Top 7 Notion CRM Alternatives in 2024: Features, Prices, Pros and Cons

Originally published July 09, 2024, updated August 13, 2024

Looking for a CRM similar to Notion? Here are the seven ones you should consider.

Are you finding Notion CRM lacking in essential features for your growing business?

In this article, we explore top Notion CRM alternatives to help you find a CRM that meets all your demands.

We’ll review the seven best solutions highlighting their unique features, benefits, and pricing for you to decide which one fits your business best.

Why are businesses looking for Notion CRM alternatives?

Notion is a versatile tool known for its project management, organizational capabilities, and database functionalities. With the help of templates, Notion can be repurposed into a basic CRM. Its high degree of customization and the abundance of CRM templates available — both from Notion itself and the user community — make it an attractive option for some businesses.

However, it's important to understand that Notion is not a dedicated CRM system. Despite the advanced templates, it lacks key features found in true CRM software. This is why many growing businesses start looking for alternatives to Notion CRM.

Here are some common issues businesses face when using Notion as a CRM:

• Data problems: There's a high risk of unclean — duplicate and conflicting — data as well as incomplete customer records. The latter stem from the inability to create required record fields in Notion. This can result in missed sales opportunities, poor customer support, and high levels of customer churn.
• Productivity issues: Notion has limited sales automation, which can hurt productivity. Important data can easily be overlooked without automated systems.
• Lost deals: Sales reps often lose deals because they lack comprehensive information about leads. A lack of a systematic approach to tracking client interactions can be damaging.
• Data security risks: When a sales rep leaves the company, they might take all customer data with them. The risk of data deletion and limited sharing permissions adds to the security concerns.
• Low adoption of the CRM among teams: Notion requires a lot of manual work, which can make the team reluctant to use it as a CRM. This results in low CRM implementation success levels and leads to a decrease in CRM ROI, less sales, and a shrink of the bottom line.
• Steep learning curve: Notion is known for its steep learning curve, which can lengthen the onboarding of new sales hires and slow them down. This also hinders the work of existing employees as they might not know how to perform certain tasks in Notion CRM.
• Hidden costs: While Notion might seem fairly affordable or even free initially, the cost of necessary third-party apps to make it work as a CRM can add up, leading to a large monthly bill. Even with enough budget, Notion lacks strong CRM-specific integrations, which can hinder your sales team’s usage of the tool.
• Limited visibility into team activity: With Notion, you have a limited understanding of team activity and performance. Do you know how many emails your sales reps send daily? How deals move through the pipeline? How long they stay in a certain stage of the pipeline? No, you don’t. Additionally, with data collected and entered manually, the reports generated by Notion CRM can be unreliable. This can mislead your sales team coaching and negatively impact future sales performance.
• Limited mobility: The Notion mobile app lacks some desktop features, making it less accessible on the go than dedicated CRM systems. This is particularly painful for sales teams that go on field trips to meet up with clients and work outside the office.

Additionally, it's not always existing problems that drive businesses away from using Notion as a CRM. Often, small businesses plan for future scalability.

As the business grows, Notion's performance can lag with larger databases or complex setups, making it challenging to process large volumes of data.

Moreover, using Notion as a CRM involves juggling numerous tabs, tables, and spreadsheets. As your customer base expands, managing all this data becomes a hassle. Quickly and efficiently navigating the database to link data with specific deals for informed decision-making becomes challenging. This scalability issue is a major concern for businesses planning for growth.

All the aforementioned challenges push businesses to explore more specialized CRM solutions that can meet their growing needs. With many Notion competitors offering better alternatives than Notion, companies can find CRMs that integrate easily, support their business, and manage sales and customer data effectively.

Top 7 Notion CRM alternatives

As CRM experts, we understand how overwhelming it can be for a business to choose a CRM system. That's why we've done the legwork for you and compiled a shortlist of nine Notion CRM alternatives worthy of your attention.

In selecting these alternatives, we focused on key functionalities to ensure they meet your CRM needs and provide the features Notion lacks. We also considered ease of use, pricing structure, and more.

Speaking of prices, we’ll compare the costs of these Notion competitors to the Notion Plus, Notion Business, and Notion Enterprise plans.

Most of the alternatives to Notion CRM listed here will be pricier than the basic Notion subscription plan, which is free. However, it's important to note that the free version of Notion lacks the necessary functionality for tracking deals within a sales team, rendering it impractical as a CRM solution. Hence, it’s not included in our comparison.

NetHunt CRM

NetHunt CRM is a powerful alternative to Notion CRM that integrates directly with your Gmail inbox, transforming the email client into a fully functional CRM system.

NetHunt CRM entered the CRM software market back in 2015 and has been consistently recognized as a highly functional, reliable, and effective CRM solution since. This is reflected in the numerous positive reviews on independent third-party review platforms, badges and awards. A user favorite, NetHunt CRM stands out in the CRM software market with high customer ratings of 4.6 on G2 and 4.8 on Capterra. Some of the traits users comment on particularly often include the constant improvement of the system, the quality of the customer support, and the flexibility of the system.

NetHunt CRM is a Cloud Google Partner and can boast top-notch security of the system. Since 2019, it annually passes the stringent Google Security Assessment.

NetHunt CRM is a cloud-based system designed for flexibility and robust performance. It offers seamless integration with Gmail and other Google Workspace apps, allowing users to manage their operations efficiently within their email platform.

On top of that, NetHunt CRM is a stellar Notion CRM alternative for outbound sales. It’s an omnichannel CRM solution that allows you to manage outbound sales end-to-end, organizing, optimizing, and streamlining every process throughout the journey.

Here are some of the most notable features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• Advanced contact management functionality that allows creating custom record layouts and offers a 360-degree view of customer records
• Sales pipeline management functionality to visualize the sales process and manage deals effectively
• Collaborative tools to enable work within and across teams, including @mentions, shared database, and task management functionality
• Email marketing functionality (email campaigns and drip email campaigns, mass sending, email tracking, custom SMTP, templates, and analytics) that removes the need for third-party email marketing management tools
• Robust sales automation functionality to automate all parts of the sales process from lead capture to moving deals down the pipeline to notifying users of the sales pipeline updates
• Seamless integration with Gmail that makes all the CRM functionality accessible from the Gmail inbox
• Native two-way integration with LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Intercom for omnichannel lead generation
• Thousands of other third-party apps that can be connected to NetHunt CRM via the Zapier integration
• Reporting functionality that allows to create different reports, including sales pipeline report, team activity report, and sales forecast
• Mobile app supported on iPadOS, iOS, and Android

Best for: Thanks to the vast arsenal of features NetHunt CRM offers, the system works not only for sales teams, but also for customer support, customer success, and marketing teams. It truly bridges the gap between different departments within your company, ensuring everyone is working efficiently toward achieving the shared goals.

Moreover, due to this Notion CRM competitor’s high level of customization, the system fits the needs of businesses of all sizes — from small businesses to large entities — across different industries in the B2B realm like SaaS, agencies, real estate businesses, construction, and more.

💰 NetHunt CRM offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to different business needs, all starting with a 14-day free trial that doesn't require credit card information:

• Basic: $24 per user per month, billed annually
• Basic Plus: $34 per user per month, billed annually
• Business: $48 per user per month, billed annually
• Business Plus : $68 per user per month, billed annually
• Advanced: $96 per user per month, billed annually

Check pricing

Advantages of NetHunt CRM:

• Flexible and customizable, the system fits the needs of any business and scales with its growth
• Centralizes communication from different channels in one place
• Offers a wide range of native integrations like those with Google Workspace, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Intercom, Instagram, etc
• Easy to use thanks to intuitive user interface
• Highly effective customer support team
• Short learning curve, allowing to use the system from the get-go
• Enhanced team productivity and increased data cleanliness and completeness thanks to sales automation functionality
• Cost-effective thanks to exhaustive marketing functionality that eliminates the need for third-party email marketing tools
• Bridges the gap between different teams thanks to collaborative functionality, effectively helping to boost sales
• Secure and reliable alternative to Notion CRM

Disadvantages of NetHunt CRM:

• Desktop version of the solution is more advanced than the NetHunt CRM mobile app
• Reporting functionality is limited to basic reports
• More advanced functionality is only available on Business Plan and above subscription plans

monday CRM

monday.com CRM is a flexible CRM platform that aims to optimize sales workflows and boost team collaboration. It features an intuitive, visually appealing interface that helps businesses organize their sales pipelines, monitor customer engagements, and automate routine tasks. An alternative to Notion CRM, the platform includes customizable workflows, automated alerts, and seamless integration with popular tools such as Gmail, Slack, and Zoom.

Additionally, monday.com CRM provides comprehensive reporting and analytics tools, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights into their sales performance and make data-driven decisions.

Key features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• AI-powered email composition and rephrasing, content generation and summarizing, task generation, and formula building
• Email sync and tracking for Gmail and Outlook, mass emailing
• Customizable dashboards
• Sales pipeline management
• Advanced lead management functionality, including lead collection from different sources and automated lead scoring based on custom criteria
• Contact management functionality
• Basic project management functionality
• Sales operations functionality for managing new sales hires
• Sales reporting functionality
• Basic sales automation features, e.g. automated lead distribution and notifications
• Mobile app

Best for: Startups and middle-sized businesses across different industries.

💰 monday.com CRM offers four pricing plans:

• Basic: $12 per seat/month, includes unlimited customizable pipelines, contacts, boards, and one dashboard.
• Standard: $17 per seat/month, includes advanced account management, 2-way email integration, AI email generator, quotes, invoices, and five dashboards.
• Pro: $28 per seat/month, includes sales forecasting, mass emails, sales analytics, and ten dashboards.
• Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing, includes lead scoring, team goals, advanced analytics, and enterprise-grade security.

All plans are billed annually and come with a free trial option.

Advantages of monday CRM:

• Flexible CRM system that can be customized to fit specific business needs
• Offers a variety of support options
• User-friendly platform with an intuitive user interface
• Streamlines various business processes with AI
• Automates parts of the sales process like lead distribution and notifications
• Allows to manage deal from pre-sales to post-sales
• Allows to plan and track sales hiring process

Disadvantages of monday CRM:

• Limited number of automations per month, which might hinder your operations if you deal with a large volume of deals monthly
• The file management system only supports certain file formats
• Number of contacts is limited to 10k per board
• CRM and Workflow aren’t a part of the same interface, so you need to switch back and forth between the two
• Limited number of third-party integrations
• Some parts of the CRM only offer limited customization
• Steep learning curve

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is one of the leading names in the CRM software market, trusted by over 216,000 customers across 135 countries. Its leader status is supported by the G2 Awards badge this vendor regularly receives.

This Notion competitor’s popularity stems from being a free solution for basic features, with more advanced functionalities available for a fee. This makes it accessible and attractive for many businesses, particularly startups and businesses with one-person teams.

Key features of the free version of HubSpot CRM, a Notion CRM alternative:

• Contact and lead management functionality with automated sales activities logging
• Sales pipeline management functionality
• Contact and company insights to populate your records with data from a database of over 20 million businesses
• Email template builders and email insights to identify the best-performing sales content
• AI email writer
• Live chat software
• Dashboards and reporting functionality to track sales activity, productivity, and individual performance of sales team members
• Meeting scheduling functionality
• Document sharing
• Sales quotes generator

Best for: Individuals and startups with small teams that want to deploy a CRM solution but don’t have the budget for it; large enterprises that require a wide range of different advanced features for various teams across the company centralized in one platform.

💰The basic functionality of HubSpot for Sales is free. However, if you want more features or more users, you will have to pay:

• Sales Hub Starter: $15/user/month paid annually
• Sales Hub Professional: $90/user/month paid annually
• Sales Hub Enterprise: $150/user/month paid annually

Advantages of HubSpot CRM:

• Free system
• An CRM that can be turned into an all-in-one platform for marketing, sales, service, content, and operations
• Extremely scalable
• Offers a wide range of different integrations
• Allows for effective team management and performance tracking

Disadvantages of HubSpot CRM:

• More advanced features like sales automation are only accessible to paid users
• Subscription plans for businesses and enterprises are pricey
• Has a steep learning curve and might take a long time to set up
• The multitude of features might be overwhelming and redundant for startups and small businesses that don’t need all that functionality just yet
• Limited number of contacts and email templates
• Limited customization

Salesforce

Salesforce is another mogul of the CRM software world. Founded in 1999, it’s been around for long enough to see the rise and fall of hundreds of other solutions for sales, marketing, and customer experience management. Over the years in the market, the vendor has been constantly improving their product, adding new features and perfecting the existing ones. As a result, businesses of today get a chance to access a powerful, multifunctional tool with pretty much every and any feature imaginable.

While it’s not a CRM similar to Notion and not even a direct Notion CRM alternative — because it’s more of an enterprise solution not well-suited for smaller teams — it’s good to have Salesforce CRM on the list of the best alternatives to Notion CRM so that you have all the top CRM software options considered and weighed.

Key features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• Sales Cloud to manage leads, opportunities, and sales performance
• Service Cloud to enhance customer support with case management and service automation
• Marketing Cloud to create and track marketing campaigns across various channels
• Commerce Cloud to build and manage e-commerce solutions
• Analytics Cloud to gain insights through robust analytics and AI-driven predictions
• Einstein AI to leverage AI for predictive analytics and automation
• AppExchange to access a vast marketplace of third-party apps and integrations
• Mobile CRM to manage CRM tasks on-the-go with mobile access
• Collaboration tools like Chatter and other tools for team collaboration and communication

Best for: Enterprise companies, large ecommerce businesses.

💰 Salesforce is a huge deal in the world of CRM software, which comes with a huge bill. Despite there being a separate, more affordable pricing plan for small teams, the functionality offered for Sales Suite users is very limited:

• Starter Suite: $25/user/month - Basic CRM for small teams.
• Pro Suite: $75/user/month - Complete CRM for any size team.
• Enterprise: $150/user/month - Advanced CRM with customizations.
• Unlimited: $300/user/month - Unlimited CRM power and support.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month

Advantages of Salesforce:

• A comprehensive solution that provides tools for sales, customer service, marketing, and more
• Highly customizable to fit specific business needs
• Offers a high degree of scalability
• Integrates seamlessly with almost every application and system
• Offers robust analytics and AI-driven insights
• Enhances productivity through advanced automation of routine tasks
• Has a large community to turn to for help alongside reliable customer support
• A secure system that provides robust data security and compliance features

Disadvantages of Salesforce:

• Salesforce can be expensive, especially for small businesses, with additional costs for add-ons and advanced features
• The platform has a steep learning curve, requiring significant time and resources to implement and master
• While highly customizable, extensive customization can be complex and may require professional services
• Some users find the interface less intuitive compared to other CRM solutions
• The wide range of features can be overwhelming and may include unnecessary tools for some businesses

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM system designed to help businesses manage their sales processes efficiently. Known for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, Pipedrive offers features like customizable pipelines, activity reminders, and detailed reporting. It allows teams to track deals and customer interactions seamlessly, automate repetitive tasks, and gain valuable insights through its robust analytics tools. Pipedrive's integration with various third-party applications and its mobile access make it a versatile choice for businesses seeking an alternative to Notion CRM.

Key features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• Contact management functionality
• Lead management functionality
• Sales pipeline management functionality
• Workflow and marketing automation
• Reporting and forecasting
• Emailing functionality (mass emailing, email scheduling, email tracking, and email sync)
• Smart Docs to sign documents, autofill documents with CRM data, track document opens and clicks in real-time
• AI-powered sales assistant and emailing tools
• Reporting functionality
• Project management functionality

Best for: Pipedrive is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses that need a sales-focused CRM to manage and streamline their sales processes. It's particularly beneficial for sales teams looking for an intuitive and user-friendly interface to track deals, automate tasks, and gain insights through robust analytics.

💰 Pipedrive offers four different subscription plans depending on the business size and the functionality it needs. There’s a 14-day free trial period that doesn’t require credit card credentials.

Advantages of Pipedrive:

• Essential: $14 per user/month (billed annually) — basic sales and CRM tools, lead management, and integrations.
• Advanced: $29 per user/month (billed annually) — email sync, automation, meeting scheduling, and live chat support.
• Professional: $49 per user/month (billed annually) — AI-powered tools, contract management, advanced reporting, and team management.
• Power: $64 per user/month (billed annually) — project planning, enhanced permissions, 24/7 support, and phone support.
• Enterprise: $99 per user/month (billed annually) — all features with enhanced security, unlimited reports, and customizations.

Disadvantages of Pipedrive:

• A lot of more advanced and useful features are only available for Professional subscription plan users and above
• The essential plan has limited reporting capabilities
• While flexible, some advanced customization options are lacking

folk CRM

A relatively new solution, folk CRM is an ideal alternative to Notion CRM for those who value a sleek, modern interface. It offers comprehensive contact management and customizable pipeline views, allowing users to track deals efficiently. With 1-click enrichment, users can quickly update contact information, while email and calendar sync ensure seamless interactions. Folk CRM also includes personalized messaging, automated follow-ups, and integration with over 6000 tools via Zapier and Make, making it a robust and user-friendly CRM solution for managing client relationships and team collaboration.

folk CRM also prioritizes efficiency and quick CRM implementation, offering ready-made workspace templates to set the workspace for your specific use case up faster.

Although a young solution that doesn’t have that much functionality available yet, folk CRM is a promising new player in the CRM software market. The vendor actively works on the development of core features, regularly releasing new functionality.

Key features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• Contact management functionality
• Pipeline management functionality
• folkX Chrome extension for prospecting on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn
• 1-click record enrichment through the Apollo integration
• Conversation templates on LinkedIn and Gmail
• AI-generated email variables
• Email sequences, mass emailing, and email analytics
• Collaborative functionality, including Smart fields, tags, shared groups

Best for: Agencies of all sizes.

💰folk CRM offers three pricing tiers, the difference between which lies in the number of emails, enrichments, email domains, magic fields, and email members available per month:

• Standard: $20/member/month billed annually
• Premium: $40/member/month billed annually
• Custom: From $60/member/month billed annually

Advantages of folk CRM:

• Offers customizable pipeline views
• Increases team productivity with sales automation
• Streamlines prospecting
• Simplifies lead capture and data enrichment
• Helps to personalize communication with AI-generated email variables
• Simplifies collaborative work across departments
• Sleek and modern, simple design

Disadvantages of folk CRM:

• Lack of crucial CRM features like sales reporting
• Limited customization of the system
• Limited number of integrations
• Data migration can be cumbersome
• Little to no automation functionality
• No roles and permissions
• The number of actions for different features, e.g. 1-click data enrichment, is capped

Airtable CRM

Airtable is a flexible and user-friendly platform that combines the functionality of a spreadsheet with the power of a database, making it a great alternative to Notion CRM. If you're not ready to switch to a dedicated CRM solution and are looking for a CRM like Notion, Airtable can serve as an excellent option with its customizable templates and intuitive interface.

It allows users to manage contacts, track sales pipelines, and collaborate with team members effectively.

With features like rich field types, automation, and integrations with other tools, Airtable offers a comprehensive solution for managing customer relationships without the complexity of traditional CRM systems.

Key features of this Notion CRM alternative:

• Integrations with popular tools like Slack, Trello, Google Calendar
• Project management functionality
• Basic contact and deal management functionality
• Grid, Calendar, Kanban, and Gallery views
• Data management functionality
• Reporting functionality

Best for: Startups, small businesses with one-member teams, individuals.

💰 Just like Notion CRM, Airtable CRM offers a free plan for individuals and very small teams just getting started. For those who need more seats or capabilities, the prices are:

• Team: $20/user/month
• Business: $45/user/month

Advantages of Airtable CRM:

• Small learning curve since Airtable CRM is similar to Notion
• Offers customization and flexibility
• Ability to visualize data in different ways
• Can be used by other departments because of its versatility
• Affordable solution

Disadvantages of Airtable CRM:

• Limiting if you have very complex CRM needs
• Only offers basic reporting and analytics
• Lots of switching between the tabs as you can’t manage different processes from one tab
• No sales automation
• Doesn’t offer a systematic approach to tracking client interactions
• Doesn’t sync communication and interactions with CRM records, meaning those will stay in the manager’s inbox after they leave
• Poor collaborative abilities

The Best Notion CRM Alternatives: A Side-by-Side Comparison

Even with just the short list of the top Notion CRM alternatives in front of you, it can be overwhelming to try and wrap your head around the functionality each option offers, their pros and cons, etc. To make the choice easier, we created a side-by-side comparison table to visualize the selection of systems, give you a chance to compare them and pick the one that works best for your business.

The Bottom Line

In this article, we explored some top alternatives to Notion CRM, highlighting their unique features, pricing structures, and suitability for different business needs.

Exploring these alternatives is crucial to finding the best CRM fit for your business. By considering dedicated CRM systems, you can ensure a more seamless and efficient management of your customer relationships and sales processes.

If you're looking for a powerful, Gmail-integrated CRM, consider trying NetHunt CRM. Its robust features and ease of use make it an excellent choice for growing businesses. Explore NetHunt CRM here.

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