logo
Search for anything...
About

Best Monday.com Alternatives

Written by Paddy Stobbs

Co-Founder & CEO

Edited by Steph Leung

Product & Operations Lead

Updated onMar 14, 2025
Monday.com has established itself as a versatile work operating system that many sales teams rely on for managing their processes. However, when it comes to specialized sales functions, several alternatives offer more refined solutions tailored to specific sales needs. HubSpot Sales Hub delivers superior lead management with dedicated pipelines and automated enrichment that Monday.com’s interface doesn't match. For email sequence management, Streak’s seamless Gmail integration provides intuitive tracking capabilities without the complex workarounds required in Monday.com. Sales teams managing multiple pipelines find Pipedrive’s purpose-built functionality more accommodating than Monday.com’s single deals board limitation. When workflow automation is critical, Salesforce Sales Cloud offers a comprehensive environment with granular control that outperforms Monday.com’s repurposed project management approach. And for contact data management, Attio’s spreadsheet-like interface with one-click enrichment and flexible organization presents a more intuitive solution than Monday.com’s terminology and rigid structure. Each of these alternatives addresses specific sales requirements where Monday.com falls short, giving teams specialized tools that can enhance their sales operations.

Best alternatives to Monday.com

For lead management:

HubSpot Sales Hub product logo

HubSpot Sales Hub

Stackfix Rating:

5.8 / 10

HubSpot Sales Hub excels at lead management through its sophisticated system, automated workflows, and comprehensive tracking capabilities. Unlike Monday.com’s confusing lead management interface that requires workarounds, HubSpot offers a dedicated pipeline to move leads from 'New' to 'Qualified', automatically enriches contact data, and provides detailed engagement analytics. Monday.com struggles with an unclear process and limited filtering options, while HubSpot provides features like customizable lead scoring based on both properties and engagement, automated lead routing, and a convenient leads summary dashboard showing conversion rates and response times.

Jump to product

For email sequence management and tracking:

Streak product logo

Streak

Stackfix Rating:

6.6 / 10

Streak is a strong alternative to Monday.com for email sequence management and tracking, primarily due to its seamless Gmail integration and intuitive sequencing capabilities. While Monday.com’s email sequences require complex workarounds and lack engagement tracking, Streak enables users to create sequences directly within their Gmail interface with just a few clicks. The platform’s native email tracking provides comprehensive engagement metrics, and users can easily segment contacts based on their interaction with previous emails – a feature Monday.com only offers through less direct solutions. Additionally, Streak’s straightforward approach to email automation makes it more effective for managing email sequences compared to Monday.com’s cumbersome method.

Jump to product

For managing multiple sales pipelines:

Pipedrive product logo

Pipedrive

Stackfix Rating:

7.3 / 10

Pipedrive stands out as a powerful alternative to Monday.com for managing multiple sales pipelines, primarily due to its purpose-built sales pipeline functionality. While Monday.com restricts users to a single deals board, Pipedrive enables teams to create and customize multiple pipelines with distinct stages and forecasting for different sales processes. The platform’s intuitive pipeline interface lets users assign stage weights to estimate deal closing probability, track deal rotting periods, and leverage AI-powered insights to identify high-probability opportunities. Additionally, Pipedrive’s unique forecast view provides clear visibility into potential monthly revenue by combining both closed and open deals across pipelines.

Jump to product

For workflow automation:

Salesforce Sales Cloud product logo

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Stackfix Rating:

5.3 / 10

Salesforce Sales Cloud’s workflow automation capabilities are more flexible and powerful than Monday.com’s. While Monday.com’s automation module feels like a repurposed project management tool with unintuitive triggers such as ‘When item is created,’ Salesforce offers a comprehensive automation environment with 13 dedicated process automation settings. Salesforce enables users to create sophisticated workflows with granular control, AI-powered optimization, and the ability to connect with any external application. Unlike Monday.com’s board-confined automations, Salesforce provides a centralized automation hub for managing all workflows, making it a preferred solution for businesses seeking robust workflow automation.

Jump to product

For contact data management:

Attio product logo

Attio

Stackfix Rating:

8.1 / 10

Attio’s contact data management capabilities make it a compelling alternative to Monday.com. While Monday.com struggles with basic contact organization, requiring workarounds and confusing terminology like 'items' for contacts, Attio offers an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface with powerful features. Its one-click data enrichment automatically populates contact profiles with comprehensive information including ARR and funding details, and its 'connection strength' metric helps track engagement levels. The Chrome extension enables seamless contact capture from LinkedIn, X, and Gmail, and its fast interface loads in 0.8 seconds. Most importantly, Attio’s flexible custom objects and pipelines let users organize contacts exactly how they need them, unlike Monday.com’s rigid single pipeline limitation.

Jump to product

PS

Meet your expert: Paddy Stobbs

Stackfix Co-Founder & CEO

I've spent over a decade deep in the world of business software - personally managing more than $2M in purchases across companies I've built and led. From intimate 10-person teams to organizations of 150+, I've developed a particular obsession with Sales and HR tools – testing, implementing, and scaling them at every stage of growth. My journey started at Cambridge University, led me through Google, and most recently culminated in selling my previous venture to TikTok. Now, I'm channeling all of that hands-on experience into helping others navigate the complex landscape of business software.

Monday.com logo

Monday.com

HubSpot Sales Hub logo

HubSpot Sales Hub

Streak logo

Streak

Pipedrive logo

Pipedrive

Salesforce Sales Cloud logo

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Attio logo

Attio

Our rating
Functionality
4

Functionality

4/10

<p>On paper, Monday offers most of the functionality SMBs will need, including contact and pipeline management, email sequencing, and basic reporting and automation. However, a lot of it seems half-baked e.g. adding multiple pipelines, tracking engagement rates of emails in sequences, or filtering contacts by interaction are either impossible, or only achievable via hacky workarounds.</p>
9

Functionality

9/10

<p>HubSpot offers all functionality that most companies will need, besides functionality required by the largest/ most sophisticated companies. For example, HubSpot's reporting functionality and ability to build highly customised workflows aren't on par with Salesforce's.</p>
6

Functionality

6/10

<p>For a CRM that operates within your Gmail inbox, Streak offers a surprisingly robust set of features. In addition to managing contacts and pipelines, it provides email sequences, data enrichment, an AI co-pilot, and custom reporting.</p><p>However, it lacks some advanced features, such as tracking web visitors, capturing contacts via webform and ability to create custom objects.</p>
8

Functionality

8/10

<p>Pipedrive offers most of the functionality that SMBs will need. Besides allowing you to manage contacts, leads and your sales pipeline, Pipedrive also allows you to send email sequences, automate workflows, and layer on marketing functionality via add-ons (e.g. create marketing emails, chat bots, web forms, track website visitors).</p><p>However, it lacks some advanced features such as a dialer that allows you to make calls from your browser, adding contacts from LinkedIn and data enrichment. These will require 3rd party integrations.</p>
10

Functionality

10/10

<p>Salesforce is one of the most powerful CRMs on the market. Its core functionality will be more than sufficient for most companies, and it also offers advanced capabilities that should satisfy even the most complex enterprises.</p>
7

Functionality

7/10

<p>Attio offers simple, intuitive CRM functionality that ticks the boxes for most SMBs. Beyond the essentials like contact and pipeline management, it stands out with some standout features: a slick Chrome extension for effortless one-click contact addition from LinkedIn/X, impressive data enrichment, and AI-powered workflow automation. They’ve even recently added email sequencing and phone calling (via an integration) into the mix.</p><p>That said, there are a few missing pieces that sales teams might notice - like native lead capture from website forms.</p>
Ease of Use
4

Ease of Use

4/10

<p>As an offshoot of Monday's Project Management tool, many things require workarounds, which is cumbersome and frustrating. Associating leads with contacts requires adding a “mirror column", moving leads into customers requires "data mapping". The terminology is also confusing, contacts are called "items".</p>
3

Ease of Use

3/10

<p>HubSpot is so packed with features and customisation options that it will take an average SMB employee at least a week to learn how to navigate the platform. Even if you're only using HubSpot CRM, you'll see irrelevant modules and fields form other products in its suites everywhere, which can get quite confusing. But once you're past the initial learning curve, most key processes can get quite intuitive.</p>
7

Ease of Use

7/10

<p>As a CRM that sits on top of your Gmail inbox, Streak is easy to set up and use.</p><p>Key workflows are also intuitive. In particular, you can easily add contacts to your pipeline from your email threads via a sidebar and easily enrol contacts into an email sequence.</p><p>Some of the more advanced features like automation however, has a bit of learning curve to them.</p>
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Pipedrive is built for sales team - we found it very easy to locate key information, and most sales workflows such as prioritising and routing leads were also highly intuitive. An average SMB employee should only require 1-2 hours to master key functionalities of the product.</p>
1

Ease of Use

1/10

<p>Salesforce has the steepest learning curve and most complex user experience out of all CRM experiences. Built for large sales teams, everything (e.g. editing pipeline stages, adding an opportunity) takes longer to get done. There are foreign terms for technically proficient, power users everywhere, especially in the automations modules. Be prepared to invest weeks to learn the basic operations, and months to master the advanced features.</p>
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p>Attio offers one of the best-in-class user experience for its core functionality. Key workflows such as creating pipelines, adding contacts to Attio via its extension and moving contacts to lists are highly intuitive, and available via keyboard shortcuts.</p><p>However, we found Attio's automation and reporting modules less intuitive and complex, since they're more powerful and flexible than the average CRM.</p>
Look and feel
6

Look and feel

6/10

<p>The platform is visually acceptable, though the emphasis on bright, engaging colours and customisable icons can make some pages seem cluttered and busy at times. Page loads also aren't the best (2-3 seconds).</p>
4

Look and feel

4/10

<p>We find HubSpot's interface to be tired and overwhelming compared to the newer CRMs on the market. There is often an overwhelming amount of actions you can take on a single screen, which makes it difficult to locate key information at times.</p>
5

Look and feel

5/10

<p>We find Streak visually acceptable, though its layout is a bit cluttered at times. Our main gripe however, is that Streak loads slowly e.g. when you login, it takes at least 5-6 seconds before Streak loads.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>We find Pipedrive's interface clean and modern, and acceptable to load <span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">(~2 seconds per page).</span></p>
4

Look and feel

4/10

<p>Even with the latest Salesforce Lightning, the user interface still feels cluttered and dated compared to newer CRMs out there—it’s definitely not a joy to use.</p>
10

Look and feel

10/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">Attio is one of the most visually appealing CRMs we've come across. We love the clean and blazingly fast UI, and page loads are +20% faster than the majority of other CRMs on the markets. Its pages are also beautifully colour-coded and accompanied by emojis, making it a joy to use.</span></p>
Customisability
5

Customisability

5/10

<p>Although you can customise some parts of Monday, the inability to add multiple deals boards and sales pipeline is a major restriction on customisability. It's also lacking some intuitive filters to create useful custom views e.g. see contacts you've recently interacted with and contacted.</p>
9

Customisability

9/10

<p>HubSpot offers the highest degree of customisability out of all CRMs besides Salesforce.&nbsp;You can create complex workflows via code, and fully customise fully customize the design of client-facing assets, such as emails and webpages.</p>
7

Customisability

7/10

<p>Streak allow you to customize most things, from fields, pipeline stages, reports, saved reports and workflows.</p><p>However, it lacks the ability to add custom objects, which allows you to track items besides contacts and companies, which may limit Streak's useful to build more complex workflows.</p>
5

Customisability

5/10

<p>Built for sales teams, this also makes Pipedrive less customisable compared to competitors. Although you can customizable most fields and pipeline stages, most of its modules and terminology are rather sales-oriented e.g. you must have a "leads inbox", pipeline cards must be "deals".</p><p>It also lacks the ability to add custom objects, which allows you to track items besides people and companies e.g. subscription types or vendors and track custom web events e.g. add to cart.</p>
10

Customisability

10/10

<p>With Salesforce's Apex programming language, you can customise almost anything you can think of - from user interface, sales workflows to how Salesforce integrates with other software.</p>
9

Customisability

9/10

<p>Attio is a highly flexible CRM designed to meet the needs of any teams. It allows you to create custom data objects (on top of the standard "people" and "companies"), fully customisable pipelines, automation flows, highly customisable reports, and workspaces for any and all kinds of use cases (e.g. marketing, recruiting, project management).</p>
Ease of Setup
4

Ease of Setup

4/10

<p>Although Monday offers a self-serve free trial, we found the initial setup (takes &gt;15 minutes) rather challenging during testing. Import was clunky - contacts import as simple text strings rather than structured data objects, requiring time-consuming fixes. Unlike standard CRMs, Monday lacks default relationships between deals and companies - these connections must be manually configured through workarounds. These structural limitations, combined with other quirks, make fully customisation a lengthy process.</p>
3

Ease of Setup

3/10

<p>HubSpot's free trial is available without having to speak to sales. Basic setup - importing contacts and creating pipelines - takes about 10 minutes. However, its extensive features and complex settings mean full customization can take weeks, especially for advanced settings like custom objects, chatbots, and automation. Many users we've talked to ended up hiring a HubSpot consultant for implementation. HubSpot's pricing structure adds another layer of complexity, with multiple plans and bundles to navigate during upgrades.</p>
9

Ease of Setup

9/10

<p>Streak offers a self-serve free trial. It takes almost no time to get started with Streak, which is simply a Chrome Extension that sits on your inbox. Fully customising the platform with workflow automation and reports is still straightforward, and can be done within 1 business day.</p>
6

Ease of Setup

6/10

<p>Pipedrive offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking about 10 minutes to import your contacts and set up pipelines. That said, getting the platform fully up and running, and getting your team up to speed, can take up to a week. This is especially true if you’re exploring Pipedrive’s add-ons for marketing, prospecting, and project management.</p>
1

Ease of Setup

1/10

<p>Salesforce offers a self-serve free trial, but as an enterprise-focused platform, the initial setup is a lot more involved. Even the simplest configurations can take over 20 minutes, with basic tasks, like customizing pipeline stages, requiring more steps compared to other CRMs. Fully customizing and implementing Salesforce can take several months, and many teams end up hiring dedicated consultants or technical experts (at significant expense) to handle setup and data migration.</p>
8

Ease of Setup

8/10

<p>Attio offers a generous, self-serve free tier —up to 3 users and fully self-serve. Thanks to Attio's familiar spreadsheet-like layout, we found the initial setup to be extremely simple. It took less than 5 minutes to set up, and connecting our email was as simple as a few clicks, with all our contacts syncing automatically.&nbsp;That said, if you want to dive deeper and fully customize the platform, expect to spend 1-2 days exploring Attio’s incredibly flexible automation and reporting tools.</p>
Customer Support
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p>Monday offers live chat support within its platform. Although you have to chat with an AI chatbot, handoff to a human agent is extremely quick. We've found the support we've been given inconsistent - at times, agents give unhelpful advice and direct you to help centre articles, other times, agents are extremely helpful and go above and beyond with personalised loom videos.</p>
6

Customer Support

6/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">HubSpot's support team responds via live chat/ email in less than 3 minutes, 24/7. </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">That said, you don't get access to their phone/ video support, unless you pay for Professional/ Enterprise, and now if you're signed up to their discounted startup plan. We also find their support sometimes frustratingly bureaucratic - you can only speak with the assigned rep in your territory.</span></p>
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p>Streak offers live chat with human agents who are helpful and quick to respond. However, note that they are online only during US business hours.</p>
9

Customer Support

9/10

<p>Pipedrive offers 24/7, in-app chat with live human agents. Our team has always found the Pipedrive support team to be friendly, quick to respond, and very helpful.</p>
4

Customer Support

4/10

<p>Salesforce offers personalized Q&amp;A through live chat, but it’s only available during business hours and often feels sales-y. We wish the coverage was greater and they held off on the upsell!</p>
10

Customer Support

10/10

<p>Attio offers in-app live chat with live, human agents who are very quick to respond (within a few minutes) and always goes above and beyond with personalised screenshots and explanations!</p>
Integratability
8

Integratability

8/10

<p>Monday offers 200+ pre-built integrations, however, these seem to be geared more towards its main offering - Monday Work Management. Although it integrates with most reasonably relevant software, it's missing some CRM-specific connections e.g. prospecting tools like Apollo and Surfe. It does offer an API for custom integrations.</p>
10

Integratability

10/10

<p>HubSpot offers native integrations with the overwhelming majority of 3rd part products a company will want to connect their CRM with, plus an ever-growing marketplace of more than 350 free and paid-for apps.&nbsp;&nbsp;The chances are that if you need a particularly integration and HubSpot don't have it, it will unlikely be provided by a competitive product.</p>
3

Integratability

3/10

<p>Streak only offers a few pre-built integrations: Google Voice, Calendly, Typeform, Google Sheets, and Slack.</p><p>However, it does have an API &amp; Zapier integration.</p>
8

Integratability

8/10

<p>Pipedrive has pre-built integrations with most relevant 3rd party products and an API that allows buyer to build own integrations where necessary.</p>
10

Integratability

10/10

<p>Salesforce has the most extensive integration ecosystem of any CRM. It offers pre-built integrations with nearly all the key third-party tools and provides a robust API for building custom integrations.</p>
4

Integratability

4/10

<p>Attio has a few pre-built integrations with a handful of the most common software tools (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Mailchimp). But, in the main, Attio pushes you to build your own integrations using Zapier, Make or its API. ‍</p>
Ease of Migration
5

Ease of Migration

5/10

<p>Basic information such as contacts, leads, deals can be exported into an Excel file. However, the restriction is that dashboards can only be exported as an PDF, though all other info can be exported via an API.</p>
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>HubSpot allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p>
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Streak allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p>
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Pipedrive allows users to export key data (contacts, accounts, deals) via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p>
10

Ease of Migration

10/10

<p>Salesforce allows users to export most data via self-serve or via an API. Exports of key data to relevant 3rd party vendors are also available via pre-built integrations.</p>
8

Ease of Migration

8/10

<p>Attio allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p>

HubSpot Sales Hub: Monday.com alternative for lead management

HubSpot Sales Hub product logo
HubSpot Sales Hub

Stackfix Rating:

5.8 / 10

Visit website

Starting at

$0

Calculate your price
Updated onMar 14, 2025
HubSpot Sales Hub excels at lead management through its sophisticated system, automated workflows, and comprehensive tracking capabilities. Unlike Monday.com’s confusing lead management interface that requires workarounds, HubSpot offers a dedicated pipeline to move leads from 'New' to 'Qualified', automatically enriches contact data, and provides detailed engagement analytics. Monday.com struggles with an unclear process and limited filtering options, while HubSpot provides features like customizable lead scoring based on both properties and engagement, automated lead routing, and a convenient leads summary dashboard showing conversion rates and response times.

Want to know more? See a detailed comparison of Monday.com vs. HubSpot Sales Hub.

Pros

  • Integrated CRM suite for sales, marketing & support

  • Powerful customization

  • Robust Workflow Automation

  • Best-in-class marketing automation capabilities

  • Superior lead management functionality

  • Extensive integration capabilities

Cons

  • Complex Pricing with Steep Increases

  • Cluttered and Dated Interface

  • Difficult to Learn and Navigate

  • Bureaucratic Support System

Compare all CRMsRead the full review

Streak: Monday.com alternative for email sequence management and tracking

Streak product logo
Streak

Stackfix Rating:

6.6 / 10

Visit website

Starting at

$0

Calculate your price
Updated onMar 14, 2025
Streak is a strong alternative to Monday.com for email sequence management and tracking, primarily due to its seamless Gmail integration and intuitive sequencing capabilities. While Monday.com’s email sequences require complex workarounds and lack engagement tracking, Streak enables users to create sequences directly within their Gmail interface with just a few clicks. The platform’s native email tracking provides comprehensive engagement metrics, and users can easily segment contacts based on their interaction with previous emails – a feature Monday.com only offers through less direct solutions. Additionally, Streak’s straightforward approach to email automation makes it more effective for managing email sequences compared to Monday.com’s cumbersome method.

Want to know more? See a detailed comparison of Monday.com vs. Streak.

Pros

  • Easy to set up and use

  • Excellent Email Sequence Management

  • Strong Data Export Capabilities

Cons

  • Gates key functionality behind more expensive tiers

  • Only works with Chrome and Gmail

  • No Custom Objects Support

  • Basic Lead Management

  • Poor Integration Capabilities

Compare all CRMsRead the full review

Pipedrive: Monday.com alternative for managing multiple sales pipelines

Pipedrive product logo
Pipedrive

Stackfix Rating:

7.3 / 10

Visit website

Starting at

$24

Calculate your price
Updated onMar 14, 2025
Pipedrive stands out as a powerful alternative to Monday.com for managing multiple sales pipelines, primarily due to its purpose-built sales pipeline functionality. While Monday.com restricts users to a single deals board, Pipedrive enables teams to create and customize multiple pipelines with distinct stages and forecasting for different sales processes. The platform’s intuitive pipeline interface lets users assign stage weights to estimate deal closing probability, track deal rotting periods, and leverage AI-powered insights to identify high-probability opportunities. Additionally, Pipedrive’s unique forecast view provides clear visibility into potential monthly revenue by combining both closed and open deals across pipelines.

Want to know more? See a detailed comparison of Monday.com vs. Pipedrive.

Pros

  • Robust Add-Ons for Marketing & Lead Generation

  • Exceptional Ease of Use

  • Outstanding Customer Support

  • Powerful Sales Pipeline Management

  • Effective Lead Management System

  • Comprehensive Integration Capabilities

Cons

  • Limited Customization Options

  • Poor Email Sequence Functionality

  • No Native Phone Integration

  • Limited LinkedIn Integration

Compare all CRMsRead the full review

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Monday.com alternative for workflow automation

Salesforce Sales Cloud product logo
Salesforce Sales Cloud

Stackfix Rating:

5.3 / 10

Visit website

Starting at

$25

Calculate your price
Updated onMar 14, 2025
Salesforce Sales Cloud’s workflow automation capabilities are more flexible and powerful than Monday.com’s. While Monday.com’s automation module feels like a repurposed project management tool with unintuitive triggers such as ‘When item is created,’ Salesforce offers a comprehensive automation environment with 13 dedicated process automation settings. Salesforce enables users to create sophisticated workflows with granular control, AI-powered optimization, and the ability to connect with any external application. Unlike Monday.com’s board-confined automations, Salesforce provides a centralized automation hub for managing all workflows, making it a preferred solution for businesses seeking robust workflow automation.

Want to know more? See a detailed comparison of Monday.com vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Pros

  • Best-in-class workflow automation

  • Superior reporting and analytics

  • Powerful lead management system

  • Extensive customization capabilities

  • Comprehensive integration ecosystem

Cons

  • High Costs and Expensive Add-Ons

  • Poor Email Sequence Implementation

  • Steepest Learning Curve

  • Dated and Cluttered Interface

  • Cumbersome Pipeline Management

Compare all CRMsRead the full review

Attio: Monday.com alternative for contact data management

Attio product logo
Attio

Stackfix Rating:

8.1 / 10

Visit website

Starting at

$0

Calculate your price
Updated onMar 14, 2025
Attio’s contact data management capabilities make it a compelling alternative to Monday.com. While Monday.com struggles with basic contact organization, requiring workarounds and confusing terminology like 'items' for contacts, Attio offers an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface with powerful features. Its one-click data enrichment automatically populates contact profiles with comprehensive information including ARR and funding details, and its 'connection strength' metric helps track engagement levels. The Chrome extension enables seamless contact capture from LinkedIn, X, and Gmail, and its fast interface loads in 0.8 seconds. Most importantly, Attio’s flexible custom objects and pipelines let users organize contacts exactly how they need them, unlike Monday.com’s rigid single pipeline limitation.

Want to know more? See a detailed comparison of Monday.com vs. Attio.

Pros

  • Fast pace of product iteration

  • Excellent Customer Support

  • Highly Customizable Platform

  • Efficient LinkedIn Integration

  • Powerful Contact Data Enrichment

  • Outstanding User Interface and Performance

Cons

  • Automation Limitations

  • Complex Reporting Interface

  • Basic Marketing Capabilities

  • Limited Core Sales Features

  • Limited Integration Capabilities

Compare all CRMsRead the full review

How we test products

With so many CRM platforms on the market, we focus on identifying the best options for small and midsize businesses. Our evaluation process is built around real-world usage, prioritizing functionality, ease of use, and overall value. Here’s how we do it:

Functionality

A CRM should help businesses manage relationships, not complicate them. We start by identifying key use cases—contact management, pipeline tracking, automation, and reporting—then test how well each platform supports these needs. CRMs that offer essential features without unnecessary complexity score highest.

User Experience & Onboarding

A CRM should be intuitive enough for teams to adopt quickly. We test each platform’s interface by navigating core features without prior training and track onboarding time—from account setup to first data import. CRMs that require extensive customization or technical knowledge to function properly lose points.

Automation & AI Capabilities

Automation is key to scaling sales and customer management. We evaluate each CRM’s automation features, such as lead scoring, email sequencing, and workflow automation. We also assess AI-driven insights to determine whether they provide meaningful improvements or just add complexity.

Integrations & Compatibility

A CRM rarely works in isolation—it needs to sync with email, marketing tools, and Sales Engagement platforms. We test how well each CRM integrates with essential business tools, prioritizing native integrations over third-party connectors.

Pricing & Value

We compare pricing across competitors, analyzing what each plan includes and whether critical features are locked behind paywalls. Hidden costs—such as per-user fees, premium automation features, or required onboarding services—are factored into our assessment. CRMs that offer strong core functionality at a fair price perform best.

Stackfix’s Fit Score

All of these factors contribute to Stackfix’s Fit Score, a proprietary ranking system that measures how well each CRM aligns with a buyer’s needs. It combines two key elements:

  • Requirements Met – How many buyer requirements the CRM fulfills
  • Stackfix Rating – Our expert assessment of the software’s overall quality, usability, and value

The result? A clear, data-driven recommendation that helps businesses choose the right CRM—without hours of trial and error.

FAQs

What is a CRM?

Put simply, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a platform that helps you manage and analyze your interactions with customers, both potential and current. It’s essentially a centralized place to store customer data, and help you forge and build stronger relationships with these customers. The key features of a CRM usually include:

  • Contact Management: Helping you store customer information, including their name, contact information, key information like whether they’ve bought from you in the past, and any communication history.
  • Sales Pipeline Tracking: This helps you track potential deals from the initial contact up until closing, which helps your sales team stay on top of opportunities and forecast revenue.
  • Analytics and reporting: Most CRMs also generate reports and insights based on your aggregated consumer behaviour, sales performance, and trends across the business.

What should I consider when buying a CRM?

Choosing the right CRM can make or break your sales and customer management process—so it’s essential to find one that fits your business needs, tech stack, and budget. Here are the key factors to consider before making your decision.

  1. Your requirements. It's important to first define what you need the CRM to accomplish. Consider your current sales needs and growth plans – a smaller startup focused on personal relationships may need different features than a larger startup managing thousands of leads at once.
  2. Ease of use. Look for an interface that your team will actually like and use. A cluttered or overly complex interface can overwhelm less experienced teams - meaning all those fancy features go to waste. That’s why Stackfix gives every CRM an ‘Ease of Use’ rating - so you can quickly see which ones are intuitive and user-friendly. Click into each product above to find the right fit for your team.
  3. Technical infrastructure. Take stock of your current tech stack. Do you need seamless integrations with your existing tools (e.g. Email, Scheduling and Customer Support software)? If you’re migrating from another CRM, can this new one handle your data volume and user count without breaking a sweat?
  4. Cost. When choosing a CRM, look beyond the headline price-per-user. Factor in setup costs, workflow limits, and how pricing scales as your team grows. The last thing you want is to lock into a “cheap” CRM that gets expensive fast when you actually start using it.
  5. Customer support. This is one of those things you don’t think about—until you really need it. If something goes wrong during setup or day-to-day use, will the vendor be there to help? Look at response times, availability (24/7 or just business hours?), and self-serve resources like help centers or community forums. To make this easier, Stackfix rates every CRM on customer support. Click into each product above to see how they stack up.

What are the common mistakes to avoid when buying CRM software?

Avoiding common pitfalls when choosing a CRM can save you time, money, and headaches down the line. Here are some of the biggest mistakes startups make—and how to avoid them.

  1. Buying based on features instead of quality. Many businesses buy comprehensive CRMs (often the big players like HubSpot and Salesforce), without considering whether all the features are crucial functionalities that they really need. Don’t be wowed by extensive features lists, if these features don’t align with your actual business processes.
  2. Not planning data migration. Many startups fall into the trap of buying a CRM without thinking about how they’ll move all customer data in the new system – keep in mind that this includes cleaning up old data, and ensuring all new fields are mapped correctly.
  3. Failing to think about scaling. Startups frequently select a CRM that fits their current needs, without thinking about their growth trajectories. Make sure to ask yourself: where do you want to be in 5 years? Does the CRM offer advanced features which you might need later, or will you have to make another switch? Consider the vendor’s frequency of updates, and ensure the CRM will continue to serve your needs as you grow.
  4. Not checking the adequacy of integrations. Integrations are particularly important for apps like email – make sure you verify that integrations are sufficient for your needs (e.g., if a CRM integrates with emails, does it sync custom fields for you? Make sure to test each integration before committing.)

How much does CRM Software typically cost?

Most CRM solutions range from $12-300 per user monthly, with entry-level options starting around $12-30 and premium solutions exceeding $150 monthly. Most vendors structure pricing in tiers based on features and scale, so be sure to enter your requirements as accurately as possible in our pricing calculator.

Many providers offer free plans with core functionality for very small teams but restrict users (typically 2-5), contacts, or available features. HubSpot, Zoho, and Freshsales all provide capable free tiers for businesses just getting started.

For enterprise plans and above, you can expect to speak to sales for a bespoke price. These custom quotes typically factor in implementation costs ($1,000-$60,000+), data migration, and specialized training. To skip the demo calls, be sure to check out our pricing calculator.

Compare other CRMs

View our comparisons of other CRM

ZCC

Zoho CRM vs Close

RF

Relate vs Folk

MC

Monday.com vs Capsule

LAB

Less Annoying CRM vs Bigin