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Methodology
Everything on this site is computed from facts copied off each vendor's public pricing page. Nothing is estimated, and nobody is paid to rank higher.
Where the data comes from
- Each vendor's pricing page was rendered in a headless browser on 2026-09-13. Billing toggles and currency pickers were clicked, and the visible text was saved for every state.
- Every price, seat rule, feature tier, trial and note is stored with the exact phrase it came from. An automated check fails the build if a phrase is missing from the saved page, and a live check re-reads the vendor pages.
- Only USD prices are compared. When a vendor showed another currency to our capture location and ignored a USD switch, its prices are shown in that currency and not ranked (currently: HubSpot (SGD)).
- Features count only when the pricing page names the plan that includes them. "Not listed" means the vendor's pricing page doesn't mention the feature for any plan. It may still exist on a higher tier, as an add-on, or in a separate feature matrix, so check with the vendor before ruling a CRM out.
- We have not used these CRMs with a live sales team. Comparisons cover published prices, plan limits and the features each vendor lists on its pricing page; they are not hands-on ratings.
Team cost
Monthly cost = per-seat price × billed seats. Billed seats apply the vendor's minimum (for example, a plan that starts at three users bills a solo user for three) and caps (a plan limited to ten users can't be picked for eleven). "Annual" uses the per-month price with a yearly commitment and falls back to the monthly price when that is the only one published. "Month to month" never falls back. Taxes and add-ons are excluded.
Scoring rubric (100 points)
| Criterion | Points | How it's calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | 40 | Cheapest plan that lists workflow automation for a 10-person team on annual billing. The cheapest CRM in the field gets all 40 points; others get 40 × (cheapest cost ÷ their cost). A CRM that can't be priced for that team gets 0. |
| Feature reach | 30 | For each of workflow automation, email sequences / cadences, sales forecasting and single sign-on (sso): full credit if the pricing page lists it on the free or entry paid plan, falling linearly to a quarter credit if only the top plan has it, zero if not listed. Averaged, then × 30. |
| Try before you buy | 15 | 10 for a free plan, 5 for a published free trial. |
| Billing flexibility | 15 | 10 for a published month-to-month price, 5 for no seat minimum. |
Affiliate links, commissions and vendor relationships are not inputs. The scores are generated by the same code for every vendor.
Current scores
| CRM | Cost | Features | Try | Flexibility | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | 25.7 | 22.5 | 15 | 15 | 78.2 |
| Freshsales | 40 | 14.1 | 5 | 15 | 74.1 |
| Salesforce | 14.4 | 13.6 | 15 | 15 | 58 |
| Pipedrive | 9.2 | 16.9 | 5 | 15 | 46.1 |
| monday CRM | 21.2 | 9.4 | 5 | 10 | 45.6 |
| Nutshell | 8.6 | 6.6 | 5 | 15 | 35.2 |
| Copper | 6.1 | 6.6 | 5 | 15 | 32.7 |
| Attio | 0 | 4.7 | 10 | 15 | 29.7 |
| Close | 3.6 | 3.8 | 5 | 15 | 27.4 |
| Insightly | 7.3 | 4.7 | 5 | 5 | 22 |
| HubSpot | Not scored: prices were only shown to us in SGD, so they are not compared with USD prices | ||||
How the copy is written
Short positioning summaries were drafted with an AI model and edited against each vendor's page; each one is tied to a quote from that page. They contain no numbers. Every figure, verdict and "comes out ahead" point is generated from the pricing data, so the copy can't claim something the data doesn't support. Marketing superlatives and testing claims are blocked by an automated check.