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Top 9 Contact Management Software [2024 Comparative Guide]

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with managing your growing list of contacts, clients, and collaborators? 

It might be time to upgrade from that old rolodex and cluttered spreadsheets to an efficient and organized digital solution – contact management software

Picture every valuable piece of information about your customers readily available at your fingertips, paving the way for efficiency and improved interactions!

In this blog post, I will list the top 9 contact management software solutions that are revolutionizing how businesses store, retrieve, and interact with customer data.
Software Best For Pricing
BIGContacts CRM & Email Marketing Automation Tool for SMBs & Startups Forever free plan for startups with all premium features. Paid starts at $5/user/month with a 15-day free trial.
Covve Personal CRM Free plan available with limited relationships, tags, etc. Paid options start at $9.99/month.
Pipedrive Pipeline Management Starts at $9.90/user/month.
Streak Gmail Users Free plan available with limited mail merge & CRM features. Paid options start at $15/user/month.
Capsule CRM Reducing Manual Busywork Free for 2 users & up to 250 contacts. Paid options start at $18/user/month.
Copper Google Workspace Synchronization Starts at $25/user/month.
Salesforce Large Enterprises With Complex Needs Starts at $25/user/month.
Close CRM Sales Teams Starts at $49/month for 1 user.
SugarCRM All-in-One CRM for Marketing, Sales & Customer Service Starts at $49/user/month.

List of the 9 Best Contact Management Software

Keeping in mind the relevance of these tools for different business sizes and to narrow down your search, I grouped the CRM software into three categories – CRM for small businesses & startups, SMBs, and enterprises.

Important selection factors included essential features, reputation, user and expert reviews, industry popularity, peer recommendations, cost-effectiveness, and the capacity for integration with existing systems. With these variables in mind, I carefully selected each software, ensuring a versatile mix to cater to different business needs.

Contact Management Software for Small Businesses & Startups

1. BIGContacts– Best Contact Management & Email Marketing Tool for SMBs & Startups

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As someone who once struggled with keeping contact data organized, I can confidently recommend BIGContacts for those searching for user-friendly and easy-to-use contact management software for small businesses.

Prioritizing efficiency, this tool allows me to stay connected with prospects across channels and manage relationships with existing customers effortlessly. The results are striking — automated follow-ups, email marketing, and drip campaigns significantly increased my conversions and customer retention rates.

Masterful in capturing leads, BIGContacts integrates smoothly with webforms and imports contacts easily from CVS files and spreadsheets.

The simple organization of contacts, tasks, and calendars within BIGContacts exceeded my expectations. The functionality of automated reminders, coupled with comprehensive activity tracking and calendar views, keeps me well-connected with my team’s tasks.

Modifying fields, processes, and workflows to mirror my business operations was effortless, and the 24/7 support further elevated its value. It’s not an overstatement to say that BIGContacts has truly revolutionized my contact management process, swiftly becoming an indispensable tool for my business.

What You’ll Like:

  • 360° view of contacts, including previous touches, notes, transactions, files, upcoming appointments, etc.
  • Static and dynamic contact lists improve customer segmentation and targeted interactions
  • Webform connection helps add leads and their associated information to the database automatically
  • In-depth reports help the effectiveness of your engagement with contacts and other relevant business metrics 
  • Automated drip email sequences and custom workflows help get things done at the right time

What You Won’t Like:

  • Identifying redundant contact records could be easier
  • While you can create email templates, navigating through these templates can be tricky

Pricing:

  • Forever free plan for startups with all premium features. Paid starts at $5/user/month with a 15-day free trial.

BIGContacts Plan Summary:

  BIG BIGGER BIGGEST ENTERPRISE
Contact Dashboard
Contact Capacity 1000 10,000 50,000 Unlimited
Custom Fields 6 20 50 Unlimited
Contact Tags
Webform Connections
Automated Tasks & Emails

G2 Rating: 4.5

2. Covve– Best for those looking for a Personal CRM

Covve CRM best for personal contact management

Image Source: Covve

Covve is a mobile application-based personal contact management software designed for individual users. Its value lies in providing concise, people-oriented solutions. With features that remind you when it’s time to reach out to contacts or give you alerts when you’re losing touch, it ensures effective networking. 

Another standout feature is Covve’s business card scanner, facilitating contactless, paperless networking. The tool also makes it easy to keep notes on contacts, so you can strengthen your business relationships. 

Plus, its analytics capabilities help maintain a healthy personal network. This personal CRM syncs with your native contacts, giving you an interlinked ecosystem for seamless management. 

I would suggest Covve as an ideal choice for those seeking a tool to maintain a simple contact database. Nonetheless, for teams with multiple users, Covve’s capabilities might feel somewhat limiting.

What You’ll Like:

  • Smart reminders ensure that you never lose touch with important contacts
  • Before reaching out, Covve provides you with curated news affecting your contacts, giving you valuable information to help break the ice and make deeper connections
  • You can track your performance and maintain a healthy network with Covve’s analytics
  • Seamless sync with your device’s native contacts, ensuring all your important contact details are up-to-date and easily accessible

What You Won’t Like:

  • Limited customization options are available for the home screen
  • Lacks any collaboration or team management features

Pricing:

  • Free plan available with limited relationships, tags, etc. Paid options start at $9.99/month.

Covve Plan Summary:

  Free Pro
Contact Management
Automatic Reminders 20 Unlimited
Contact Export
Daily Backups
Tags 20 Unlimited

G2 Rating: 4.7

3. Pipedrive- Best for Pipeline Management

Pipedrive CRM dashboard showing the prospect journey

Image Source: Pipedrive

As a former user of Pipedrive in my previous organization, I can attest to how beneficial it was for our sales team in terms of contact management.

We extensively used its visually striking pipeline management to associate specific deals with contacts and track their progress across stages of the sales process. This feature gave us an overview of where each contact stood in the pipeline.

We could also jot down notes, schedule proceedings, and set follow-up reminders straight from the tool. It was Pipedrive’s automation features that considerably reduced time spent on mundane tasks, ensuring that our method of managing contacts was both organized and efficient.

Beyond everything else, I like how effortlessly this contact tracking software merges with popular third-party applications, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Trello.

What You’ll Like:

  • Visual sales pipeline with a drag-and-drop UI to track and manage available opportunities
  • Improved team collaboration with easy file sharing and instant alerts
  • You can eliminate busy work and achieve more efficiency by automating repetitive tasks like data entry and follow-ups
  • Better targeting by segmenting and sort leads into distinct lists

What You Won’t Like:

  • Training resources may seem inadequate
  • Lacks advanced reporting capabilities

Pricing:

  • Starts at $9.90/user/month.

Pipedrive Plan Summary:

  Essential Advanced Professional Enterprise
Contact Management
Custom Fields
Duplicate Records Merge
Two-way Email Sync
Meeting Scheduling

G2 Rating: 4.2

Contact Management Software for Medium-Sized Businesses

4. Streak– Best for Companies Using Gmail Suite

Choose Streak for Email Automation

Image Source: Streak

Designed directly into the Gmail interface, Streak’s plug-and-play nature helps reduce the friction of adopting a CRM, making it an appealing option to Gmail-centric operations.

This tool provides a complete context of who you’re engaging with, including relevant contact information and previous exchanges, so you can deliver highly personalized solutions.

Key features of Streak include email tracking, mail merging, and the management of leads from within your Gmail inbox. And something that stood out for me, it offers automated data capture from emails and reminder systems for follow-ups – inclusive of G Suite integrations: Sheets, Chat, Drive, and more.

Streak allows you to customize processes for your team and has the simplicity of a spreadsheet for adding, editing, and collaborating. It also offers easy and efficient sorting, grouping, and filtering of data to identify bottlenecks swiftly.

What You’ll Like:

  • Features like view tracking, scheduled emails, and the use of pre-set email templates (snippets) 
  • iOS and Android apps help log updates and stay connected on the go
  • Offers shared access to pipelines, emails, notes, and call logs, providing crucial context alongside access to your mailbox
  • You can create personalized mass emails with details pulled directly from your pipelines to ensure a unique touch on every send-out

What You Won’t Like:

  • Customer service can be unsatisfactory
  • It is only suitable for teams looking for a contact management tool that works within Gmail

Pricing:

  • Free plan available with limited mail merge & CRM features. Paid options start at $15/user/month.

Streak Plan Summary:

  Free Solo Pro Pro+ Enterprise
Contact Management
Custom Fields
Contact Enrichment
Data Validation
Shared Contacts & Emails
Mobile Access

G2 Rating: 4.5

5. Capsule CRM– Best for Reducing Manual Busywork

Capsule CRM Dashboard showing contact information of each prospect

Image Source: Capsule CRM

If you’re a medium-sized business looking to reduce manual contact management work without sacrificing effectiveness, Capsule CRM can be an excellent choice. 

This contact management CRM is designed with usability and simplicity in mind, making it easy to manage contacts, leads, and sales pipelines. I could seamlessly import contacts, track their activity histories, link contacts to relevant opportunities, and effortlessly organize them with custom tags and filters. 

Sales pipeline visualization and tracking are also well-incorporated in Capsule CRM. I could create custom pipelines, with each stage possessing its own unique set of actions and required fields. 

Collaboration is effortless with Capsule CRM as it allows you to share contact information and task assignments with your team. By keeping everyone informed, you can ensure that customer interactions are coordinated, and no details are missed.

What You’ll Like:

  • Provides a complete overview of people, companies, and organizations you interact with, allowing easy tracking of communication and a historical context of relationships
  • Automatically adds social network profiles for contacts
  • You can create tasks for appointments, meeting, phone calls, and more, directly linked to contacts – ensuring seamless interaction planning
  • Integrates well with popular third-party applications like Google Workspace, Mailchimp, and Zapier

What You Won’t Like:

  • It has weak mass email support, which means it may not be suitable for businesses that rely on email marketing campaigns
  • Lacks some of the more advanced features, such as analytics and custom dashboards. 

Pricing:

  • Free for 2 users for up to 250 contacts. Paid options start at $18/user/month.

Capsule CRM Plan Summary:

  Free Starter Growth Advanced Ultimate
Contacts 250 30,000 60,000 120,000 240,000
Social Profile Enrichment
Custom Fields 25 50 150 300 Unlimited
Workflow Automation
Activity Reporting

G2 Rating: 4.5

6. Copper– Best for Google Workspace Synchronization

Copper CRM to be a brilliant contact manager software

Image Source: Copper Help Center

As a professional who has been part of a mid-sized business deeply ingrained in the Google Workspace ecosystem, I found Copper CRM to be a brilliant contact manager software.

You can readily access and sync contact records across Google apps, such as Gmail and Google Calendar. So, you can save time and prevent data discrepancies. 

There’s absolutely no need to jump between different applications!

Remarkably easy to use, Copper CRM has a ‘zero-input’ feature, which automatically populates contact data from emails. This feature reduced the amount of manual data entry our team had to do, thereby increasing time efficiency and reducing the chance of errors.

One of the standout features of Copper CRM was its lead management system. It was refreshing to see where in the pipeline each contact was, helping us make informed decisions about the next steps in the process.

Just as excellent are Copper CRM’s forecasting tools, allowing us to make accurate predictions regarding future sales based on real-time data from our contact interactions. 

What You’ll Like:

  • Contact records are enriched with information such as phone numbers, email addresses, and social media automatically
  • Live activity feeds within contact profiles help stay updated with interactions in real time
  • Mobile app helps stay connected with contacts even when you’re out of the office
  • You can add new contact records from Gmail or Google Calendar and receive alerts directly in your inbox

What You Won’t Like:

  • Functionality is restrictive for businesses not using the Google ecosystem
  • Creating workflow automation sequences is time-consuming and challenging

Pricing: 

  • Starts at $25/user/month.

Copper CRM Plan Summary:

  Basic Professional Business
Contact Management
Custom Fields
Mobile App
Activity Logs
Google Chrome Extension
Bulk Email

G2 Rating: 4.5

Contact Management Software for Enterprises

7. Salesforce– Best for Enterprises With Complex Needs

Salesforce Dashboard showing the invoices

Image Source:  Salesforce AppExchange

Often, large companies have to deal with a considerable number of contacts, customer interactions, and data points. The strength of Salesforce lies in its ability to streamline these complex processes and make contact management a breeze.

The integrated structure of Salesforce encompasses marketing, sales, commerce, and service departments under a unified platform. It delivers a seamless view of every customer interaction, from lead generation to deal closure, which is helpful when managing multitudes of contacts.

The platform’s automated workflows save ample time by minimizing the need for manual data entry and task scheduling. This automation, coupled with AI-driven predictive analytics, enables accurate forecasting.

Salesforce’s in-depth reporting and analytics feature provides detailed insights into contact behavior and the effectiveness of each interaction. These insights are invaluable for large enterprises seeking to refine their strategies.

What You’ll Like:

  • AI-driven prompts suggest the best timing and actions to push a deal forward
  • Provides a unified, shared view of customer data across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT teams
  • Provides automated notifications and easy-to-use dashboards for swift decision making
  • Customer profiles are enriched with data sourced from multiple platforms

What You Won’t Like:

  • It has a steep learning curve and requires expert assistance to set it up
  • Customizing reports can be challenging

Pricing: 

  • Starts at $25/user/month.

Salesforce Plan Summary:

  Essentials Professionals Enterprise Unlimited
Contact Management
Outlook & Gmail Integration
Workflow Automation
Sales Insights
Duplicate Management
Mobile App

G2 Rating: 4.3

8. Close CRM– Best for Sales Teams

Close CRM- Best for Sales Teams

Image Source: Close CRM

Designed with sales operations in mind, Close CRM offers a diverse range of communication channels, such as calling, emailing, and SMS, all available directly from the platform. 

This range ensures that every interaction you have with a customer, regardless of the platform it took place on, is accurately tracked. As a result, each contact’s record is continuously updated, providing an up-to-date view of communication history.

Close CRM’s robust search functionality made it incredibly easy for us to find contact details. Whether it was using a name, email, or any custom field data, searching for contacts was never a hassle. Besides, we could categorize contacts based on various parameters, adding more depth to our contact management strategy.

Another notable feature is task management, which helped our team keep tabs on follow-ups and interactions. The predictive dialer optimized our outbound call strategy by enabling swift switching between calls, thus saving valuable time for the sales team.

What You’ll Like:

  • The ‘Close Inbox’ centralizes all communication and syncs with your calendar and email applications 
  • Workflow automation cadences can be saved as templates and shared with team members with a single click
  • Search and Smart Views help prioritize the leads that matter the most and automate outreach 
  • You can customize Close to fit your unique sales workflow and prioritize the most important details

What You Won’t Like:

  • The mobile app is not as feature-rich as the desktop version, and some users have reported performance issues
  • Smart Views can be difficult to customize for complex needs

Pricing:

  •  Starts at $49/month for 1 user.

Close CRM Plan Summary:

  Startup Professional Enterprise
Pipelines 1 3 10
Workflows 3 25 100
Calendar Sync
Custom Objects
Bulk emails

G2 Rating: 4.6

9. SugarCRM– Best All-in-One CRM for Marketing, Sales & Customer Service

SugarCRM- Best All-in-One CRM for Marketing, Sales & Customer Service

Image Source: SugarCRM

With its customizable applications, AI-driven capabilities, and extensive marketplace, SugarCRM can cater to a wide array of business needs and industries.

I found its user-centric approach to customer experience to be quite unique.

By offering highly tailored and customizable applications, it enables you to adapt the CRM to your specific needs and processes, thus ensuring a seamless integration into current operations.

The platform is equipped with intuitive features such as forecasting and AI, which play a pivotal role in driving sales automation, marketing automation, and customer service excellence. These features equip large enterprises with the tools they need to improve productivity, drive growth, and engage customers effectively.

What further improves SugarCRM’s usability is its marketplace with a wide array of add-ons to connect your favorite tools and extend the platform’s functionality, ensuring a seamless end-to-end experience.

What You’ll Like:

  • Captures a complete historical record of every change event in the customer journey, offering improved situational awareness
  • Supports deep functional access and multi-level customization, useful for embedding CRM into custom applications
  • Offers highly accurate, AI-powered predictions about customers and business scenarios
  • Includes an all-in-one marketing automation platform, which assists in creating campaigns, engaging at scale, and predicting needs

What You Won’t Like:

  • It can be slightly slow and unresponsive, especially when working with large datasets
  • SugarCRM can be customized, but it can be complex and time-consuming to do so

Pricing:

  • Starts at $49/user/month.

SugarCRM Plan Summary:

  Essentials Advanced Premier
Contact Management
Data Enrichment
Lead Prioritization
Gmail & Outlook Integration
Mobile App

G2 Rating: 3.8

Which is the Best Contact Management System?

Choosing the right contact management software is vital to managing your customer relationships effectively, ensuring successful communication, and guaranteeing an excellent return on investment. The nature of your business, its size, customer base, and specific needs all play a pivotal role in this choice.

To simplify the selection process, I have narrowed the list further to the 3 top contact management tools.

Option A: BIGContacts

BIGContacts is a superb choice for small businesses and startups. Its focus on simplicity, combined with robust features, ensures efficient contact management without overwhelming its users. It provides customizable dashboards, comprehensive contact profiles, and an interactive calendar to keep track of communication history.

Option B: Pipedrive

Geared towards medium-sized businesses, Pipedrive presents an intuitive platform for visual sales pipeline management, ensuring that you never miss a follow-up. Its advanced lead and opportunity management tools, along with quick and accurate reports, make it a powerful ally to drive business growth.

Option C: Salesforce

An all-inclusive platform for large enterprises, Salesforce employs supreme automation capabilities and a vast array of tools to streamline your complex customer relations processes. Its ability to deliver a comprehensive view of customer interactions makes it an unrivaled option for large businesses with intricate needs.

In my view, if we focus solely on contact data management, BIGContacts emerges as the best choice. It effectively balances simplicity with powerful features. Regardless of the industry you are in, if you’re in search of a user-friendly yet capable contact management software, BIGContacts could be the perfect fit!

Evaluation Criteria

The evaluation of products or tools chosen for this article follows an unbiased, systematic approach that ensures a fair, insightful, and well-rounded review. This method employs six key factors:

User Reviews / Ratings: Direct experiences from users, including ratings and feedback from reputable sites, provide a ground-level perspective. This feedback is critical in understanding overall satisfaction and potential problems.

Essential Features & Functionality: The value of a product is ascertained by its core features and overall functionality. Through an in-depth exploration of these aspects, the practical usefulness and effectiveness of the tools are carefully evaluated.

Ease of Use: The user-friendliness of a product or service is assessed, focusing on the design, interface, and navigation. This ensures a positive experience for users of all levels of expertise.

Customer Support: The quality of customer support is examined, taking into account its efficiency and how well it supports users in different phases – setting up, addressing concerns, and resolving operational issues.

Value for Money: Value for money is evaluated by comparing the quality, performance, and features. The goal is to help the reader understand whether they would be getting their money’s worth.

Personal Experience / Experts’ Opinions: This part of the evaluation criteria draws insightful observations from the personal experience of the writer and the opinions of industry experts.

Learn More About Contact Management Platform

What is contact management software?

Contact management software refers to tools that help consolidate and manage the data related to your business contacts. This includes their contact details such as phone number and address, purchasing behavior, communication history, activity timelines, social media accounts, and other information.

Read More: What Is Contact Management & How to Capitalize on It

What are the features of a contact management system?

A contact management system essentially assists in tracking communication and managing relationships with your contacts. Core features include storing comprehensive contact information, logging interactions, setting reminders for follow-ups, and seamlessly integrating with email. Advanced tools might offer social media integration, automated data enrichment, and AI-powered insights to provide a more detailed view of your contacts and optimize your communication strategies.

What are the benefits of having a contact management platform?

Web-based contact management helps you:

  • Track all previous interactions, contact information, online activity, pending tasks, and any other additional notes related to prospects and customers from a single platform
  • Modify interactions according to the target customer segment, thereby enhancing the probability of conversion
  • Understand contact needs and preferences to optimize your offerings
  • Enhance internal communication with shared access to updated information
  • Streamline sales, marketing, and support processes

What is the difference between contact management and CRM?

Contact management primarily focuses on storing and organizing contact details and keeping track of interactions. CRM, on the other hand, goes a step further to manage end-to-end customer relationships, including sales pipelines, marketing campaigns, and customer service. When it comes to striking a balance, tools like BIGContacts provide a comprehensive solution, effectively weaving contact management tools into a broader CRM framework.

How do I choose the best contact management software?

Here are some factors to consider when making the final decision:

  • Find a tool that aligns with your vision and goals. Choose a flexible tool that can be adapted according to your team’s requirements.
  • Go for a tool that offers all the required features without causing budget overruns. You can easily find cost-effective contact management systems, such as BIGContacts, providing advanced features for affordable prices.
  • The tool should have an easy-to-use interface since a complicated tool will only get in the way of your business operations, leading to a drop in productivity.
  • Consider your business’s future needs when picking a contact management system. A tool capable of growing your business can save you time and money in the long run.

Once you find tools that check these boxes, look into their user reviews on credible sources. You can also use the free trial period that most applications offer. This can help you ascertain if the tool is right for your business before you commit to it.

For more on this, watch:

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About the author

Caleb Mitchell is BIGContacts' senior product manager with a deep-rooted passion for tech and customer relationship management. He holds a Master's in Business Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania. Caleb steers the way for CRM innovation with a blend of analytic prowess and technical expertise, drawing from his extensive background in data analytics and software development. He's a fervent writer on CRM, SaaS, automation, customer relationship management, AI, and predictive analytics, with his work regularly published in TechCrunch, SaaS Mag, and Customer Think. Connect with Caleb through his LinkedIn profile for insights on CRM strategies and to engage in solution-oriented discussions.