There’s no single best CRM for a business of one to five people, so here’s our pick for each situation. On your own: Zoho CRM’s free edition, which has the most room of the free plans that publish their limits. Two to five who want one predictable price: Less Annoying CRM, at $15 a month per user with no tiers. On a tight budget, paying anyway: the lowest paid bill for three people, which is Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $27 a month. Fewest tools: HubSpot Starter, which bundles marketing, sales, and service, at $20 a month at the regular price ($10 a month for new customers, for a limited time) per seat.

On your own: start free, on the plan with the most room

Our pick is Zoho CRM’s free edition. Every free plan in this guide fits one person, so the question is which one you’ll outgrow last, and of those that publish their limits, Zoho CRM’s has the most room. Zoho CRM’s holds 10 email templates and stores 5,000 records (10 MB), notes included, and it sends one-to-one email from a contact’s record. It also fits 3 users, so a hire or two doesn’t end it. Start Zoho CRM’s free edition.

What it gives up: replies to the emails you send from it aren’t tracked until you connect your mailbox on a paid plan, and there’s no mass email on free. If your list is tiny and you only need a pipeline, Bigin’s free edition, Zoho’s other CRM, also fits one person. If you’d send the odd newsletter to a short list, HubSpot’s free plan does that for free, with its branding. Do you need a CRM if you’re the only person selling? may save you the setup altogether.

Two to five people who want one predictable price

Our pick is Less Annoying CRM. It sells one plan at $15 a month per user, with unlimited contacts, pipelines, and custom fields, and no tier above it. Two people pay $30 a month, three pay $45 a month, and five pay $75 a month. The bill only changes when your team does. Start a Less Annoying CRM trial.

What it gives up: there’s no free plan, so up to three people pay for something a free plan could do. There’s also no automation that sends things for you, and it’s English only. If you’re three or fewer and happy to stay free, Zoho CRM’s or Freshsales’s free plan fits three. When a free CRM plan is enough shows which one suits your list.

On a tight budget, and paying anyway

Our pick is the lowest paid bill in this guide. For three people that’s Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $27 a month, and five people on the same plan pay $45 a month. For that you get team pipelines, room for 50,000 records, your email and WhatsApp inside the CRM, automations, and mass emails up to 150 a day per account. Start Bigin’s free trial.

What it gives up: Bigin is a separate product from Zoho CRM. If you started on Zoho CRM’s free edition, moving to Bigin is a fresh setup and an import, not an upgrade. Its daily mass-email allowance also means a big mailing goes out in batches. What a CRM costs for 1, 3, 5, and 10 people shows every tool at your size.

The fewest tools: one platform for sales and marketing

Our pick is HubSpot Starter. On HubSpot’s Sales pricing page, Starter is a bundle of its marketing, sales, service, content, and data tools, priced per seat. It includes email marketing to 1,000 marketing contacts, the people you can send marketing email to. Three seats are $60 a month at the regular price ($30 a month for new customers, for a limited time). HubSpot calls the lower price a limited-time offer for new customers and gives no end date, so budget on the regular one. See HubSpot’s Starter plan.

What it gives up: you pay for the whole bundle on every seat, used or not. And the next step up, Professional, comes with a year’s commitment and a required onboarding fee. If you’d only use the CRM, one of the picks above does that job without paying for the rest of the bundle.

A worked example

Say you run a four-person real estate brokerage office: two agents, an office manager, and you. All four of you need the client list, and once a month you’d like to send a short market update to about six hundred past clients.

No free plan in this guide fits four, so you’re choosing a paid plan. On a tight budget, Bigin Express (by Zoho) for four is $36 a month. Its mass emails, up to 150 a day per account, send the update in daily batches over a few days. If you’d rather never think about plans, Less Annoying CRM is $60 a month, though you’d send the update from a separate email tool.

If the monthly update is central to how you win listings, HubSpot Starter for four is $80 a month at the regular price ($40 a month for new customers, for a limited time), with email marketing built in. Our pick for most brokerages this size is Bigin Express. Choose HubSpot only if you’ll use its marketing tools every month.

What we didn’t pick, and why

  • Pipedrive is a strong pipeline tool with no free plan. Its email sync and sequences sit on Growth, at $49 a month per seat, against $24 a month for Lite, so budget for the plan you’ll grow into. It’s a good fit for a team that sells hard from a pipeline and wants a sales-only tool.
  • Freshsales has a free plan for three, which we’d happily recommend, but its free contact allowance isn’t published and its free custom fields are unclear. Test both on day one before you rely on it.
  • Capsule is a clean pipeline-and-contacts CRM. It’s a sound choice, but none of the four situations above is where it stands out: its free plan’s contact cap is tight, so most businesses pay from the start, at $22 a month per user on Starter.

Our view

Pick by situation, not by brand. For one to three people, start on a free plan that fits and spend nothing until a cap stops you. At four or five, decide what matters most: the lowest bill, one predictable price, or one platform for sales and marketing. Each of those has a clear pick above. What this approach gives up is a single answer, but a single answer would be wrong for most of you.

Your next step

Count the people who’ll log in over the next six months, then find your situation above and start its free plan or trial this week. Import your list the same evening, set a next step on every open deal, and use it daily for a month before you pay for anything more.