Today business landscape presents unique challenges for growing companies. For small businesses, staying ahead means juggling customer relationships, sales pipelines, and marketing efforts. And often with limited resources. If you’ve ever felt buried under scattered spreadsheets or missed a lead because your systems didn’t talk to each other, you’re not alone. This is exactly where getting the right CRM for small business is pretty much essential. It’s your central hub, pulling together sales, marketing, and service interactions to help you understand customers better and work smarter.
And that’s what we do in Nexalab: helping SMEs link sales pipelines with marketing automation, sync invoices back to Xero, and surface real-time insights their competitors miss. All with a small business CRM system as central command.
This article distils what we’ve learned about how a solid CRM strategy and tools make a world of difference. Let’s explore your fit and plot a smarter growth path.
Finding Your Fit: Best CRM Tools for Small Businesses in Australia
Finding the right CRM tool can feel overwhelming, especially with so many options on the market. So, how to choose a CRM for a small business without losing your mind? It boils down to a few key things:
- Is it easy for the team to use?
- Does it have the features you need (like managing contacts, tracking sales, maybe some email marketing)?
- Can it play nicely with the tools you already use, particularly Aussie staples like Xero?
- Will it grow with you? Is your data safe (Privacy Act compliance is a must)?
- What’s the cost?
- Does it offer a free CRM or a cheap CRM starting point?
To simplify things, let’s look at ten standout solutions that are often considered a good fit for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot is a big name, partly because their free CRM is seriously impressive. HubSpot blends a generous free CRM with marketing, email marketing, service, and operations hubs. Up to a million contacts, pipeline boards, meeting links, and live chat cost nothing.
Paid tiers jump in price but unlock automation, custom reporting, and advanced CRM marketing automation. HubSpot CRM is best for startups needing a free CRM with marketing muscle, though the free plan’s limits (like basic support) might nudge you to upgrade.
Zoho CRM
Zoho balances affordability with power. Its free plan supports three users, while paid tiers (from AUD$18/user/month) offer inventory management and workflow automation.
It’s scalable, packed with features, and ties into Zoho’s ecosystem. Zoho CRM is best for teams that value breadth and can tolerate a steeper learning curve.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive shines as a sales CRM for small business, with a slick, visual pipeline that’s a breeze to use. There’s no permanent free plan, and add-ons like LeadBooster lift the bill, yet it focuses on selling.
Starting at USD$14/user/month (no free plan, but a 14-day trial), it’s built for sales teams who live and breathe deals. It integrates with over 400 tools, but marketing and service features are lighter. Pipedrive is best for sales-focused teams craving simplicity.
Freshsales
Freshsales, part of the Freshworks family, is handy if you want everything in one place for customer interaction. They have a free CRM plan for up to three users. The free plan covers basic contact management and those built-in comms tools. Paid plans kick off at USD$9/user/month, adding automation and lead scoring. Higher tiers introduce AI-powered lead scoring, multiple pipelines, and advanced reporting.
Freshsales is ideal for service-heavy outfits that want conversations, not just contacts, in one window. So, Freshsales is best for SMEs needing unified customer interactions.
Insightly
What makes Insightly stand out is its strong project management features baked right into the CRM system. If your business delivers services or manages complex projects after the sale, this integration is a huge plus. You get the usual CRM stuff alongside tools for managing tasks and projects.
There’s no free CRM option, but they offer a trial. However, the starting prices are a bit higher than some others (around USD$ 29/user/month). Insightly is best for agencies juggling client projects and sales.
Monday Sales CRM
Built on monday.com’s Work OS, this option turns pipelines into colourful boards that non-coders customise at will. It’s great for team collaboration and highly customisable. You can build pipelines, manage contacts, and automate workflows.
Features like email integration and sales forecasting come in on the paid plans. And we recommend you pick the paid plan rather than its free plan. The paid plan starts at USD$ 27/ 3 user/month. Monday Sales CRM is best for creative teams wanting workflow flexibility.
Salesforce
Salesforce remains the global heavyweight. The Starter Suite lands at about AUD 35 per user, bringing leads, opportunities, basic marketing, and AppExchange integrations. Power and scalability are unmatched, but setup time and cost mean very lean teams may find lighter rivals easier.
However, it can be complex to learn and implement, and the starting cost is higher than many alternatives focused purely on SMBs (AUD$ 35/user/month). It’s a serious investment for businesses with the resources and growth plans to justify it. Salesforce is best for businesses planning to scale rapidly.
Kommo
Kommo takes a unique angle, billing itself as a “Messenger-Based Sales CRM”. If your sales process heavily relies on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Instagram DMs, this CRM tool is designed for you. No free plan and a six-month upfront term apply, yet chat-centric retailers rave about conversion jumps.
The Base plan is AUD$ 23/user/month. Kommo is quite niche; fantastic if chat is your main channel, maybe less relevant otherwise. So, Kommo is best for teams relying on social and messenger selling.
Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell pushes clean pipelines and tight linkage with Zendesk’s support suite. If you already run Zendesk tickets, Sell completes the 360-degree customer view. It offers a clean interface, a good mobile app, and standard CRM system features. There’s no free tier, but the unified service-plus-sales lens can justify the spend.
The Zendesk Sell pricing plan starts from USD$ 19/user/month. From our perspective, Zendesk Sell is best for businesses already using Zendesk support tools.
Keap
Keap (or Infusionsoft) aims squarely at service-based small businesses needing strong sales and CRM marketing automation. The platform combines CRM with sophisticated automation tools for email marketing, appointments, invoicing, and payments. It even includes AI helpers.
With so many features, the starting cost is significantly higher than most others on this list (USD$249/2 user/month). For your notes, Keap can also be complex to master. And some features, like text marketing, work best in North America. Keap is best for established businesses who ready to invest heavily in automating complex processes.
CRM Implementation Tips for Small Businesses in Australia
Beyond the software, a successful implementation is where the real value lies, yet it’s also where many initiatives stumble.
For small businesses, adopting a structured approach focused on strategy, data, and integration creates the foundation for success.
- Start with Strategy, Not Software: The software is just part of the CRM strategy. So, clearly define what you want the CRM to achieve. This fundamentally helps you set up the CRM properly and figure out if it’s working later on.
- Clean and Organise the Data: Strategy is getting inefficient when your data is messy. So, map fields carefully and conduct test migrations. Also, stay compliant with the Privacy Act 1988 when handling customer information.
- Integrate Your CRM from Day One: Integrate your CRM and data from day one. Plan how it will connect with the other tools you rely on. Connect tools like Xero, Mailchimp, or Shopify early. Automating data flow between systems cuts manual work and silos. At Nexalab, we’ve seen integrations with MYOB or Xero save Aussie businesses hours weekly.
Transform Your Tech Stack with CRM Integrations
Transforming your tech stack with CRM integrations turns a simple contact database into a living command centre. Sync email marketing stats, invoices, support tickets, and even inventory levels so every update appears everywhere, automatically. Sales reps enter a note; finance sees it. A win triggers invoicing; marketing adds the client to a loyalty workflow. The payoff is faster hand-offs, fewer keystrokes, and decisions powered by real-time context.
That’s what we do in Nexalab. Our CRM integration service does the heavy lifting—connecting Xero, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and the rest of your toolkit through secure APIs and low-code automation. The main goal is to make data flow in real time, and growth bottlenecks vanish.
So, why don’t you book a free discussion session with one of our CRM integration specialists? Let’s discuss your specific needs, problems, and goals.
