Top best small business apps for customer relationship management

Even if you’ve tamed your own to-do lists, many businesses need an in-depth system to help them keep their customers straight. Customer relationship management apps, or CRMs, help you keep track of everything related to your customers — contact information, past and pending purchases, and anything else it’s essential to know about a client. Here are a few solid bets:

Streak

If your small business uses Gmail or Google Apps, Streak is a great little CRM that integrates with both. Instead of organizing customers by contact, it lets you keep track of where you are in your business relationship.

For instance, perhaps you’re just beginning a pitch, or maybe you’re finalizing a deal. You can view all emails associated with each client directly within Streak, and a newsfeed can keep everyone on your team updated on the status of everything in the app.

Streak’s basic service is free for up to five users. Beefed-up plans range from $19 to $119 a month per user.

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‎Streak - CRM for Gmail

Developer: Streak Inc

Price: Free

Insightly

Insightly is a relationship manager that also boasts a lot of project-management features, which could make it a one-stop shop for some small businesses.

You can categorize contacts with tags, integrate their social network profiles, and manage leads. You can also create tasks for team members, set up pipelines to track the status of those tasks, and create email reminders to keep everyone on time.

Though there is a free basic version, you’ll have to pay at least $12 a month per user for access to the app.

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‎Insightly CRM

Developer: Insightly

Price: Free

Nimble

If your business has a prominent social media presence, Nimble might be the CRM for you. It gleans data from your contacts’ social profiles, updating itself so that you don’t have to do it. It even analyzes shared interests and integrates with Gmail, Outlook, Hootsuite and many other services.

Nimble also learns what relationships you value as you continue to interact with it, making it more likely to highlight future opportunities. Pricing starts at $15 a month per user.