91% of marketers say that lead generation is an essential goal, which means implementing a lead management system can be helpful when new leads start pouring in. Lead management software creates a bridge between your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. Your marketing team generates interest in your product, sales teams guide prospective buyers to purchase what you’re offering, and customer service builds a relationship with them to encourage repeat buying.
But sometimes there can be a disconnect between these groups; that’s where lead management comes in. Lead management software ensures that you focus on the right prospects so you don't leave money on the table. Finding the right platform for your company can be the first challenge to overcome.
This article will introduce you to some of the best lead management platforms available. These can help you capture, convert, route, and nourish your prospects, so your teams only focus on the best leads who want your products.
Best Lead Management Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
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How I Selected the Best Lead Management Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best lead management software for this list? To build this list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of lead management software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of RevOps experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
If you have general questions about lead management software or how to pick the best lead management software for your organization, take a look at our frequently asked questions section below. Or, you can skip directly to my detailed software summaries, if that's what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best lead management software for this article:
Usability:
Implementing new software can be a significant change for your company. If your teams aren’t comfortable with the platform or they’re afraid of not knowing how to use it properly, the change could cause your efficient team to lower their performance. This is why investing in a platform that’s easy to use is essential.
Customizable:
There are some conventional ways to capture leads from several sources, such as landing pages, opt-in forms, social media ads, and email campaigns. No two leads will be the same, so you need lead management software to customize each user’s experience with your online store. The key is to encourage visitors to provide their contact info so you and your teams can send relevant content to increase their interest in your business.
Workflow Automations:
The most advanced lead management software includes powerful and intelligent workflow automation to help you enhance redundant and repetitive processes. For example, you can set up a persuasive email drip campaign to automatically respond to customer questions to avoid a delay in your response. Lead management software often comes with a predefined response and email templates that customers send out when they trigger a specific event.
Software Integrations:
A lead management software’s capability to integrate with your current systems and other third-party apps is a significant criterion when choosing the best platform. You risk losing money, time, and data if it can’t integrate with your systems. It’s safe to assume that you’re planning to continue using specific tools for other aspects of your store. So, ensuring the lead management platform you’re considering using can work well with what you’re already using in your company is essential.
Pricing:
It was tempting to only show the cheapest options on this list, but sometimes this means you’ll be stuck with the most essential software. If you sign up for a software demo, the impressive features you saw are most likely part of the paid subscription, which might not be cheap. Paid options can be worthwhile if the ROI you receive outweighs the costs.
Overviews of the 10 Best Lead Management Software
Here’s a brief description of the lead management tools to showcase each one’s best use case, some noteworthy features, screenshots, and pricing information.
1. Creatio – Best for automating lead management workflows
Creatio helps users automate workflows and CRM with a no-code platform that provides maximum freedom.
Why I picked Creatio: From initial lead to repeat sales, Creatio is a comprehensive tool that handles your entire sales cycle. You can use the platform to design and manage lead generation workflows of any type and complexity. These workflows can help businesses create in-depth audience segments based on multiple socio-demographic and behavioral data. Your marketing teams can then use this information to provide targeted communication and develop effective marketing campaigns.
Creatio is an excellent fit for medium to large companies operating in various industries, such as retail or high-tech. The platform’s features enable your teams to enhance customer experience and focus on only the hottest leads. You can also use Creatio to build powerful business applications without needing to code or hire a developer; all you need to do is drag and drop.
Creatio Standout Features and Integrations
Features include audience targeting, data import and export, forecasting, calendar management, contact sharing, customer management, conversion tracking, data visualization, and inventory tracking.
Integrations include PandaDoc, Quickbooks, Outlook, DocuSign, Hubspot, Salesforce, Twilio, OneDrive, Jira, RingCentral, and Zoom.
Price: Creatio offers custom pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Creatio offers a free 14-day trial of the platform. They also offer a free demo to help you see whether the platform is right for you.
Pros
- A highly customizable business solution.
- Easily adaptable to your current systems.
- It can scale efficiently with your business as it grows.
Cons
- The customization capabilities can be daunting for new users.
- Business processes don’t show a real-time impact on your screen.
2. Keap – Best for marketing automation
Keap helps small businesses manage sales and customer experiences by providing various marketing solutions.
Why I picked Keap: Users can implement the platform to send email and SMS marketing campaigns from within the software. Keap helps users develop automation triggers based on leads’ actions and move them to the next stages. The platform’s pipeline generation capabilities enable users to know each lead’s status throughout their marketing funnel after creating personalized sales and marketing campaigns.
Keap focuses on small businesses and solopreneurs and helps them grow. The platform’s design helps them nurture strong customer relations that appear as if they are a large organization. The tools Keap provides users help them automate processes to quickly move prospects along their pipeline to conversion.
Keap Standout Features and Integrations
Features include CRM integration, conversion tracking, data import and export, inventory tracking, data visualization, lead scoring and management, and marketing automation.
Integrations include Zendesk, Mailchimp, Leadpages, Google Drive, Help Scout, BigCommerce, Shopify, Slack, WordPress, Zapier, Zen Cart, OptinMonster, and Quickbooks.
Price: Keap costs from $169/month when paying month-to-month for up to 1,500 contacts or $129/month when billed yearly.
Free Trial: Keap provides new users with a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- The software’s campaign builder tool automates prospect interactions.
- Provides in-depth lead details for effective advertising.
- It has a vast number of integrations.
Cons
- Importing multiple emails into a campaign can be time-consuming.
- There’s a big learning curve to automation.
3. Gong – Best for revenue intelligence
Gong enables businesses to take advantage of customer interactions by delivering in-depth insights.
Why I picked Gong: The patented Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform inside the software automatically captures and analyzes your interactions with customers. This information can help you understand what’s happening in your market and learn about any shifting sentiments with your leads so you can adjust accordingly. Afterward, the platform delivers insights regarding these interactions and empowers your teams to determine the best actions to take.
Gong enables businesses of any size to replicate their best sales reps. The recordings the platform captures can turn into training modules that transform your sales team into super sellers during every interaction with a new, warm lead. This intelligence tool also helps you understand what messaging and product offers to make when new leads flow into your systems.
Gong Standout Features and Integrations
Features include chat transcript, call recording, deal management, dashboard, contact management, call monitoring, file transfer, performance management, competitive analysis, and automatic call distribution.
Integrations include Chili Piper, Google Workspace, Highspot, Hubspot, Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Salesforce, Outreach, Slack, Zoom, and Aircall.
Price: Gong offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Users can fast-forward recordings to when a specific person is speaking.
- The transcripts make it easy to find specific keywords.
- The platform sends emails to reps to tell them what to follow up on.
Cons
- No way to review how much talking reps do compared to the lead.
- Transcripts aren’t always 100% accurate.
4. Zendesk – Best for lead prospecting
Zendesk helps your sales teams accelerate revenue by providing the proper tools to help find ideal leads.
Why I picked Zendesk: Prospecting is a crucial stage in the lead management process, which can involve tons of research to find leads that fit your target audience. Zendesk offers users several tools, such as prospecting credits, which allows user to create profiles based on customer traits. The platform also has a geolocation feature on its mobile app that can find local leads for your business.
Zendesk offers small, medium, and large businesses with sales teams features and functionality for storing leads, managing tasks, and communicating with prospects over different channels, such as email, phone, and SMS. Sales teams can focus on the highest value leads thanks to Zendesk’s lead tracking features that let users access the best prospects. Zendesk also has a pipeline conversion report feature that helps businesses discover sales cycle difficulties early on.
Zendesk Standout Features and Integrations
Features include data visualization, contact management, audience targeting, calendar management, data import and export, email integration, customer management, forecasting, and lead management.
Integrations include Trello, Mailchimp, Salesforces, Dropbox, Aircall, Intercom, PandaDoc, Jira, Shopify, Recurly, ChartMogul, and Microsoft Teams.
Price: Zendesk costs from $19/user/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- Track leads from the moment lead enter your sales funnel until you convert them.
- It helps businesses implement data-driven solutions with comprehensive analytics.
- It helps users already using Zendesk’s other tools capture important lead information.
Cons
- The lowest tier plan doesn’t offer email nurturing and lead scoring.
- Users can’t delete some of the set fields they don’t use.
5. Salesforce – Best for lead reporting
Salesforce is a popular platform that provides in-depth lead reports that saves you time from searching through spreadsheets to find the best data.
Why I picked Salesforce: There are very few names when it comes to SaaS platforms that people know off the top of their heads, and Salesforce happens to be one of them. They live up to this popularity by providing businesses with high-quality data reports that track your marketing ROI throughout your entire pipeline. You can customize these reports with drag-and-drop fields to only show the most relevant data to your needs.
Salesforce provides large businesses with powerful, automated lead routing, custom forecasting dashboards and reports, and pipeline tracking features. The platform also provides a built-in AI sales assistant who can help your business eliminate manual data. The platform is like having a set of building blocks that allows you and your teams to build anything and connect to whatever systems you already use.
Salesforce Standout Features and Integrations
Features include marketing automation, lead scoring, notifications, data import and export, dashboard, customer management, audience targeting, data visualization, and A/B testing.
Integrations include Shopify, CallRail, Pipeliner CRM, Formstack, SendinBlue email, MarcomCentral, Dropbox, Expensify, Five9, Mailchimp, Quickbooks, and Zapier.
Price: Salesforce costs from $25/user/month billed annually.
Free Trial: Salesforce provides a 30-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- It’s incredibly customizable.
- It can scale effectively with your company.
- The platform works well on mobile devices.
Cons
- There’s a very steep learning curve.
- The vendor doesn’t update it according to what customers want to see.
6. Freshsales – Best for AI lead management
Freshsales provides everything sales teams need to drive deals with AI-powered insights and nurture relationships.
Why I picked Freshsales: The tools within Freshsales, such as lead scoring, email marketing, and lead tracking, can help users manage leads by using activity and historical data. The powerful AI helps users automate lead management and nurturing processes efficiently. Freshsales calls the AI “Freddy,” Freddy provides you with insights through sales forecasting and predictive scoring, suggesting the next steps for your sales teams to know when and how to engage with potential leads.
Freshsales helps businesses of any size track sales progress with the sales pipeline feature. The platform has excellent pipeline tracking capabilities, which include Kanban boards that provide a detailed view of your deals and tasks that indicate whether you’re losing an opportunity. Your team members can use the platform to collaborate on your deals and update each other, and sales managers can assign your entire team to handle your largest deals.
Freshsales Standout Features and Integrations
Features include file sharing, dashboard, customer management, data import and export, calendar management, forecasting, lead scoring, data visualization, and lead management.
Integrations include Slack, Freshdesk, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Microsoft Teams, Hubspot, Dropbox, Shopify, Asana, Skype, and Pipedrive.
Price: Freshsales from $18/user/month when billed monthly or $15/user/month when paying annually. The platform also offers a free forever subscription.
Free Trial: Freshsales offers a 21-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- It’s an excellent option for small teams.
- The software is straightforward to understand.
- They have a straightforward onboarding process when adding new users.
Cons
- There aren’t any notifications to warn users when processes break.
- The third-party integration options are limited.
7. Zoho CRM – Best for nurturing leads over multiple channels
Zoho CRM enhances sales team productivity with precise business activity solutions across multiple channels.
Why I picked Zoho CRM: Sales teams can use Zoho CRM to speak with leads through several channels, such as phone, email, web chat, and social media, without needing to switch systems. The lead information you collect about the lead remains in one central platform. It’s an excellent choice for those searching for a lead management solution with diverse communications for a significant volume of leads.
Zoho CRM is an excellent choice for small, medium, and large businesses that need a platform that helps them encourage leads along their sales pipeline. The AI-powered assistant scans emails for urgency displays relevant statistics or documents when searching for information, and predicts appropriate times to reach customers. It’s particularly effective for those who already use Zoho’s products, such as Zoho Books.
Zoho CRM Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead scoring, forecasting, marketing automation, file sharing, data visualization, dashboard, lead management, data import and export, employee training, project management, and contact management.
Integrations include Slack, Shopify, Mailchimp, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, PandaDoc, Twilio, RingCentral, GoToWebinar, Quickbooks, Proposify, and ActiveCampaign.
Price: Zoho CRM costs from $20/user/month when paying month-to-month or $14/user/month when billed annually.
Free Trial: Zoho CRM offers a free 15-day trial for new users.
Pros
- It offers advanced business intelligence when you bundle it with Zoho Analytics.
- You can see what stage each lead is in.
- The platform has numerous customization options to match your needs.
Cons
- Customer support can be limiting.
- Users can only get advanced analytics in the Ultimate tier.
8. Pipedrive – Best for sales pipeline visualization
Pipedrive is a sales-focused lead management tool that prioritizes pipeline visualization that helps sales teams focus on leads at the right time.
Why I picked Pipedrive: Users can import new leads either manually or through their website’s chat and forms, then label and filter them to plan various activities, such as sending emails or making calls to the best leads. These leads then show on a visual pipeline arranged by activity due date, allowing sales reps to manage leads efficiently. Users can use the drag-and-drop feature to make necessary changes and fix mistakes.
Pipedrive is an excellent choice for small and medium businesses focusing on sales because it provides excellent features to help track and engage leads and keep your teams productive throughout the entire process. A significant standout feature is the platform’s intelligent Smart Contact Data, allowing teams to automatically update lead records using sources such as LinkedIn.
Pipedrive Standout Features and Integrations
Features include forecasting, file transfer, lead scoring, calendar management, contact sharing, data import and export, file sharing, dashboard, and pipeline management.
Integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, PandaDoc, Quickbooks, DocuSign, Hubspot, Asana, Aircall, Trello, Zendesk, and Stripe.
Price: Pipedrive costs from $19.90 when paid monthly or $14.90 when billed annually.
Free Trial: Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- The platform has a very intuitive interface.
- The vendor provides easy-to-access resources to help you learn its capabilities.
- The customer service team is excellent when solving problems.
Cons
- Users can’t customize automation.
- The platform’s mobile app needs more work.
9. monday Sales CRM – Best for managing customer data
monday Sales CRM is a no-code solution that enables users to capture leads and manage all contact information efficiently.
Why I picked monday Sales CRM: This lead management software helps businesses manage customer interactions, data, and processes in a way that works for you. The software automatically inserts all lead information that it captures from any form or after collecting the data from your current systems. The software will highly protect all customer and business data on the platform.
monday Sales CRM helps users build and customize the dashboard based on their needs, and the automation capabilities help with performing repetitive tasks. It’s an excellent solution for small-to-medium businesses, sales managers, and sales teams. Your teams can use the platform to manage post-sales processes, such as gaining insights into what they need and when they need it.
monday Sales CRM Standout Features and Integrations
Features include calendar management, expense tracking, forecasting, data visualization, data import and export, customer management, budgeting, marketing automation, lead management, scheduling, and lead scoring.
Integrations include Jira, SAP, Google Chat, HubDay.io, Power BI Connector, GitHub, Airtable, Trello, Slack, Asana, Mailchimp, Dropbox, Zoom, and Hubspot.
monday Sales CRM Pricing
monday Sales CRM costs from $13/user/month when paying month-to-month or $10/user/month when billed annually. monday Sales CRM offers a free 14-day trial for new users.
Pros
- Sales managers can easily access their team’s progress, delays, and escalations.
- It provides a very visual dashboard.
- The interface is comprehensive and user-friendly.
Cons
- There aren’t a lot of industry-specific dashboards.
- There aren’t many training videos to help users learn popular automation.
10. Hubspot CRM – Best for inbound lead management
Hubspot CRM provides businesses with solutions to help capture and organize inbound leads.
Why I picked Hubspot CRM: Users can create landing pages and web forms from within the platform to collect the details needed to start sales conversations. The platform then creates lead profiles with this information and automatically routes them to the appropriate sales rep. HubSpot helps users build workflows to send tailored emails to nurture new leads.
Hubspot CRM is an excellent option for businesses that focuses on online lead generation. The platform will pull details from its database for each lead you receive and fill in the lead profile. The platform provides a contact activity feature that shows detailed interactions between your business and the lead.
Hubspot Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead management, marketing automation, lead scoring, notifications, forecasting, file transfer, audience targeting, calendar management, data import and export, and conversion tracking.
Integrations include WordPress, Google Calendar, Zapier, Quickbooks Online, Mailchimp, Lucky Orange, Jotform, CloudTalk, Aircall, PandaDoc, Google Meet, and GoToWebinar.
Hubspot CRM Pricing
Hubspot CRM costs from $50/month when paying monthly or $45/month when billed annually.
Pros
- It provides a significant amount of lead information.
- Users can design new sales funnels from the platform.
- The software allows sales managers to filter down and create in-depth reports.
Cons
- You might need to pay for more email contacts if you want to send multiple email campaigns throughout the month.
- It can take some time to get used to the software.
Other Lead Management Solution
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best [keyword] list:
- Salesflare - Best zero-input sales pipeline tool.
- noCRM - Best for creating leads from any source.
- Lusha - Best for building trust with leads.
- Outreach - Best for integrating sales, conversion, and revenue intelligence.
- SalesRabbit - Best for optimizing field sales operations.
- CentrixONE - Best for enhancing sales processes and increasing revenue.
- SutiCRM - Best for capturing leads and gaining current customer insight.
- Insightly - Best for centralizing and managing customer and sales data.
- OneHash - Best for scaling with your business.
- SmartReach.io - Best for automatically sending personalized emails and follow-ups.
- Copper CRM - Best for logging all customer interactions.
People Also Ask
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Conclusion
Lead management software works with businesses of all shapes and sizes. There are many options for you to choose from, which means you should be able to find something that fits your needs. Many businesses’ success depends on their ability to track, onboard, and close sales after generating leads. So, you should ensure your business doesn’t fall behind in this area; this list is an excellent place to start.
If you need more advice on the top tools you can implement or how to enhance other aspects of your company, you can check out the rest of our site. Here, you can get the latest information about various software tools and tips from industry leaders.