The 5 Best Zoho CRM Alternatives for Small Business Owners in 2021

Published on December 29, 2020 The 5 Best Zoho CRM Alternatives for Small Business Owners in 2021

After the pandemic ridden year that was 2020, what can one expect from the upcoming year of 2021? While this may have been bad news for many, it also helped with the rapid development of many other things. We can see that many solutions came to the fore, especially for small and local businesses that earlier had to remain within a certain geographical boundary in the past. This is where a solution like Zoho CRM and the Zoho CRM alternatives come into the big picture and the upcoming scheme of things in 2021!

Before we talk to you about the Zoho CRM competitors and what CRM really does for your business, let us look at what 2021 is going to look like for the small business and its owner:

• More Visibility: To begin with, the pandemic has left most small and locally run businesses in the lurch. While the small business was always dependent on organic walk-in attention from its prospects who lived within a certain geographical area, things are going to be very different. The small business will have to become more and more visible.
• Targeted Efforts: Sales and marketing will have to become much more targeted and data driven. This is an area where the Zoho CRM alternatives directly step in. When you need data that would help you build a powerful campaign, you would the CRM in place to help you tap into the said data available on various social media and other platforms. This is simply due to the fact that big data is something that we all need to sift through in order to what find what can relevantly define our offerings as a business house. This is now more important than ever for the small business.
• Know Your Customer: In 2020, the race towards reaching the right customer at any cost became the priority for all small businesses. That trend would continue deep into 2021. It would be more imperative than ever to know the pulse of the right customer so that one can reach the right customer with minimum time wastage. The small business owner would have to know exactly what the ideal customer prefers in terms of solutions as well as after sales services.
• Information Handling: This would be one of the most important things that the small business would have to be able to do efficiently in 2021. With the pandemic situation, all businesses – irrespective of size – have had to move online. The digital presence building involves finding the right information to not only find the right customers but also, to articulate campaigns that would engage the customers in the best way possible.
• Automate, Automate, Automate: Again, this is the place where we would have to mention the Zoho CRM alternative. This kind of a system would become the norm rather than a luxury for every kind of business. With the advent of big data and the need for all businesses to be online, there is an added need to crunch data and take the relevant parts to create further deliverables including campaigns, emails and a sales pipeline that has automated tasks along the way.

In order to do all this and more, the small business would necessarily need automation as well as a system like CRM that can help in automating various sales and marketing functions. Can you imagine the team sitting down to send out emails to one email list after the other in order to reach a segment for a certain product or service? This would be monotonous to say the least. Similarly, there are dozens of such tasks and deliverables that would need automation. CRM in the form of Zoho CRM competitors would help small businesses do the trick with the following functions in place:

• Organization and better handling of data so that the most relevant nuggets are brought out at the right time;
• Keeping a tab on the efficacy of one’s chosen strategy and methods to know what is working for the customer and what is not;
• Knowing the customer and the basic audience in a far better manner so that reach becomes a breeze and engagement is a seamless process towards sure shot conversions;
• Bringing in more revenue with the help of such tools in place so that there is better coordination between teams and less wastage of time.

Accordingly, let us look at a few competitors of the well known yet slightly unaffordable Zoho CRM platform. While Zoho CRM is a well known platform, there are many Zoho CRM competitors who would be able to deliver similar or even better results:

1. EngageBay: This platform is definitely one of the best known Zoho CRM alternatives. It boasts of a wide range of services and features within a super affordable price range. The platform has services over 12,000 clients all over the globe and is the preferred choice for those looking to upgrade as well.

2. Bitrix24: This Zoho CRM alternative is a well known one, yet it is not the most affordable one in the market. Hence, one would have to look at other Zoho CRM competitors as well.

3. Copper CRM: As a Zoho CRM alternative, this platform has many advantages but it helps small businesses mainly in the email marketing area. Hence, it does not have a very wide range of features to offer.

4. ProofHub: This is another Zoho CRM alternative that primarily caters to those in search of email marketing, without the rest of the marketing automation features in place.

5. Base Camp: This is a lead generation and CRM platform that offers many services, yet it is not the most affordable platform by any means. It also does not offer too many functions for marketing operations under its umbrella.