Compare CRM Software in the United Kingdom

How we compare CRM software

We list 11 CRM tools sold to UK businesses. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, and some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, so read the contract row with the price.

The calculator asks for users, contacts and whether you need automation. For each vendor it picks the cheapest published plan that covers your seats and your contact count, and ticking automation removes any plan that excludes it. The table sorts by that cost. Commission does not change the order.

UK GDPR and PECR: the law that follows customer data into CRM software

A CRM holds other people's data, by name, with notes attached. None of what follows is legal advice, and no row in our table is a compliance verdict.

Lawful basis comes before the software. UK GDPR requires a lawful basis for each set of contact records. For a B2B pipeline that is often legitimate interests. The CRM has to record which basis applies and when the record was created: a custom field you configure on day one.

Retention is your decision. Ask whether it can be automated per record type or is a manual purge.

PECR governs the marketing you send from it. Marketing to individuals, which includes sole traders and most partnerships, needs consent; the soft opt-in covers existing customers given a clear chance to refuse. You have to evidence which applied to a given contact, months later, from the record. Where sending sits in a separate product, as Capsule CRM lists with Add-on (Transpond) and Pipedrive with Add-on (Campaigns), the consent flag still has to travel with the contact.

Where the records are stored is a row you can read. Moving personal data outside the UK needs a lawful transfer route, so hosting region is a procurement question, and it tends to track the support clock.

A US-hosted CRM is a normal thing for a UK business to buy. It is not a thing to buy without knowing you have.

Subject access, erasure and getting records out of CRM software

Two requests turn data protection into an operational job.

A subject access request has to be answered within a month and covers everything you hold about that person: the contact row, notes, logged emails, old custom fields, a colleague's deal comment. On a trial, search a name and see whether the search reaches note bodies and attachments or only the indexed fields.

Erasure is harder, because a CRM is designed to remember. Does deleting a contact remove the linked activity, or hide it in an archive that reporting still counts? And what happens to the copies, because the record has usually been syndicated outward through integrations, which run from Capsule CRM's 60+ (Xero, QBO) to Salesforce's 5,000+. Every connected app is another place the same person exists.

Export is your exit route too: API access reads yes on every row, so a bulk extract is possible everywhere. What differs is how much of the record comes with it.

Fixing the unit before comparing two CRM software prices

The most common mistake in this category is comparing figures that do not measure the same thing.

Per user per month is the shape most rows use, and headcount is the whole story there. ActiveCampaign prices per contact, so the size of your database moves its bill, not your team. Keap is a third shape: a platform fee of £223/mo (Ignite, includes 2 users and 1,500 contacts) plus a separate £1,121 one-time (Ignite Implementation Package), a platform rather than a seat.

The seat minimum inverts the arithmetic at the bottom of the market: a low per-seat rate under a minimum can cost a sole trader more than a higher rate with none. Put your real headcount and contact count into the calculator, because the entry figure is a unit price, not a bill.

The contact cap that ends a free CRM software plan

Free plans are capped on seats and on contacts, some entry plans are capped on contacts too, and the two caps behave differently. Seats change when you hire, with a decision attached. Contacts grow every week you trade and nobody watches the number, so the contact cap is the one that tends to arrive unnoticed.

Read each free tier as two numbers and ask which you will hit first, on the database you will have in a year. A capped plan stops and forces an upgrade. A contact-priced plan costs more each month as you succeed, which is easier to live with and harder to notice.

Annual or monthly: the contract row on CRM software

Several products publish a monthly-equivalent price that assumes a year's commitment. That is standard practice, but the figure you compared and the figure you can buy at a month's notice are different numbers for the same plan.

The switching cost in a CRM is not the subscription. It is the migration, the retraining and the reporting history you leave behind. If you are still testing whether the team will use it, leaving after a month is worth paying a little more for.

AI and MCP in CRM software: included, gated or an add-on

AI itself separates almost nothing here. What separates products is whether it is included in the plan you are buying, and whether an outside assistant can reach your records through model context protocol.

A native connection means an assistant is reading records about named people, so settle a read-only scope, a lawful basis and where queries are processed before you switch it on.

Automation is often gated above the entry plan even where the feature list says the product has it. Monday CRM lists workflow automation as Standard+ and Pipedrive lists Yes (Growth+). If automation is why you are shopping, tick the box in the calculator.