We picked six CRMs people actually compare before buying: Response365, and the five best-known platforms with a genuinely free plan or trial. No platform paid for a better spot on this table — see our methodology for how we keep it that way.
| CRM | Free offer | Starting paid price | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Response365 | No forever-free tier 1 month free, full features, card required |
$14.99 /user/mo + modules from $8.99/mo |
Going from solo operator to a full CRM/ERP/call-center stack without switching platforms | Nothing is free forever, but the modular pricing means you only switch on (and pay for) what you actually use. |
| HubSpot CRM | Free forever 1,000 contacts, 2 users |
$9 /seat/mo (Starter) Pro from $800/mo, 3 seats |
A very small team that will stay very small | Workflows, sequences, and automated follow-ups are locked out of the free plan entirely — and the jump to Professional is steep. |
| Zoho CRM | Free forever up to 3 users |
$14 /user/mo billed annually |
A tiny team that wants core CRM only, nothing else | Hard-capped at 3 users — the moment you hire a fourth person, you're paying. |
| Bitrix24 | Free forever unlimited users |
$49 /mo flat Basic, 5 users, billed annually |
A cash-strapped team that needs many logins more than deep automation | Unlimited users sounds generous, but telephony and marketplace apps live behind the paid plans, and the interface is dense. |
| Capsule CRM | Free forever 250 contacts, 2 users |
$18 /user/mo Starter, 30,000 contacts |
A freelancer or two-person shop that wants something simple, not powerful | 250 contacts disappears the moment you import an email history — this is a plan for testing, not running a business. |
| monday CRM | No forever-free tier 14-day trial, no card required |
$12 /user/mo Basic, 3-seat minimum |
A team that already runs its projects on monday.com | It's a work OS with a CRM bolted on, not a CRM built first — and there's no permanent free plan to fall back on. |
Prices and limits change often — we last checked these in 2026. Always confirm current pricing on the vendor's own site before buying.
Response365 doesn't have a permanent free plan, and we'd rather say that up front than bury it. What it has instead is a full-featured 1-month free trial (a card is required to start it) and a pricing model that scales in small steps — a base seat at $14.99/month, extra users and add-on modules from $8.99/month, and industry packs from $159/month if you need vertical-specific tooling like food regulatory tracking or manufacturing.
What makes it worth the look is the new command bar: type or say a plain sentence — "Le Sablon ordered 10kg of agar agar" — and it creates the real order against your real customer and product records, in whatever language you naturally speak. No other CRM on this list can do that today. Combine that with the fact the same account can grow into a call center, a booking engine, an e-commerce storefront, or a full ERP without a re-platform, and it's the one CRM here that a genuine one-person business and a 200-person sales floor could both use without feeling like the wrong fit.
HubSpot's free CRM is genuinely free forever, and it's a fine place to store contacts, deals, and basic tickets. The trouble is the limits are tight and getting tighter: 1,000 contacts, 2 users, one pipeline, and no workflows or automated follow-up of any kind — every single one has to be sent by hand. Every email, form, and chat widget also carries HubSpot's own branding until you upgrade.
The jump from free is unusually steep, too: Starter begins around $9/seat/month, but the real automation and reporting most teams actually want sits in Professional, which starts near $800/month for three seats. It's a good CRM to outgrow, not a good CRM to grow with.
Zoho's free plan is one of the more honest ones out there — up to three users, no time limit, with real lead, contact, and account management, basic workflow automation, and 1GB of storage. If your team is exactly that size, it's hard to beat for zero dollars.
The catch is the hard 3-user cap. Hire a fourth person and you're on the Standard plan at roughly $14/user/month (billed annually), climbing to $23, $40, and $52 per user as you move up tiers. It's built for small and stays built for small.
Bitrix24's free tier is unusual in a good way: unlimited users, unlimited deals in the pipeline, unlimited invoices, video calls for up to 300 participants, and 5GB of shared storage — permanently, not a trial. For a cash-strapped team that just needs many people to have a login, that's a genuinely rare offer.
It comes at the cost of depth and polish. Telephony and the Bitrix24 Market app ecosystem are paid-only, and the interface tries to be a CRM, an intranet, and a project tool at once, which some teams find cluttered. The first paid tier, Basic, runs about $49/month flat for five users when billed annually.
Capsule is the simplest CRM on this list, and its free plan reflects that: two users, 250 contacts, one pipeline, 50MB of storage. It's pleasant to use and easy to learn, but 250 contacts is not a lot — importing a year of email contacts alone can blow past it.
Once you outgrow the free plan, Starter is about $18/user/month and lifts the cap to 30,000 contacts. Treat the free plan as a trial with no expiry date, not a long-term home for real customer data.
monday CRM doesn't offer a permanent free plan — instead there's a 14-day free trial that, unlike Response365's, doesn't require a card to start. After that, Basic starts around $12/user/month with a 3-seat minimum, moving up to Standard, Pro, and a custom Enterprise tier.
It's a genuinely capable CRM if your team already thinks in monday's boards-and-automations model. If you're choosing a CRM from scratch, though, it can feel like a work-management tool with sales fields added on, rather than a CRM built from the ground up.
Response365's command bar turns a sentence into a real order, note, or task — and the same account scales from solo founder to full enterprise stack.