Agile is a CRM software that aims to be your one-stop shop for every aspect of customer relationships. It offers sales, marketing, and customer service management, all rolled into one platform.
But can a CRM that tries to do everything actually excel at doing its one job—managing customer relationships—well?
We put Agile CRM through rigorous testing to determine whether its jack-of-all-trades approach works for small businesses.
Agile CRM takes an ambitious approach to customer relationship management. Instead of focusing on one thing and doing it well, it splits itself into three separate workspaces: sales, marketing, and customer service.
Each workspace functions like its own mini-CRM. The sales side handles leads (or contacts), deals, and pipelines. Marketing manages multi-channel campaigns, A/B testing, web engagement, and social media communication. Customer service runs support tickets and help desk functions.
Moreover, you can customize your dashboard with various widgets, capture leads from Gmail and LinkedIn, and use gamification features to motivate your sales team. You can even communicate with prospects and create posts on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook—from inside the CRM.
Beyond that, Agile CRM offers easy integrations with more than 50 productivity tools and business applications.
But these positives can’t mask the problems.
Working wth three mini CRMs leaves you with over thirty different tabs and modules to navigate through. This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that Agile CRM’s interface looks outdated and has performance issues.
What’s more frustrating is the limitations of this small business CRM. On the subscription plan most suitable for small businesses, Agile puts an unfair cap on how many automations and integrations you can use.
Speaking of integrations: It’s also quite concerning that a handful of Agile CRM’s features—like click-to-call, ticket management, and social media communication—are facilitated only through third-party tools. Couple that with the integration limits, and it starts to look like the CRM doesn’t want you using these features on a budget plan.
Perhaps most frustrating is how there’s no free trial to test if a paid plan actually meets your needs before you commit. That said, Agile CRM does offer a freemium plan.
Some users also mention that the CRM development is most likely abandoned. So, if you’re looking for a modern and up-to-date solution, Agile CRM might not be the best choice.
Agile CRM comes with certain benefits and drawbacks. We highlight them below.
Let’s break down what Agile CRM delivers at the Starter plan level ($9.99 per user/month), along with what’s missing from this budget tier.
Here’s a table showing Agile CRM’s features.
Below, we’ll examine the features in detail.
On the free plan, you can manage up to 1,000 contacts, while the lowest paid plan raises the cap to 10,000. This makes it workable if you’re a solo professional, entrepreneur, or very small business with a modest customer base.
The Contact page is where most of the action happens. Here, you can import or create contacts, apply tags, attach marketing campaigns, track lead scores, send emails, schedule appointments, jot down notes, and add related events, deals, or tasks.
When you click on a contact, you get a 360º view of everything tied to them. This includes their basic info, tags, lead score, notes, events, campaigns, documents, tickets, deals, and even web stats. You can also see inbound and outbound emails in one place.
To top it off, there’s a chronological timeline that tracks every action taken by you or your team with that contact. It’s a handy way to get the full context of the relationship at a glance.
While this CRM doesn’t have a dedicated follow-up tracking function, it does include a task management module.
In Agile CRM, tasks are organized on a Kanban board by default. They’re grouped into columns such as overdue, today, tomorrow, and later. The board updates automatically, but you can also rearrange tasks manually with drag-and-drop.
If you prefer, you can switch to a calendar view, where tasks appear on specific dates.
Tasks are color-coded according to the urgency level you chose:
Reminders aren’t available, but you’ll still get notified of what’s due. A badge on the “tasks” button shows how many are overdue, and you’ll also receive daily email reminders about pending activities.
It’s worth noting that Agile CRM also features an appointment scheduling tool on all subscription plans. Choose your business hours, set up meeting types, and share a link to your online calendar with prospects who want to reach out to you.
In Agile CRM, pipelines are called “Tracks”. This small business CRM’s free and lowest plans give you just one Track. If you want more, you’ll need to upgrade to higher plans like Regular or Enterprise.
You can configure your Track via the Admin settings tab. Modify the stages (or milestones, in this case), add or edit loss reasons, choose a rotting date, and set up goals. You can even create and manage product items.
The Deals module allows you to import or create new deals, which are then organized in Kanban form, according to their pipeline stages. With this, you can move the deals through your pipeline using drag and drop.
You can also click on the deal to open up its full page, where you can edit the deal’s info and add tags. You can also create and view all notes, events, tasks, documents, products, and related contacts.
The page also keeps a chronological record of all actions taken concerning the deal.
Agile allows you to create a two-way connection between your email account and your CRM. It doesn’t work on the free plan, though; the two-way email sync functionality begins from the Starter plan.
This feature lets you send and receive emails, and keep a complete record of everything—all in your CRM.
Interestingly, there’s also a two-way telephony sync. This means you can make and receive phone calls right inside Agile CRM. The catch is, you’ll need to be on at least the Regular plan. And even then, you’ll still have to integrate a third-party tool like Twilio, SIP, Bria, CallScript, and the like.
Collaboration in Agile CRM is pretty bare-bones. You can add team members to the CRM and assign them contacts, deals, and tasks. But that’s about it. There aren’t dedicated features for tagging, messaging, leaving notes, or controlling access, like you’d find in more modern CRMs.
Agile CRM provides a very basic duplicate management functionality. If you suspect that a contact has duplicates, you can handle them through the “Merge Duplicates” function on that individual contact’s page.
And that’s as far as it goes. Unlike many other small business CRMs, Agile doesn’t provide a dedicated tool that scans your entire database for duplicates and suggests merges automatically.
This means you’ll need to manually catch and resolve duplicate records, which can become tedious as your contact list grows.
Agile’s homepage is a dashboard that gives you insights into your workspace. Though you’ll only find this in the sales and marketing workspaces.
Using dashlets (widgets of sorts), you can modify the dashboard to display all sorts of insights in various ways.
For instance, in your sales workspace, you can include a list of the fifty most recently added contacts, present your forecasted revenue in a graph, include a list of upcoming tasks, insert a leaderboard of your sales team, and so much more.
The same applies to the marketing space. For instance, you can display the percentage of email opens in visual form plus a list, present your campaign stats in a table, get a performance overview, and more.
Agile CRM offers workflow automations, but it’s very limited. The free plan has just one automation, and the lowest paid plan (Starter) offers just five. Even the Regular tier that costs $39.99 per user/month gives you just ten.
If automations are important to you, you’re better off with the Enterprise plan, which gives you unlimited automation rules. But will you really shell out $64.99 per user/month just for workflow automations? Most likely not—especially when other small business CRMs offer extensive automations on even the lower plans.
Agile also has a call automation feature. That is, you can set up calls to happen when certain conditions are met. To use this feature, however, you must’ve integrated Twilio or some other telephony tool available on Agile CRM. Additionally, your account needs to have a spare automation rule available.
There is no outright email sequencing tool on Agile CRM, but the “Autoresponder” module achieves almost the same results.
There, you can set up triggers that send emails automatically. Of course, you’d be exhausting your Campaign Workflow cap, which is one and five on the free and lowest plans, respectively.
Agile CRM relies heavily on integrations to deliver many of its features. That may be why they’ve simplified integrations and made it so that you can connect to most apps in just one click.
Agile CRM lets you sync contacts with Google, Microsoft 365, Shopify, Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, and HubSpot.
You can also integrate LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to not only capture contact profiles, but also communicate with them, and even create posts—all from within your CRM.
Beyond that, there’s a host of telephony, customer support, billing, and e-commerce apps available in the CRM’s widgets and integrations marketplace. And for a fee of $14.99 per user, Agile CRM provides access to over 38 productivity, marketing, sales, support, and HR tools from 500Apps—like NinjaSEO, Finder.io, ClickDesk, Clockly, and a host of others.
If these aren’t enough, you can connect with Zapier to access a lot more integrations.
But note that Agile puts a limit on how many integrations you can use, depending on your subscription plan:
Agile CRM has mobile apps available for Android and iOS devices.
These applications offer access to many of the CRM features you’d normally be able to use on the web version. To be specific, Agile’s app provides you with a dashboard for tracking your business health and allows you to manage contacts, track deals, and stay on top of your tasks and events.
With the mobile CRM, you can also make calls, run email campaigns, automate your workflow, and access the helpdesk functionality for customer service.
Agile CRM has a minimalist design, with no distracting color schemes or text layouts.
That said, this small business CRM can be overwhelming and confusing to use, and here’s why.
For one, it has too many tabs and modules. This problem begins from the fact that the CRM has three distinct interfaces, each for managing different things: sales, marketing, and customer care.
And within each of these workspaces, you have to work with multiple tabs and modules. Put them all together, and you have a total of over thirty tabs, which is too much, especially for a small business CRM.
Moreover, if you want to use the automation and email campaign functionalities, you’ll have to wade through a slew of modules to find what you need.
The same applies to the CRM in and of itself. It’s riddled with so many functionalities, a lot of which you likely won’t need, and quite frankly, just make the software bloated and difficult to get a hang of.
The saving grace is that Agile lets you manage deals and tasks using drag and drop. On top of that, you can create new contacts, deals, events, notes, tasks, emails, and more, no matter where you are in the CRM.
Plus, when you first log in, there’s a short onboarding video waiting for you. And at the top of the screen, there’s an onboarding button with steps to help you get started.
That said, Agile CRM’s interface is outdated. It has an average rating of 4.0/5 on G2 from over 350 customers who say that, although it’s generally easy to use, it suffers from slow loading times and performance issues.
On Agile CRM’s free plan, you get only customer support via email. For phone support, you’ll need to pay for a paid plan.
All paid subscription plans have email and phone support, but there are limits:
That said, other forms of assistance are available from the free plan. They include Agile’s knowledge base (help centre) and their free weekly training webinars.
If you need more robust support beyond these already mentioned, your best option is to opt for the highest tier (Enterprise). There, you’ll also get an onboarding coach and a dedicated account rep.
Agile CRM’s pricing includes a freemium plan and three paid subscription tiers: Starter, Regular, and Enterprise.
Starting at just $9.99, the CRM appears to be affordable. However, the true cost becomes apparent once you understand the severe limitations baked into each tier.
The platform’s pricing strategy relies on aggressive caps for essential features. Contact limits, automation rules, and integration restrictions all push small businesses toward more expensive plans much sooner than expected.
Agile CRM has a free plan, but it has several limitations:
As such, you may need to upgrade to the lowest paid plan (Starter). Going for $9.99 per user/month, Agile’s lowest tier is cheaper than a lot of other small business CRMs. Commit to a two-year license, and the price drops to $8.99 per user each month.
However, it’s also limited:
With these limits, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll need to get on the Regular plan. The Regular plan costs $39.99 per user/month, features all the basics, but still has limits:
If you’d like to access more automation capabilities, you’ll need an Enterprise subscription. It’s the only one of Agile CRM’s plans that offers you unlimited automation rules. The problem is that it costs $64.99 per user/month.
It’s worth noting that on all plans, you get just 5,000 emails before you need to pay for more. For context, the next 100,000 emails you purchase will cost $0.004 per email, and the next 1 million will go for $0.003 per email.
And to make matters worse, there’s no free trial available. This means you can’t even test-drive the subscription tier you’re interested in before committing to such a steep price.
The $9.99 starting price seems reasonable, but it’s misleading.
Most small businesses will quickly hit the integration limits. When that happens, you’re looking at $39.99 per user—a 300% price increase.
What’s more concerning is that there’s no middle ground. You either stay cramped in the Starter plan or quadruple your costs. And without a free trial, you’re committing blind to a plan that might not even work for your needs.
The email limits add insult to injury. Just 5,000 emails across all plans means you’ll be paying extra charges regularly if you do any serious email marketing. For a CRM that markets itself as an all-in-one solution, these nickel-and-dime tactics feel particularly frustrating.
Small businesses on tight budgets might make the Starter plan work, but only if they’re willing to accept severe limitations. For most growing businesses, Agile might not be the most affordable CRM.
Agile CRM tries to handle all aspects of customer relationships by combining sales, marketing, and customer service in one platform. It’s an interesting idea that could save businesses from buying multiple tools.
But the reality doesn’t match the promise, especially for small businesses that need something simple and affordable.
The biggest problem is complexity. Small teams don’t have time to hunt through different tabs for basic functions. This might work for bigger companies with dedicated staff to manage the CRM, but it’s a daily headache for small businesses trying to work quickly.
Then there’s the pricing issue. Agile CRM looks affordable on the surface, but the limits are severe.
It’s a classic bait-and-switch scenario: the entry price draws you in, but scaling up comes with costs that can easily outweigh what small businesses are prepared to pay.
Some businesses might find value here. If you have very few contacts, need lots of social media features, or actually want all three workspaces, Agile could work. But these are rare cases. Most small businesses would do better with a simpler CRM that’s upfront about pricing and focused on core features.
According to our criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Agile CRM’s fit for small businesses is Moderate.
If Agile’s complexity and restrictions are deal-breakers, OnePageCRM is an alternative that many small businesses vouch for.
Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95
OnePageCRM strips away the confusion and focuses on helping you follow up with leads and close deals. That means you won’t have to juggle different workspaces or navigate through endless modules. Everything happens in one place, with an action-focused approach that keeps your sales process moving forward.
The pricing is straightforward, too. At $9.95 per user/month, you get the core features you need without artificial limits designed to push upgrades. Plus, you can actually try it free before committing.
For small businesses that want to spend more time selling, OnePageCRM is the way to go.