The best sales software for small businesses & how each system stacks up
If you’re selling B2B, the key reason most companies need sales software is to better manage their sales leads, sales team, and ultimately sales performance.
If that is your case as well, you best make sure you implement a good sales management software system.
The benefits can be huge: even a small sales team (3 people) I recently talked to reported earning $1 million per year more in sales (💵!) after getting their sales management software in place. Talk about a performance boost!
With all the different software systems for sales management out there however, it can be hard to figure out exactly what you need to up your performance. So first, we’ll tackle that for you and give you a list of useful features to look out for. 👀
After this, we’ll use this same feature list as well as review scores from G2 to compare 8 different top sales management software platforms in detail, including pricing.
Let’s dig in! 👇
What features can you expect from sales management software?
Here are 10 core features a sales management software platform can offer to help you better manage your sales leads and sales team:
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
There’s a lot of useful features in there that you won’t be able to get just from an Excel sheet 😄 We’ll detail below which of these features come with each sales management software.
How can you determine what is the best sales management software for your company?
If you’re looking for good CRM software to manage your sales leads, the above set of features can significantly boost your sales performance. We’ve researched which platforms offer which features and have detailed them for you below.
Next to this, it is important to keep the bigger picture in mind when comparing software, because you need to make sure your team will actually use the system as well. Getting a sales CRM that the sales team doesn’t use is pretty useless 😏
Because of that, we’ll include the current scoring for each software on G2 so you get a better idea of how they stack up. It’s broken down as follows:
- Ease of Use
- Ease of Setup
- Meets Requirements
- Quality of Support
- Ease of Doing Business With
- Ease of Admin
We’ll then take the average of the G2 review score, and combine it with the sales management software feature score, to calculate… the final score! 🥇
The 8 Best Sales Management Software ranked
Don’t want to read the whole comparison? 🤓
Here’s a quick overview of how the sales management software stacks up:
- Salesflare: 9.8/10 🏆
- HubSpot CRM & Sales Hub: 8.3/10
- Pipeliner CRM: 7.2/10
- Freshworks CRM: 7.0/10
- Close: 7.0/10
- Pipedrive: 6.3/10
- Salesforce: 6.1/10
- Zoho CRM: 5.9/10
Want to dig into the details? Read on!
1. Salesflare [9.8/10] 🏆
If we ask our customers what they’re essentially using Salesflare for, the answer is usually: to better manage our sales.
Our goal at Salesflare is to make managing sales leads super easy for you, without you having to input data to keep the system alive. And with a ton of built-in automation to make you more productive. That way the sales team ends up actually using the software... and sales management only becomes easier.
Salesflare (founded in 2014) is used by thousands of small and medium-sized businesses who sell to other businesses (incl. agencies, consultancies, development houses, tech companies, …). It’s top ranked across review platforms and is the #1 CRM software on Product Hunt, the leading community for product enthusiasts.
It’s very tightly integrated with Gmail (also within Google Workspace) and Outlook, so you don’t need to switch between your inbox and sales software while tracking leads. Plus it adds some handy features like integrated email and website tracking, email templates, and email sequences.
Without further ado, here’s an analysis of how Salesflare stacks up:
Features Salesflare offers: 10/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features Salesflare doesn’t offer: none
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 9.5
- Ease of Setup: 9.5
- Meets Requirements: 9.3
- Quality of Support: 9.7
- Ease of Doing Business With: 9.9
- Ease of Admin: 9.5
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 10/10
- Average G2 review score: 9.6/10
- FINAL SCORE: 9.8/10
Pricing to get all of the above (10 features):
$49/user/month (billed annually)
$55/user/month (billed monthly)
Want to see it all in action? You can try Salesflare for free. 👈
It only takes a few minutes to to start a Salesflare trial and start tracking your leads in a better way.
We guarantee you won’t find easier and more automated sales management software to up your team’s performance! 👌
2. HubSpot CRM + Sales Hub [8.3/10]
HubSpot is a marketing automation platform turned everything platform. It was founded in 2005 to make marketing automation easier.
Nowadays, HubSpot’s main selling point is offering an all-in-one solution, including marketing, sales, service and operations. If you don’t like using different apps and integrating them (using tools like Zapier and native integrations), then HubSpot might be what you’re looking for.
To get functionality that is comparable to what you’re getting with the other sales management software in this ranking, you need to get two HubSpot products: its CRM and its Sales Hub.
That makes the pricing to get all this handy functionality (8 features) quite steep, starting at $450/month billed annually (for 5 users, which is the minimum they impose).
Features HubSpot CRM + Sales Hub offers: 8/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features HubSpot CRM + Sales Hub doesn’t offer:
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 8.6
- Ease of Setup: 8.3
- Meets Requirements: 8.5
- Quality of Support: 8.5
- Ease of Doing Business With: 8.7
- Ease of Admin: 8.6
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 8/10
- Average G2 review score: 8.5/10
- FINAL SCORE: 8.3/10
Pricing to get all of the above (8 features):
$90/user/month (billed annually – minimum 5 users)
$100/user/month (billed monthly – minimum 5 users)
3. Pipeliner CRM [7.2/10]
Pipeliner CRM (formerly Pipelinersales) is a software company founded in 2009 with the goal of building better software for salespeople.
Although Salesflare hardly ever gets compared to Pipeliner by people who want to manage their sales in a better way, we decided to include them in this comparison because of their clear dedication to sales.
The sales software is relatively feature rich compared to the other platforms in this comparison, although also a little dated and not too easy to use.
Pipeliner’s pricing rises quite steeply as you need more functionality, which probably makes it a better fit for mid-sized companies with deep pockets.
Features Pipeliner CRM offers: 5/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features Pipeliner CRM doesn’t offer:
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 9.4
- Ease of Setup: 9.2
- Meets Requirements: 9.3
- Quality of Support: 9.3
- Ease of Doing Business With: 9.4
- Ease of Admin: 9.3
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 5/10
- Average G2 review score: 9.3/10
- FINAL SCORE: 7.2/10
Pricing to get all of the above (5 features):
$85/user/month (billed annually)
$100/user/month (billed monthly)
4. Freshworks CRM [7.0/10]
Freshworks CRM (formerly known as Freshsales) is a sales CRM from Freshworks, the company behind / initially called Freshdesk. Freshworks was founded in 2010 to provide a better, cheaper solution for customer service teams.
Freshworks’ main selling point is its feature depth. It has also managed to offer this range of functionality through an easier to use interface than its competitor/predecessor from the same city, Zoho.
What makes Freshworks strong is also its weakness: the interface is full of so many little buttons that common side-effects of using the sales platform include a mild headache, fatigue and dizziness. 😅
Features Freshworks CRM offers: 5/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features Freshworks CRM doesn’t offer:
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 9.1
- Ease of Setup: 8.9
- Meets Requirements: 8.9
- Quality of Support: 9.0
- Ease of Doing Business With: 9.1
- Ease of Admin: 9.4
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 5/10
- Average G2 review score: 9.0/10
- FINAL SCORE: 7.0/10
Pricing to get all of the above (5 features):
$69/user/month (billed annually)
$83/user/month (billed monthly)
5. Close [7.0/10]
Close is a sales CRM company that grew from an outbound sales agency that specialized in outbound calling.
This history is still clear when you try Close today, as it’s more heavily focused than the other sales management software platforms in this list on calling features like a power dialer and a predictive dialer.
The software works a little differently than most, as it doesn’t have “companies” as a concept and you need to create “opportunities” linked to “leads” instead. But once you get used to how it works, it’s relatively straightforward.
So, if calling a list of cold leads is what you do on a daily basis, this sales software system might very well be what you’re looking for to up your sales team’s performance.
Features Close offers: 5/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
Features Close doesn’t offer:
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 9.1
- Ease of Setup: 8.9
- Meets Requirements: 8.8
- Quality of Support: 9.2
- Ease of Doing Business With: 9.3
- Ease of Admin: 9.0
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 5/10
- Average G2 review score: 9.05/10
- FINAL SCORE: 7.0/10
Pricing to get all of the above (5 features):
$99/user/month (billed annually – minimum 3 users)
$109/user/month (billed monthly – minimum 3 users)
6. Pipedrive [6.3/10]
Pipedrive is an easy-to-use and easy-to-setup sales management software for small businesses and startups, and is therefore compared to Salesflare very often.
The company was founded in 2011 to launch a counterreaction to enterprise systems like Salesforce, which are built more for enterprise needs than they are for sales teams. Pipedrive set out to change that.
While the company is focused on helping you manage your sales in a better way, it keeps missing some of the more modern functionality offered by other platforms in this area.
Features Pipedrive offers: 4/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features Pipedrive doesn’t offer:
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 8.9
- Ease of Setup: 8.7
- Meets Requirements: 8.4
- Quality of Support: 8.4
- Ease of Doing Business With: 8.7
- Ease of Admin: 8.6
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 4/10
- Average G2 review score: 8.6/10
- FINAL SCORE: 6.3/10
Pricing to get all of the above (4 features):
$49.90/user/month (billed annually)
$59.90/user/month (billed monthly)
7. Salesforce Sales Cloud [6.1/10]
Salesforce is by far the biggest CRM company in the world, controlling about 24% of the market in 2024. It was founded in 1999 in California by an ex-Oracle executive.
Salesforce offers a huge platform to enterprises that basically consists of a set of building blocks with which you can build anything, gives the possibility to customize everything, and the promise to connect to whatever other software you’re using.
A Salesforce implementation typically requires a consulting company to map the business needs and workflow, build all this in Salesforce, connect with other software, train the employees and follow up with additional changes afterwards.
While the software is not a great match for small and medium-sized businesses nor really built for great day-to-day sales management, no comparison is complete without mentioning the market leader.
Features Salesforce Sales Cloud offers: 4/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
Features Salesforce Sales Cloud doesn’t offer:
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 8.1
- Ease of Setup: 7.5
- Meets Requirements: 8.8
- Quality of Support: 8.2
- Ease of Doing Business With: 8.3
- Ease of Admin: 8.0
Final result:
- Sales management software CRM feature score: 4/10
- Average G2 review score: 9.6/10
- FINAL SCORE: 6.1/10
Pricing to get all of the above (4 features):
$75/user/month (only billed annually)
8. Zoho CRM [5.9/10]
Zoho is a true household name in the CRM industry, so we couldn’t omit them from this ranking.
Zoho launched its small business CRM product in 2005 and has historically been positioning itself as a cheaper alternative to Salesforce. That is immediately its main selling point.
If you’re looking for a sales management software solution to up your team’s performance, Zoho has many tiers (and products even: Zoho CRM, Zoho CRM Plus, Zoho One, …). Some of those are free, but most of the four features below come on Zoho CRM’s Professional plan, which does offer the lowest pricing of the platforms in this comparison.
Features Zoho CRM offers: 4/10
- Visualize your leads in multiple drag-and-drop pipelines
- Track the source (and lost reason) of your leads and analyze it
- Digitize business leads with a built-in business card scanner
- Manage your leads fully from your inbox with a handy email sidebar
Features Zoho CRM doesn’t offer:
- Send automated email sequences until leads reply
- Automatically enrich leads from both publicly available info and email signatures
- Get reminded to follow-up automatically when leads go inactive
- Track leads with integrated email & website tracking
- Get a live overview of what your leads are doing in an in-app notification center
- Use email templates within your Gmail inbox to manage leads more productively
G2 review scoring:
- Ease of Use: 8.1
- Ease of Setup: 7.6
- Meets Requirements: 8.2
- Quality of Support: 7.4
- Ease of Doing Business With: 7.9
- Ease of Admin: 7.8
Final result:
- Sales management software feature score: 4/10
- Average G2 review score: 7.8/10
- FINAL SCORE: 5.9/10
Pricing to get all of the above (4 features):
$23/user/month (billed annually)
$35/user/month (billed monthly)
That’s all we have for the 8 sales management software platforms!
Want to dig deeper into the differences? Just ask our team using the chat on salesflare.com. We’re here to help 😄
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