Best CRM for Startups (UK - 2025)

A CRM (customer relationship management) tool can be an essential way to communicate with customers effectively through marketing and lead management, sales, and service conversations. If you’ve newly launched a business in the UK you may be looking for the best CRM for startups to help you handle customer relationships. This guide is for you.

If you’re running a UK startup, take a look at Wise Business for powerful digital accounts which can hold and exchange 40+ currencies, offering extensive international features and currency conversion which uses the mid-market exchange rate and low, transparent fees every time.

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Why is a CRM important for startups?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. Getting a CRM for your startup might seem like a big leap - but having ways to manage your customer relationships can bring huge benefits, even to a very early stage business.

To understand why a CRM for startups may be a good choice, it helps to have an idea of the scope of CRM systems, which span sales, service, and market development and can include:

• Hold all your customer data in one place to make analysis easier
• Identify existing customers as targets for new products and use your CRM to market directly to the niche
• Get a deep understanding of your audience demographics to market to new groups
• Analyse customer interaction with your marketing across media to decide which work best
• Automate marketing efforts in a data driven way
• Improve conversion with sales tools embedded into the way your CRM works
• Talk directly to customers to offer service, resolve issues and build brand loyalty

Some CRMs also have built in or bolt on options for inventory management, time planning, team communications, project tracking and more.

Not convinced it’s worth the money? The good news is that there are also a few options for a free CRM for startups which we’ve highlighted as part of our review of the best CRM for startups. These providers often give you a limited selection of features for free on a freemium model, allowing you to add in additional features for a fee, or to upgrade to a plan. Generally plans also offer a free trial period of 2 - 4 weeks, as well, which give you some wriggle room to decide if the tool is the right one for you.

Do I need a CRM for my startup?

So - how can you decide if a CRM is needed for your specific business?

This guide should give you some ideas on what a CRM for startups can do. You may decide you need to get a startup CRM in place sooner rather than later if you’re trying to manage customer marketing, information and interaction through spreadsheets or other cumbersome methods. This can quickly get too much to track and maintain.

A CRM startup package can also be really beneficial if you have multiple people working across similar or overlapping roles - sales agents and marketing specialists for example. Use a CRM to hold all your information in one place to avoid duplication or missed opportunities.

Ultimately there are lots of ways a customer relationship management system may benefit your business - and as this best CRM software for startups review shows, you can test out one or more risk free either through trial periods or freemium products, to get a feel for what works for your team.

How to choose a CRM for a startup?

When you choose a CRM, you’ll need to decide on the features to watch for based on your specific business type. All of the providers we’ve selected have some similar features - but they may also specialise in specific industries or niche needs.

We’ve considered the CRM packages we included based on the following criteria, among others:

• Features included in different package options
• Pricing and offers
• Customer reviews and Trustpilot score

Use this guide as a starting point, and then book a demo with your preferred providers, to pick the best CRM to fit your unique business processes and needs.

Best CRM for startups

We’ve picked out a few different CRM options which each offer their own unique packages for startup businesses in the UK.

Here’s a quick head to head comparison as a starting point - we’ll then look at each in more detail in just a moment:

*Correct at time of research - 31st March 2025

Salesforce

Salesforce offers an AI driven integrated platform to unify customer data across sales, service, and marketing. Choose from no-code, low-code and pro-code tools depending on the complexity of the solutions you want, and your external or in house tech support. Get help from the Salesforce team to pick the products and features you need, and to get the system launched in the optimum way for your business.

• Features: End to end solution, with autonomous AI agents to handle customer requests where possible
• Pricing and offers: Get a 30 day free trial, then talk to an agent to learn about ongoing pricing
• Trustpilot score: 1.4 star, Bad rating from 500+ reviews¹
• Best for: AI driven integrated platform suited to small businesses needing no code options, and larger businesses with more complicated needs

Hubspot CRM

Hubspot CRM offers a free package aimed at small teams and individuals, with a variety of packages available right through to enterprise level solutions. Free solutions cover things like deal and task management, email templates, document sharing and meeting scheduling, but you’ll see the Hubspot branding on the pages you use. Upgrade to lose this and access more features like marketing automations and email and SMS support.

• Features: Email marketing, customer tracking, live chat and more - the higher the account tier you pick, the more available features
• Pricing and offers: Selected tools available for free, top plan for small teams is 702 GBP per month²
• Trustpilot score: 2.4 star, Poor rating from 800+ reviews³
• Best for: Small businesses wanting to test out using a CRM with no commitment on costs - start for free and scale up if you choose to

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM has several different plan models, including a freemium model which offers some features for free for up to 3 users. This could give you a good way to try the system for your startup before you commit to a monthly fee which applies per user. Zoho’s tools are built with AI integrations to offer contextual customer contacts and an easy user experience.

• Features: Email marketing and workflow tools, sales forecasting, inventory management - enhanced, extended and customisable features for higher tier plans
• Pricing and offers: Free version available with select features. For full plan, fees vary widely depending on plan, set per user per month - free trial offer applies⁴
• Trustpilot score: 4.1 star, Great rating from 5,000+ reviews⁵
• Best for: Easy user interface, contextual AI and customer contacts across all channels

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a very popular CRM service, scoring the highest Trustpilot score in our roundup of options. You can get a 14 day free trial of any of the available packages and the team will help you with onboarding so you can hit the ground running. Plans run from 14 USD per seat per month, but you can also upgrade to get more features depending on the complexity of your business and the services you require.

• Features: Lead, calendar and pipeline management as standard, with project planning, enhancements and custom AI features for higher tier account plans
• Pricing and offers: Billed in USD from 14 USD to 99 USD per user per month - free trial offer applies⁶
• Trustpilot score: 4.5 star, Excellent rating from 2,600+ reviews⁷
• Best for: Simple import and implementation with personalised onboarding, from a basic plan to a more complex one

Insightly

Insightly has 3 different plans which can suit businesses of varied sizes and needs. As a standard you’ll get lead, contact and project management, business dashboards, reporting and project management solutions - and you can also upgrade to get more features as and when you need them. Billing is from 29 USD per seat per month.

• Features: Lead, contact and project management, business dashboards and workflow automation tools
• Pricing and offers: Billed in USD from 29 USD to 99 USD per user per month - free trial offer applies⁸
• Trustpilot score: 2.4 star, Poor rating from just 7 reviews⁹
• Best for: Easily scalable solutions across end to end CRM features

Zendesk

Zendesk uses AI tools in most plans, to support the customer experience and make life easier for your team. All plans have extensive features to ensure customers get a good experience with your company, with tools to make sure you can always see what’s going on at a customer level at a glance. The higher tier plans have enhanced features and include AI support to reduce workload and make the customer experience seamless.

• Features: 4 different plans, including multi channel customer communications, rules based triggers for action, AI automations and more
• Pricing and offers: Billed in USD from 19 USD to 115 USD per user per month¹⁰
• Trustpilot score: 1.6 star, Bad rating from 500+ reviews¹¹
• Best for: Award winning packages featuring AI which has been trained in customer service

Wise Business cards: international spending made easy

If you need to pay software subscriptions in USD or other currencies and Wise Business debit cards can be the ideal solution.

These contactless international debit cards work for spending and cash withdrawals in 150+ countries worldwide, with no foreign transaction fees or subscription fees.

Whenever someone spends or withdraws cash overseas, the currency is converted at the mid-market exchange rate, with just a small conversion fee to pay.

There’s also 0.5% cashback paid on all eligible spending.

Once you have a Wise Business account, you can order unlimited expense cards for just a one-off fee of £3 a card. You can add employees to your account, with controlled access - and you get full control over spending their limits.

What’s more, it’s easy to integrate Wise with your accounting tools, and your accountant can view team spending for smarter collaboration.

Get started with Wise Business 🚀

As a startup, your team has a lot of plates to spin. Taking time to select a CRM to suit your needs may feel like one more job on your list, but it can really lighten the load by making communication, analysis and other key business functions simpler. Use this guide to start off your research - and while you’re choosing the providers which will help your business optimise, take a look at Wise Business as well, for powerful digital accounts which can hold and exchange 40+ currencies.

Sources used in this article:

Sources last checked March 31, 2025