Freshsales CRM Review

• Freshsales allows you to run outbound email campaigns from your CRM.
• All subscription plans include cloud-based phone service.
• Upper-tier plans include AI-driven insights to help you stay on top of deals and grow revenue.
• This review is for small business owners who are interested in implementing Freshsales CRM. 

Freshsales by Freshworks is a top CRM platform with an excellent mix of built-in communications tools and AI-powered features that push the traditional sales pipeline beyond the basic functionality of tracking and managing deals. With built-in cloud telephony, you'll have far more context about your prospects with an instant view of past activities, call notes, previous conversations and their overall score to win deals faster. The platform can automatically log sales calls to help you analyze the key performance indicators that drive sales. The AI-powered assistant, Freddy, will learn from your historical sales data, activities and customer engagement to deliver better recommendations that you can apply across the customer journey. With the chatbot enabled, you reduce the first-response time on your website with precise answers to popular customer questions and capture new leads.

Freshsales Editor's Score: 94/100

Why We Chose Freshsales for Communications 

In addition to the native cloud-based phone support with toll-free and local business phone numbers available for purchase in more than 90 countries, Freshsales also offers AI-powered chatbots, bulk email marketing tools, easy forms to capture customer data and auto-enrichment to automatically add social and publicly listed information to your contacts' listings. By combining basic communications tools with an automated sales pipeline, your team will have access to vital customer information and AI-powered insights to focus efforts efficiently and close more deals in less time. If you're not ready to leave your existing phone provider, you can use numbers from an existing plan while leveraging the CRM platform's benefits through the Enterprise plan. And with the mobile app that's included with all plans, you can run all of your sales from your phone on the go. While the free version includes chat, email and phone service, the Pro plan is recommended for the best Freshworks experience, with AI-powered deal insights, time-based workflows and multiple sales pipelines to help teams sell effectively. 

Source: Freshsales

Pros

• All paid Freshsales plans include Al-powered tools that provide actionable insights across the entire customer journey.
• Freshsales has basic built-in VoIP phone service with virtual phone numbers available in more than 90 countries.
• You can manage global transactions with over 150 currencies and multilanguage support.

Cons

• The built-in phone system is lacking in cloud-based call management features.
• You'll have to pay $75 for 1,000 extra bot sessions if you go over your limit.
• There's no discounted rate for purchasing a large number of seats.

Key takeaway: Freshsales CRM might be able to replace your existing business phone service provider and marketing automation software for email campaigns.

Usability

While far from a difficult CRM platform to learn and use, Freshsales is not among the easiest we've reviewed. The learning curve also applies to many of the AI-powered tools that improve over time with access to historical sales data, activities and engagement. However, once you and your team have your visual sales pipelines, sequences, workflows, enriched contacts and AI-based forecasting tools in place, Freshworks makes it much easier to understand your customers and serve them better. 

The platform features many automated sales productivity tools for workflows, chat campaigns, lead capture and sales sequences to boost your team's efficiency. With all of Freddy AI's features enabled, you'll benefit from predictive contact scoring to prioritize your efforts and recommendations for the next best action to close a deal. Freshworks also includes API access and easy integrations with popular business applications that sales teams across industries use on a daily basis.

Freshsales Features

All three of the paid Freshsales plans include everything you'll need to manage your customer relationships and sell effectively. However, many of the standout features that make Freshworks such a powerful CRM platform are available only with the Pro and Enterprise plans. Some features, such as bulk email and sales sequences, are limited by a set number of actions per day, which varies by plan.

Cloud Telephony

Many Freshworks subscribers can ditch their business phone system provider and enjoy many of the same calling features and tools through their CRM software with a built-in cloud-based phone system. This feature provides everything you need for a successful sales call, including call recording, call logs, voicemail and phone numbers available for purchase in more than 90 countries. You can make calls directly from any laptop or mobile device and track all of the calling metrics to optimize your sales tactics and strategies. 

Source: Freshsales

Freddy AI

Freddy is an AI-powered assistant whose main purpose is to help you understand your customers better. This feature improves over time as it learns from your CRM data to deliver predictions and recommendations that serve your specific business goals. You can increase your team's opportunities for success and avoid letting hot leads go cold with Freddy's data-backed suggestions for the next best action to keep the conversation moving forward. You can also reduce first-response times on your website by automating chat conversations to proactively interact with prospects and answer standard questions.

Source: Freshsales

Bulk Emails

Freshsales makes it easy to leverage the timesaving power of personalized bulk emails for outbound campaigns. You can tailor emails with highly targeted content, track open rates and see your click-through rates with built-in tracking and reporting options. Freshsales helps teams deliver email messages at the right time and provides real-time notifications when a recipient interacts with your communications. You can also reawaken cold leads, send follow-up emails and automatically capture leads from emails. 

Source: Freshsales

Deal Management

Freshworks describes its deal feature as pipeline management 2.0, signaling a significant improvement over the basic functionality of tracking and managing deals. This feature can help you make smarter and more timely decisions by predicting each deal's performance, engaging with your prospects and forecasting revenue. With the Enterprise plan, your CRM can automatically enrich each of your prospect's contact sheets by adding any relevant publicly available information. You can also spot rotten deals to move on quickly as well as manage your incentive structure for different sales teams and situations.

Source: Freshsales

Freshsales Cost

Freshsales is available through four plans – Free, Growth, Pro and Enterprise – that range in price from free to $69 per user per month when billed annually. Unlike many competitors, such as monday.com Sales CRM and Keap, Freshsales does not have a minimum seat requirement for any of their plans. Freshsales also offers separate add-ons for branding documents and extra bot sessions. You can test any plan free of charge for 21 days with a trial account. 

Setup

While far from difficult, Freshsales is not among the easiest CRM platforms to get up and running. All but Enterprise plan subscribers will be tasked with setting up their system and making use of the 15 available "setting things up" articles from the knowledge base. These articles include easy-to-follow instructions for everything from logging in to the platform to adding new users to converting sales emails into Freshsales leads. You may also utilize a small number of workflow templates to use as a starting point to optimize for your team's needs. If you're also purchasing and setting up a new local or toll-free phone number, the request process can take up to two days. Once the process is complete, a phone widget will appear at the bottom of your Freshsales account, and you can begin making calls.

Customer Service

All Freshsales plans include customer service via phone, email and chat 24 hours a day, five days a week. While many competitors, including monday.com Sales CRM, offer 24/7 customer support, not every company includes contact by phone, which we believe is an essential method of communication for support. Enterprise subscribers are assigned a dedicated account manager who will personally resolve any issues on your behalf.

In terms of self-help, Freshsales has a variety of customer case studies and how-to videos covering the basic features and tools. Freshworks also has an academy program with courses to improve your skills and certifications for admins and agents to demonstrate your knowledge of the system. 

Drawbacks

Customer service availability is limited to weekdays. Many competitors in this industry offer 24/7 customer service support with basic and top-tier plans. However, Freshsales does offer support by phone at all plan levels, which is something that's not offered by competitors, including monday.com Sales CRM and Keap.

Even with an Enterprise plan, many feature actions, such as bot sessions, are capped each month. Enterprise subscribers will find limitations with daily sales sequence emails, personalized bulk emails and API access. Additional bot sessions are sold in batches of 1,000 for $75.

Tip: Keep a close eye on your use of chatbots, sales sequences, bulk emails and API access hours during your first few months to prevent overages or service interruptions.

Methodology

Our editorial team and contributing writers considered many major CRM software providers in 2022 for review. After performing our initial research into each platform, we selected 11 of the leading CRM solutions for small businesses: Salesforce, monday.com Sales CRM, Freshworks, Keap, Zoho, Oracle NetSuite, HubSpot, Insightly, Pipedrive, SugarCRM and Zendesk. After spending many hours participating in live product demos and testing each platform, we identified the best use case for 11 providers to help small businesses owners and managers choose the best CRM for their needs. We've also taken a deeper dive with six of our top performers, providing greater insight into the features and tools that separate these CRMs from the rest of the competition. Freshsales sets itself apart from other CRM platforms with a variety of business-grade communications features and tools. With Freshsales, you'll get built-in phone support, toll-free and local business phone numbers available for purchase in over 90 countries, AI-powered chatbots, and bulk email marketing tools to reach your customers effectively.

Freshsales FAQs

Are Freshworks and Freshsales the same?

The Freshworks CRM is now called Freshsales. Freshworks has expanded with Freshdesk, Freshmarketer, Freshservice, Freshteam, Freshping and Freshstatus to support numerous business departments and teams. 

Is Freshsales Free?

Yes, Freshsales offers a limited free version of its CRM platform. This version includes contact management, deal management, a built-in phone dialer, inbound caller ID, a chat widget, mobile apps, contact lifecycle stages, an activity timeline and 24/5 support.

How is Freshsales used?

Freshsales is a cloud-based CRM platform designed to help businesses collect new sales leads and manage interactions with potential customers. The CRM platform is accessible via mobile app for iOS and Android, and it includes an AI tool to help cultivate and convert leads.

Overall Value

We recommend Freshsales for …

• Businesses looking for chatbots to reduce first-response time.
• Small businesses that want to reduce recurring software and service costs. 
• Small teams with large lead lists.

We don't recommend Freshsales for …

• Businesses that don't use online lead capture.
• Businesses that don't want to worry about overages.
• Large businesses that want enterprise-level discounts.