Software Advice 2021 Midyear Top CRM FrontRunners

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is integral to both sales and marketing operations. It offers many useful features such as contact management, lead generation, and sales pipeline management to help streamline the CRM function at your organization.

Selecting software that’s right for your business can be challenging due to the sheer number of CRM tools available in the market. To help you shortlist the right tool, we’ve created a list of CRM products that have been rated well by real software users like you. Products on the list are featured in our CRM software FrontRunners reports released over the first half of 2021.

Software Advice FrontRunners reports use reviews from real software users to highlight top-rated products. (Learn more about FrontRunners.) Our list will help you understand which products have consistently delivered value across diverse CRM categories, including contact management, customer service, customer experience, remote support, call center, help desk, live chat, and predictive dialer.

EngageBay is an integrated marketing, sales, support, and CRM solution designed to help small to midsize enterprises acquire, engage, and convert website visitors into customers.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 5

FrontRunners reports: Help desk, live chat, CRM, customer service, contact management

EngageBay user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “Being an all-in-one CRM, it helps me club various activities at one place and engage with them seamlessly.”
• “You can easily collect leads, segment them and then create using Macro/Micro funnels to engage them to pump up your marketing efforts.”
• “The user interface is attractive and easy enough to set your business up in a very short amount of time with not a lot of effort.”

Cons

• “I would like to see a mobile app for this app which they don’t have up till now also it is a little bit expensive for people who have freshly started their business.”
• “It takes a little while to learn your way around because it offers so much.”
• “Webinar features, landing pages do not support reusable headers and footers, no option to build own templates.”

Aloware is a contact center solution for sales and support teams. It offers automatic dialing, seamless CRM integrations, and workflow automation that businesses can use on any device.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Predictive dialer, call center, auto dialer, call tracking

Aloware user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “This was an easy solution that gives each CSM and Sales rep a personal line and logs their activity through the desktop or app.”
• “Aloware allows us to seamlessly integrate all guest communications into a single source via their integration with our Property Management Software, Guesty.”
• “Aloware helped us build a custom implementation and now we can contact 3X the leads in half the time.”

Cons

• “Changing a contact on Aloware does not work well if the contact has been pulled from another integration, the Guesty integration is not 2-way.”
• “One feature that is challenging to find is a true local presence and Aloware doesn’t have it.”
• “Mobile apps have bugs such as needing to be open in the background, and find old conversations is not easy.”

Apptivo is a cloud-based integrated suite of applications used by businesses of all sizes to manage a range of functions, including CRM, financials, and supply chain management.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Help desk, CRM, customer service, contact management

Apptivo user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “It is so customizable and easy for our own team to make changes to fields, views and screens. Very intuitive.”
• “The ability to customize fields is important to me and Apptivo allows the flexibility and functionality to provide solutions specific to my CRM needs.”
• “I am impressed with the master layout and how I can easily add or remove information fields as a super user.”

Cons

• “Some of the templates such as purchase order, packing slip are hard to customize. Some of the fields do not display consistently.”
• “You can only integrate one mail platform so I cannot pull my mail from my various accounts into the Apptivo Suite.”
• “A bit slow on page changes, updates, and downloads. They need a more robust system and servers.”

CallTrackingMetrics is a cloud-based call tracking and contact center solution for businesses and agencies. It helps track campaigns and reach new audiences through integrated text marketing and online forms and uses intelligent analytics to monitor the quality of conversations.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Predictive dialer, call center, auto dialer, call tracking

CallTrackingMetrics user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “What I like best about this software is that all tracking numbers are recorded so you can listen and replay for educational/training purposes.”
• “Call Tracking Metrics has amazing reporting dashboards and is extremely customizable, yet super user-friendly.”
• “The platform is extremely user friendly, we were able to get call center agents trained remotely and they could even download an app to their smartphones for additional access.”

Cons

• “It would be nice to have a way to visualize leads from multiple sources in a way besides the call log (i.e. kanban, or “stages” like a typical crm product).”
• “CTM App- it’s ineffective for inbound calls, but perfect for outbound calls, which I know they are working on updating the app.”
• “The reporting and reports are not as clean and robust as others. Additional focus on speech analytics and analysis would be helpful.”

Claritysoft is a cloud-based CRM solution designed for midsize businesses and large enterprises. It helps manage customer contacts, accounts, and sales activity. It also offers sales automation, customer service and support, marketing automation, and social CRM within a single solution.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Help desk, CRM, customer service, contact management

Claritysoft user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “As a CRM system, Claritysoft is very easy to use and we love that we can hide features our company doesn’t use, such as invoicing and support ticketing, to streamline the interface.”
• “Claritysoft CRM has been ‘spot on’ for me as far as organizing all of my sales information. It has allowed me to have everything I need in one spot!”
• “I liked the fact that the software was so user friendly, that I could use the software with only minimal training, and yet still be able to maneuver around the site, changing data, etc.”

Cons

• “The lead module is not as customizable compared to the contacts module.”
• “The reporting and analysis is also not as easy to understand with filter logic compared to other CRMs I have used.”
• “Tasks should automatically hide once they are marked complete. I don’t feel like I should have to create and set a filter to hide them.”

Five9 is an all-in-one cloud-based contact center solution for inbound, outbound, blended, and omnichannel contact centers. It helps businesses connect with customers over phone, email, chat, social, and more.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Call tracking, auto dialer, call center, predictive dialer

Five9 user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “Very complete software package, having an integrated dialer, lead management and reporting tool is awesome.”
• “I like the non stop call base, I really like the record button. I also like how we can transfer to the vote line with ease.”
• “This cloud contact center has the best dialing features for sales teams, so if you are looking to make more sales with your team and in search of a CCaaS platform for this a good one!”

Cons

• “Wallboard feature to share data as a link is required. New Integrations with newer brands require customizations that take longer to build.”
• “At times it would run slow, and we would run into tech issues with dial up system some times.”
• “I felt that sending scroll messages or quick comms to the agents was a bit clunky.”

LiveAgent is a cloud-based customer support tool that offers help desk, ticketing, live chat, and call center capabilities. It helps businesses build a virtual call center to manage both inbound and outbound calls.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Issue tracking, help desk, live chat, customer service

LiveAgent user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “Fair pricing, well structured, social media integration, easy to use, clear and simple ticketing system (even for first-timers), helpful support staff.”
• “I like all the features that they have. Most importantly, social media integration, hybrid ticket stream, department system, and automated ticket distribution.”
• “The interface is easy to navigate and the chat window is highly customizable.”

Cons

• “There is also no desktop version and you have to do everything from the webpage.”
• “They are a bit stagnant in modern working life. For example, logging into two browsers will close the session on one side.”
• “Linking phone numbers can be complicated, you have to be especially careful with the country code.”

OnContact CRM is a full-featured, flexible, mid-market CRM solution that offers comprehensive sales, marketing automation, and customer service capabilities. It helps businesses increase sales and revenue and improve internal communications.

Number of appearances in 2021 FrontRunners reports: 4

FrontRunners reports: Help desk, CRM, customer service, contact management

OnContact CRM user reviews on Software Advice:

Pros

• “The ease of setup and customization and use of the system was key to evaluating and purchasing this solution.”
• “User friendly, ability to create great lists and get quick data from the results (of email blasts etc.).”
• “OnContact is a fairly simple system to use. Although there are usually numerous different ways to do things within the system, it is fairly self explanatory.”

Cons

• “If you don’t use the exact work or phrasing, you can have duplicate entries which are a headache.”
• “Lots of customizable search options and features, but it’s too programmy in the language and execution, which makes it difficult for folks who aren’t computer savvy to understand.”
• “There is nothing overall that was disliked, the only thing that was cumbersome was our initial data import.”

Learn more about Software Advice FrontRunners

To come up with this list, we looked at all the products placed in our CRM FrontRunners reports released over the first half of 2021. Then we ranked the products based on the number of reports each product appeared in.

For qualification, each product must have been featured in at least four of the following categories: CRM, contact management, customer service, customer experience, remote support, call center, help desk, live chat, call tracking, auto dialer, membership management, customer loyalty, issue tracking, predictive dialer, appointment scheduling, and appointment reminder. In the event that two or more products featured in an equal number of categories, we listed them alphabetically.

We relied on Software Advice’s FrontRunners data to create this report. To create our FrontRunners reports, we consider recent, published user reviews for individual software products in order to score and rank them.

The data we collect for FrontRunners reports falls within a set time frame and is not updated after publication. For that reason, FrontRunners reports should be interpreted as a snapshot of reviews data.

Note: Product ratings and no. of reviews are as of August 2, 2021. User reviews have been captured as is; they have not been edited for conciseness, clarity, or grammar.