Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that helps businesses create stores and sell online. It provides many useful features that give flexible and scalable advantages for businesses. CRM (customer relations management) systems aren’t an exception. Partnering with a Shopify expert who can provide the best Shopify CRM apps gives companies powerful tools for e-commerce combining sales, marketing, and customer service capabilities in one platform.
Have you ever wondered how you can benefit from integrating Shopify with a CRM? When you start growing, it gets burdensome to support requests, order data, contact information, and more. That is time to think about another way to manage all your customer data. Let’s dive deeper into the discussion of how to collect data on people who bought from your online store in its initial days up until now.
What is a CRM?
A CRM tool combines features for handling contacts, providing technical support, automating marketing, and many other processes to increase sales.
CRM systems use different channels or points of communication, detailed information on customers' personal information, purchase history, buying preferences, and concerns, which could include the company's website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials, and social networks.
But what's the difference between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Content Management Systems (CMS)? Which does your business need? They serve different purposes in the business software landscape. Let’s look more closely by sketching out the main differences between CMS and CRM:
Both CMS and CRM help e-commerce businesses manage their online stores more effectively. Find more tips about choosing a CMS system for e-commerce development in our guide “Best Headless CMSs for E-Commerce Development”.
Let's look at why it is worth considering a CRM system for e-commerce.
Why it is worth considering a CRM system for your e-commerce business
Using a CRM is an effective way to reach a range of opportunities, such as:
There are a variety of Shopify integrations you can add to your store to supercharge your e-commerce business. Below, we have collected the ten best CRM to use with Shopify.
HubSpot
All HubSpot apps, including the HubSpot CRM, are introduced in the Shopify store. They offer additional tools and features to empower every unique product workflow pipeline corresponding to your Shopify online store orders. HubSpot’s engine will automatically import the details of every new Shopify customer and save them as contacts with their corresponding orders and sales details. Furthermore, it systematically auto-populates the contact profiles with additional intel, including their social specifics and associated companies. Hubspot is one of the best Shopify CRM that can also track customer behavior, identify potential leads, and improve customer engagement.
With the Hubspot intuitive interface, you will enable contact management, sales automation, and effective email marketing.
The main benefits and drawbacks of the HubSpot CRM are:
Pros:
- One software to manage all sales and marketing activities
- Efficient lead tracking to analyze sales data
- Sales and marketing campaigns
- SEO optimization tools like customizable page titles and meta descriptions, SEO-friendly URLs, XML sitemaps, image ALT text, creating 301 redirects, breadcrumb navigation, etc.
- Nurturing customer relationships
Cons:
- High cost for small businesses
- Lack of early termination for annual contractors
- Unavailable A/B testing on lower plans
- Necessity to pay for additional technical support, and the pricey mandatory onboarding service
Pricing: you may choose a free CRM tool with limited features. The advanced featured plans start at $45 per month and can increase based on the number of users.
Bottomline: Hubspot is worth considering and can help you improve your sales and marketing processes. There are a lot of HubSpot alternatives with similar features but better pricing, which may be a better choice for small businesses.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is another solution for a Shopify website that may automate your workflows, processes, campaigns, customer journeys, and more. With great use of artificial intelligence (AI) Zoho CRM strongly emphasizes increasing leads, accelerating sales, and measuring performance.
The AI-powered assistant Zia provides lead and deal predictions to identify potential customers, making the sales process more efficient and intelligent. You can integrate the platform with various apps and software, making it easy to customize the CRM for any business needs, including HIPAA compliance for the healthcare industry.
The main advantages and disadvantages of using the Zoho app
Pros:
- All-in-one software that allows you to conduct team meetings and client presentations
- Notifications about new lead interactions to alert remote workers
- Easy-to-use interface with a low barrier to entry
But there are some disadvantages and limitations that challenge users of Zoho.
Cons:
- Limited set of features in the free plan
- Available standard support only on weekdays. Premium or Enterprise support will cost you extra money
- Most valuable features rely on Zia AI and are only available on the upper-tier Enterprise and Ultimate plans
- Many essential features, including email notifications and webhooks, are limited per day
There are different pricing options available:
- The Standard plan will cost $14 per user per month on annual billing and includes basic features like email hosting, document management, and basic reporting.
- The Professional plan will be paid $23 per user per month when billed annually and provides additional features like CRM, advanced analytics, and sales automation.
- The Enterprise plan will be charged $40 per user per month when billed annually and includes features like inventory management, project management, and advanced customization options.
- The Ultimate plan will cost $52 per user per month when billed annually and encompasses all the features that are available in the lower-priced plans, along with priority customer support and extra storage capacity.
Bottomline: Zoho will be the best fit for small businesses looking for the first CRM experience and midsize companies that are eager to streamline sales.
Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the most intelligent and proactive AI-powered platforms that help companies put the client at the center and make the best decisions. There are a few options how you can integrate Salesforce CRM into your Shopify store. You will centralize all customer information, from contact details to preferences, behaviors, or communication channels.
Businesses may integrate many solutions in their Shopify app store with the Salesforce system. These assist the functionality integrity and add extra options to your store. For example, Zendesk Live Chat app (formerly Zopim) connects with Salesforce to chat with visitors in real-time on their websites. Furthermore, you may integrate the TradeGecko app for inventory management, which enables tracking inventory by item or in bulk and getting better visibility and control over your business. It reduces the administration time and double-handling errors. The “Zap” tool provides one of the best CRM integrations with Shopify that streamline and automate certain tasks. All these tools help improve tracking products without jumping between Salesforce and Shopify.
Enumerating the pros and cons of the Salesforce CRM:
Pros
- Comprehensive customization options where you can add/delete features to suit your business needs
- Rich reporting tools
- Variety of integrations with more than 1000+ platforms
Cons
- High price
- Complex and time-consuming configuration and setup
- Poor customer support
Pricing: Salesforce has a lot of flexibility in its pricing policy. A business may start from $25 a month for its out-of-the-box package and grow the opportunities to manage more leads at $300 a month. The Lightning Enterprise package will give you maximum support in running a wholesale business more socially and engagingly.
Bottomline: Salesforce doesn’t offer a free version. Plus, if you need help customizing the CRM and installing additional functionality from other Salesforce products, your price will dramatically increase. This all-inclusive solution will best suit larger or scaling businesses with lots of customization or integration needs. Smaller companies or those without a team to handle the customization capabilities or modification requests will likely need a cheaper and simpler CRM product. This out-of-the-box solution fits only some larger businesses.
Pipedrive
With Pipedrive's tools, you can automatically track and organize calls and emails and synchronize schedules across devices. The tool can improve efficiency through various means and integrations. Pipedrive is a deal-driven CRM solution that provides the ability to assist with marketing and the entire sales process.
Among the most attractive capabilities to small and midsized businesses (SMBs) is Pipedrive's ability to visualize the sales process from start to finish. It is a sales-driven solution that is quite simple to use and set up.
Pipedrive provides 1,000 names on an email limit but lacks robust marketing automation features compared to some other CRMs. However, it is a fine choice, which can also expand its offerings to accommodate large companies.
Although the software is simple, Pipedrive CRM has many support options like in-depth demo videos and toll-free calls in the US, UK, and Canada. They are also responsive via social media within 12 hours and 24/7 via live chat and email support.
Unveiling the Pipedrive solution's pros and cons:
Pros
- Affordable pricing plans
- Effective sales pipeline management
- AI sales assistant available in all plans
- Fully customizable API
Cons
- No free plan
- Phone support included in the highest tariff plan
- Limited custom fields and reports in most plans
Pricing: Pipedrive CRM offers three plans:
- The Essential tier costs $12.50 per user per month billed annually (or $15 month-to-month).
- The Advanced tier ($24.90 per user per month, or $29 month-to-month) will include two-way full email sync and increase storage to 5GB per user.
- The Enterprise tier ($49.90 per user per month, or $59 month-to-month) includes high-end features like a dedicated account manager, full phone support, and more.
Bottomline: Pipedrive CRM has a reasonable price for featured CRM services. Simple UI and quick and easy deployment make it a preferable solution for time- and personnel-strapped SMBs.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is one of the newest platforms on the list of the best CRMs for Shopify. It was founded in 2019 but earned its place in the league of the most effective marketing tools and CRM automation solutions.
In SendinBlue packs, you will find all the essential tools for automated email marketing campaigns, transactional emails, SMS marketing campaigns, Facebook ads, landing page optimizations, and on-site chat campaigns.
SendinBlue has the resources to process over 100 million emails daily, letting more than 80,000 users engage their leads through cleverly-triggered campaigns that ride on the leads’ shopping activities, web behaviors, email engagement, and contact data. Via SendinBlue’s flexible workflow editor, the platform offers advanced automation sequencing to proceed with a workflow that not only awards scores but also adapts to your contacts’ needs and tracks them through the sales funnel.
Additionally, you can use the Sendinblue transactional email campaign to drive additional engagement and trigger repeat purchases.
You can also launch an optimal message campaign through SendinBlue’s “Send Time” optimization based on the performances of previous campaigns.
Let's line up the pros and cons of the SendinBlue platform:
Pros:
- Affordable pricing: while popular marketing platforms offer prices that start at $40 for the basic plans, Sendinblue’s Lite plan starts at only $25 and includes 100,000 emails, A/B testing, and advanced statistics.
- All-in-one marketing software: you don’t have to buy separate products for different marketing strategies: an email marketing tool, CRM software, etc.
- A robust email marketing service allows creation of beautiful and practical emails.
Cons:
- Lack of some features offered by full-blown CRM systems likequote management, meeting scheduling, and other features you would expect from dedicated CRM software.
- There are no design services for custom-made solutions. The platform offers templates for your campaigns but does not offer any design services if you want to create something.
Pricing: You’ll find six reasonable price options, with the cheapest being a free plan that offers a number of decent features. Then for additional A/B testing capabilities, advanced statistics, and 350,000 email sends per month, you could purchase the following package for $173 a month.
Bottomline: SendinBlue is ideal for small businesses working hard to expand their contact base. At the same time, its omnichannel campaigns that combine email with SMS, on-site chat, Facebook ads, retargeting, and landing pages will nurture the resultant leads even for a mature company.
Metrilo
Metrilo is a CRM and email marketing platform. By quick integration into the Shopify store, it can sync with your historical data and display all your customers and orders in the system. The CRM system comprises comprehensive data on customers and website visitors, covering their on-site activity, revenue, orders, sessions, contact details, tagging, filtering, segmentation, and more.
In addition, it provides rich behavior-tracking functionality that enables you to categorize your customers using over 30 pre-configured filters. With access to all this data, it's effortless to pinpoint various customer types, such as high spenders, loyal customers, inactive ones, bargain hunters, and many others.
Metrilo leverages this information to help you keep your existing customers engaged and loyal, boosting your bottom line. Its Retention Analysis feature provides insights into the most effective channels, campaigns, and periods for attracting loyal customers. The built-in email and automation tools also enable you to contact your customers directly.
Let’s go over the pros and cons of the Metrilo CRM:
Pros:
- Comprehensive customer data. Metrilo CRM provides extensive information about customers and website visitors, including their behavior, revenue, orders, contact information, and more.
- Practical retention analysis. The Retention Analysis feature helps businesses identify the most effective channels, campaigns, and periods for retaining loyal customers.
- Segmentation and filtering. Metrilo's segmentation and filtering capabilities enable businesses to categorize and target customers precisely.
- Built-in email and automation. The CRM includes built-in email and automation tools, making communicating with customers and streamlining marketing efforts easy.
- User-friendly interface. The CRM has an intuitive interface that is easy to navigate and use, even for beginners.
Cons:
- Limited integrations. Metrilo CRM integrates with a limited number of third-party apps and services, which may be a drawback for businesses that rely on various tools.
- Pricing. The CRM’s pricing may be relatively high for small businesses or startups on a tight budget.
- Limited reporting. Some users have noted that the CRM's reporting capabilities could be more robust and offer more customized options.
- Limited customization. While Metrilo's segmentation and filtering features are powerful, some users have noted limitations to how much customization is possible.
Pricing: Metrilo offers three different plans, each designed to meet the varying needs of different types of businesses:
- Essential Plan: This plan costs $119 per month and is ideal for beginners. It provides analytics capabilities to help businesses track their website traffic and customer behavior.
- Pro Plan: This plan costs $199 per month and includes a customer database and retention analysis tools. It is ideal for businesses that are looking to grow and retain their customer base.
- Premium Plan: This plan starts at $299 per month and is the most advanced option. It includes all the features of the Essential and Pro plans, as well as additional functionality such as marketing automation, custom reports, and more. This plan is ideal for businesses that want to streamline their operations and use one tool to manage most aspects of their business.
Metrilo offers a free trial period to allow businesses to test out the platform before committing to a paid plan. Additionally, annual billing can save businesses the equivalent of two months' worth of fees. Overall, Metrilo's pricing structure is designed to scale with the needs of growing businesses.
Bottomline: Metrilo CRM is a good choice as it is a powerful tool for businesses looking to improve their customer engagement and drive revenue growth through targeted marketing campaigns, customer insights, and personalized experiences.
AgileCRM
AgileCRM is a highly regarded alternative to other solutions, quietly establishing itself as a top contender in the CRM space. Its competitive pricing makes it an excellent option for beginners, offering a comprehensive range of tools available on other CRMs at a fraction of the cost.
For just $9 a month, AgileCRM allows you to track sales, manage contacts, and leverage a sophisticated marketing automation platform. To integrate this one of the best CRM with Shopify, you'll need to upgrade to the Enterprise package, which costs $48 monthly.
One of AgileCRM's standout features is its help desk option, available on the Regular package for $30 monthly. Exceptional customer support can take your business to the next level, and Agile's ticketing tool enables you to identify critical issues within your team and reduce turnover. Additionally, you can group topics to pinpoint any recurring problems.
Analyzing the Agile CRM's strengths and weaknesses:
Pros:
- Comprehensive feature set offers a complete toolbox for managing the customer lifecycle from a single platform, including contact management, deal tracking, marketing automation, helpdesk, and custom development services.
- Friendly user interface makes it easy for users to get started with the platform without requiring extensive training.
- Affordable pricing plans for businesses of all sizes, including a free plan for up to 10 users.
- Integration with third-party applications like Zapie and Gmail, allowing users to streamline their workflows and automate their processes.
- Customization allows users to tailor their workflows, reports, and dashboards to fit their business needs.
Cons:
- Limited customer support, which can be frustrating for users needing quick platform assistance.
- Learning curve. Although AgileCRM is relatively easy to use, there is still a learning curve for new users unfamiliar with CRM software.
- Limited third-party integrations compared to other CRM software.
- No mobile application which can disadvantage users who need to access the platform on the go.
- No social media integration with platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which can be a disadvantage for businesses that rely heavily on social media marketing.
Pricing: AgileCRM provides various pricing plans catering to different user needs. The plans are:
- Starter Plan costs $8.99/user/month (billed annually) or $14.99/user/month (billed monthly). It offers basic CRM features such as contact management, deal tracking, email tracking, and appointment scheduling.
- Regular Plan is $29.99/user/month (billed annually) or $39.99/user/month (billed monthly). It includes all features of the Starter Plan and adds marketing automation and helpdesk features.
- Enterprise Plan is $47.99/user/month (billed annually) or $63.99/user/month (billed monthly). It includes all features of the Regular Plan and adds advanced integrations, custom reporting, and custom development services.
AgileCRM also has a free plan for up to 10 users with limited features.
Bottomline: AgileCRM is a comprehensive CRM platform with various features suitable for businesses of all sizes. Its affordable pricing plans, customization options, and integration with third-party applications make it an excellent choice for companies looking to streamline their customer management processes.
Insightly
Insightly is a customer relationship management (CRM) system for small to midsize businesses (SMBs). The software has an easy-to-use interface, and inputting data into the system is straightforward. Although Insightly is more expensive than Zoho CRM, it's still a great option for SMBs thanks to its user-friendly features.
Insightly provides a customizable landing page that allows you to configure essential tasks, awesome emails, or reporting dashboards. You can modify or move objects on the dashboard on the go without the need to access a separate designer. The platform offers four default dashboards, and you can create new ones from scratch, distribute them to others associated with your account, and easily find and use all these options.
Assessing Insightly's advantages and disadvantages:
Pros:
- A user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to adapt to the system.
- Relationship linking tool enables users to identify how their contacts are connected, allowing them to expand their networks. Mobile app is a standout feature, offering an excellent user experience that is ideal for remote teams and sales representatives.
- Robust analytics and reporting features that allow users to track the metrics and data that matter most to their business.
Cons:
- Lack of customer support features.
Pricing: Insightly CRM has four pricing plans available for different types of users:
- Free plan: This plan is suitable for small businesses that are just starting and have limited contacts or customers. It includes basic features like contact management, task management, and calendar integration.
- Plus plan: This plan costs $29 per user per month when billed annually and includes more advanced features such as custom fields, email tracking, and custom branding.
- Professional plan: This plan costs $49 per user per month when billed annually and includes features like lead routing, workflow automation, and custom reports.
- Enterprise plan: This plan costs $99 per user per month when billed annually and includes all of the features of the Professional plan, along with additional features like custom user permissions, advanced project management, and dedicated customer support.
Insightly also provides a 14-day free trial of its paid plans to allow users to test the features before committing to a paid plan.
Bottomline: Overall, it has an easy-to-use interface and offers customizable dashboards. The platform provides a user-friendly experience for inputting and managing data. However, it may not be as feature-rich as some of its competitors and is relatively more expensive.
Keap
Keap is an all-in-one CRM platform with rich sales and marketing automation features. The platform is designed for businesses to grow, assuming that users may not be experts in sales pipelines or CRMs. Keap provides pre-built sales pipeline templates, allowing users to automate emails, notifications, and tasks through automatic triggers as they move deals from one stage to another. Keap also provides analytics and reports for contact list growth, email marketing performance, and revenue trends over time to help business owners measure success effectively.
By storing all customer contact information and activity in one place, Keap allows users to review all interactions with a contact quickly. The data can be organized by category or chronologically, providing context at any moment. The contact dashboard enables users to perform tasks such as calling, texting, emailing, booking an appointment, processing a purchase, adding an invoice, and much more, with a single click. Keap also allows users to segment their contact list by groups to trigger automated actions based on a group member's activity.
Examining the advantages and disadvantages of the Keap solution:
Pros:
- A user-friendly platform that combines both sales and marketing automation.
- Great customer support. All Keap plans come with access to a customer success manager, US-based phone support, and 24/7 chat support directly from the Keap app.
- Automatic lead collection and scoring for a more streamlined sales process.
Cons:
- A monthly fee for some software integrations. High migration price. The free data migration process is limited to 10 items, one landing page, and contacts only.
- Increasing monthly base price as the contact list grows.
Pricing: Keap's pricing is based on contacts, with two core plans: Pro and Max, starting at $129 and $199 per month, respectively (when billed annually). The Pro plan includes two user seats and 1,500 contacts, while the Max plan includes three user seats and 2,500 contacts. It's recommended to take advantage of Keap's 14-day free trial before purchasing to determine if the platform meets your business needs.
Bottomline: Compared to other pricing structures, Keap's unique contact-based pricing may be a drawback for businesses with large contact lists. However, the platform offers higher monthly base plans that can accommodate more than 25,000 contacts.
FreshsalesCRM
Freshsales is a cloud-based CRM software designed for sales teams as part of the Freshworks suite of tools that integrate seamlessly. It offers a highly functional free plan and affordable paid plans, making it an excellent option for small to mid-sized businesses. Freshsales stands out from its competitors with its AI-powered contact and deal scoring features, customization options, and built-in phone features.
Reviewing the main benefits and drawbacks of the FreshsalesCRM:
Pros:
- A functional forever-free plan
- Affordable paid plans with contact leads via chat, email, and phone
- Mobile app available for all plans
- AI-powered lead scoring included in all paid plans
- Automation available even on the low-priced plan
- AI-powered sales insights on high-tier plans
- Customization of dashboards and reports
Cons:
- Limited integrations
- Customer support only available on weekdays
- Few reporting options in the free plan
Pricing: Freshsales offers a rare forever-free plan with no limit on the number of users. It includes many premium features, such as customizable contact life cycle stages and communication via phone, email, or chat from the web or mobile app. All plans provide email and phone support 24/5. The entry-level paid plan, Growth, costs $15 per user per month if billed annually and features AI-powered contact scoring to determine the best time to contact leads. It also includes workflow automation, customizable dashboards, and custom reports.
Bottomline: Freshsales is a budget-friendly and user-friendly CRM tool suitable for small startups. Its free plan serves as a great entry-level tool, and paid plans offer more features as businesses grow. However, it's designed solely for sales teams and lacks cross-team collaboration features. To address this, businesses may need to integrate with other Freshworks products or opt for a more comprehensive CRM solution.
Which CRM solution will be the best for your business?
The right choice of CRM software allows a company to achieve competitive advantages like lowering production costs, boosting sales revenue, and increasing market share. It’s important not to slow down the working process with unnecessary and disjointed tools that can lead to discrepancies or inaccuracies and poorer business outcomes.
All the solutions mentioned above are popular customer relationship management (CRM) software options. Each of these best CRM Shopify software options has its own unique strengths and features, and the best choice for your business will depend on your specific needs and goals.
DigitalSuits experts will analyze your business needs and provide practical e-commerce solutions to bring all your tools into a single interface. With the best CRM for Shopify, your team can work more efficiently with instant performance insights, lower business expenses, and a greater experience for your customers.
Drop us a line and we will help you deal with complex problems and build software products that meet unique clients' needs.
Frequently asked questions
Why you should consider CRM for Shopify?
With the best CRM works with Shopify, your business will benefit from customer segmentation, personalized outreach, centralized data about the leads, and more. Additionally, you will forecast sales trends, scale internal and external communication, automate your daily tasks and data entry, and discover actionable trends in customer data. With all these advantages, CRMs offer better lead and customer experiences, ultimately boosting lead conversion rates and customer lifetime values.
Do you need any investments to integrate CRM with Shopify?
You don’t need to make a significant investment. Many cloud CRM solutions offer free plans; even novices can employ them. Some CRM platforms are ready-set-go, meaning you only pay to use the software as a service (SaaS) and can stop using it anytime.
What are some baseline features of CRM for Shopify?
If you want to streamline sales processes and save time, find out a checklist of typical requirements:
- Contact management
- Sales pipeline
- Lead management
- Marketing activities
- Automated communication
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