WordPress CRM Plugins

Why do you need WordPress CRM plugins? First, let’s agree that keeping track of business contacts can seriously eat into your daily schedule, robbing you of the time you need to grow your brand – and without growth, your business could quickly go from forward-thinking to moving backwards.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are designed to help you regain that time. Many CRMs also assist with correspondence, serving as a potential difference between a missed business opportunity and the clinching of a major deal. It’s of no surprise that, once again, WordPress is flexible enough to accommodate the need for such software, with a number of WordPress CRM plugins out there to choose from.

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of using a CRM, as well as why you should consider turning WordPress into a tool that can help handle your contacts. Finally, we’ll compare and contrast our top five WordPress CRM plugins – by the end of this post you’ll have a clear idea on which solution is right for you.

What is a CRM?

Click here to learn what a CRM is
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps to manage all of your company’s interactions with existing and potential customers.

It acts as a hub for your customer’s contact details to keep them easily accessible, searchable, and manageable. In addition, a high-end CRM typically boasts features such as calendars, task management, email marketing, and website form creation, to help organizations generate and follow up on leads.

Agile CRM - alternative to WordPress CRM plugins

Agile CRM is a popular standalone choice for handling customer interactions.

For instance, ClicData’s use of Agile CRM is a typical example of the benefits of CRMs. Despite having a global reach, they were having trouble managing leads manually, and required a CRM to help unify their contacts. They also required the marketing and sales features a quality CRM provides to help their sales teams chase up new and existing leads.

By adopting Agile CRM, ClicData were able to fulfill all those needs. They increased their lead follow up rate by 90%, and enhanced their sales conversions by 30% compared to the previous year.

Why should you use WordPress as a CRM?

Perhaps the biggest benefit of choosing one of the WordPress CRM plugins is the fact that so many are available for free. In contrast, standalone CRM platforms – such as Agile CRM – tend to cost a pretty penny.

Furthermore, contacts that are already integrated with your WordPress website will be far easier to access and manage on a day-to-day basis. Having everything under the same digital roof helps streamline the workflows of both you and your staff.

Finally, you and your team should already be familiar with the WordPress environment, so you won’t have to get used to a new interface in order to start managing your customer’s details efficiently.

Now that we’ve explored why WordPress is a good home for your CRM system, let’s take a look at our top five WordPress CRM plugins to get the job done.

Here’s a short table comparison if you’re in a hurry:

PluginCore Plugin PriceAdd-ons?Feature Set
vCita CRMFreeYes (Premium)Midrange
HubSpot CRMFreeYes (Premium)Robust
WP ERPFreeYes (Premium)Robust
UpiCRMFreeNoneBasic

The five best WordPress CRM plugins compared

1. vCita CRM & Lead Management for WordPress

Overview

vCita CRM & Lead Management for WordPress is a powerful CRM solution that enables you to generate new sales opportunities, track all interactions, gain insights, and collect payment from customers. It even automates your client reminders, notifications, and overall communications.

The plugin works together with vCita’s Small Business Management App – a free customer relationship platform that encourages site interaction. Those actions include sending messages, scheduling appointments, uploading documents, and paying for services – even from mobile devices.

Finally, vCita also has iOS and Android apps to help you view, manage, and reply to customers wherever you are.

Pros

  • An excellent extension of the vCita platform
  • Actively engages with visitors to make sales, appointments, and more
  • Native iOS and Android apps
  • Offers integrated email and SMS marketing tools

Cons

  • The advanced nature of the plugin may overwhelm those looking for a simpler CRM solution
  • The iPhone app has been known to have interface problems
  • If you upgrade your vCita software you may feel like the monthly pricing is too expensive

Who is CRM & Lead Management for WordPress best suited for?

If you already make use of vCita’s all-in-one small business management app, using this plugin is a no-brainer. However, it may not be suitable if you’re looking for a simpler solution. We also like it for those companies that want to incorporate payment and marketing tools into their CRM.

2. HubSpot – CRM, Email Marketing, Live Chat, Forms & Analytics

Overview

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service platform with 300+ product integrations.

HubSpot’s free WordPress plugin makes it easier to grow your business by helping you attract, engage, and delight all of your contacts and customers. It brings powerful, easy-to-use contact management, email marketing, ads management, live chat and bots, forms, analytics and much more to WordPress.

You will be able to see each contact’s interactions — page views, forms submissions, live chat conversations, email engagements, and more – in a beautiful timeline.

Pros

  • You can easily add new members and assign them to teams or departments
  • You can create filters for contacts based on their engagement with your site
  • It comes with many pre-made templates for reports, where you can keep track of every campaign or user activity
  • You can create all sorts of front-end forms for multiple purposes
  • It provides various email templates which you can edit right from your HubSpot account

Cons

  • You can’t create custom dashboards and reports unless you upgrade to the premium plans
  • You might find it complicated if you only need the CRM features and not the whole suite
  • It doesn’t provide payment processing features or payroll reports

Who is HubSpot CRM best suited for?

HubSpot plugin was built for small to medium businesses. The tool has something to offer to everyone in the team – from salespeople, marketers, and customer service engineers to business owners.

3. WP ERP – HRM, CRM & Accounting Solution For WordPress

Overview

WP ERP is an enterprise resource planning plugin made for medium to large companies working with WordPress. It’s actually a full suite of tools including features for recruitment, accounting, human resources, and customer relationship management.

Therefore, you’re able to expand upon your CRM and bring most of your resource planning into one WordPress dashboard. For instance, the human resources module helps with communicating with employees and adding them to departments.

That said, this article is about WordPress CRM plugins, so that’s what we’ll focus on.

The CRM provides options for personalizing the customer life cycles for each client. It includes notes for marking down important interactions, along with a full log of every communication. Leads are collected through the plugin, where you can then assign tasks to different people in your organization. Categorize your contacts, and even schedule meetings with clients from within the plugin.

Pros

  • You don’t just receive a CRM, but four other modules for things like recruitment, documents, human resources, and accounting
  • The CRM has customization tools for personalizing your business approach for each client
  • The ERP core plugin is free
  • Integrates with popular apps and software like WooCommerce, Mailchimp, and Salesforce
  • It’s easy to assign tasks to team members
  • Interaction logs are stored automatically, but you still have manual tools for notes and grouping customers

Cons

  • You may have to upgrade to more advanced features or add some extensions for an additional cost
  • Some companies may not want a full suite of products like this
  • Some of the premium add-ons can be found for free in other plugins on this list – like payroll and payment processing

Who is WP ERP best suited for?

WP ERP makes the most sense for medium to large businesses that also want to take advantage of the other tools for recruitment, accounting, and human resources.

4. UpiCRM

Overview

UpiCRM is a free WordPress CRM plugin that works with your chosen contact form plugin to capture and manage leads. It boasts powerful user management, enabling you to configure roles, assign leads, group contacts, and send emails – ideal for teams working collaboratively.

UpiCRM also offers an advanced analytics system, providing detailed insights into user activity from your dashboard. This helps with gathering traffic sources and actually linking your leads to those sources. Along with an elegant and “behind-the-scenes” interface, UpiCRM ranks as one of the best WordPress CRM plugins.

Pros

  • Complete customer life cycle management
  • Teamwork and collaboration features built-in
  • Role hierarchy options
  • Dashboard KPIs give quick and easily digestible insights
  • Built-in analytics for improved tracking and marketing
  • The plugin is completely free with no upsells

Cons

  • Limited marketing campaign monitoring features
  • Although it works with a handful of popular contact form plugins, you may find that your current solution is not supported

Who is UpiCRM best suited for?

Thanks to its user management features, UpiCRM is best suited to teams looking to manage the entire life cycle of a customer. It’s particularly nice for linking to current databases and creating hierarchies for users. In short, I like it best for that initial transfer process from a contact form to a database.

5. UkuuPeople

Overview

UkuuPeople is perhaps the most detailed standalone WordPress CRM plugin on this list, helping you manage your contacts from a master list. You can then segment your contacts into groups (or ‘tribes’), and monitor interactions with them via ‘TouchPoints’. Furthermore, you can build an email list, schedule meetings, manage tasks, add team members, and more – all from your WordPress dashboard.

Finally, UkuuPeople is a free plugin, although premium add-ons are available to integrate UkuuPeople CRM with relevant third-party business apps such as MailChimp and Google Apps. These add-ons are sold as bundles (typically a few hundred dollars) or as individual extensions (usually around $50 to $100 per add-on).

The primary features offer options throughout the client life cycle. For instance, you can sell products, generate business directories, build mailing lists, and collect leads from a contact or donation form.

Pros

  • Manage and monitor interactions with multiple ‘TouchPoints’
  • Easily build email lists
  • Manage and assign tasks
  • Can be integrated with other popular business apps like Gravity Forms and Give Donations
  • The core plugin is entirely free
  • It has tools for selling products or accepting donations

Cons

  • Integrations with other business apps come with a cost
  • There aren’t any plugin translations outside of English

Who is UkuuPeople best suited for?

UkuuPeople is a WordPress CRM plugin with many advanced options, as well as integrations with other vital business apps. This makes it ideal for small to medium-sized companies looking to turn WordPress into a CRM. The contact forms connect nicely with your databases, and it’s also an excellent plugin for collecting money from clients.

Conclusion

If your brand depends on working with a large number of contacts, the time needed to simply manage and organize those details can be a mind-numbing chore – not to mention a poor use of your time.

WordPress CRM plugins are ideal solutions, both for your productivity and budget. Let’s recap the plugins we’ve compared:

  1. vCita: Ideal for vCita members looking to expand operations to their WordPress website.
  2. HubSpot CRM: An all-in-one plugin that beautifully combines CRM with marketing, sales, support, and more. Its suite of tools makes everyone on the team happy.
  3. WP ERP: An excellent choice if you want a full enterprise management suite with a CRM, accounting tools, HR options, and more.
  4. UpiCRM: For teams working together to manage customer life cycles and collect leads from contact forms.

Are you a fan of any of the above WordPress CRM plugins, or do you make use of another solution to handle your business contacts? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Nathan Porter
May 28, 2017 8:26 pm

Great review!

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