It’s no secret that sales reps spend a lot of time sending and responding to emails; research shows that up to three-quarters of sales reps’ time is spent on non-sales activities, including working in their inbox. For many professionals, Gmail is their email provider of choice, making a Gmail CRM a necessity to streamline productivity.
As a freelance writer, I email a ton of potential leads as well as clients — and my inbox can get messy fast. The worst part? Potential clients can easily slip through the cracks if I’m not carefully tracking who I’m connecting with. That’s where the power of a CRM comes in. Given that my work is already deeply integrated with the Google ecosystem, having a Gmail CRM makes it easy to track what I need in one place.
Luckily there are a lot of great tools on the market that can help you track leads easier and efficiently. I tested out 8 of the top tools to see which I liked best — and I’ll share tips for how you can pick a tool for your needs, too.
Table of Contents
What to Look for in a Gmail CRM
I’ve played around with several Gmail CRMs over the years and am sharing some of my favorites below that I believe are the most effective and, more importantly, easy to use. In fact, ease of use is one of the top considerations, whether you’re looking for yourself or your team.
Ease of Use
In my experience, if a tool is difficult to understand with a complex UX or overly complicated, it quickly goes by the wayside, making usability one of the most important considerations, especially when you’re just starting out.
That’s not to say that complex tools aren’t valuable — the truth couldn’t be further. But as complexities grow, the more detailed your SOPs and team training must be. To that end, it’s not just about use but about installing and getting started.
Gmail Integration
This is a no-brainer for Gmail CRMs, of course. However, what I want you to think about here is whether you want to do all the work right in Gmail, if you’re open to logging into other platforms, and the kinds of activities you want — or are willing — to do in each.
So keep an eye on the level of syncing and if it’s bi-directional (goes back and forth) or one-way. That’s going to affect your processes.
Task Management and Calendar Integration
These go hand in hand. Not all CRMs, Gmail or otherwise, are great task management systems. And that’s okay, but you need a plan for how you’ll manage sales-related tasks and if they’ll drop reminders into your calendar or help you manage your day.
Automations & AI
What automation and AI capabilities does the Gmail CRM tool you’re considering have? Can it automate follow-up emails or reminders based on triggers or behaviors — or at least help you ideate the content so you can polish it later? Can it support lead nurturing workflows and some repetitive tasks? You also may want to look for predictive lead scoring and customizations.
Scalability
I get it — you may not be ready to think about growth yet. However, if you’re looking for a Gmail CRM now, growth may be in the not-so-distant future, so I want you to think about whether or not it can grow along with you.
If not, and you’re just looking for something #rightnow, that’s totally fine, but I want you to be aware of your long-term plans so you can identify what you’ll need when it’s time to scale.
Cost
Again, a no-brainer for most of us — but it’s not just about the cost now. Many of these tools have free or low-cost starting options. So what is it about? It’s also about the cost down the road as you grow. How much more will you pay when it’s time for the next subscription level? Or when your team grows? And what is the cost of making a switch down the road? If you don’t have plans for growth yet, no big deal, but I’d encourage you to consider this!
HubSpot's Free CRM Software
Free CRM Software & Tools for Your Whole Team
- Sales
- Marketing
- Operations
- Customer Service
Should you use a CRM?
That’s another consideration, for sure. However, anyone with more than a handful of clients really should use a CRM. If you’re on the fence about implementing a CRM for your sales team, check out this post to learn how using a CRM helps your team grow better.
Now that you know what to consider, let’s dive on into the best Gmail CRM options!
1. HubSpot CRM
- Price: Free
Bring the power of HubSpot CRM to your inbox with our seamless Gmail integration. By connecting HubSpot CRM to your Gmail account, you can log emails sent from your inbox in your CRM with just one click, so you never lose a valuable message again.
You also have the ability to track email clicks and opens in real time, and you can access powerful HubSpot tools, including templates, meeting scheduling, sales sequences, and more, without leaving your inbox.
Features
The free features include:
- Email tracking.
- Create shared email templates.
- Meeting scheduler.
- Mobile App — iOS and Android.
- Task management.
- Dashboard and reporting software.
- Deal pipeline.
- Company insights.
- Pipeline management.
When you upgrade to a paid version, you can also get automated personal outreach. Of these features, my favorites are email tracking and task management, which help me stay on top of everything. Plus, with a few clicks of a button, it just works.
Getting Started
Right off the bat, I was blown away by how easy it was to set up HubSpot’s CRM. After answering a few simple questions about my goals, HubSpot mapped out my starting point in about 30 seconds. For the purposes of this article, I didn’t change the pipeline stages, but it seems quite easy to do.
After choosing the Build a Sales Pipeline Playbook (one of HubSpot’s templated starting points), it walked me through how to sync my Google contacts and create a pipeline.
Next up, creating a sample deal — ACME Awesomeness, because, of course. Then, I opened up the deal and clicked “Email” on the left-hand side of the screen, and was able to connect my inbox.
From there, I followed the prompts to connect my inbox and download the HubSpot Sales extension for Gmail.
After downloading the extension, you can start using the CRM in Gmail.
The HubSpot Gmail CRM extension shows up on the right-hand side of my screen, just above the calendar. Plus, you can adjust the settings by clicking the icon just beneath the URL bar.
After setting it all up, I was able to open up a new email, send a test to my alter ego, and track it. I was prompted to add the contact to my new HubSpot CRM and could create templates, insert scheduling links, and set up follow-up tasks.
The Verdict
Ultimately, I found it easy to set up, and I absolutely love the task management focus, which has been missing from past CRMs I’ve used. While it takes a few actions to set up, HubSpot guided me through it, and I didn’t have to go spelunking to figure it out. After setup, it feels quite intuitive.
HubSpot’s Gmail CRM is easily the most comprehensive free tool, and I definitely recommend it, especially if you have big plans for growth. I love the email-specific integrations. If you’d like to take it for a spin, you can see it for yourself here.
2. Streak
Streak was designed to keep your sales pipeline moving from within the Gmail interface. This CRM is highly customizable, giving you and your team the ability to search, filter, and sort your data to create custom views. You can also easily share details of your deals including emails, notes, and call logs with your team for the seamless transition of information between reps.
Features
The free version includes
- Email tracking.
- Link tracking.
- Email sharing.
- Snippets.
- Mail merge (up to 50/day).
All other plans include
- Private and shared pipelines.
- Unlimited boxes.
- Mobile access.
- Core and advanced CRM features.
- Live support.
Getting Started
Getting started with Streak is as easy as adding a browser extension.
After activating it and signing in, I immediately got access to the 14-day Pro+ Trial, which features a series of welcome videos that make it easy to dive in.
As soon as it’s integrated, you can start customizing how you use Streak CRM for Gmail.
Next, you can choose from a variety of integrations and automations. Once you’ve set everything up, you can start using Streak CRM for Gmail, with features that include several tracking options, adding to the pipeline, link tracking, snippets, and sending later.
The Verdict
Personally, I like the ease of use and features available. Additionally, I caught up with my friend Kate Burgener, an interactive PDF designer who has been using Streak for years, and asked her opinion.
Here’s what Burgener had to say:
“I love using the Streak email power tools, which are free. Email tracking helps me know if my clients have taken a peek at what I sent or if I should follow up if it looks like they missed a draft … I set up snippets to reuse perfectly worded text, so I stopped writing from scratch every time I needed to perform a repetitive task, such as inviting clients to a feedback meeting.”
HubSpot's Free CRM Software
Free CRM Software & Tools for Your Whole Team
- Sales
- Marketing
- Operations
- Customer Service
3. Salesflare
Salesflare is an easy-to-use CRM meant for small businesses selling B2B products and services that connects directly to Gmail. With a visual pipeline feature, it reminds sales reps about upcoming tasks so prospects don't fall through the cracks.
The CRM pulls all contact information it can — from email signatures, social media profiles, emails, and past conversations — and automatically adds it into your records so you have all of the details about each of your contacts at your fingertips. It also connects with your calendar and mobile phone to help you manage and log your meetings and calls with leads and customers.
Features
Salesflare is known best for the following features:
- Automated address book.
- Account and contact suggestions.
- Data enrichment using public sources and email signatures.
- Email sequences.
- Email, meeting, and call synchronization.
In my opinion, the coolest feature is the data enrichment. I love how it automatically improves the quality of your CRM data based on the emails you’re already sending. I wish this was standard on more CRMs — for Gmail and otherwise.
Getting Started
As soon as I started the free trial, Salesflare gave me a sample tour that showed me how to dive right in.
The tour shows you step by step exactly how to get started with Salesflare.
Next, Salesflare makes it easy to connect the CRM with Gmail and other providers. I followed the prompts and added the extension to Chrome.
The Salesflare CRM immediately populated the Gmail inbox — the above picture shows two side-by-side views of tasks vs. all of the options.
The Verdict
The Salesflare tour was amazing, and I’m obsessing over the micro UX copy inside the Gmail CRM extension. I wasn’t as clear right away on how to use the CRM right from my email outside of the bar itself, but it got easier extremely quickly with just a little playing around. I love all of the integrations and the general ease of use.
4. Copper
- Price: $9 per user per month for basic CRM features; premium features starting at $49 per user per month
Copper CRM is designed to integrate directly with all of your Google Workplace programs. Using Copper, you can manage leads, update contact and deal records, and track tasks within your inbox. Additionally, you can use Copper to drive productivity with powerful automations that eliminate the need for manual data entry.
Features
The Starter Plan includes:
- Lead tracking
- Contact management and segmentation
- Auto-enrich profiles
- Mobile business card feature
- Automatic email capture
- Automatic data capture
- Custom views and activities
- Zapier integrations
I find the automatic features the most exciting because of how much sheer time is saved. It becomes more about verification than research.
Getting Started
Once I set up the free trial and browser extension, Copper populated right in my Gmail and provided a short tour. At Copper’s prompting, I clicked on an email chain, added the contact to my list, and then was able to view the full history of our communications.
When it came time to add someone to a pipeline, I had to first create a pipeline and go into Copper’s app, but they made it easy. I just clicked the template I wanted and was able to create a pipeline that quickly worked with my business.
From there, I could create, track, and manage opportunities either through the app or Gmail. As soon as I created one in the Gmail CRM, I was able to see it in the app.
The Verdict
Copper CRM for Gmail feels like a no-brainer. The UX is incredible, and I’m impressed with how easy it is to set up and dive right into. I can see how it works well for solopreneurs as well as growing teams. And at $9 per month to start, it’s an easy yes.
5. Nutshell
By integrating your Gmail and Google Calendar accounts with Nutshell, you can centralize your email and calendar activities to reduce jumping back and forth between programs. In addition to syncing capabilities, Nutshell allows users to create tasks, document notes that can be shared among teammates, and track communication timelines without having to leave Gmail.
Features
In a nutshell (pun absolutely intended), the features include:
- Contact records and data storage.
- Automatic contact sync.
- Automatic customer data scouring.
- Lead capture through embeddable forms.
- Pipeline management.
- Communication and task management.
- Reporting and performance tracking.
- Email automation.
- Support and onboarding.
Getting Started
The first step Nutshell recommends on the first screen is connecting to Google.
I had to poke around a bit before I was able to find how to connect Nutshell to Gmail. While I connected to Google right away, it wasn’t immediately obvious to me. Totally possible I got click happy and missed it. If that’s you, just go to Settings > Integrations, and it’s the first thing that pops up, with some helper text. On to download the Nutshell for Gmail Chrome Extension.
While Gmail can do canned email, Nutshell makes it even easier to manage and update. And that feature is available as soon as you add the browser extension. It appears that this is the top way that Nutshell integrates with Gmail.
The Verdict
In a nutshell (I had to make another pun), Nutshell seems to be a solid CRM with a lot of great capabilities for teams needing a reasonably priced solution. It does just about everything you want. However, if you want a deeper integration with Gmail, other solutions allow you to do more right within the Gmail interface.
6. NetHunt CRM
NetHunt is built to live within your Gmail account and is designed to be intuitive for Gmail users. This CRM allows you to log emails that can be made visible to your team for easy information sharing. NetHunt also brings full lead management capabilities to your inbox — you can collect leads, qualify them, capture relevant details, and segment contacts all from within Gmail.
Features
NetHunt’s features include:
- CRM essentials, including tasks and reminders
- Pipeline management
- Team collaboration and productivity features
- Sales and email automations and tracking
- Comprehensive Google Workspace integrations
- Strong support options
Let’s dive into exactly how it all works.
Getting Started
Right off the bat, I can see that NetHunt takes onboarding seriously. They encouraged me to book a call to dive in. The next step was connecting the CRM with Gmail via a Chrome extension.
An app that makes using it easy? Check! I love that NetHunt simplifies using it by telling you exactly what to do at every step.
Their Gmail CRM interface is super user-friendly and works smoothly. They have a collapsable dashboard that integrates into your sidebar right above the standard Gmail folders.
As someone who likes to read, I found it slightly frustrating that I had to watch videos, but the videos are short and focused on the specific task at hand. Otherwise, I have zero complaints.
NetHunt’s Gmail CRM integration is so well designed and integrated that it’s easy to get up and running … quickly!
The NetHunt CRM populates in new Gmail emails as well, with options to connect to specific contacts, deals, or companies, as well as add tasks, use templates, and track opens and specific link clicks.
The Verdict
If my limited test has any say in the matter, I think NetHunt looks incredibly promising. With one of the smoothest Gmail integrations, it’s easy to manage just about everything right from your email. And I have to admit, when they tried to get me to book a call before I did anything else, I had some concerns that it was going to be overly complicated to use. Those are totally alleviated. The biggest con I see is the lack of reports and integrations at lower tiers.
HubSpot's Free CRM Software
Free CRM Software & Tools for Your Whole Team
- Sales
- Marketing
- Operations
- Customer Service
7. Capsule
This CRM is designed to help you build meaningful relationships with your customers. Using their Google Workspace add-on, you can access contact records, message history, tasks, and sales opportunities from within Gmail. Integrating Capsule with Google Workspace also makes accessing your contact data from mobile seamless for sales reps on-the-go.
Features
Capsule CRM features:
- Contact management.
- Sales pipelines.
- Workflow automations.
- Email marketing and tools.
- Sales analytics.
- AI content assistant.
- Tasks and calendar.
- Project management.
Getting Started
Getting started with Capsule is easy. It walks you through the first few steps, one of which is linking to Google and Gmail. By going to Settings > Integrations, I was able to find the Chrome extension and add it to my account.
After clicking on an email, Capsule asked if I wanted to add the contact to my Gmail CRM. I could choose a person, organization, or find them in Capsule and then add all their contact details.
While I found the Gmail component of Capsule’s CRM less robust than some of the others, I found their interface in the app easy to navigate. It’s easy to create contacts, opportunities, and projects.
The Verdict
As with all tests, time is a limiting factor. However, I found Capsule to be quite easy to use from a user interface standpoint but less robust than Gmail CRM. If I were focusing on ease of use alone, it would have top marks because it’s so intuitive. However, if I’m looking for CRMs that are highly effective in Gmail, this one isn’t quite as strong there as some of the other options.
Where Capsule really stands out to me is that they’ve put great effort into the project management side of things, and candidly, that’s where most other CRMs fall off. If you’re looking for an option that does both, this is a great solution.
8. TeamWave
Using TeamWave’s CRM integration with Gmail, you can turn your inbox into a powerful sales tool. With this add-on, you can automatically create new CRM contacts from emails you receive in Gmail, auto-sync your emails to save conversations to share with your team, schedule activities directly from your inbox, and instantly access the sales history of a contact when you receive an email from them.
Features
All of TeamWave’s plans include all features — just different levels of each. The $39/month starter plan includes:
- Unlimited users.
- Unlimited projects.
- Unlimited deals and activities.
- 15k contacts.
- 25 GB storage.
- Customizable sales pipeline.
- Contact management.
- Multiple views.
- Project management capabilities.
- HR management options.
- eSignatures.
- Email integrations.
- Comprehensive reports.
I love that you don’t have to upgrade for features, just based on the scope of contacts, data, and number of sites you support.
Getting Started
The first screen that pops up in TeamWave includes a checklist with instructions for creating a Gmail CRM.
I installed the marketplace add-on and started adding contacts by clicking on emails and adding details. From there, I went back into the TeamWave app to play around and explore settings and deals.
The detail of project management capabilities is incredible, with customization options that include project phases and bill rates, making it easy to track and manage the entire customer relationship from lead to offboarding.
The Verdict
While it’s not the strongest Gmail CRM out there in terms of Gmail functionality and integrations, TeamWave comes out as one of my favorite options because it’s a single subscription regardless of how many users you have and includes all of the features you need without upgrading.
My second favorite attribute is the ease of managing the entire customer relationship, especially with regard to project management — as I mentioned above, that’s an area most CRMs fall down. While the Gmail CRM features could be stronger, I do like how you have the ability within Gmail to get a better understanding of each contact.
Finding the Best CRM for Gmail
The good news is you’ve got a lot of Gmail CRM options, and most of them work with other email services as well. The bad news is that they’re all pretty fantastic.
I’d recommend trying a few to see what works best for you and fits most closely with the way your brain, business, and processes work. Keep in mind — if you’re testing several CRMs with Gmail, the browser extensions may compete with one another. With that in mind, I recommend making a list of what you’re looking for, trying one at a time, and weighing the pros and cons of each Gmail CRM.
Happy searching!
Get the most out of your CRM by integrating it with your inbox.
HubSpot's Free CRM Software
Free CRM Software & Tools for Your Whole Team
- Sales
- Marketing
- Operations
- Customer Service
![The 12 Best Client Management Software for Any-Sized Team [+My Insights]](https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/screenshot-2024-08-26-at-42754-pm-66cce54da128a.webp)
