5 Best Contact Management CRM Software Of 2024 (Top Tools)

Upfront Conclusion

The best contact management CRM software right now is HubSpot.

Do you run a business with regular customers? Do you want to ensure that your customers return and keep purchasing from you? If you answered “yes” to those questions, you must have a contact management system in place to reach your customers and encourage loyalty. Contact management is the process of recording every interaction a customer or prospective customer has with your business. It can include tracking details such as name, contact information, preferences, how they found your business, and any potential sales. Every business can benefit from this process as it can give you a view of who your customers are and allow you to improve your offerings to them. We have put together the top CRM systems you can use today to improve your contact management.

Top 5 CRM for contact management

HubSpot – best for managing business operations
Nimble – best for combining contacts from different platforms
Nutshell – best for simplicity
Keap – best for saving time through automation
Contact Boss – best for small businesses

1. HubSpot – best for managing business operations

Pricing: starting from $45 per month. Free plan available

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM software that combines Marketing, Sales, Customers Service, and Website Management into one system and labels them “Hubs.” The Sales Hub can give you insights into your customers and new leads. The Marketing Hub can nurture those relationships and provide reporting to improve your business performance. The Service Hub can give your customers an easy and efficient way to contact you, and The CMS Hub allows you to maintain your website.

Key features:

Track all interactions a customer has with your business
Follow up on new leads with automated marketing
In-depth reporting and analytics are available
Monitor all customer queries with The Service Hub
Receive SEO recommendations to improve your website

Reasons to buy:

24/7 customer support and online resources are available
Targeted marketing to customer groups
Automate repetitive tasks like sending out introductory emails
Learn more about your customers and some of the common questions they have
Integrates with hundreds of applications

Reasons to avoid

There are features beyond contact management that some businesses might not need
The package for more prominent companies increases to $3,200 per month

Try HubSpot

2. Nimble – best for combining contacts from different platforms

Pricing: starting from $25 per month. Free 14-day trial available

Nimble is a CRM software to centralize all your contacts across every platform that you work across within one place. The software has over 100 integrations that automatically pull contacts from social media, emails, and appointments into the system and display their details, communication history, and messages with your business. A key benefit of combining your contacts in Nimble is engaging with your customers at scale through grouped and personalized emails.

Key features:

Centralize your contacts in one place
Integrates with over 100 programs
360-degree view of each customer
Group customers together to send personalized communications
Track emails and click-through rates

Reasons to buy:

Learn more about who your customers are
See which platform most of your customers come from
Organize your customer database to make your marketing more targeted
Free trial available
Reduce the amount of time you spend on manual data entry

Reasons to avoid:

Only 2GB of storage is available
Additional $10 per month for 10GB more storage
It will take time to set up integrations with your existing software initially

3. Nutshell – best for simplicity

Pricing: starting from $27 per user/per month

Nutshell is a simple, affordable, no-frills CRM system that is quick to set up but still sophisticated enough for any business to implement. The software has can help business owners reduce the time they spend on daily tasks by simple automations. Nutshell has a contact management system and stores your customers’ details, conversation history, and preferences in one place.

Key features:

Create a central repository for all your customer data
Automated workflows to trigger emails
Reporting tools to show your financial performance
Manage projects with a pipeline tracker
Design on-brand and targeted email marketing campaigns

Reasons to buy:

Free, unlimited professional support by phone, email, and webchat
Quick and simple setup
No contracts, so you can cancel at any time
Unlimited storage and contacts
Affordable to update to the Pro package ($49 per user/per month)

Reasons to avoid

Sales automation is not available with the Starter package
Reporting may not be comprehensive enough for larger businesses
Email and phone integration capabilities was reviewed as poor
The mobile app has been reported to lack some features

4. Keap – best for saving time through automation

Pricing: starting from $59 per month. 14-day free trial offer

Keap is a CRM and contact management system that specializes in finding ways to save business owners time through automating repetitive tasks. Keap builds up a database of current and potential customers and then allows you to build sequences that trigger when someone interacts with your business. The communications sent out can be fully personalized, and complete reporting is available to track and improve performance.

Key features:

Easy to build sequences to engage with customers
Dashboard, sales reports, and analytics
Integrates with over 2,500 applications
Pulls together contacts from the website, social media, and custom web forms
Send marketing emails directly from the software to the customer

Reasons to buy:

Save time by automating sales and marketing tasks
Keep track of all your customers and prospects
Free resources providing business advice
Webchat and phone support available to all users
84% of users saw an increase in clients after using Keap*

Reasons to avoid:

The starter package is only for 500 contacts
500 – 1500 contacts will cost $129 per month, and anything above that is $199 per month
Email building software within Keap was reviewed as too simple

5. Contact Boss – best for small businesses

Pricing: starting from $8.33 per month. Free 130-day trial available

Contact Boss was setup to help small business owners manage their contacts and build lasting relationships. Through integrations with applications such as Gmail, Outlook, and MailChimp, Contact Boss combines all the connections and displays them according to your requirements. The software contains a robust search function to find customers within seconds, even if you only have a partial name or descriptor. All the data is stored securely in the cloud, so there is much storage and real-time versions of records.

Key features:

Capture all your contacts in one place
Set up rules to automatically organize your contacts
Search for specific customers within the search bar tool
Keep track of every interaction your business has with a customer or prospect
Store all the data you collect in the cloud

Reasons to buy:

Affordable pricing for small businesses
Simple to use and quick to set up
Create robust contact lists
Filter through and search for specific contacts
Track every engagement each customer has with your business

Reason to avoid:

There are no built-in marketing features
Reporting is not as comprehensive
It is solely to manage your contacts, so not ideal if you need a business management software
Lack of professional support

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Why do businesses need a contact management system?

It is essential for all businesses to have a contact management system in place and establish a good working relationship with their customers. Capturing details of existing customers and prospects will help you build a picture of who your customers are. In turn, this can help you, as a business owner, to improve your product offering, targeted promotions, and tailored marketing.

Will automation benefit my business?

Automation is a beautiful digital tool that business owners have available to help speed up repetitive tasks. For people with large workloads to manage, automating tasks such as data entry, introduction emails, follow-ups, social media posts, and marketing campaigns can save time so that you can work on other areas of your business. CRM software is intelligent and can send out certain emails if a customer meets a specific criterion. You can make these emails personal, which may encourage more traffic to your business and, in time, more sales.

How do I create a contact management database?

Luckily, CRM software with a robust contact management feature can do a lot of this work for you. The main thing to be aware of is choosing a software with a variety of integration capabilities so that you can connect your email accounts, social media platforms, website, and any other form of communication within one place. Pulling all your contacts within one place will allow you to track who is engaging with your business easily, and you can then use reporting tools to nurture and grow those relationships.

*Source: https://keap.com/