The importance of having quality digital data about customers is essential for the success of sales and for your marketing activities. However, some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools can be too expensive for small businesses. Other options, such as an Excel document, can be useful when started, but can become cumbersome and difficult to use.

Here we have gathered our 5 favorite CRM tools, which are also totally free:

1. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a high-quality online application that offers, free of charge, all the features of paid tools.

It is very easy to use and will allow your entire team to be able to follow up on interactions with your contacts. This tool keeps track of all your emails and, for a small additional cost, you can make and monitor phone calls. It even synchronizes with Gmail and Outlook so you have all your customer information on hand when you talk to them.

2. Google Contacts

Companies that already use  Gmail , do not need any new application to start their CRM. Google Contacts has basic CRM functions that make it much more powerful than other address books and can be a great option if it is the first time you gather your contacts in digital format.

If you're already using Google Contacts, you'll probably just enter names and contact details, but you can actually do much more. In the custom fields you can add the information you want.

In addition, you can add notes to each contact to track their interactions with them and see any information they have added to their Google+ profiles.

When you read your emails, through the link View recent conversations, Google Contacts can show everything you have spoken with your contacts.

In addition, you can organize your contacts in as many lists as you wish, including adding, if necessary, contacts to multiple lists and then sharing those lists with anyone else on your team. This function is ideal when you send promotional emails.

3. Bitrix24

Bitrix24  is a powerful CRM tool, totally operative, free to use and with all its features for up to 12 users. For small businesses, it should be more than enough.

You will find a CRM with all the functions that allows you to manage your contacts, send them automatically by email and call them directly from your dashboard. In addition, Bitrix24 social networking features will allow you to manage your social activities and keep in touch with your customers. This application will allow you to manage your entire company from one place.

4. Streak

As we said in point 2, Google Contacts is a very good basic CRM tool, but as your business grows, you may need a little more power and capacity. This is the moment that Streak  becomes an excellent option, since it is a complete CRM application that lives inside your Gmail, so, you will never need to open a program or application separately.

Streak will automatically track all your conversations by email and allow you to collaborate with your team members.

In addition, it will allow you to organize the emails into lists to follow up, add notes and additional contact information and assign email threads to another team member. It also has additional useful features, such as the option to schedule emails to send later.

5. Agile CRM

Agile CRM  is by definition a flexible CRM tool. Its basic plan supports up to 10 users for free and is quite complete. In addition to carrying out marketing tasks automatically, it allows easy follow-up of contacts. With its easy-to-use automation flow chart, you can create marketing plans for individual contacts based on the level of interaction they have with you. Its built-in social media package will also help you monitor your channels, schedule updates and even monitor the social activity of your contacts.

While these are our favorite CRM tools, there are many more in the market. Take the time to research about them and see what is the best option for your business. Once you implement a platform in your company, it is important that you allow your team to learn how to use it and manage it efficiently to get the best out of it.