficiently without struggling much with technical jargon or lengthy tutorials. It also has a comprehensive marketplace for external extensions that you can purchase to support the growing requirements of your business.
Key features and benefits
As already suggested, this tool is planned with basic users in mind and thus doesn’t have many extensive features like reports, analytics, etc. However, it excels at what it concentrates on like scoring engagements, contact management, and seamless integration with Outlook. Supporting an unlimited number of users is another USP of this tool.
Odoo
Odoo boasts of a global user base of more than 5 million businesses and individuals. It is an ERP tool but offers a rich CRM module loaded with extensive capabilities.
Odoo offers a very dynamic variety of features and functionalities. However, it also inflates the overall structure and makes navigation a bit tricky for beginners. That said, this challenge should not stop them from using this wonderful tool. A little patience along with a bit of learning should easily make it simple to handle even for beginners.
Key features and benefits
Built on Python, the tool excels when it comes to compatibility and development. It comes with purposebuilt leads and pipeline management options, along with a graphical representation of progress. Its diversified capabilities support diverse needs to efficiently manage the entire customer life cycle.
With the right CRM tool, you can deliver the best customer experience. This article has brought you a curated list of different open source CRM tools that not only come for free but also offer scalability, easy integrations, and a user-friendly experience. Diverse tools have been included to help you select the one that fits your needs. However, do check the most current reviews of these tools to make an educated choice.