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We here at Startups are experts in CRM. We’ve spent the past half-decade researching this vast marketplace, in collaboration with an independent analyst.
Based on our results, the top construction CRM system is Freshsales. As a user-friendly platform, it is ideal for employees needing to balance onsite and desk work.
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Best for:
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Price per month (billed annually):
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Price per month (billed monthly):
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Free trial?
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Features:
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HubSpot |
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Larger teams with lots of trainees or apprentices |
Teams working on longer projects for 8+ months |
Equipment rental or leasing companies |
Main contractors billing lots of suppliers |
House building companies |
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Free plan, or £12 per user |
£38 (flat rate) |
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£42 (flat rate) |
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✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
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Construction SMEs make up 16% of the UK’s business population, according to ONS data. But despite this dominance, today’s building firms are facing a cocktail of challenges including supply chain delays and a growing skills gap.
Construction CRM software takes the spanner out of these works. Platforms streamline contractor-client relationships and simplify delivery. But which is the best system to use?
Read on for our top construction CRMs, based on precise pain points for the industry.
Or, save time with our specially-designed online quote-matching tool. It’s 100% free and will find you the best provider to suit your company’s unique needs in just one minute.
Freshsales for usability
Best for: larger teams with lots of trainees or apprentices
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Free trial? Yes
- Brilliant customer support
- Automated workflows make managing work easy
Freshsales dashboard
Historically, the construction industry has been underserved by technology, which has made some workers resistant to new products.
Freshsales was our highest-scoring CRM system for usability. Its innovative design is easily navigable, without sacrificing functionality.
Because of this, we’d most recommend it for companies with lots of apprentice or trainee construction workers that need to get new users up and running quickly.
Our testers liked Freshsales for simplifying basic CRM admin tasks, like contact management. It took just six minutes to input all of our mock customer data into the app’s dashboard.
Other helpful features include:
- Custom fields for recording particular contact details, like service descriptions
- Auto-assignment rules for allocating tasks to project leads
- Company-wide notifications in case of delivery or shipment delays
- Internal SMS, phone, and email communication
Freshsales is also extremely popular amongst users for its smart automation assistant, named Freddy. You can use Freddy to build your own automatic processes, saving you time and money spent on fiddly administration tasks.
For example, once you’ve marked an invoice as paid in your database, the Freddy tool could be set up to send an email with the receipt to your customer.
Freshsales pricing
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Price per month (billed annually)
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Price per month (billed monthly)
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Users
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Freshsales Free |
Freshsales Growth |
Freshsales Pro |
Freshsales Enterprise |
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£0 |
£12 per user |
£35 per user |
£55 per user |
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£0 |
£15 |
£35 |
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Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Costing £12 per user, per month (billed annually) Freshsales is an affordable CRM that we scored 3.5 out of 5 for value for money.
As the name suggests, Freshsales is specifically designed for sales teams. Its lowest-priced tier, Freshsales Growth, permits an unlimited number of users, so it’s a good option for larger teams.
monday.com for project tracking
Best for: teams working on longer projects for eight months or more
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Free trial? Yes
- Ecommerce integrations offered - rare for a CRM tool
- Excellent customisation means you won't have to redesign your existing CRM process
monday.com is the perfect sales CRM for tracking the lifecycle of a project from early-stage bidding to the final ribbon-cutting ceremony. Because of this, we recommend it for teams working on long-term projects.
Users benefit from a huge library of fully customisable templates and 15 widgets. This means you can install measurements for everything from project progress to budget tracking.
As it’s all in one place, this also makes project manager workloads considerably more efficient, as you won’t be constantly chasing down updates from colleagues.
However, a project is not just owned by its manager. In terms of team-working tools, monday.com has:
- Automatic data sync so that every dashboard shows the full picture
- Slack integration for internal communication
- Mobile app to keep staff up to date, wherever they are
- Time tracking so you can keep an eye on employee productivity
Another one of monday’s finest traits is its eye-catching traffic light task management system. The status of a task can be given as either red, green, or orange. Due dates and any necessary notes, such as upcoming client meetings, are also shown.
If you need to display sensitive information, you can also introduce user permissions to ensure only the necessary individuals have access to a dashboard.
monday.com pricing
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Price Per Month (billed annually)
You can typically save by paying for a year or more in advance
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Price Per Month (billed monthly)
Paying monthly is usually the more expensive option
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Users
The total number of users for this plan level
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Free Trial
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monday.com Individual |
monday.com Basic |
monday.com Standard |
monday.com Pro |
monday.com Enterprise |
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Free |
£12 seat/month |
£27 seat/month |
£42 seat/month |
Contact sales |
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Up to 2 |
Minimum of 3 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
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✓ |
X |
X |
✓ |
X |
We recommend monday.com Basic. It permits unlimited users for just £7 per seat, per month (billed annually).
Complaints about monday.com’s confusing pricing structure are common amongst users. If you want to know more about how much the platform will cost you, read our monday.com pricing guide.
Zendesk Sell for cross-site communication
Best for: equipment rental or leasing companies
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Free trial 30-day
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Price from £19 per month
- Long list of integrations
- Excellent analytics tools
- Unparalleled support services
Construction workers spend very little time behind desks. Largely, they’re based onsite and only intermittently checking mobiles or computers – which can cause siloing.
This is particularly true for equipment rental firms, who come with a designated driver. For them, we recommend Zendesk Sell.
The app’s extensive list of communication tools includes the ability to:
- Make and receive calls
- Record conversations for call analytics
- Assign collaborators
- @mention colleagues to notify them of an update
- Integrate calendars across the organisation
The same is also true for client communications. Zendesk’s list of messaging tools helps to massively reduce email response time and ensure customers feel listened to.
For example, you can add custom fields to track the number of days you’ve gone without sending an SMS response.
Working on multiple projects, likely with different managers or architects, can lead to details becoming confused. Thankfully, Zendesk provides a unique ‘smart list’ tool that makes it easy to construct detailed lists of notes and criteria for each project.
We also found it took just under two minutes for our testers to import all the necessary information – making Zendesk the fastest CRM system in our research round.
Zendesk pricing
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Price per month (billed annually)
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Price per month (billed monthly)
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Users
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Sell Team |
Sell Professional |
Sell Enterprise |
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£19 |
£45 |
£79 |
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£21 |
£49 |
£99 |
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Up to 3 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Zendesk Sell costs £19 per user, per month (billed annually) which makes it a slightly pricier product than budget-friendly construction CRMs like monday.com.
Still, we think Zendesk is worth the cost for large teams making lots of site visits. What it will save your business in avoiding delays means the app will pay for itself in the long term.
ClickUp for document management
Best for: main contractors billing lots of suppliers
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Free trial 'Free forever' plan
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Price from £3.62 per member
- High-performing freemium plan
- Generous functionality and feature list
As any construction company knows, there is a lot of paperwork involved in planning and building.
ClickUp isn’t strictly a CRM, but as a flexible workflow app it can be employed for plenty of customer management duties.
We like ClickUp most for its state-of-the-art document management system (DMS). You can use it to store, create, and edit any contract or invoice. Because of this, we think it's best for larger contractors that are going to be hiring a lot of third-party suppliers.
User experience is at the heart of ClickUp’s interface. Subscribers have the ability to embed bookmarks to find folders more easily. Our testers also liked that you can connect documents to tasks, populating workflow dashboards with all of the relevant paperwork.
Handily, the ClickUp DMS allows for real-time editing, meaning budget holders and project managers can be instantly updated on any changes to plans.
Because it’s not strictly a CRM, ClickUp is not designed for sales. The platform is harder to customise for deal pipelines.
Still, buyers should think of ClickUp DMS as a knowledge centre. Every blueprint and redesign will be categorised, filed, and easily searchable. Your suppliers can even be added as guests via public permission settings.
ClickUp pricing
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Price Per Month (billed annually)
You can typically save by paying for a year or more in advance
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Price Per Month (billed monthly)
Paying monthly is usually the more expensive option
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Users
The total number of users for this plan level
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ClickUp Free |
ClickUp Unlimited |
ClickUp Business |
ClickUp Enterprise |
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Contact sales |
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Free |
£13.74 per member |
Contact sales |
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Unlimited – but only 5 spaces |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
ClickUp prides its generous free plan on being ‘forever free’. You could theoretically use the platform for zero charge, forever.
However, the free plan upholds strict feature limits. Users are better off moving to ClickUp Unlimited for just £3.60 per user per month (billed annually) to remove all caps.
HubSpot for marketing
Best for: house building companies
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Free trial? Yes
- Intuitive user interace
- Brilliant email marketing features that make it easy to attract new business
As building SMEs are usually competing against larger companies, it is important to not let your marketing strategy sit on the back burner while your competitors capture nearby leads.
For consumer contracts, getting higher on search engines is easy thanks to HubSpot’s SEO elements. Even with the app’s free plan, you’ll get:
- Topic suggestions to increase your search engine rank
- Webforms to gather customer information and queries
- Chatbots to ensure an immediate response
- Website visitor tracking to monitor ad success
- Social media integration to target advertisements locally
Make use of all of these features to build up a strong localised presence and stand out on Google business listings and other popular directories.
HubSpot’s premier marketing email design editor can also craft attractive and personalised email outreach lists, advertising your services to the right contact.
Target your consumer base with pricing and product information, or example case studies.
Do you use timber materials to ensure you are building sustainably? These are the kind of unique selling points that can swing a curious customer.
If you don’t think things are working as planned, you can also use HubSpot analytics to study traffic and see how you might need to adapt your communications or content.
HubSpot pricing
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Price per month (billed annually)
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Price per month (billed monthly)
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Users
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HubSpot Free |
HubSpot Marketing Hub |
HubSpot Sales Hub |
HubSpot Service Hub |
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£0 |
£38 (flat rate) |
£38 (flat rate) |
£38 (flat rate) |
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£0 |
£42 (flat rate) |
£42 (flat rate) |
£42 (flat rate) |
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Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Two free users |
Two free users |
Construction SMEs can use HubSpot Free to get access to premium marketing tools for zero cost. But, be warned, you’ll have to put up with HubSpot branding on campaign materials.
Our HubSpot review outlines the pros and cons of the more professional-looking HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter pack (£38 per month, billed annually).
What is a construction CRM?
Construction customer relationship management software, or construction CRM, is a type of software that helps building firms to nurture relationships with their leads and customers.
Given the competitiveness of the construction industry, attracting new business is becoming increasingly difficult for construction SMEs. As contractors look for new ways to remain profitable, investing in CRM software can be key to winning contracts.
What can a construction CRM do for my firm?
The best CRM systems for small businesses, as outlined above, will enable you to assemble and store all project information in one easily accessible database.
Rather than having to search through crowded email inboxes and outdated spreadsheets, you’ll be able to spot delays or issues at a glance via a clear dashboard layout.
Another benefit CRM systems offer is improved customer leads. It is important for construction SMEs to cultivate and maintain a positive relationship with their vendors, suppliers, distributors, and subcontractors during early stage procurement.
Sales CRM systems like monday.com create customised client profiles that can tell you everything about your existing customer relationships. This is useful for personalising outreach and securing new contracts.
How do you choose the best CRM for your construction business?
Usability
We’ve previously written about the construction skills crisis. Finding a builder CRM that is easy to use, such as Freshsales, means you can quickly train new employees or trainees in your existing sales process.
Similarly, look for software that has good navigation and formatting. This is enormously helpful for creating and managing your sales pipeline.
Communication capabilities
Construction workers are, more often than not, working on-site or away from the office.
Remote work can lead to miscommunications. Internal communication tools are ideal for ensuring strong collaboration between workers, no matter where they’re based. We recommend Zendesk Sell for this reason.
Document management system
Few sectors have more red tape than construction. Keeping on top of paperwork is the bane of most building SMEs. Getting it wrong can also cause significant payment and time delays.
ClickUp performs particularly well for document management tools. These help you to store and share project bids, delivery slips, and receipts. You’ll be able to stay on top of deals and maintain a healthy cash flow.
Marketing tools
Marketing isn’t often considered by construction firm owners, but it’s essential for attracting new business. Look for a CRM system that can integrate with social media platforms and send out email marketing campaigns.
These are a great way to showcase your employees’ fine craftsmanship, excellent pricing, and impressive client portfolio.
Verdict
We think Freshsales is the best CRM for construction SMEs. Its workflow automation keeps tasks effortless for construction employees, who are often busy onsite and need a CRM that’s easy to master.
We recommend it to small construction businesses with lots of apprentices or trainees.
- monday.com is the best option for SMEs working on large-scale projects lasting more than eight months, thanks to excellent project tracking tools
- Zendesk is a good CRM for construction businesses working with plant hire or equipment rental, as an unrivalled option for those visiting lots of sites
- ClickUp is our top CRM software for main contractors that are billing lots of subcontractors, boasting a top-quality DMS centre
- We recommend HubSpot for brand-building in competitive service offerings, like house building
Construction is one of many industries that demonstrate specialist CRM needs. That’s why we also designed our online comparison tool, so you can be certain your CRM choice will produce the best value for your money.
It’s 100% free to use and gives you direct quotes from the top providers on the market – a much quicker way to compare costs.
- Why do contractors need CRM?
Supply chain management is a top priority for building companies. Construction CRM platforms are used to oversee every aspect of your customer and sales pipeline, helping you to anticipate future delays and target new business opportunities.
- What is the best construction CRM?
We think Freshsales is the best CRM for construction companies. We gave it top marks for usability – it's easy for all employees to get the hang of, regardless of their level of training.
- How much does a construction CRM cost?
The importance of good customer relationships in building projects means we recommend construction companies don’t go for a free CRM. Economical options, like monday.com or Freshsales, mean you can still access premium tools for a bargain fee.
Compare quotes from the top providers to find the deal that best matches your business needs
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via https://www.AiUpNow.com
May 6, 2022 at 10:35AM by Helena Young, Khareem Sudlow
