CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a platform that allows freelancers or small business owners to manage their client’s and potential customers’ interaction in a single dashboard.
A CRM tool lets you store your clients’ and prospect contact information, identify sales possibilities, and manage marketing campaigns all in one dashboard.
With easy access to data, it’s easier to collaborate and improve productivity as a small business owner. Everyone in your business can view how potential clients have been communicated with, their purchase history and patterns, what and how they paid, and so much more.
CRM can help any type of company to improve business growth, especially for small businesses when you are finding smart ways to grow your business.
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Best CRMs For Freelancers
1. Honeybook
Honeybook is the best cloud-based CRM platform designed for small business owners and freelancers. The software helps freelancers manage client communication, and projects, book clients, sign proposals and contracts, and make payments.
The best feature of Honeybook is that you can respond to potential clients with automated appointment requests and follow-ups using personalized templates and notifications. The task management features of Honeybook are pretty helpful, where you can view and track various stages of your current project.
In addition, you can also automate project-based payment and task reminders. Honeybook is a monthly subscription CRM tool that offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android users and customer support via email and online forums.
Also read: Honeybook Review (2022 Update)
Honeybook Features:
- The best all-in-one CRM software for freelancers
- Can send automatic payment reminders for clients
- Integrates business management, invoicing, automation, and payments
- Solid Mobile App Integration
- User-friendly interface
- Dynamic pipeline-focused system
- Automated follow-ups and appointments with ease
Drawbacks:
2. Agile CRM
Agile is the most versatile and user-friendly CRM tool for freelancers and small business owners. It offers contact management, appointment scheduling, marketing automation, telephony tools, a landing page builder, and more.
It also offers a customizable deals pipeline, document storage, calendar sync, a drag-and-drop dashboard, an activity feed, and filterable reports.
With Agile, you can also track and view website visitors to analyze behaviors, and the marketing automation tools help users create neat and clear project workflow.
The social media integration allows users to monitor brand mentions on various platforms, track contacts, and interact with prospects through Facebook and Twitter.
Agile CRM Features:
- Simple and user-friendly dashboard
- Connect email and social media
- One-click calls and call automation
- Customizable Templates
- Schedule appointments with prospects
- Task management with drag-and-drop task lists
- Create automated marketing workflows
- Add-on apps for more functionality
- Free version for up to 10 users and 50,000 contacts
Drawbacks
- No invoicing or accounting features
- No email campaign in the free plan
Also, Read- Best accounting software for freelancers in 2022
3. Salesmate
Salesmate is one of the cheapest CRM software for freelancers. The basic subscription plan starts at only $12/month and the premium plan is for $24/month.
With the price paid, you’ll get access to the best sales pipeline software, with multiple other essential features like workflow automation, detailed sales reports, a power dialer, and much more.
Salesmate’s contact management feature allows freelancers to import contacts from mobile, excel sheets, and google and store them in a dashboard. One of the best features of Salesmate is that it allows users to view, organize and automate the creation of follow-up tasks for various levels of deals.
Salesmate Features:
- Contact Management
- Build in calling
- Email Management
- Sales activity tracking
- Sales Pipeline Management
- Mobile CRM
- Interaction Tracking
- Lead Management
- Calendar/Reminder System
Drawbacks
- Only 15 days free trial
4. Hello Bonsai
Hello Bonsai is an all-in-one CRM software for freelancers. You can go from chaotic to well-organized quite fast with templates, client management, reminder, and more. It also offers the best mobile app for fast and quick access on the go.
With its simple, easy-to-use dashboard that collects everything from menus. From there, you can easily manage your tasks, projects, and clients’ communication and even start a timer to help you to determine billable hours for particular projects.
Bonsai also offer templates for contracts and agreements with enforceable digital signatures, saving you considerable time from paper works.
Bonsai features:
- Full-featured invoicing
- Create and manage contracts and proposals
- Automated timesheets
- Numerous templates (invoicing, contracts, proposals, briefs, etc.)
- Client input (forms, feedback, contact, etc.)
- Manage leads and contacts
- Full accounting features, including taxes
- Track tasks and projects
Drawbacks
- No free trial (14-day free trial only)
- Tax feature and a few are add-ons (not included in any plans)
5. Dubsado
Dubsado offers the best CRM tool for both freelancers and business owners. The free version is limited to crucial features and clients (just three). However, this includes a time tracker that helps to monitor your billable hours and an invoicing system that lets you send quotes and get paid faster.
The user-friendly dashboard standout, offering an overview of your schedules, upcoming projects or tasks, financial details, and urgent notifications to handle.
Dubsado supports various payment getaways like PayPal, stripe, and square and even offers clients to add tips while making the final payment.
However, Dubsado does not have a mobile app or cloud storage allocation. Freelancers who need a mobile app for their project management can consider either Agile CRM or HubSpot CRM.
Dubsado Feature:
- Invoicing features
- Billing and payment scheduling
- Project management
- Time tracking
Drawbacks
- Lacks mobile app
- No cloud storage option
Benefits Of Using CRM For Freelancers
A properly implemented CRM system is a handy tool for your small business. It tracks and automates customer interactions and communication with clients and prospects over time. It also helps to point out opportunities that might require extra attention or follow-ups (among many other benefits of using CRM). Here is a list of all the benefits of using CRM tools for a freelancer–
- Manage all communication with customers and prospects
- Automate data entry
- Improves messaging with automation
- Identify and categorize leads
- Create sale reports
- Automate forecasting for your sales performance
- Scale your sales processes over time
- Simplifies collaboration
- Increase referrals from existing customers
Read more: Best Productivity Apps for Freelancers in 2023
