Looking for the best client management software?
Client management software (also known as CRM tools) helps businesses track, manage, and improve on every element of their customer relationships.
With a CRM tool, businesses can secure long-term relationships with their clients and earn word-of-mouth referrals to secure other potential clients.
But with so many client management tools out there, how do you know which one is the best for your company?
Don’t worry!
In this article, we’ll look at what client management tools are, and what are the top five CRM software alongside their key features, pros, cons, pricing, and customer ratings.
Let’s get rolling!
What Is Client Management Software?
Client management software helps businesses understand and improve their customer relations.
It provides them with a client database that has everything they need to know about their customers.
This way, you can be like:
Client management tools also help sales and marketing teams stay productive by automating the data entry process and speeding up tedious tasks.
Here’s how:
Powerful CRM tools offer features like:
- Contact management
- Pipeline management
- Sales automation
- Data and reporting management
- Email automation
The 5 Best Client Management Tools In 2021
To help you build and maintain fantastic client relationships, here are the five best client management software:
1. ClickUp
ClickUp is the world’s leading project and client management tool.
From helping you with contact management to having advanced automation features, ClickUp is the ultimate client management system.
Read our guide on the benefits of combining CRM and project management capabilities.
ClickUp key features
Here are just some of the reasons why you should use ClickUp for customer relationship management:
1. Multiple views
Bagging and looking after clients is a lot of work.
And that’s why you need multiple teams to handle this workload.
From sales and marketing to finance and customer support, you have tons of teams working together. But here’s the thing, each of these teams is going to want something that caters to their specific needs.
Luckily, with ClickUp, you can use tons of different views to see different aspects of your work in the way you want.
Here are some of the different views you get:
- Task view: Group, sort, and filter your tasks so you can view them the way you want to
- List view: Visualize your entire sales pipeline using List view
- Board view: Visualize tasks by status and use the drag and drop feature to organize tasks
- Gantt view: Map out project workflows, manage time spent on tasks and monitor project deadlines
- Timeline view: See your schedule linearly and manage resource management
2. Form view
In the real estate biz? 🏘
Well, consider ClickUp as your company’s dream home.
Form view lets you create beautiful custom Forms to help your team understand what your clients are looking for.
You select with Lists you want your form responses to go to or choose a default assignee for any tasks created from the form.
That’s right!
You can collaborate on, create, and assign tasks out of your form responses and move responses through a workflow. You can even graph your response data for further analysis.
On top of that, you can also filter submissions using Custom Fields to match client requests with available listings.
You can also enable reCAPTCHA to protect your forms! 🤖
This way, anyone and everyone will be required to pass the Captcha test before submitting forms.
Need more info? Go here to the top free CRM tools for real estate agents.
3. Guests
“How long till the project’s done?”
“What’s the status of the campaign?”
We get it.
With ClickUp, you can simply invite your clients as Guests to keep them in the loop.
When you add your clients to ClickUp, they’ll only have access to what you want them to see.
This means that you can invite Guests to Tasks, Lists, and Folders without having to worry about them accessing things that don’t involve them!
4. Column calculations
Bring out your inner genius with ClickUp’s Column Calculations.
With ClickUp, your sales and revenue teams can perform powerful Column Calculations in List view:
- Total contract values: Calculate how much a contract is worth after it’s been completed, including costs like service and onboarding fees
- Total cost to close: Calculate closing costs (fees paid at the closing of a real estate sale)
- Revenue: Calculate your income, sales, or turnover
Why not also help your finance teams with the Table view?
You can use tables to keep track of all your financial data, and there’s also a Money Custom Field to keep up with the $$$.
Want more info? Check out our guide to sales project management.
5. Proofing
Got an amazingly creative digital marketing team? 🎨
With ClickUp, your marketing team can communicate easily by dropping comments and updates on any image. And once your design is complete, you can ask your client to approve it.
But we all know how confusing client feedback can be!
You can create better contracts and agreements by proofing PDF files with your clients.
If your client needs to review a contract, simply attach the contract to a task and assign a comment through Proofing. Once that’s done, your clients can add comments for anything they want to change.
Luckily, there are multiple ways you can add Proofing to your CRM workflow using ClickUp.
You can add and resolve comments on any PNG, GIF, JPEG, WEBP, or PDF file, all within ClickUp.
Need a little more detail? Read up on using ClickUp for marketing project management.
6. Templates
With ClickUp, you have access to a ton of different Templates to help you get started immediately. You have Templates for Account Management, Customer Service, Invoicing, Patient Management, and so many more!
That’s a lotta tempting templates! 😍
And Templates are the perfect way to quickly onboard new clients.
What do we mean?
You can use ClickUp to create onboarding Lists with a list of different tasks for your clients.
And since you know you’ll be using it over and over again, you can save the List as a Template.
And why not share your unique template with the world? 🌎
With the new Template Center, you can search, share, and use custom-made templates created by ultra-productive teams around the world.
Want to know more? Go here for more tips on how to create your own CRM in ClickUp.
ClickUp pros
- Powerful free version with unlimited users
- Get work done for your clients without internet access via offline mode
- Use unlimited Custom Fields for event planning, client collaboration and more.
- Mind Maps to help you map out project workflows and ideas
- Goals to help you keep track of your company’s objectives
- Simple Layout helps you get acclimatization in no time
- Work together with team members in real-time using Docs
- Email Project Management lets you create new tasks by sending emails to Lists
- 50+ Task Automations for workflow automation
- Powerful Task Dependencies helps teams complete tasks in the right order
- Relationship Field to build custom Relationships between clients and Lists
- Integrates with several third-party software like Evernote, Time Doctor, Salesforce, and more
ClickUp cons
- Can’t export Dashboards
Check out ClickUp’s roadmap here to see how we’re fixing these minor drawbacks. Also, check out all the exciting features that this free client management software has in store for you!
ClickUp pricing
ClickUp has a powerful free plan for unlimited users with paid versions starting at just $5 per user/month.
ClickUp customer ratings
- G2: 4.7/5 (2000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (2000+ reviews)
2. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is a free CRM tool.
This CRM solution lets you enjoy unlimited users, data, and up to a million contacts with no time limit or expiration date.
But, there is a limit on the number of custom fields you can have.
Why is this bad?
Having a CRM system with limited custom fields means that your forms are limited to certain types of questions and in turn, limited responses and data.
HubSpot CRM key features
- Email sequences let salespeople schedule follow up emails, so they don’t lose important leads
- Sales reps can personalize each email with personalization tokens, including company and contact name
- Email templates can be used to turn repetitive sales emails into templates, so sales reps don’t have to start from scratch every time
HubSpot CRM pros
- HubSpot integrates with Gmail, G Suite, Office 365, and Outlook
- Unlimited free users
- Short learning curve
- You can store and manage a lot of contacts in the tool
HubSpot CRM cons
- The mobile app isn’t as powerful as the desktop app
- There’s a limit of 1,000 custom fields, and you can’t purchase more
- Task due dates are set to 8:00 am and can’t be changed
HubSpot CRM pricing
This client management tool has a free plan available, and its paid plans start at $50 for up to two users per month.
HubSpot CRM customer ratings
- G2: 4.3/5 (6000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (2000+ reviews)
3. Salesforce
Salesforce is a popular customer management software that’s used by over 10 million people.
But how suitable is this client management tool for your ‘salesforce?’
Let’s find out:
Salesforce key features
- Sales forecasting feature gives you a real-time view of the forecast of all your sales reps
- Get insights from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn right within Salesforce
- Use reports and dashboards to get a real-time picture of your business processes
Salesforce pros
- Access critical customer information including client communication history, customer profiles, campaign history and current deals they’re involved
- The tool and pricing model are scalable so it can suit any business
- Salesforce has a powerful mobile app that lets you log calls, respond to leads, and check dashboards
Salesforce cons
- No free plan available and it’s expensive when compared to other customer relationship management software
- The cheapest free plan has a limit of 10 users
- Steep learning curve
Salesforce pricing
This CRM software has no free plan available, and its paid plans start at $25/user per month.
Salesforce customer ratings
- G2: 4.2/5 (10 000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (15 000+ reviews)
4. Vcita
Vcita is a marketing automation CRM software that “plays nicely” with Facebook, Google, WordPress, and more.
One of the downsides of this client management tool is that it doesn’t offer any visual representation of your sales pipeline.
Why’s this a downside?
A sales pipeline shows you how efficient your sales process is, and without one, your team will have a difficult time achieving higher conversion rates and overall improved performance.
Vcita key features
- Comprehensive contact management feature that lets you store client data and manage and label your leads in one centralized online hub
- Easily collaborate with your team by assigning clients, appointments, and incoming requests to team members
- Let clients schedule, pay and share documents from a friendly self-service client portal
Vcita pros
- Lets clients schedule appointments directly from your website or social media pages
- Automated reminders to keep you organized
- The client interface is easy to use
Vcita cons
- More expensive than most client management tools
- An invoice can only be paid by one person and can’t be forwarded for payment
- Basic billing features only and no financial reporting capabilities
Vcita pricing
The pricing plan for this contact management software starts at $29/user per month.
Vcita customer ratings
- G2: 4.5/5 (40+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (100+ reviews)
5. Keap
Keap is a CRM Software with a robust contact management system that stores and updates customer data for you.
Will you want to Keap this tool once you check out its features?
Let’s find out:
Keap key features
- Pre-written emails and automated messages for potential leads
- Saves client information with details like social media details, addresses and birthdays
- Appointment and schedule management features
Keap pros
- Smart forms help you collect specific client info
- Integrates with Outlook and Gmail
- There’s a robust marketing automation feature
Keap cons
- The client management tool has a steep learning curve
- No free plan and it’s expensive when compared to other client relationship management tools
- Can’t really use it to bring your clients and projects together
Keap pricing
This CRM software has no free plan, and paid plans start at $79/user per month.
Keap customer ratings
- G2: 4.1/5 (1000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.1/5 (1000+ reviews)
What To Look For In Great Client Management Software
Apart from the fact that client management tools should help you manage your clients, here are four other elements your client management software should have:
A. User-friendly
Client management software needs to be easy to use for both your company and your clients.
This way, your clients don’t react like this when trying to use it:
B. Integrations
The client management tool you choose should ideally integrate with other software, such as Gmail and Zoom.
Why?
Your clients might email you or request a Zoom call, and smart integration lets you access these software with a click of a button. This way, you won’t have to waste time switching between apps.
C. Automation
Your CRM solution should also automate customer relationship tasks like customer follow-up emails and appointment scheduling to save more time.
D. Customization
The best customer relationship management software let you add your company’s brand to the software to really make it yours.
On top of that, your management software should also offer room for scaling up. For example, startups don’t need all the features that giant law firms do. However, if you do grow to become a huge firm, it should be able to deal with that too!
Time To Scale Your Customer Relationships 📈
Client management software helps businesses build and maintain relationships with their clients for optimal customer satisfaction.
And while each CRM solution we mentioned here has something to offer when it comes to client management, there’s nothing like ClickUp!
This CRM software lets you actively involve your clients every step of the way, helping you and them get the work done.
So get ClickUp for free, and make sure you and your clients feel like this:
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.