Bigin by Zoho CRM is a simplified customer relationship management (CRM) software designed specifically for small businesses, startups and teams. Bigin helps small businesses unify customer-facing operations— marketing, sales, onboarding, delivery, and support, and it offers features that help to manage these customer relationships effectively.
$9
per month per user
Salesforce Starter
Score 8.9 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Salesforce Starter (formerly Salesforce Essentials) is a small business CRM that replaces the former SalesforceIQ product. It is priced at $35 per user, on a monthly basis, or at $25 per month for if billed annually ($300) and can be tried free for 14 days on a trial.
- Multiple pipelines let me organize processes like sales, marketing, customer support, and assets clearly. - The forms builder allows me to gather leads, sign-ups, and customer requests from my website directly into the Bigin by Zoho CRM. - Integrations with Zapier and Make connect website orders and data from other sources smoothly. - Email templates make it easy to send professional, branded communications. - Automations handle repetitive tasks like managing customers, orders, and team tasks, saving me time.
If you own a business that has complex selling processes or requires integrations with 3rd party tools/systems, you should look at Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited editions. Salesforce operates very well across pretty much every industry, but not all sales, marketing, and operational processes are created equal. If your marketing process requires a long list of sendable contacts then I would recommend adding on Pardot or Hubspot. Always start small and scale up, to avoid boxing yourself in down the road.
Manage big databases. We have a large database of contacts and partners (more than 5,000 contacts), which are updated day by day, as a result of our participation in conferences, webinars, etc. For this reason, we needed a platform that would allow us to always have our database up to date, and accessible and editable by any member of the company.
Pipelines. Pipelines are very necessary in our daily lives, since we present many service proposals to different clients, and until now we control the status very manually. With Bigin by Zoho CRM, we can have all this information centralized in a single place, and know at all times the status of the service proposals we present (sent, pending decision, lost, won...).
Product definition. The product definition block has allowed us to further structure our typologies of products and services. At least, it has allowed us to reflect on them and what is the best way to package the service offered.
Control panel. The control panel has been very useful for us to be able to quickly see the main indicators (offers presented, next actions to be taken, etc.).
No multi-select bulk move in pipeline After a webinar we had 42 cold leads that qualified → wanted to drag them all to “Interested” in one go. You can’t; moved them one-by-one like playing Solitaire.
Workflows hidden behind pay-wall We needed an auto-survey when deal = “Won”. Works in trial, the day licence dropped back to free the rule simply stopped – zero warning.
Offline mobile = read-onlyMentor met founder in co-working basement (no Wi-Fi). Took paper notes, re-typed into Bigin back at office → duplicate risk.
Pick-list values can’t be deactivated, only deletedWe miss-typed “Refferal” instead of “Referral”. To fix, must delete; history of 60 old records then shows empty source.
Table views can be sorted by column. Filters can be applied, but only to one column. Multi-column filtering like Excel allows would be extremely useful and a big improvement.
The ability to quick copy data in a table view would also be helpful, like (ctrl ') in excel.
Sales Development Representative Account Executivessss sssssssssssssssss ss ssss s ss s ssssss ss s s ss sss sssssss sssss s ssssssss sssss sss sssssssssssssss ss ss sss sssss s ssss sssssss s s s s ssss sss s s ss ss ssss s s sssssss s ssssssssss sssss sss ss eads sd
The usability is very easy to understand. It takes some time generating all the content you need (e.g. forms or email templates) but the integration in Bigin is very easy and therefore the usability. Once you have all together, you can automatize a lot of marketing activities as well as following up possible projects/customers.
The system is very user-friendly on a desktop but lacks mobile friendliness. The Customer relationship manager disappears after the deal is signed. We struggled to get the system in a usable format, which was not cost-effective. The CRM system on desktop was great but way more complicated than it should be.
The support is all international and it takes a while to get support as you have to go through chats and set up times, not as easy to just call and get the support you need. They are very nice when you do finally connect with someone and they are knowledgeable, just challenging being international sometimes.
Simplicity Without Sacrificing Core Features Unlike full-scale CRMs that often feel overwhelming, Bigin by Zoho CRM provides a focused set of features that are perfect for managing deals, contacts, and activities. It’s not bloated, and that was exactly what we needed for a lean, fast-moving team.
