The 12 Best CRMs for Your WordPress Site 2020

The 12 Best CRMs for Your WordPress Site 2020

Whether you’re a solopreneur, agency, or freelancer, it’s important to have a CRM in place to manage the new contacts resulting from all the traffic your WordPress site is getting. Without a CRM, you can find yourself missing out on valuable deals and losing customers. Definitely not a place you want to be.

If you take nothing else away from this post, the most important idea is that if you don’t separate ‘sales’ from the rest of your business, it will suffer. Don’t be like us.

The best first step you can take to ensuring that you’re growing the sales side of your business is to leverage the power of a CRM.

Why Do You Need A CRM?

Illustration of Business Handshake
A CRM helps you better manage your business relationships online.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, plugins are designed to help you balance the needs of past, present, and future customers.

They allow you to track customer interactions with your business and keep all of their information organized neatly in a dashboard.

CRM software can also automate parts of your sales, marketing, and customer service processes to take the pressure off of your teams.

Important Features

Illustration of checklist
Make sure your CRM features tick all the boxes!

CRMs make it a lot easier to manage the leads and customers who come onto your WordPress site and give you the tools to interact with them in meaningful ways.

Here are the important features that you’ll find in most CRMs:

  1. Customer/Contact Database – A good CRM will let you customize the fields and entries to tailor to your business. A better CRM will have an integration that will pre-populate data or pull it in from other services you may be using. Organize your contacts and all information about them.
  2. Sales Funnel – Create the progression of leads to customers that makes sense to you. For example, with our Enterprise hosting service we use something like, “Lead > Demo > Quote Sent > Trial > Migration/Onboarding > Customer”. With the CRM, we get a visual view of where all leads are in the funnel at all times.
  3. Lead Scoring – Once you have your database organized and your sales funnel in place, you will start to notice trends of who your ideal leads are. Many CRMs even help generate ‘lead scores’ to identify potential customers that are more likely to convert. You may have a different funnel or process for those, or choose to spend more time and resources on them to optimize results.
  4. Reports and Stats – This is the feature that I obsess over most. At any time, we can run reports to help us forecast sales over the next quarter and year, identify where leads in the funnel fall away, and track how long it takes for the average new deal to close. For existing customers, we can identify trends over time of the verticals and niches that we serve. Without a CRM, we would spend ages trying to sort through all of this data.
  5. Rules and Workflows – Be reminded when you have not heard from or updated a lead in a while. Don’t let contacts go cold because you are pulled in so many directions that you forgot about them.

Bottom line: CRMs are a game-changer for managing customer relationships, streamlining communication, and providing a positive customer experience.

But with literally hundreds to choose from, it can be difficult to know which one to pick. So, we’ve compiled a list of the best WordPress CRMs you can use to keep your leads from falling through the cracks.

Illustration of dog choosing between three bones.
So many CRMs to choose from…it can drive you barking mad!

The Best CRMs For WordPress

  1. HubSpot CRM
  2. Agile CRM
  3. Capsule CRM
  4. Zoho CRM
  5. WP ERP
  6. WP-CRM by Usability Dynamics
  7. Zero BS CRM
  8. vCita
  9. Maximizer
  10. Less Annoying CRM
  11. Drip
  12. Insightly

1. HubSpot

View all your contacts and CRM data inside your WordPress admin with HubSpot's free plugin.
The HubSpot free CRM WordPress plugin lets you view all your contacts and CRM data inside your WordPress admin.

One CRM we can confidently recommend is the one we use: HubSpot.

HubSpot’s WordPress CRM plugin is an awesome solution for managing everything related to your customers. With it, you can track all of your customers’ interactions with your site including which pages they visit, form and popup entries and live chat conversations. All of that information will be automatically synced to robust customer profiles in HubSpot CRM.

My favorite, and almost hidden surprise, feature of HubSpot is the meeting calendar link, which you can send to leads and customers to eliminate all the awkward back and forth that typically goes into finding an agreeable date and time.

Best of all, for most of your needs, HubSpot is completely free. You can get started at the link above or by installing the HubSpot plugin. We do pay for the additional ‘Sales Hub’ features, as our team and needs have grown, but the cost is worth it.

2. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM that lets you automate your sales, marketing, and service in one platform.
Automate your sales, marketing, and service in WordPress with Agile CRM.

Built for the purpose of making enterprise CRM software accessible to small businesses, Agile CRM’s plugin offers a wide range of features for sales, marketing, and customer support teams.

At its core, Agile’s plugin is designed to work like a standard customer relationship management tool. It collects data on your site visitors and stores them in a dashboard as leads—providing you with stats to help you nurture and track them throughout their customer journey.

But Agile is also a great solution for interacting with customers. First of all, the plugin lets you share your calendar with your WordPress site visitors—giving them the ability to book meetings on-demand. This frees up your sales team to meet with leads and chat with repeat customers, as the scheduling is automated by Agile.

You can also leverage Agile’s dashboard to easily create landing pages, web forms, pop-ups and marketing campaigns that enhance your WordPress site. All you have to do is use Agile’s drag-and-drop interface to build campaign flows, select a template and customize the design. Yep! No coding on this one.

3. Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM lets you manage all your customer relationships and see everything from one place.
Manage all your customer data from one place with the Capsule CRM WordPress plugin.

Capsule prides itself on being a simple, yet powerful CRM. And from contact management to reporting, Capsule’s WordPress plugin offers just that.

Capsule is not unlike other plugins, in terms of collecting customer data from your website. However, Capsule goes beyond the basics of this functionality, by synching customer profiles with their social media alter egos. This feature is great for sales and marketing teams, as it gives you a complete 360 view of your customers.

Once leads have been added to the dashboard, you can also populate their profiles with information, manually. Quickly add notes and other documents to keep everything together, add tags for faster searching, and divide your customers into groups for easier viewing.

Capsule is also designed to help teams work better together. You can tap into this functionality by color-coding tasks in Capsule’s calendar and assigning customers to specific teams and employees. You can also use its Kanban style board to organize leads in your pipeline and assign tasks to specific team members. You can even track your teams’ overall progress in a specialized dashboard to see what’s working and what isn’t.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a WordPress CRM plugin that lets you manage, connect, and automate business processes across your organization.
Manage, connect, and automate business processes across your organization with the Zoho CRM plugin for WordPress.

Zoho CRM Lead Magnet is a robust plugin made to support both big and small WordPress businesses alike. Using its intuitive interface, you can organize your leads and customers, design templates for different lead nurturing projects and customize your dashboard.

Being the first omnichannel CRM, Zoho is a proven solution for managing customer relationships across multiple platforms. The tool supports communication on almost every channel—including live chat, social media, email, and phone calls—and offers analytics, AI and filtering to help you track and forecast each interaction with your business. Using these features, you can streamline communication with your customers by managing all conversations in a single platform; and monitor the success of each interaction by using widgets to look at stats side-by-side.

With Zoho CRM, you can also automate many of your tasks to save time. You can add new leads to your CRM, update customer profiles and even send follow-up emails, without having to lift a finger. You can even build workflows to keep your team working effectively and efficiently.

5. WordPress ERP

WP ERP CRM suits any small to medium business with integrated HR management, CRM and accounting tools.
Use WP ERP CRM to integrate HR management, CRM and accounting tools in WordPress.

Created specifically for WordPress businesses and websites, WordPress Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offers a powerful CRM plugin for tracking leads and managing customers.

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With this tool, you can keep tabs on your site visitors, subscribers and customers all in the same place. Tag customer profiles based on urgency and importance to make sure you’re taking advantage of the best sales opportunities. Add comments to customer profiles to keep everyone on your team in the loop. And set reminders to minimize the likelihood that customers will be lost in the shuffle. These functionalities are available to B2B companies too, as WordPress ERP allows you to save and modify company profiles like you would individual customer profiles.

WordPress ERP is also a great tool for communicating with customers, as it allows you to message them directly from their profiles. This eliminates the need to toggle back and forth between pages and minimizes the risk of email threads or messages being misplaced.

Best yet, WordPress ERP is compatible with a bunch of different extensions, making it easy to integrate it into your existing website.

6. WP-CRM by Usability Dynamics

WP-CRM is a customer relations management system that integrates seamlessly into your WordPress control panel.
WP-CRM is a customer relations management system that integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

The WordPress CRM plugin developed by Usability Dynamics is an all-around solid option for most businesses. It offers a clean UI, easy-to-modify forms, and a simple hierarchical setup.

With WP-CRM, you can import contacts, manually fill in attributes, and add notes to create clear profiles for each customer. Once everything has been imported, you can start charting data to track individual customers and find better ways to connect with them. You can also set up notifications so that you don’t miss out on opportunities to interact with a customer or nurture a lead.

The really cool thing about the WP-CRM plugin, though, is its ability to work with tons of different WordPress add-ons.

7. Zero BS CRM

ZBS CRM provides an alternative CRM to over-complex solutions.
ZBS offers free CRM for WordPress with a paid upgrade for a bundle of extra features.

With this one, the name says it all. Built specifically to support entrepreneurs, this CRM plugin is all about making convoluted processes and complex software as simple as possible. In fact, Zero BS actually lets you pick and choose the features you want, so you don’t get bogged down or overwhelmed by anything you don’t need.

You see this functionality right out of the gate too, as this plugin can be installed and set up in just a few minutes. And once it’s up and running, Zero BS helps you get up to speed quickly, by moving all of your site visitors, customers and contacts to your CRM, where you can view them in a minimalist dashboard.

However, your CRM doesn’t just store, organize and track your customers. It also allows you to interact with them via a branded customer portal where you can upload quotes, send invoices, schedule appointments, and log transactions. And all of this functionality is available on mobile, which means you can continue to manage and communicate with your customers while traveling.

Zero BS also prides itself on its dedication to regularly updating the plugin, which means you don’t have to worry about it being incompatible with future WordPress versions.

8. vCita

vCita CRM lets you manage and grow your client base and business inside WordPress.
vCita CRM is a popular client management software solution for WordPress users.

vCita is another CRM plugin that was created with the small business owner in mind. Like other CRM plugins, it automatically generates leads in your CRM by collecting data from live chat widgets. Once there, these leads can be organized, labeled and assigned to different members of your team to keep them moving down your pipeline.

However, vCita isn’t just accessible on your end. It also allows customers to access their data via an online portal that holds everything from their email address to their recent transactions and lifetime spending on your products and services. They can even make new purchases and book meetings directly from the CRM.

vCita isn’t a plugin you need to micromanage or be online to use, though. Not only is it mobile-friendly, but also allows your customers to connect with you via the self-service portal at any time of the day or night. This means your CRM will keep working, no matter where you are or how fast you’re moving.

9. Maximizer

Maximizer provides loads of CRM features inside your WordPress dashboard.
Maximizer CRM software offers fully-loaded features for one all-inclusive price and can be run from your WordPress dashboard.

Being the only plugin out there that offers both cloud and on-premise CRM options, Maximizer CRM is a great solution for businesses with all types of infrastructures. Its features allow you to turn site visitors into leads, track those leads through your sales funnel and nurture them toward final purchases.

Maximizer CRM is also completely customizable, which means you can make it as lightweight or heavy-duty as your business needs. Its list of features is extensive, so there’s little chance you’ll have a need Maximizer can’t meet.

In addition to its deployment flexibility, Maximizer is also accessible from any device, which means you can manage your leads just as effectively on business trips, in meetings and on vacation (not that we recommend you do that!). And you can integrate it with apps and tools from all over the web, keeping your business and WordPress site working seamlessly.

10. Less Annoying CRM

Less Annoying CRM lets businesses manage contacts and track leads from their WordPress dashboard.
Less Annoying CRM offers basic team collaboration and contact management for WordPress users.

Less Annoying CRM is another tool that’s built on simplicity and minimalism. In fact, the entire point of their platform is to make CRM software accessible and editable by the average person. And you can see how that’s the case, just by looking at their dashboard. Everything from customer profiles to team calendars and reports is easy to understand and modify.

Using this tool, you can do standard customer relationship management work like importing leads and assigning them to specific team members. But Less Annoying CRM also offers some unique features like email reminders for teams and pipeline reports to keep everyone focused on the task at hand. The dashboard even includes tasks lists and appointment times, so you don’t accidentally miss opportunities to nurture leads.

Less Annoying is so dedicated to the idea of making their software usable and well…less annoying, that they even offer free phone and email support to help you figure out the platform or troubleshoot problems.

11. Drip

Drip is an eCommerce CRM designed for building relationships with your customers at scale.
Drip is an eCRM suitable for WordPress sites running an eCommerce business.

Drip is another great plugin option for modern eCommerce businesses. With a clean interface, it provides business owners with the data needed to make strategic design, inventory and marketing choices. It does this by gathering data from visitors on your site—like names and currencies—and organizing it neatly into customer profiles.

Drip doesn’t just gather data on customers based on live chat conversations and form submissions, though. With this plugin, you can actually see what your customers are viewing, clicking on and buying. This gives you a leg up on the competition, by helping you know exactly what your site visitors want, so you can build marketing strategies around it.

Using its drag-and-drop dashboard, you can also create marketing and sales workflows to guide leads through an ideal customer experience. You can then design beautiful social media and email campaigns on the platform, to match the style of your brand and the interests of your customers.

And here’s the best news: Drip integrates seamlessly with all types of WordPress eCommerce stores, including WooCommerce and Shopify.

12. Insightly

Insightly CRM software lets you manage your pre-sale and post-sale activities inside WordPress.
Insightly is a SaaS-based CRM solution that can be run from WordPress using a plugin.

Insightly knows that the best way to drive sales is to build relationships with customers—and they built a CRM tool to help businesses do just that. With this plugin, you can not only collect and organize customer data, but you can also route entire customer profiles to people in your organization. This includes everything from general customer information to detailed reports on interactions like phone calls, meetings, and email threads.

This plugin also includes the option to create, manage and automate marketing campaigns that are tailored to the needs of your customers. It then tracks the success of each campaign in an analytics dashboard. This helps you make sure your campaigns are working, and if not, enables you to use data to modify it in the future.

Beyond that, Insightly integrates nicely with loads of different apps, so you can keep the rest of your business processes connected without much hassle.

Getting Started With Your CRM

No matter what CRM you choose, you’ll want to allow a good amount of time for configuring and setting up your customer fields and sales pipeline(s). You can always tweak these later, but the more time you spend upfront, the more useful your CRM will be.

You’ll also want to import and manually add all of your existing customers first off. This will help to ensure that you have all the fields you need and will allow you to get going with any of the analysis you want to do with reports right away.

Once you have the basics down, there’s so much you can do with your CRM.  We hope that if nothing else, this post has encouraged those of you that have yet to take the CRM plunge to bite the bullet and give it a go.

What are you using to track your customers and your leads and how is that working for you? Let us know in the comments below!

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Ronnie Burt Ronnie graduated with a BA in Mathematics from The University of Texas and then an MBA from LeTourneau University. Living in Austin, Texas, he worked for 11 years growing Edublogs, CampusPress, and WPMU DEV and interned for four years at UT Austin’s Web Accessibility Institute. He now works on senseilms over at Automatic.