Compare CRM Software in the United States

How we compare CRM software

We list 11 CRM platforms sold to US businesses. Every figure comes from the vendor's own US pricing page; some are the monthly equivalent of paying for a year up front, so read the Contract required row beside the price.

The calculator asks for users and stored contacts, plus whether you need automation, because automation sits above the entry tier on much of this table. It picks each vendor's plan that covers those numbers, on whichever axis that vendor bills, and sorts by the monthly cost. Commission does not change the order.

Seat, contact or bundle: the three meters CRM software runs on

Most of this table meters seats, so the bill moves when you hire. ActiveCampaign meters contacts instead, publishing Per contact (from $15/mo) against a contact allowance of 1,000 (Starter entry), so growing the list is what moves the bill. Keap runs a third shape, a bundled fee of $299/mo (Ignite, includes 2 users and 1,500 contacts), which buys a different unit from the seat rates around it.

A seat minimum inverts the arithmetic at the bottom of the market: for a two-person business, a low seat rate with a minimum can land above a higher seat rate without one. Use the calculator with your real seat and contact counts rather than the headline.

Two ceilings at once: how a free or entry CRM software plan ends

Free plans exist here and they are real. Each names two limits, and the two behave differently. A seat cap is visible from a long way off, since hiring is a decision you make on a date you know. A stored contact cap is not: contacts accumulate on their own, and nobody watches that number.

An uncapped contact limit is worth more than a few dollars of seat rate if your list grows faster than your team. A third gate is not a ceiling at all: automation is often above the entry tier, which catches people who priced the entry rate before finding out what it excludes.

If a follow-up sequence is the reason you are shopping, the entry rate is not your rate, which is why the calculator carries an automation toggle.

Contracts, setup fees and support hours in CRM software

The headline rate is usually the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment. A no-contract answer means monthly billing is available, not that the advertised rate applies to it. Setup never appears in a monthly column, so add any one-time fee to your first-year total before you compare.

Support hours are the other cost with no line item. Capsule CRM's row reads UK and US west coast hours, which is a different working day if you trade on the East Coast.

Before signing, ask what the renewal rate is once an introductory term ends, and how you get a complete copy of your data out.

State privacy law and the customer records inside your CRM software

There is no single federal privacy statute covering ordinary business records in the US. What exists is a patchwork of state laws, of which California's CCPA and CPRA are the best known, each with its own thresholds for who is covered. Where the rules reach you, three obligations land on a CRM: a consumer can ask what personal information you hold, can ask you to delete it, and can opt out of the sale or sharing of it. That last term is defined broadly enough in California to catch some advertising and analytics integrations a business would never call a sale.

That becomes one operational question: can you find every record for one named person and remove it, and prove you did? A CRM scatters a person across a contact record, deal notes, email history and every connected app that received a copy, so the integrations row is a fair proxy for how far a record travels. Where the records physically sit surfaces in vendor questionnaires more often than small businesses expect.

Ask a vendor in writing how a deletion request is executed end to end, whether an opt-out survives a re-import, and what happens to the copies your integrations already made. None of this is legal advice, and no product here is compliant or non-compliant by itself.

Calling and texting from CRM software under the TCPA

The second body of law is much stricter than the rules on email. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the National Do Not Call Registry govern marketing calls and texts, prior express written consent is generally required before a marketing call or text reaches a cell phone, and penalties are assessed per call or per message.

The distinction changes where the evidence lives. When calling is built in, the consent flag and the suppression list have to exist inside the CRM, so ask to see each one by name. When dialing comes via an integration, the record of what someone agreed to may sit in a system your CRM never reads. Ask whether the platform scrubs against the Do Not Call Registry or leaves that to you, then take the answers to your own counsel.

AI and MCP in CRM software: ask what it costs

Every product here lists native AI of some kind, so the presence of AI separates nothing. The distinction is between native and native plus add-ons: an add-on is a separate line on the invoice, so ask which capabilities in the demo were included in the plan quoted.

MCP lets an outside AI assistant query your CRM directly. Read-only and read-write are different products from a risk standpoint: one summarizes your pipeline, the other can change it. Beta means the interface can move or be withdrawn. An assistant with MCP access queries the same database of named people that state privacy law is about, so ask which accounts can connect it and what those queries log.