Comparing CRMs?
Almost every CRM does the same four things. What separates them is what comes in the plan you actually buy. Compare AllClients to the tools below.
Those four things: hold your contacts, capture new leads, send email to your list, and run the follow-up on its own. AllClients includes them all, in every plan, starting at $24 a month, with no add-on to buy and no tier to unlock.
No credit card. Build in every feature; sending and publishing turn on when you subscribe. You deal with Jeff, not a sales rep.
Compare us to a specific tool
Each page below asks the same questions. What comes with the plan you’d actually buy, what the rest costs to turn on, and when the other tool is the better choice for you.
Pipedrive
A well-built pipeline tool for teams working deals. The full setup arrives as two separate purchases.
See the comparison → PlatformHubSpot
A free CRM and an enormous platform. The follow-up automation lives a long way up the price ladder.
See the comparison → Real estateFollow Up Boss
Built specifically for real estate teams and lead routing. Worth reading closely if speed to lead is your whole business.
See the comparison → All-in-oneKeap
Genuinely does the whole job in one plan. Priced for a business ready to invest in setup up front.
See the comparison → Simple CRMLess Annoying CRM
Deliberately minimal and good at it. A different answer to a different question than the ones above.
See the comparison → Agency platformGoHighLevel
Built for agencies running accounts for clients. Enormous toolkit, and the email, texting and calling bill by usage on top.
See the comparison → Marketing automationActiveCampaign
Built for a marketer running campaigns, with automation depth to match. The CRM itself is sold as a separate add-on.
See the comparison → Email firstMailchimp
Excellent at sending to an audience. The question is whether you need to manage relationships underneath it.
See the comparison → Email firstBrevo
Priced by emails sent rather than contacts stored, which is unusual and worth understanding. One pipeline comes free; more than one is a paid package.
See the comparison → Low entry priceFreshsales
One of the cheapest ways in, priced per seat. The marketing side lives in a separate product with its own contact allowance.
See the comparison →Or jump straight to one: PipedriveHubSpotFollow Up BossKeapLess Annoying CRMGoHighLevelActiveCampaignMailchimpBrevoFreshsales
Four things we think you need
Every CRM company defines a complete system as whatever it happens to sell. Here’s what we’d tell you if you called us, and it’s the same test each comparison above applies.
Contacts
Everyone in one place, with the whole history.
Lead capture
A page or form that adds new people on its own.
Email marketing
Reach the whole list, or a slice of it, at once.
Automated follow-up
Keeps going on the days you are busy or away.
and back to the top
Start with everyone in one place. Add a way for new people to put themselves on the list. Reach all of them when you want to. Then set the follow-up running so it happens whether or not you show up, and every send, open and reply writes back to the contact record you started with. Break any link and the loop stops being automatic, which is another way of saying it stops happening.
That loop is what AllClients sells: every piece of it in every plan from $24 a month. No add-on to buy, no tier to unlock the features, no setup fee.
The rest depends on your business
That’s the floor. Everything a CRM piles on top sorts into three kinds.
Everyday
The handful of features you actually use. For most people that’s contacts, lead capture, email, and automation.
Someday
The features you might grow into. Genuinely useful later, just not yet.
Never
The features that look essential when you’re shopping but never get turned on.
The catch: at the pricing page, an everyday feature and a never one look exactly the same.
The never pile is bigger than anyone expects, and it’s the one you pay for and don’t use. We’ve been selling this software since 2004 and the pattern hasn’t changed: most people end up using a small handful of what they bought, and it’s usually the same short list. A long feature list is very good at making you feel confident the day you sign up. It’s not much good at telling you what you’ll open in month three.
None of which means features don’t matter. Invoicing is the whole job for one business and dead weight for the next, and only you know which one you are. It means being straight with yourself about the never pile before you agree to pay for it every month.
What else gets sold with a CRM
A rough catalog to sort against, so you’re working from the whole field rather than whatever one website decided to show you.
Talking to people
Texting, calling, live chat, chatbots
Getting paid
Invoicing, payments, quotes, e-signatures
Appointments
Online booking, reminders, lead routing
Marketing past email
Social publishing, ads, website builder, reviews
Sales management
Multiple pipelines, lead scoring, forecasting
Running the business
Project management, time tracking, custom reporting
Connections and data
Gmail and Outlook, calendar sync, API
Forget the never pile, then put a price on the someday one. Something you might use later is rarely worth another hundred dollars a month today, and writing that number down is the fastest way to find out which pile it really belongs in.
We sell a few of these ourselves and keep them optional on purpose. Gmail and Outlook integration, extra capacity. You shouldn’t pay every month for something you’re never going to turn on.
Common questions
What should a small business CRM include?
We think four things: contacts with full history and where each person stands, a landing page that adds new people on its own, email marketing you can send to your whole list, and follow-up automation that keeps running without you. Together they form a loop. Everything past that depends on what your business does.
How does the free trial work?
Every plan comes with a free trial, no credit card required. You can build the whole setup while you try it: the landing page, the emails and the follow-up workflows. Sending and publishing switch on when you subscribe, which keeps unpaid accounts from being used to send spam.
Why compare on packaging instead of feature counts?
Because feature counts don’t separate anyone anymore. Nearly every CRM in this category can do all of it somewhere in the product. What differs is which ones come with the plan you buy and which ones cost extra, and that difference is what you pay every month for as long as you stay.
What does AllClients cost?
Our plans start at $24 a month, with contacts, lead capture, email and follow-up all included, no setup fee. Optional extras like email integration and extra capacity are priced separately so you only pay for the ones you use.
Try it yourself
Free trial, no credit card. Build a landing page, set a follow-up going, and see whether the loop closes before you pay for anything.
Start your free trialHow we put our comparisons together. We make our best effort to pull every fact from the other company’s own website and documentation, not from reviews or roundups. Competitor prices we leave out on purpose, since they change without notice. We compare how each product is packaged instead. Find something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.