Best CRM for Freelance Writers (2024)

CRM solutions are becoming more and more popular among savvy freelancers as they can take the hassle out of task management, invoicing, email marketing, and scheduling.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a business platform that helps freelancers and businesses manage communication with their clients and prospects. A CRM system holds data on all your clients including emails, payments, calls, and sales, and keeps it all in one place. The biggest benefits of using a CRM tool are that it enhances contact management, improves customer satisfaction, and automates your sales process.

I’ve evaluated the 7 best CRM tools to help you organize your business effectively and grow.

🌟 My top pick: Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM solution that enables freelancers and business owners to plan their sales process and monitor deals. This is a stunning visual CRM tool that displays the progress stages for each project and tracks the pending activities in each pipeline.

This CRM solution eases the process of email marketing as it allows users to choose ready-made email templates, create custom email templates, and merge fields to autofill information. It integrates seamlessly with Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo. Pipedrive keeps a visual history of every call, email, and activity made with every client, so freelancers can check the last conversations they had with their clients before following up with the communications.

Pipedrive allows users to directly contact clients by using the click-to-call feature. Freelancers that have many projects on their plate will manage their time more easily as this CRM solution will send them reminders, follow-up alerts, and notifications via email. Additionally, Pipedrive has an easy-to-use and highly customizable interface that comes with built-in features like sales forecasting, sales reporting, and pipeline management.

Key Features:

• Visual sales pipelines
• Unlimited custom fields
• Customizable product catalog
• Sales, activity, and product reports
• Revenue forecast
• Calendar view and activity management
• Customizable email templates
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android
• Two-factor authentication
• API access
• Team reports and goals
• Customizable dashboards
• Data import & export
• Workflow automation
• 24/7 customer support (chat & email)

Pricing:

• Essential

Pipedrive’s essential plan starts at $15 a month per user. The plan includes all Pipedrive core features, sales, activity reports, and 1 live dashboard. Users also get contact and deal management.

• Advanced

This plan starts at $29 a month per user. This features robust email marketing features like customizable email templates, email tracking, and email syncing. Users also get LinkedIn integration.

• Professional

Pipedrive’s professional plan starts at $59 a month per user. This plan features advanced client management features like one-click calls, call recording, and group emailing.

• Enterprise

This plan starts at $99 a month per user. This plan includes all the features from the Professional plan plus enhanced security, extra customization, unlimited dashboards, and user permissions.

EngageBay

EngageBay is an affordable all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software designed specifically for small businesses, freelancers, and solopreneurs. The platform offers tools to help drive traffic, capture leads, convert them, and ultimately close deals.

EngageBay’s intuitive interface has a very shallow learning curve, meaning solopreneurs and freelancers can get the hang of it without expensive training or technical assistance. The CRM connects all the tools and offers a 360-degree view of customers, with an activity timeline that displays the complete interaction history of each customer.

EngageBay also offers in-CRM telephony to help you connect with your clients, record calls, use call scripts, and take notes. In addition, you can offer exceptional customer support through the platform’s helpdesk and ticketing system.

Plus, the intuitive dashboard allows freelancers to easily keep a bird’s eye view of all their metrics.

Key Features:

• Multichannel marketing
• A/B testing
• Drag-and-drop landing page builder
• Autoresponders
• Social media management
• Multistep visual automation builder
• Traffic analytics
• Free CRM
• Customizable dashboards
• Deal pipelines
• Appointment scheduling
• Task management
• 2-way email sync
• Timezone-based email delivery
• Audience segmentation
• Multiple integrations
• Ticketing management
• Live chat
• Onboarding and migration services

Pricing:

• Free: This plan is free forever and offers basic tools to help freelancers and small business owners get started.
• Basic: The Basic plan costs $14.99/month for 500 contacts and 3,000 emails.
• Growth: The Growth plan costs $64.99/month for 5,000 contacts and 25,000 emails.
• Pro: The Pro plan costs $119.99/month for unlimited contacts and 50,000 emails.

You also get a 10% annual and a 20% discount on biennial plans.

Insightly

Insightly is an amazing CRM with project management and marketing tools. The platform has automation for lead and opportunity management where users get an easy-to-use lead profile layout.

Users get to see their activity history with the lead including exchanged files, events, email correspondence, related tasks, and notes.

This platform allows you to keep track of everything and keep in contact with all your customers and clients. The app features built-in email templates and customizable reports. Insightly works with Google Calendar and Contacts and every user can also sync their email accounts from Gmail and Outlook. Insights integrate with all popular applications including Google Apps & Gmail, Evernotes, MailChimp, Office, and Outlook.

Key Features:

• Lead management
• Mass emailing
• Email templates
• Automatic social profile enrichment
• Task and event management
• Contact and organization management
• Opportunity management
• Calendar synchronization
• Milestones and associated task tracking
• Integration with Google G-Suite Login, Calendar, and Docs
• Integration with Microsoft Office 365 Login, Calendar, and OneDrive
• Built-in business intelligence dashboards
• Customizable real-time insight cards
• Customized report scheduling and emailing
• Over 250 integrations to business apps

Pricing Plans:

• Plus

The Insightly Plus plan costs $29 a month. It includes lead and sales management and accounting integrations.

• Professional

Insightly Professional costs $49 a month. This plan includes priority email support and allows users to send up to 5000 emails per day.

• Enterprise

Insightly Enterprise costs $99 a month. It includes over 250 integrations to business apps, 200 custom fields per record type, and priority support.

Close

Close is a CRM platform that makes lead management an easy task by using a handy dashboard. The platform features built-in calling, SMS, and email which puts your communication with all of your prospects and clients in one place.

This platform is most suitable for small and midsize businesses that need a CRM solution that has email marketing features. All users need to do is define their copy and the Close will automatically generate an entire email marketing campaign. Users get advanced email tracking and can set up multiple email accounts.

Close can also help business owners measure the individual performance of members of their team. The platform can track performance and rank performances across the team based on sales activity, emails sent, the number of calls made and time spent talking to prospects.

Key Features:

• Bulk email sending
• Power dialer
• Advanced email tracking
• 2-way email sync
• Email open & response tracking
• HTML customization
• Custom fields
• Activity, task & pipeline management
• Zapier integration
• Two-factor authentication
• Global calling
• Calendar sync
• Real-time sales activity reporting
• Sales comparison reporting
• Email customer support

Pricing:

• Starter

The Starter plan starts at $59 a month per user. This plan is limited to 4 custom fields, 2500 leads, and 4000 contacts.

• Professional

The Professional plan costs $109 a month per user. It includes built-in email sequences, bulk email sending, and power dialer.

• Business

Close’s Business plan costs $149 a month per user. The business plan features call recording, call transferring, and a dedicated account manager.

Bonsai

Bonsai is an all-in-one tool that will help freelancers easily deal with client management, accounting, and project management.

Freelancers that feel overwhelmed by paperwork can find Bonsai very helpful as this CRM software automatically generates and fills your documents for every new project. Bonsai also generates templated contracts and legally binding e-signature. This will ease your paperwork process and save you a lot of time.

What’s more, Bonsai creates and customizes invoices from any proposal, contract, or timesheet automatically. This CRM will also track your payments and inform you about your client’s interactions with the invoice and when they are planning to pay. This also eases the whole payment process for your clients as they get to sign their contracts and pay their invoices quickly and easily.

Bonsai also allows freelancers to manage their projects with ease as all the information regarding the projects is located in one central location – the Bonsai dashboard. Users get to start new projects and add information about project details, social media, and contact information. Bonsai can assign projects to current clients and lists all ongoing projects in a client panel.

Key Features:

• Simplified client onboarding process
• Client management
• Client contracts and invoice system
• Auto reminders/weekly reminders
• Complete contract templates
• Project management tools
• Time tracking
• Chat support
• Global payments, 180 currencies
• Easy-to-use interface
• Automating invoicing
• Read-receipt notifications
• Payment schedule
• Storage of legally binding contracts online
• E-signing
• Secure messaging
• Data import & export

Pricing:

Bonsai starts at $21 a month (when paid yearly) or $25/mo for monthly payments. The plan includes all Bonsai core features including client management and project management.

Indy

Indy is an adaptive, all-in-one management software that helps freelancers and small businesses track everything from proposals to payments. Indy makes organization and time management easy, letting its users focus on their work.

This platform features a library of proposal, contract, and form templates to make getting clients easier. The task tracking system allows users to assign individual tasks to larger projects or categories. As users work on tasks, the time tracker tool logs and categorizes time spent on each task, making it easy to balance multiple projects and create invoices.

When it’s time to get paid, use Indy to generate a detailed invoice to send right to clients: in return they get peace of mind knowing that Indy uses the web’s top payment methods, like PayPal and Zelle. With other tools like Profiles, Drive, and Client Contacts, Indy’s features make it a versatile and reliable addition to any creative team.

Indy’s mobile app can be downloaded by both Android and iOS users.

Key Features:

• Proposal and contract templates
• Manage projects on a large or small scale
• Time tracking
• Custom branding
• Client management
• Chat directly with clients and other freelancers
• Invoice creation and management
• Integrated online payment with PayPal, Stripe, and Zelle

Pricing:

• Free. With Indy’s Free plan, you can use basic tools as much as you want each month, free forever.
• ‍Pro Bundle. Get full access to Indy and all its features with the Pro Bundle for only $12/mo or $9/mo when paid yearly.

Capsule

Capsule is a simple CRM that enables freelancers and small businesses to keep track of their new clients and follow interactions and opportunities in the sales pipeline. Capsule allows clients to categorize data using tags, custom fields, and branding options.

What particularly distinguishes Capsule CRM from competitors is that it provides a visual overview of your sales pipeline. Freelancing can get easier if you can track your sales as they progress through the sales process. By using Capsule you’ll be able to define the sales process by using milestones for each stage of the pipeline. It also generates revenue forecasts to give you a clearer image of how your business is going.

The platform supports integrations for email marketing, document management, customer support, and accounting. By using this CRM software your project management can get much easier as the platform generates to-do-lists and calendars.

Capsule CRM is an excellent CRM solution for business owners that have a small team as users get to create tasks, share them with co-workers, and follow the progress.

Key Features:

• Customer relationship management
• Project management
• Contact management
• Custom fields
• Calendar & task management
• Customizable sales milestones & Sales pipeline dashboard
• Customized filtered lists
• Advanced sales reporting
• Custom Reports Via Google Data Studio
• Gmail Add-on
• Google Suite Single Sign-on
• Two-factor authentication
• Add-ons & integrations
• Mobile app (for iOS & Android)
• Zapier integrations & automation
• A 30-day free trial is available for all plans

Pricing:

• Free

Users get 50MB storage and can manage up to 250 contacts.

• Professional

The professional plan costs €18 per user per month. Clients get 10GB storage per user and can manage up to 30,000 contacts. This plan also includes sales reporting and premium integrations for G Suite, Xero, MailChimp, and Wufoo.

• Teams

The team plan costs €38 per user per month. Users get all core features from the Professional plan, 20GB storage per user, and get to manage up to 60,000 contacts. The plan also includes advanced sales reporting and custom google data studio reports.

HoneyBook

HoneyBook is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) that allows creative business owners and freelancers to handle payments, manage projects, and book clients.

Honeybook can ease the whole business process and save multiple hours a day to a small business as it generates professional contracts and keeps invoices and important documents in one place.

The platform helps you to set-up a to-do list for every new project and create alerts by sending you task reminders. Users also get to send automated appointment requests and communicate with clients by using personalized templates. HoneyBook also eases the payment experience for clients as it features an auto-pay option. It tracks payment and accepts payment through credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers.

This CRM solution offers a mobile app for iOS and Android users. Honeybook integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, QuickBooks, Calendly, and Zapier.

Key features:

• Client management & contact management
• Automatic payment reminders
• Payment tracking
• Time tracking
• Credit, Debit, and ACH/bank transfer
• Mobile invoicing
• Mobile app for iOS and Android
• Customizable templates & collaboration tools
• Sales pipeline management
• Electronic signature
• Payment processing services integration
• Employee, group, and appointment scheduling
• Customer support
• Fraud protection
• Integration with Google Calendar, Gmail, Zapier, QuickBooks, and Calendly
• A 7-day free trial is available
• 60-day money-back guarantee

Pricing:

• HoneyBook’s only plan costs $40 a month. If you pay in advance for an annual plan you’ll pay $33 a month. The plan includes all HoneyBook features, free account setup, and training.

Dubsado

Dubsado is a simple CRM solution that takes the hassle out of task management, email marketing, invoicing, and scheduling.

This CRM tool can help freelancers stay up-to-date with their finances as it displays a complete history of their transactions and financial reports. What’s more, the platform lets you view profit breakdown through charts and graphs.

Dubsado helps small businesses keep all clients and contacts in one place, track their projects, automate workflows, and schedule appointments. It eases onboarding new clients as users get to create new projects, track upcoming tasks, and get deadline alerts. Each project has a tag that helps users find their way around the interface and get quick access.

Dubsado automatically sends invoices, forms, and invoices. Users can also activate the automatic response feature which sends a personal email to clients the moment they are trying to reach you. Dubsado is a great all-in-one tool for small businesses.

Key features:

• Automated responses
• Form reminders & to-do reminders
• Time tracking
• Project timelines
• Email, forms, and invoice automation
• Payment reminders
• Appointment scheduling
• Integration with PayPal, Stripe, and Square
• E-signatures
• Custom branding
• Custom CSS styling
• Client portals
• Project tags
• Calendar integration with Google, iCloud, Outlook, and Office 365
• Add-ons for brands & users
• A free trial is available (no time limit)

Pricing:

• Free

Dubsado’s free plan has no time limit. It gives users access to a plethora of tools and allows them to manage up to 3 clients.

• Monthly plan

The monthly plan costs $40 a month. This plan supports an unlimited number of clients and projects. However, if users want to add more than 4 accounts they will need to buy some of the add-on pricing packages that start at $25 a month.

• Yearly plan

Dubsado’s yearly plan costs $400. The plan includes all of Dubsado’s core features and supports an unlimited number of clients and projects. Users that run multiple businesses can add additional brands by buying the add-on pricing package that starts at $20 per month.