How to choose a CRM for a small business

1. Can you get your data out, free, today?

Test it on day one, before you have anything to lose. Export the two customers you added and open the file. If export is a paid feature, an API call or a support request, you are looking at the price of leaving, and it is higher than the subscription.

2. Does it work with no connection?

This is not a doomsday question. It is about the basement, the industrial unit, the client office with guest wifi that will not authenticate, and the month your data ran out. If the customer record does not open without a connection, it will fail you in the meeting you bought it for.

3. How long until it is useful?

Anything that needs a configuration project before it repays attention will be abandoned. The realistic test: can you add a customer, book them in and record what they paid within ten minutes of installing, without reading anything.

4. What happens when a second person joins?

Almost every small business tool is bought by one person and outgrown the moment somebody else needs to see the same list. Find out before you commit whether the answer is a different product, a migration, or a setting.

5. What does it cost as you grow?

Per-user-per-month is the shape that surprises people. Five staff at a modest monthly rate is a real annual number, and it arrives at exactly the moment you are also paying for the fifth person. Look at the price of the size you expect to be, not the size you are.

6. Who else can see your customer list?

Every cloud CRM holds your customers in its own database, which is a business decision you are making on your customers behalf. It may be perfectly reasonable — but know the answer, and know what happens to that copy if the company is sold or shut down.

7. What does it deliberately not do?

A tool that claims to do everything is either lying or bloated. Ask what is out of scope. If nobody will tell you, the feature list is marketing rather than a description.

For the record, this one does not issue legal invoices, does not process card payments, has no browser version and no iOS build, and does not run marketing campaigns.