For all businesses, keeping track of customers is as vital as ever. The ability to collect customer information is important for future relationships with these ever-important customers. Thankfully, there are a number of useful tools that make this an easy process. The large supply of free contact management software available is there to make your life simple.
These kinds of software mean that customer contacts can be kept in what is essentially a powerful address book.
These customer contacts will be the bedrock from which businesses can build sales and marketing strategies in the future.
There is a huge range of this type of software to choose from.
To try and narrow down the decision, this article created by our team at Trafft, put together a list of some of the best contact management software available at the moment.
To make the options clearer, we have split this list into two parts. The first deals with premium software, while the second deals with the best free software.
The Best Premium Contact Management Software
1) Funnel CRM
The first of these CRM solutions is Funner CRM. It is built to help teams solve common frustrating issues such as ineffective workflows and untidy inboxes that make keeping track of customers difficult. It achieves all of this in one, simple, dynamic application.
Some great features of Funnel CRM include lead capture forms, centralized lead processing, and much more.
2) monday.com
This widely used and incredibly popular project management app is great for all types of businesses. With its built-in support for calls, email, meetings, and a huge array of further organizational tools, Monday.com can handle even the most complex workflows.
Other great features include sales tracking, Kanban support, maps, timelines, calendars, and charts – all of which can be customized and shared among teams in real-time. It’s a great way of showing large amounts of information in easy-to-digest, visual ways.
3) Insightly
This software is particularly popular with Office 365 users. Primarily designed for small to medium-sized businesses, it has over 1.5 million users worldwide. These are spread over a diverse array of sectors such as communications, media, manufacturing, and more.
The user-friendly interface is famous for being easy to use. It has useful functions such as to-do lists, bulk email management, and account management. While it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing software on this list, it certainly packs a punch where it counts!
4) Pipedrive
This CRM and contact management solution is a great way for businesses to plan sales strategies and control deals. Its interface makes it easy to see a full history of communications, both with team members and with customers. It puts everything into a handy and beautiful timeline, which helps to streamline every process involved.
Pipedrive is a cloud-based application, meaning it can be accessed and used from any web-connected device.
5) AllClients
AllClients has a host of functionalities that make it a great solution for marketing and CRM. Some of the highlights in its roster of fantastic features include contact management, contact filtering, autoresponder emails, and great workflows. All of this is centered around a brilliant client database.
Along with those main features, AllClients includes an array of extras. These include video emails, team tools, contact management systems, client records, calendars, and much more. It also gives users the tools to build fantastic landing pages –a great way of building up client address databases.
6) Affinity
This self-professed “relationship intelligence platform” is mostly aimed at businesses working in the worlds of venture capital, sales, fundraising, and real estate.
It helps users build up a client list including contact data based on previous engagements. This unique app uses machine learning to do this and is on the cutting edge of this kind of functionality.
7) Maximizer CRM
This all-in-one solution allows users to personalize their communications with clients. With Maximizer CRM, users can make use of the fantastic interface to help organize communications, simplify data, and respond to promising leads as early as possible.
The software helps do this by making use of a great shared address book, which can be edited and expanded by the whole team. One of the best tools in this CRM software is the ability to track the connections between contacts. This is a brilliant way of maximizing the potential of each contact.
8) vCita
This software allows for managing, storing and cataloging leads, clients, and other contacts. The powerful tools that are available through the system make lead generation, scheduling, and invoicing incredibly easy and intuitive.
Take a birds-eye view of everything, from client history to payments and invoices. Combine that with great team-working functionality, and vCita is a truly killer solution.
9) Nutshell
Nutshell prides itself on its simple yet powerful interface design. With compatibility for Android and iOs, this cross-platform software makes team-working a breeze. It includes all the necessary add-ons for the modern business world, such as Slack, Gmail, Google suite products, Office 365, MailChimp, Twitter, and much more.
This software is designed primarily for small to medium-sized businesses.
10) Nimble
This unique software solution is built around the benefits and strengths of social media. It includes a social prospector tool, and also a social profile matching tool. When used in conjunction with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, Nimble can truly make the best use of its features to convert leads in sales.
Some great features include custom fields, two-way email syncing, call logs, activity tracking, forecasting, and reports.
11) ebCard
Providing a great platform and interface for contact data, ebCard uses this data to convert leads into sales. The difference from other similar providers in the field is that they collate different contact data from multiple different sources. This provides a greater reach and more potential for lead conversion.
This software company usually works with medium-sized B2B Companies in the IT industry. They help provide advantages over competition using their contact data systems.
12) Salesflare
This simple but powerful CRM software is a great way of automating data collection to build more effective relationships with leads and convert them more often. The intuitive interface makes the job simple, and its overview functions make overseeing a complex situation a breeze.
It intelligently reads a situation and recommends actions that need to be taken next, thus becoming almost like another team member.
13) Pipeliner
This CRM software is designed specifically to bring more effective customer engagements to businesses. Its customizable interface uses drag-and-drop tools to make quick changes easy, and its visual-centric ways of displaying data make everything easy to understand.
The beauty of Pipeliner is its simplicity. It requires only a few hours of use to master every aspect of it. This does not mean that it is basic software however –Pipeliner is a powerful CRM software that will work for most businesses.
14) Card Scanner by Covve
This brilliant app began as a challenge to Covve’s engineering team to find a new approach to business cards. Their solution was Card Scanner.
This mobile app allows users to quickly scan business cards and automatically have the corresponding details sent directly to a database of their choice. With multiple languages programmed into the app, networking and connecting no longer have to be constrained by any language barriers! This approach to the exchanging of business cards is a great way for professionals to go paperless – you’ll only ever need to carry one card ever again!
The Best Free Contact Management Software
1) Zoho Contact Manager
This simple but brilliant app provides a centralized address book and powerful tools surrounding it. This includes the ability to have an overview of all communications that you have with those in your address book. Send emails, allocate tasks, and make notes to any individual contacts with the simple interface. Gather all necessary information together and use it to maximize the impact of your sales efforts.
In the free version, users can collect up to 500 contacts. This is ideal for small businesses, freelancers, or startups.
2) Pobuca Connect
This cloud-based solution is a great way of gathering together an address book and sharing contacts with colleagues and partners. With its simple interface and great functionality, Pobuca Connect offers a fantastic way of organizing a company’s leads into an effective database.
3) Hubspot CRM
This great free CRM software solution allows users to import contacts and data from Outlook and Gmail with a single click and organize it all into one great database.
Once these contacts are added, they stay updated automatically if changes are made in their original address books, and sales are automatically logged too.
HubSpot CRM automatically includes relevant information from over 20 million businesses to keep contact information up to date at all times.
4) Really Simple Systems
This solution provides all the features a user could need to manage everything from customer information to sales and leads. The free version can accommodate up to two users and one hundred companies, but if a user needs more then they can upgrade to a paid plan.
5) Bitrix24
In this contact management software, the features extend far beyond many other platforms in this category. It has all the features one would expect from this type of software, such as a centralized database, but includes even more. For example, it features automatic logging and recording of phone calls, the same for emails, and all of this can be set up for only specific contacts if the user wishes.
6) Streak
Streak is another great free CRM software that integrates directly with Gmail. Directly store contacts and their information with a single click, and view all related activity in a simple timeline view. This includes calls, tasks, notes, and more.
This timeline can be customized and viewed however the user desires, making information accessible in any way possible.
7) Vtiger CRM
This flexible CRM solution can be used either in the cloud or on local systems. The open-source nature of this software makes it adaptable and more flexible than many of its competitors. It specializes in sales automation, marketing automation, and customer support. It is also able to integrate directly with Outlook.
The base version is free and includes a great many useful features that will suit most users. However, more is available if a user decides to upgrade to a paid plan.
8) CiviCRM
This free software is fully customizable and brilliantly user-friendly. Its best features include online fundraising tools, grant tracking, case management, and much more. These are mainly targeted towards association-based companies.
It’s fully compatible with platforms and software such as WordPress and Drupal. This makes it a breeze to use for those users already familiar with these systems. It is also open-source, meaning it is always being improved upon and is more flexible than many others in this same arena.
Contact Management Software – a Necessity for Most Businesses
Contact management software has become a necessity for every kind of business. This is especially true as more businesses move online and remote working becomes more normal. It is vital for businesses and organizations of all types to keep track of their contacts and organize them effectively. Thankfully, as we have seen, there are now more free tools than ever before that can fulfill these basic roles brilliantly for most small to medium-sized businesses.
Great contact data organization can greatly increase lead conversion, and aids in the effective setting-up of sales and marketing pipelines. This can take the form of email newsletter campaigns, customer support platforms, and much more. Once the data is organized, it can be utilized in the most effective way. We are increasingly finding ourselves in an era of relationship-driven commerce, so communication and customer information truly is king.
It’s important to note, however, that occasionally, contact management software is used interchangeably with CRM (customer relationship management). Some view CRM as more advanced than CMS, as the latter is often simpler in its design and functionality.
While there are many options available out there for all types of businesses, it can become overwhelming when making the choice. To make the decision easier, it’s important to carefully consider what exactly the needs of your business are before choosing which software is for you. While each possibility covers most of the basics, they all also cover slightly different aspects and can benefit different types of companies in differing ways.
Once you have selected which software option to use from our lists of free and premium software solutions, a good next step would be to find other tools that fit your business needs.
One possible starting point is to look for appointment booking software. One possibility that is an industry leader, and one that we would highly recommend, is Amelia.
Amelia offers many powerful appointment-booking capabilities, enabling companies to:
- Log more events and appointments
- Use search and filter options to aid in decision making
- Optimize the signup and sales process
- Use a booking widget that has been specially designed to act as a personal assistant
- Collect payments in an integrated window
- Automate the generation and sending of emails and SMS messages
Amelia acts as a great complement to many of the customer management software solutions that we have recommended in this list.
This trusted and widely-used WordPress plugin helps automate a huge amount of the day-to-day work of running a business, taking the stress and hassle out of much of that daily labor. We hope that our recommendations will set you on your way to increasing the reach of your business, and will make your workflow as efficient as possible!
If you enjoyed reading this article about free contact management software, you should read these as well:
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