For creative and marketing agencies, having a reliable CRM system is akin to having a trusted ally by your side and having an ideal weapon in hand.
A CRM system can help agencies track their contacts and leads, fostering conversions, manage their deals, and provide better support for all the agency’s clients.
Yet, with so many different CRM systems available in the market, choosing the right one for your agency can be easier said than done.
This is why in this article, we will explore the seven best CRM solutions available, especially in the context of creative an
d marketing agencies’ needs.
Without further ado, let’s dive in and discover these 7 best CRM solutions, starting from number one.
Top 7 CRM Software for Creative and Marketing Agencies
1. Function Point
Function Point is a leading cloud-based CRM solution designed specifically for marketing and creative agencies’ unique needs.
Overview
In recent years, It has gained popularity and trust within the CRM industry due to its combination of a robust suite of features and its ease of use, enabling agencies to streamline their operations and improve client relationships.
Function Point is also highly customizable and can be customized to meet the specific needs of your agency, including branding needs.
Features
Client Management Features
- Customer Briefs
- Create Estimates and Proposals
- Sales Pipeline and Opportunity Tracking
- Email Integration (Outlook, Gmail)
- Workback Schedule Estimates
- Change Order and Revision Tracking
- Client Job Request Portal
Project Management Features
- Creative Briefs
- Campaign and Project Hierarchy
- Schedule Templates
- Gantt Chart
- Task Dependencies
- Kanban Board View
- File Sharing
- Task and Project Collaboration
- Email Alerts and Notifications
Resource & Time Management Features
- Resource Forecast by Role and Staff
- Forecast Tentative Projects
- PTO and Vacation Tracking
- Customizable Work Calendar
- Time Tracking
- Track Billable vs. Non-billable
- Allocate to Job/Task
- Mobile App
Financial Management Features
- Expense Tracking
- Batch Invoicing
- Quickbooks Online and Desktop Integration*
- Blended vs. Role vs. Staff Rates
- Expense Markup
- Campaign and Project Budgeting
- Retainer Management
- Task Budgeting
Business Intelligence Features
- Profitability by Client, Project, and Services
- Staff Billable (Efficiency) vs. Utilization
- Custom Saved Reports
- Data Visualization
- Report Sharing
- Margin Projection
Pros and Cons of Function Point
Pros:
- Ease of use: Function Point is easy to set up and use with its intuitive interface and user-friendly design
- Industry-specific focus: Function Point is developed exclusively for creative and marketing agencies, offering unique and powerful features tailored to agencies’ needs and workflows
- Customizable: Function Point is highly customizable. You can add branding details, custom fields, custom workflows, etc., to meet the specific needs of your agency
- Comprehensive features: Covering a wide range of features from lead management to project management to financial management tools
- Scalability: Highly scalable to meet your needs as a growing agency
- Excellent customer support: Excellent 24/7 customer support, including phone support and online knowledge base/resources
Cons:
- Cost: While Function Point offers fairly competitive prices, it is not the most affordable CRM solution available. Smaller agencies with limited budget may find Function Point expensive.
- Learning curve: Function Point is mostly ease to use, but may have a learning curve for users who want to use its more advanced features. Training and onboarding may be necessary to make the most of Function Point.
Pricing and Subscription Options
FunctionPoint offers three different plans based on the number of users. The more users you have, the lower the price per user:
- Boutique: for 5-9 users, $49/user monthly on annual billing
- Studio: for 10-49 users, $33/user monthly on annual billing
- Agency: for more than 50 users, contact for price
With these options, Function Point ensures simple, transparent, and cost-effective pricing, and all of these plans offer the same set of features (as discussed above). Additional fees apply for optional add-on features.
Our Verdict
Function Point offers numerous advantages and is an excellent CRM solution for creative and marketing agencies. It has numerous agency-specific features while offering robust overall functionality. Despite its extensive features, Function Point is intuitive and easy to use, although there may be a learning curve for its more advanced features.
Based on our assessment while considering various factors, Function Point is our top choice as the best CRM software for marketing and creative agencies.
2. Salesforce
Overview
Salesforce is one of the market leaders in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) landscape, known for its robust CRM solution that offers versatile features widely used across various industries.
As a global powerhouse, Salesforce CRM also offers a wide range of integrations with other popular solutions and tools.
Features
- Lead management: Salesforce offers a wide range of features designed to help businesses effortlessly track and manage their sales opportunities.
- Marketing automation: Salesforce also offers various automation tools to help make it easier for businesses to market their products/services and convert leads into clients. Salesforce’s marketing automation features include automated email campaigns, social media automation, and others.
- Project management: Salesforce offers rich project management features, such as time tracking, scheduling, task management, and project budgeting, to help agencies manage their projects from A to Z.
- Analytics and reporting: Robust analytics and reporting tools, enabling creative and marketing agencies to gain insights into their ROI, project performance, and identify areas for improvement.
- Customer support: Salesforce offers various features designed to help agencies improve their customer service, such as customer case management, self-service portal, knowledge base management, and others.
Pros and Cons of Salesforce
Pros:
- Versatility: Salesforce is a highly versatile and adaptable tool, making it suitable for a wide range of businesses across different industries, ideal for marketing and creative agencies who handle clients from different industries.
- Improved visibility: Salesforce provides a single, centralized view for all projects, contacts, leads, and customers, providing improved visibility. In turn, this helps marketing and creative agencies achieve better productivity and make better day-to-day decisions.
- Collaboration tools: Salesforce offers a variety of powerful features that can help agencies collaborate more effectively—both internally and with clients—such as task delegation, fast file sharing, and real-time chat.
- Support and community: As a global market leader, Salesforce’s ecosystem offers a great support system along with a vast community of active users. You can find answers to most issues related to Salesforce quickly and effectively.
Cons:
- Complexity: Salesforce’s options and robust set of features may be overwhelming for newer and smaller agencies and those without CRM experience.
- Limited customization: Salesforce CRM offers fairly limited customization options compared to other CRM options in this list.
- Cost: Salesforce’s advanced and more useful features are hidden behind a paywall, and its most premium plan is rather expensive (starting from $1,250/month). This can be an issue for smaller agencies with a tighter budget.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Salesforce offers a wide variety of pricing plans, but the most affordable plans designed for small businesses are as follows:
- Starter: $25/user/month, simple CRM with marketing, sales and service features, designed for small teams
- Sales Professional: $80/user/month, everything in the Starter plan and more comprehensive sales features for any size team
- Service Professional: $80/user/month, everything in the Starter plan and more comprehensive service features for any size team
- Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: starting from $1,250 per month, including marketing automation tools for any size team for up to 10,000 contacts
You can get a fully customized plan while including a variety of add-on products and services (Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, etc.) from Salesforce to cater to your unique needs and budget.
Our Verdict
Salesforce is a powerful, adaptable, and scalable CRM, ideal for marketing and creative agencies looking for a feature-rich CRM option. However, its high cost and steep learning curve may be dealbreakers for some agencies.
Still, if you do have the budget and have experience in using CRM solutions, Salesforce is a powerful solution that is definitely worth your consideration.
3. HubSpot CRM Suite
Overview
HubSpot is one of the most well-known brands in the di marketing and CRM landscapes. Its CRM solution is widely popular across different industries, especially due to its comprehensive but easy-to-use functionalities.
HubSpot CRM is also highly versatile, allowing creative and marketing agencies to easily adapt to different clients’ needs and streamline their marketing efforts.
Features
- Alignment of marketing, sales, and customer service: HubSpot offers a plethora of features designed to help agencies align their marketing, sales, and customer service teams in a single CRM platform. This facilitates agencies to provide a more centralized and personalized client experience.
- Automation: A variety of automation tools to help agencies automate their tasks. This can free up time for your personnel so they can focus more on closing deals and meeting the client’s expectations.
- Advanced reporting and analytics: HubSpot provides agencies with in-depth reporting and analytics tools. Agencies can gain valuable insights to identify areas for improvement and make better business decisions.
- User-friendly interface: HubSpot CRM Suite is well known for its easy to use interface and easy set up. This makes the solution a good option for any agencies, regardless of their technical expertise.
Pros and Cons of HubSpot CRM Suite
Pros:
- Ease of use: HubSpot, with its intuitive interface and easy setup, is accessible to all team members, including those without prior CRM experience.
- Scalability: HubSpot CRM suite is highly scalable, suitable for agencies of all sizes and can follow them as they grow as an agency.
- HubSpot integration: If you are already using HubSpot’s solutions (i.e., HubSpot Marketing Hub, Sales Hub,) then HubSpot CRM can seamlessly integrate with these solutions.
- All-in-one solution: HubSpot CRM offers a centralized and comprehensive platform where you cna manage client relationships, marketing, and sales in one place. This eliminates the need of investing in multiple tools.
Cons
- Limited customization: While HubSpot does offer some customization options, they are fairly limited compared to other CRM systems in this list. This may limit the solution’s adaptability.
- Cost: HubSpot does offer a free-forever and affordable paid plans, but access to advanced features requires upgrading to the more expensive plans. This may make HubSpot not suitable for smaller creative and marketing agencies.
- Dependency to HubSpot ecosystem: To maximize the benefit, you may need to invest in additional HubSpot products (i.e., Marketing Hub, Service Hub,) which can increase the coot and limit your flexibility in choosing other solutions.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Hubspot offers a free-forever CRM plan with basic features and functionalities. For paid plans, HubSpot offers three main options:
- Starter: Starts at $20/month with essential marketing, sales, service, CMS, and operations features:
- Marketing Hub Starter with up to 1,000 marketing contacts
- Sales Hub Starter with up to 2 paid users
- Service Hub Starter, up to 2 paid users
- CMS Hub Starter
- Operations Hub Starter
- Commerce Hub
- Professional: Starts at $1,200/month with more comprehensive marketing, sales, service, CMS, and operations features. Includes everything offered in the Starter Plan, and:
- Marketing Hub Professional with up to 2,000 marketing contacts
- Sales Hub Professional with up to 5 paid users
- Service Hub Professional, up to 5 paid users
- CMS Hub Professional
- Operations Hub Professinonal
- Commerce Hub
- Enterprise: HubSpot’s more premium plan starts at $5,000/month. Offering advanced marketing, sales, service, CMS, and operations features:
- Marketing Hub Enterprise with up to 10,000 marketing contacts
- Sales Hub Enterprise with up to 10 paid users
- Service Hub Enterprise, up to 10 paid users
- CMS Hub Enterprise
- Operations Hub Enterprise
- Commerce Hub
Of course, HubSpot also offers custom-tailored plans to cater to your unique needs.
Our Verdict
Overall, HubSpot CRM uiste is a comprehensive and powerful platform, with some unique benefits for creative and marketing agencies. However, it can be an expensive platform to use, although it does offer a free-forever option due to its reliance to HubSpot’s ecosystem.
Nevertheless, the platform’s scalability and advanced features may make it a compelling choice for many creative and marketing agencies.
4. Zoho CRM
Overview
Zoho CRM is a versatile and comprehensive CRM system, offering a wide range of features designed to streamline agency workflows, faciliteate better customer relationships, and improve overall agency performance.
Despite its renowned fame, Zoho CRM is also a relatively affordable platform that is also easy to set up and use.
Features
- Canvas: Zoho CRM offers “Canvas”, its no-code design tool, allowing agencies to create custom charts, layouts, and dashboards for their CRM data. This can help agencies to tailor Zoho CRM to their unique needs.
- Process Management: Zoho offers a powerful process management feature, allowing agencies to automate their processes. This can offers a powerful time-saving benefit, helping agencies improve their efficiency.
- Journey orchestration: Zoho has a feature called “journey orchestration,” allowing agencies to create personalized customer journeys. This can help agencies improve their client engagement.
- Omnichannel support: Zoho provides omnichannel support, allowing agencies to interact with their clients through a variety of channels (phone, email, social media, chat, etc.)
Pros and Cons of using Zoho CRM
Pros:
- Affordability: Zoho CRM is one of the most affordable CRM systems available in the market today, making it a good choice for agencies with limited budgets.
- Ease of use: Zoho CRM is easy to setup and use despite its richness in features.
- Versatile features: A wide range of features including lead management, contact management, customer support, and more. This makes Zoho CRM a great option for agencies looking for a comprehensive CRM system.
- AI-powered insights: Zoho CRM offers an AI-powered assistant that can help agencies predict client behaviors and make better data-driven decision.
- Customization and integration: Zoho offers extensive integration capabilities and customization options, so you can tailor Zoho CRM to meet your unique needs.
Cons:
- Learning curve: While Zoho CRM is generally easy to use, there may be a learning curve when using the platform, especially when using its more advanced features and customization options.
- Complex customizations: While Zoho offers great customization, extensive customization may be complex and time-consuming, and may require technical expertise.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Zoho offers five pricing options, including a free-forever option. Free trial is available for all paid plans:
- Free: for up to three users with essential features:
- Leads, contacts, accounts
- Tasks, events, call logs, and notes
- Opportunities
- Advanced filters
- Page customization
- Standard: $14/month/user, includes everything in the Free plan and:
- Sales forecasting
- Scoring rules
- Charts and KPIs
- Document library
- Roles and profiles
- Professional: $23/month/user, includes everything in the Standard plan and:
- Email integration
- Social CRM
- Sales signals
- Macros
- Blueprint – process management
- Enterprise: $40/month/user, includes everything in the Professional edition and:
- Zia Voice (Conversational AI)
- Multi-user portals
- Target meters, anomaly detectors, predictive AI
- Custom modules and buttons
- Mobile SDK and app distribution
- Ultimate: $52/month/user, includes everything in Enterprise edition and:
- Multiple currencies
- Multiple scoring with 5 different rules/layout
- Advanced analytics, Zia notifications, added reports, cohort and quadrant analytics, etc.
- More AI features: Additional Zia records for data enrichment, Zia Vision, Zia Scores
Our Verdict
Zoho CRM is an affordable CRM option, great for agencies looking for a cost-effective solution for their CRM needs.
Despite its low price tag, Zoho does offer a decent set of features with great customization options and in-depth reporting/analytics capabilities. Yet, keep in mind that there may be a learning curve in using the solution, especially if you don’t have any prior CRM experience.
5. Insightly
Overview
Insightly is another reputable CRM system known for its versatility and comprehensive approach to agency management: client relationship, contact management, and project management, among others.
This makes Insightly an ideal choice for creative and marketing agencies looking to streamline their client interactions and operations.
Features
- Custom fields and objects: Insightly offers the ability to create custom fields and objects on the CRM dashboard to meet the specific agency’s needs. This makes Insightly a great option for agencies that have unique CRM requirements.
- Process automation: Insightly offers robust automation tools to help agencies automate their processes. This can help agencies save more time and become more efficient.
- Customizable reports: Advanced and customizable reporting and data visualization tools. Agencies can easily generate custom reports to analyze their projects and keep track of client performance.
- Integration: Insightly offers integration with a wide range of popular third-party applications, including marketing tools, accounting software, project management tools, and others.
Pros and Cons of Using Insightly
Pros:
- Affordability: With its paid plans starting at just $25/month, Insightly is a relatively affordable CRM system. This makes it a great choice for agencies who are looking for a cost-effective CRM solution or those with limited budgets.
- Relationship mapping: Insightly has a robust relationship mapping tool that can help agencies visualize and understand relationships between contacts and organizations, facilitating better client relationship management.
- Robust features: Insightly offers a rich set of features, including contact management, lead management, deal management, customer support tools, and more. This makes Insightly an ideal choice for agencies looking for a comprehensive CRM system.
Cons:
- Limited customization: Compared to other CRM systems, including those in this list, Insightly is not as customizable. This can be a dealbreaker for marketing and creative agencies with specific needs.
- Lack of integration: While Insightly does offer integration with some popular tools, it doesn’t integrate with as many third-party solutions as some other CRM systems in this list. This can be a drawback if your marketing or creative agency is already using certain third-party tools or software.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Insightly offers three different pricing plans, free trial available:
- Plus: $29/user/month
- Essential CRM features
- 100,000 records limit
- 10 GB file storage
- 25,000 records per import
- 2,500 mass emails per day
- Professional: $49/user/month
- Everything in the Plus plan
- More advanced CRM features
- 250,000 records limit
- 100GB file storage
- 50,000 records per import
- 5,000 emails per day
- Enterprise: starts from $99/user per month
- Everything in the Professional plan
- Ultimate CRM features
- Unlimited records limit
- Unlimited file storage
- 50,000 records per import
- 10,000 emails per day
Our Verdict
Insightly is a great CRM system for creative and marketing agencies: it’s affordable, easy to use, and offers a robust set of features. However, it is fairly limited when it comes to customization and third-party integration, which may be a concern for some agencies with specific needs.
6. Creatio
Overview
Creatio is a dynamic CRM System known for its versatile, adaptable, and intuitive design.
For creative and marketing agencies, Creatio offers an agile CRM platform that allows them to simplify client management and streamline their day-to-day agency operations.
Features
- No-code approach: Creatio is designed as a totally no-code platform. This means agencies can create and customize their workflows, automations, and apps without writing any code.
- Business process management: Creatio includes a powerful business process management (BPM) engine that allows agencies to automate their processes, save time, and improve their efficiency.
- Predictive analytics: Creatio includes predictive analytics tools, offering insights into client preferences and behaviors. This can help agencies in nurturing ther leads and getting more clients.
- Integration: Creatio offers seamless integration with popular third-party solutions, so agencies can centralize their data and create a cohesive tech ecosystem.
Pros and Cons of Creatio
Pros
- Comprehensive features: Creatio offers a wide range of useful features for creative and marketing agencies, facilitating more efficient day-to-day agency operations and allowing them to manage their customer relationships more effectively.
- No-code platform: Creatio’s no-code approach makes it ideal for creative and marketing agencies looking for easy-to-use CRM systems.
- Flexibility: Creatio is a highly flexible platform, and agencies can easily customize them to meet their unique needs.
- Scalability: Creatio is highly scalable. It can accommodate agencies of different sizes and can follow their growth.
Cons:
- Cost: Creatio’s overall pricing may be relatively high for agencies with limited budgets, due to fees for additional features and other costs.
- Learning curve: Creatio can be complex to use with steep learning curve, which can be an issue for users without any experience with CRM.
- Data migration challenges: Migrating data from other solutions to Creatio and vice versa may be complex, and may require additional technical support.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Creatio offers three different pricing plan options:
- Growth: starts from $25/user/month
- Starting with 5 users
- Unlimited number of applications
- Unlimited number of workflows
- 50,000 executed process elements per month
- 1GB database storage per user
- 1GB attachment space per user
- Enterprise: starts from $55/user/month
- Custom branding for UI
- Starting with 5 users
- Unlimited number of applications
- Unlimited number of workflows
- Unlimitedexecuted process elements per month
- 2GB database storage per user
- 2GB attachment space per user
- Unlimited: starts $85/user/month
- Custom branding for UI
- Starting with 5 users
- Unlimited number of applications
- Unlimited number of workflows
- Unlimitedexecuted process elements per month
- Unlimited database storage per user
- Unlimited attachment space per user
These prices don’t include optional sales, marketing, and service features
Our Verdict
Creatio is a highly versatile CRM system, ideal for creative/marketing agencies of different types and sizes. With its no-code approach, Creatio is very easy to set up and use, and is also highly customizable. Yet, keep in mind of Creatio’s learning curve and cost considerations when considering using it for your marketing or creative agency.
7. Monday.com Sales CRM
Overview
Monday.com is more popular as a cloud-based work management platform, helping temas of all sizes plan, keep track of, and execute their day-to-day operations. However, it also offers great CRM features designed to help you streamline client relationship management.
It is especially renowned for its dynamic and visually engaging interface that is both highly customizable and user-friendly.
Features
- Flexible customization: Monday.com is highly customiizale, allowing agencies to customize their CRM boards to meet their unique needs. You can easily create custom views, change the types of data displayed, and more.
- Visual data representation: Monday.com is a very visual platform, so avencies can visualize their CRM data in a variety of ways (Gantt charts, Kanban boards, etc.)
- Integration: As a “modern” solution, Monday.com integrates with a veariety of popular third-party applications and tools; from marketing platforms to other project management tools.
Pros and Cons of Monday.com
Pros:
- Versatility: Monday.com is a very versatile CRM platform. You can customize it to meet your creative or marketing agency’s specific needs easily.
- Visual approach: Monday.com visual approach can help marketing and creative agencies visualize their data to quickly identify patterns/trends and gain accurate insights.
- Ease of use: Monday.com has an intuitive, user-friendly interface despite its extensive features. This makes it a great option for agencies of all sizes even those with low to no technical expertise.
Cons:
- Limited reporting and analytics: While it does have basic analytics capabilities, Monday.com’s reporting and analytics are not as powerful as other CRM systems in this list.
- Cost: Monday.com’s advanced features are only available in the more expensive plans. This can be a dealbreaker for agencies with limited budgets.
Pricing and Subscription Options
Monday.com offers 4 different pricing options for its Sales CRM solution:
- Basic CRM:
- $10/seat /month
- Unlimited customizable pipelines
- Unlimited contacts
- Unlimited boards
- Templates for lead, contact & deal management
- iOS & Android apps
- Unlimited free viewers
- Create a dashboard based on 1 board
- Standard CRM:
- $14/seat/month
- Advanced account, contact, & deal management
- 2-way email integration with Gmail and Outlook
- AI email generator
- Activity management
- Quotes & invoices
- Merge duplicate data
- Custom CRM automation (250 actions per month)
- Custom CRM integrations (250 actions per month)
- Create a dashboard that combines 5 boards
- Pro CRM:
- $27/seat/month
- Sales forecasting
- Email templates with custom parameters
- Email tracking & automation
- Mass emails
- HTML editor for mass email
- Mass email tracking
- Google Calendar sync
- Sales analytics
- Customizable email signatures
- Custom CRM automation (25,000 actions per month)
- Custom CRM integrations (25,000 actions per month)
- Create a dashboard that combines 10 boards
- Enterprise CRM
- Custom pricing (contact for prices)
- Lead scoring
- Team goals
- Advanced analytics (dashboards up to 50 boards)
- Account management
- Documents for sales
- Enterprise-scale automations & integrations
- Enterprise-grade security & governance
- Multi-level permissions
- HIPAA Compliance
Our Verdict
Monday.com is an intuitive and versatile CRM system, ideal for creative and marketing agencies looking for a user-friendly and customizable solution for their CRM needs. However, it has fairly limited analytics capabilities, and the potential cost should be carefully considered before adoption.
Wrapping Up
We have reviewed 7 of the best CRM software for creative and marketing agencies, each with its unique features, benefits, and disadvantages.
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, having the right CRM is critical for any agency, and among these options, FunctionPoint stands out as a powerful, cost-effective, and versatile solution designed specifically for creative and marketing agencies.
Function Point’s comprehensive features, along with the fact that it is highly customizable, make it ideal for creative and marketing agencies of all sizes.
However, that’s not to say the other CRM systems we’ve covered above aren’t without their strengths. Each of them offers something unique to the table, which may meet your unique needs and preferences as an agency better. Thus, it’s important to first assess your objectives, needs, and priorities when choosing your ideal CRM solution.
