Best Free CRM for Small Businesses (2026): Honest Plan-by-Plan Comparison

Quick picks: the best free CRMs in 2026

All six have a free plan listed on the vendor’s own pricing page as of October 2026. “First paid step” is the cheapest tier you move to when the free plan stops fitting.

Not sure which wall you will hit first? The quiz takes a minute and scores all six against your team, data and budget.

Which free CRM fits you? Take the quiz

What a free CRM has to do for a small business

A free plan is a trial with no end date. Judge it on whether it can run your real sales process for a year, not on the feature grid. Six things matter:

• Seats for everyone who sells. The user cap is the first wall for most teams. If three people follow up with customers and only two can log in, the third works from a spreadsheet and the CRM stops being the truth.
• Room for your list. Count contacts and companies, not just customers. Imports from an old inbox or an event list fill a 1,000-contact cap faster than you think.
• Email where you already work. Logging emails from Gmail or Outlook automatically decides whether people use the CRM or skip it.
• Basic automation. A reminder to follow up when a deal sits for a week is worth more than any dashboard.
• Clean data out. Check how you export. Zoho’s free edition, for example, allows up to 10 data exports a day.
• A sane first paid tier. You will probably upgrade. A $14 seat and a $90 seat are very different next steps.

What doesn’t matter yet: AI features, forecasting, territory management and hundreds of integrations. A small team needs a pipeline people update, reminders and an email log. Everything else can wait for the paid plan.

The best free CRMs, plan by plan

Every limit and price below comes from the vendor’s own pricing page or product page, checked in October 2026. Prices are list prices in US dollars per user per month unless noted. Vendors change them often, so confirm before you buy.

HubSpot: the best free CRM for most small businesses

Who it fits: one or two people who live in their inbox and want a CRM that works on the first afternoon.

What you get free: contact management, deal pipelines, CRM import, reporting dashboards, live chat, meeting scheduling, quotes and the mobile app. HubSpot’s CRM page states the free tools cover up to two users and 1,000 contacts, with no expiration date and no credit card.

Limits and gotchas: the Sales Hub pricing page caps the free plan at 3 email templates, 3 snippets and 1 personal meetings link, and puts HubSpot branding on 1-to-1 emails, live chat and the meetings link. The 1,000-contact cap is the one that surprises people after a big import.

The upgrade: Starter normally lists at $20 per seat per month. As of October 2026, HubSpot runs a limited-time offer for new customers: $7 per seat per month with upfront annual payment, or $10 month to month. Starter removes HubSpot branding. Sales Hub Professional is $90 per seat per month billed annually ($100 monthly) plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee, according to HubSpot’s pricing page. That jump is the real cliff.

Zoho CRM: the most generous free plan for a small sales team

Who it fits: teams of up to three who want automation without paying, and don’t mind a busier interface.

What you get free: Zoho’s pricing page lists the free edition as “free forever for 3 users”, with contact management, follow-up reminders, workflow automation, tasks, calls and meetings, standard reports, data import and mobile apps.

Limits and gotchas: up to 10 custom email templates, up to 10 data exports a day and 5,000 API calls a day. Zoho’s edition comparison caps free data storage at 5,000 records, with 1 GB of file storage, and mass email isn’t included. A fourth user means moving to a paid edition.

The upgrade: Standard is $14 per user per month billed annually ($20 monthly), Professional $23 ($35 monthly), Enterprise $40 ($50) and Ultimate $52 ($65), according to Zoho’s US price list. For a growing team that is the gentlest slope of any CRM here.

Salesforce Free Suite: real Salesforce for two people

Who it fits: a two-person team that expects to grow into Salesforce, or works with partners and investors who already use it.

What you get free: Salesforce’s free CRM page lists account, lead, opportunity and support case management, task feeds, knowledge management, customizable reports and dashboards, landing pages for lead capture, Slack conversations and embedded AI for summaries and email drafts. You can send up to 100 marketing emails a month.

Limits and gotchas: two user licenses, full stop. Salesforce says the plan has no expiration date “as long as you log in at least once every 60 days”, so an abandoned account can lapse. Salesforce says free users get 24/7 support through its Agentforce chat bot on the Salesforce help site. Advanced automation and lead routing start at Starter Suite.

The upgrade: Starter Suite is $25 per user per month (billed monthly or annually) and Pro Suite $100 per user per month billed annually, according to Salesforce’s pricing page. Moving up keeps your data in the same org, which is the main argument for starting here. If you will connect it to other tools later, our Salesforce integration guide covers the options.

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Bitrix24: free CRM plus tasks, chat and calls

Who it fits: small teams that want one workspace for selling and running projects, and prefer a flat team price to per-seat billing.

What you get free: Bitrix24’s pricing page lists the free plan as “100% free for 1–2 users” with 5 GB of storage, a basic CRM for deals and contacts, Kanban and Gantt tasks, shared calendars, and chat with video calls.

Limits and gotchas: the free CRM is basic, with a single pipeline; Bitrix24 lists sales pipelines, email integration and telephony integration among the additions on Basic. Bitrix24 does a lot, and the interface shows it; expect a few days of setup.

The upgrade: Basic costs $49 a month billed annually ($69 monthly) for the whole organization with 5 users, and Standard $99 annually ($144 monthly) for 50 users, adding unlimited leads and 100 GB of storage. For a team of 5–15, that flat price beats most per-seat CRMs.

Attio: flexible free CRM for startups

Who it fits: startups whose data isn’t just contacts and deals (investors, partners, users of their product) and who like shaping their own tools.

What you get free: Attio’s pricing page lists up to 3 seats, 3 objects, 50,000 records and 50 GB of file storage on the free plan. According to Attio’s help center, the 3 objects are Companies, People and one more standard object of your choice.

Limits and gotchas: only 3 reports, no access permissions (everyone sees and edits the whole workspace), and 200 emails per user a month with 10 bulk emails at a time. Custom objects start on Pro. AI features run on monthly credits. Its flexibility needs someone who enjoys setting it up.

The upgrade: Plus costs $35 per seat per month billed annually ($44 monthly) and raises the limits to 10 seats, 5 objects and 250,000 records. Pro, at $79 per seat billed annually ($99 monthly), removes the seat cap and adds custom objects, according to Attio’s US dollar pricing page.

Bigin by Zoho CRM: the simplest free CRM for one person

Who it fits: a solo founder, consultant or tradesperson who wants a pipeline and reminders, not a platform.

What you get free: Bigin’s pricing page lists the free plan for 1 user, 500 records and a single pipeline.

Limits and gotchas: 500 records is small. It suits a focused list of active deals, not a full contact archive.

The upgrade: Express is $7 per user per month billed annually ($9 monthly) with 3 pipelines and 50,000 records; Premier $12 ($15 monthly). If you later need serious automation, you move to Zoho CRM. More solo options are in our guide to the best CRM for freelancers.

Other free options, and free plans that changed

• Odoo: the “One App Free” plan gives unlimited users on a single app, including CRM, hosted on Odoo Online. Adding a second app or Studio moves you to a paid plan.
• Freshsales: its pricing page now shows only Growth ($9 per user per month billed annually), Pro ($39) and Enterprise ($59), plus a 21-day trial that ends in suspension if you don’t pick a plan. Older reviews still describe a free tier; treat them as out of date.
• Open-source CRMs you host yourself have no license fee. You pay instead in hosting, updates, security and someone who keeps them running.

Free CRM plans compared

“Not stated” means the vendor’s pricing page doesn’t say; test it in the free account before you rely on it.

When free stops being enough

Free plans fail in predictable ways. These are the signs it is time to pay, or to look further:

• Someone works outside the CRM. A third salesperson without a seat, or a manager who asks for exports. Pay for the seat; the alternative is two versions of the truth.
• You delete data to stay under a cap. Old leads are future pipeline. Deleting them to keep a free plan costs more than the upgrade.
• Follow-ups depend on memory. If deals stall because nobody got a reminder, you need automation, which most free plans keep minimal.
• You copy data between systems by hand. Typing orders into billing or syncing sign-ups from your product is where a paid tier with integrations, or an integration built for you, pays back fastest.

Costs beyond the license

A free CRM has a $0 license, not a $0 cost. The bigger bill comes later, when you connect it to the rest of the business:

• Setup and data cleanup: usually your own time on a free plan, a few days to a couple of weeks for pipeline stages, fields and an import.
• Paid onboarding: some vendors charge it on higher tiers, such as HubSpot’s one-time $1,500 fee on Sales Hub Professional.
• Integrations: a simple one-way integration between two apps often costs $2,000–10,000, and a two-way sync between your CRM and accounting or ERP typically runs $10,000–40,000, as our API integration cost guide explains. Moving data between systems is covered in the cost of data integration.
• Training: an hour per person to start, more if the CRM replaces a tool people liked.

When the workflow itself doesn’t fit a standard CRM (custom objects everywhere, heavy integrations, licenses priced for 50 seats), a custom CRM can be the cheaper path over time. A focused custom CRM typically costs $40–100k with an Eastern European or Latin American team; our custom CRM development cost guide compares it with SaaS licenses over five years.

How to set up a free CRM in a week

1. Write down your pipeline stagesFive to seven stages that match how you actually sell, from first contact to paid. Each stage should end with a clear action, such as “proposal sent”.
2. Decide the fields you needKeep it short: source, deal value, next step, close date. Every extra required field is a reason not to update the CRM.
3. Clean and import your contactsExport from your inbox, spreadsheet or old tool, remove duplicates and dead contacts, then import. Check the result against the plan’s contact or record cap before you hit it.
4. Connect email and calendarLink Gmail or Outlook so emails and meetings log themselves. This one step decides whether people keep using the CRM.
5. Add one automationA follow-up task when a deal sits in a stage for 7 days. On plans without automation, use a recurring reminder or a saved view of stale deals.
6. Agree the rules and trainWho updates what, and when. Thirty minutes with the team and one rule (“if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen”) beats a manual nobody reads.

Before you sign up: checklist

Tick what you have checked. The more you tick, the fewer surprises when the free plan runs out.

For the paid side of the market, see our pillar guide to the best CRM for small business and the best CRM for startups.

FAQ

Where Gilzor fits

Gilzor is a software development company from Poland and Cyprus, not a CRM vendor or reseller. We help businesses set up and extend their CRM, connect it to billing, forms and product data through API development, migrate data between systems, and build custom CRMs when off-the-shelf ones stop fitting. If you start on Salesforce, our Salesforce integration services cover connecting it to the rest of your stack. If your free CRM is turning into a pile of workarounds, tell us how you sell and we’ll suggest the simplest next step.