Keep a shared customer database. 5 tools in this list, 3 with a free plan.
How this list is ranked. Tools are ordered by how strongly they are built for this job (as tagged in VERILO’s catalogue), then by editorial score and editor rating. Affiliate relationships and featured status are never inputs.
This list is for a team whose contacts are spread across inboxes, phones and a spreadsheet, and who want one shared record of who knows whom. It is not a deal list: if the job is moving opportunities through stages rather than keeping people straight, start with sales pipeline software instead.
How to choose
Contact management is judged first on how contacts get in and stay current. All five tools sync email with Gmail and Outlook; folk adds a browser extension that imports from Gmail, Outlook and LinkedIn, which is the shortest route when your contacts live in your inbox and on LinkedIn rather than in a system you already run.
Then decide what a contact record has to carry. HubSpot keeps one record shared by sales, marketing and support. Zoho CRM and Salesforce let you model your own modules and fields, which is powerful but needs someone to own the configuration — in VERILO's assessment Salesforce is the hardest of the five to pick up and folk the easiest.
Last, decide whether the tool has to do more than remember people. Pipedrive organises contacts around deals and suits a team that sells in stages; folk handles partnerships, hiring and fundraising as comfortably as sales, with basic reporting as the trade.
What to compare
How contacts arrive
Import and sync decide whether the database stays true. Look for two-way email sync with your mail provider, and an import or extension that matches where your contacts already sit.
Duplicates and history
One record per person only works if the tool merges duplicates and shows who last spoke to them. Test merging with your own messy export rather than a demo dataset.
Fields and segments
Every tool segments; they differ in how far you can shape it. Custom fields, tags and saved segments matter more here than forecasting, which is where CRMs diverge most.
Who needs a seat
Seats are the recurring cost. Count everyone who will open the tool, including people who only look things up, and check whether the plan you need charges for them.
Getting the data out
A contact database is worth leaving cleanly. Confirm that contacts, notes and activity export in a format another tool can import before you commit to one.
Common questions
Which contact management tools have a free plan?
HubSpot and Salesforce Sales Cloud have a free plan, with limits on usage, users or features. folk (14 days) and Pipedrive (14 days) offer a free trial instead. Pricing for Zoho CRM has not been checked against the vendor in the last 90 days, so it is not included.
How much does contact management software cost?
The entry paid plans as each vendor lists them, checked against its pricing page: HubSpot Sales Hub Starter at $20 per user a month, Pipedrive Lite at $24 per user a month, Salesforce Sales Cloud Starter Suite at $25 per user a month and folk Standard at $30 per user a month. Some vendors quote the annual-billing rate, and seat minimums, higher tiers and add-ons all change the real cost, so price the plan you actually need. Pricing for Zoho CRM has not been checked against the vendor in the last 90 days, so it is not included.
Is contact management the same as a CRM?
Contact management is the part of a CRM that stores people and companies and the history with them. A CRM adds deals, pipelines, forecasting and automation on top. Every tool here does both; they differ in how much of the sales machinery you have to adopt to use the contact side.
Can a spreadsheet do this?
For one person and a short list, yes. It stops working when two people edit it at once, when you need the email history attached to a person, or when someone has to be reminded to follow up. That is the point where these tools start paying for themselves.