If you’ve been looking for a small business CRM to help you build stronger customer relationships, you’ve likely come across Nimble CRM.
As a relationship-focused CRM, Nimble pulls social media data, enriches contact profiles, and tracks interactions across multiple social media channels.
But does all this extra functionality actually help small businesses sell more? In fact, does it even justify the premium price?
We tested Nimble CRM for several weeks to see how it performs for small business needs.
Nimble was built with context in mind. As a social CRM for small businesses, it aims to give you a deeper understanding of each contact.
When you log into Nimble, you’ll land on the “Today” tab—your main workspace. You can create deals, manage contacts, and complete activities from this page. It’s a decent attempt at centralization, but you still need to jump to other sections for some tasks, like creating new contacts.
One of Nimble’s standout features is its ability to capture contact interactions across social media platforms. The small business CRM can pull contact details and messages from social media platforms like LinkedIn and the like.
Nimble also offers data enrichment. The CRM system searches public databases to find email addresses, phone numbers, job titles, and company information, then fills this data into contact profiles.
However, this social CRM comes with several trade-offs.
The interface is a bit complex, with numerous subtabs and options that can slow down daily workflows. And starting at $24.90 per user/month, the pricing sits in the premium tier compared to other small business CRM solutions.
Perhaps most concerning are the usage caps built into the single pricing plan. Features like workflow automations, email sequences, email marketing, and even data enrichment come with monthly limits that growing businesses quickly exceed.
Exceeding these limits requires purchasing add-ons that can easily double your monthly costs. But if you’re feeling generous, Nimble CRM can be genuinely useful for your small business.
Nimble has several advantages and disadvantages to consider when evaluating it for your small business.
To help you understand what Nimble CRM offers, we’ve analyzed its features and limitations. Here’s what you get with the single plan at $24.90 per month per user:
Let’s cover Nimble’s main features in detail.
This CRM software lets you add up to 25,000 contact records and manage everything.
Your contacts are organized in the Contact page, according to their initials, and their data, displayed using default fields like name, title, phone, email, and the like.
By default, Nimble’s Contact page features columns that update themselves based on real-time actions in your CRM. For instance, “Last contacted by me” and “Last contacted by team” are updated automatically. There are also drop-down lists for the “Lead type” and “Lead status” fields.
Roughly, these are the elements you start with. If they’re not sufficient, you can create custom fields to capture more relevant data.
After organizing your contacts, you can perform various actions such as:
You can also click on a contact to open its page. There, you can manage its personal info, social media profiles, Workflow (the contacts’ stage in your funnel), assigned rep, email sequences, deals, and integrations—if any.
You’ll also be able to create “stay in touch reminders”, make notes, schedule tasks (activities), send and record messages, add files, and keep a complete record of everything. You can even enrich the contact’s data right on that page using publicly available data.
Nimble CRM houses activities in the “Activities” tab. There, you can view your agenda — a list of all kinds of activities on your plate — for each day, organize just your tasks in a list, or view each week’s schedule in a calendar.
However, Nimble falls short in the area of proper follow-up tracking for two reasons.
First off, since you’re not required to link activities to a lead or deal, not every task in your CRM ends up being a true follow-up. And because of that, there’s no single page dedicated to tracking follow-ups alone; you’ll just see a general mix of tasks instead of a focused list of next steps that move specific sales opportunities forward.
That said, Nimble CRM does offer something quite interesting: a stay-in-touch reminder. On each contact’s page, you can set a reminder to help you constantly reconnect with them.
But as interesting as this may be, it still doesn’t qualify as a proper follow-up tracking functionality.
You can create an unlimited number of pipelines from scratch or by leveraging one of the pipeline templates available.
Visualize your pipeline in a Kanban board that presents deals as cards and organizes them according to their sales stage. Each card shows the name of each deal, as well as the value, probability of success, and expiry date. You’ll see who’s in charge of the deal, as well as the associated contact, and the product or service included.
When you click on a deal in your pipeline, its full-context page will emerge. There, you can view and manage the deal’s value, timeline, probability, order details (product or service items), sales stage, associated contacts, assigned rep, and privacy settings.
You can also add notes, schedule tasks (activities), send and record messages, add files, and keep a log of every single action taken concerning that deal.
Nimble affords you the option of creating a two-way sync between your CRM and your email account. You can do this with your Gmail or Microsoft account, and if you use some other provider, the IMAP protocol route is available to you.
By connecting your email account, you’ll be able to send emails from within Nimble and keep a history of all correspondence. You can also send out automated email series, personalize each message, and track the open rates.
That said, Nimble’s email integration feature has a fatal flaw: it syncs your entire email inbox. That means you’ll be seeing all messages in your email account, instead of just those from contacts in your CRM.
Add as many team members as you want to your organization’s Nimble account and manage sales together.
This small business CRM lets you assign activities and deals to members of your team. There are also privacy settings for managing access to specific contacts and deals in your database. More precisely, you can:
Moreover, you can filter your CRM to display activities, contacts, deals, and workflows tied to specific members of your organization.
Nimble CRM has a very basic duplicate management functionality.
When you import records via CSV, this small business CRM automatically checks for existing entries. If it finds a duplicate contact or company, it merges the new data with the existing record instead of creating a separate one.
Besides, if you suspect that a record in your CRM has one or more duplicates, you may use the “Find/Merge Duplicates” option in the contact or company’s individual page to automatically search for and merge them.
Nimble also features manual duplicate management. If you know of any duplicates in your database, you can locate them yourself and use the merge option to consolidate them into one record.
Nimble comes with a simple dashboard that you can customize to present different kinds of reports about your sales funnel.
Choose from a list of 9 pre-built reports and generate overviews of your funnel. Ironically, being stuck with pre-built parameters means you can’t really customize the dashboard as you would like.
There are several automation functionalities available on this CRM’s single plan.
First off, you can create automated workflows to cut down on repetitive tasks and admin work.
There’s a limit of 25 automations per month, though. If you want more access, you’ll need to purchase the add-on at a monthly rate of $10 for every extra set of 25 automations.
Nimble CRM also allows you to set up email sequences with both activity and time-based triggers. This feature is limited, though. Email sequences are capped at 1,000 per user/month. An extra set of 2,000 emails costs $15 per month, and 10,000 costs $69 monthly.
Moreover, this small business CRM features tools for capturing leads automatically. The Prospector extension auto-captures contact data from social media platforms and any website and adds it to your CRM. There are web forms, as well, but you need to pay $12 each month to use 10 forms.
Nimble CRM natively integrates with your calendars, contacts, and emails on Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
There’s also a browser extension — dubbed Prospector — that lets you access your CRM no matter where you are on the World Wide Web. The extension can also pull contact details and messages from social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
Moreover, this small business CRM has an App Marketplace with over 100 business apps that you can integrate with.
Nimble CRM has mobile apps available for iOS and Android devices.
With these applications, you can manage contacts and deals, stay on top of each day’s agenda, and track tasks and calendar events. The Nimble mobile app also tracks your email opens, and like the web version, houses email correspondence and conversations between you and your contacts.
And if you’re using the iOS version, you’ll find Nimble in your “Share via” menu. With this, you can share contacts from your LinkedIn, Email, and Calendar apps to your mobile CRM and create a record for them.
Nimble CRM puts different features in appropriate tabs, neatly arranged on the menu on the left side of the screen.
That being said, Nimble still isn’t very easy to navigate. There are so many subtabs that it’s easy for new users to be overwhelmed.
There’s also an issue with how Nimble uses colors. All contacts (without images) have different colors, for no particular reason. This can be distracting.
On the bright side, the tool has auto-filling functionality and features Kanban boards for updating contacts’ and deals’ stages. It also isn’t overbloated with features, so the learning curve isn’t too steep.
However, the interface feels outdated, which is especially visible in the marketplace that uses a lot of old logos for different business apps.
And to make learning easier and faster, Nimble offers:
When you first create an account, you’ll land on the onboarding page that shows you how to get set up and start managing leads, deals, contacts, activities, and messages.
It’s also important to mention that Nimble was developed as a better alternative to Salesforce’s social features. Dubbed as an “enterprise social platform”, Nimble CRM lists enterprise customers on its homepage, such as GoDaddy, Upwork, and Tableau. This focus on larger organizations explains Nimble’s high price tag, cumbersome interface, and multiple add-ons.
Customer support in Nimble CRM is limited in more ways than one.
The customer success team is only available 8 hours a day, from Monday to Friday.
There’s also no phone support. Granted, you can have a 1:1 screenshare meeting with the customer care team. But it lasts just 15 minutes, which may not be enough time to resolve issues for many small businesses.
Moreover, many of Nimble CRM’s help articles are outdated. While the knowledge base is extensive, several resources still reference old pricing structures or features that no longer exist. This makes it more time-consuming to pinpoint which features the CRM offers at the moment.
Nimble CRM uses a single-plan model where all functionalities are available from the start.
With this, you don’t have to worry about choosing the right tier or missing out on features. But it also means you’re paying for advanced features you might not need, and you can’t start with a cheaper basic plan and upgrade later.
Add-ons are a major part of this CRM’s pricing structure. Access to several features is limited, so you’ll need to buy add-ons to continue using them.
Nimble CRM has just one price point, going for $24.9 per seat/month.
Although this one plan covers all the basics you’d expect of a CRM for small businesses, there are a few issues:
Moreover, access to several features is limited:
Furthermore, a single price point means you may need to switch to another CRM when your business grows, as opposed to just upgrading your plan (assuming there is a higher plan that accommodates your growing needs).
Nimble does have a 14-day free trial. Your credit card details aren’t required.
At $24.90 per user per month, Nimble costs more than most small business CRMs. This puts it in the premium category, which raises questions about whether it was built for small businesses in the first place.
The single pricing plan sounds simple, but it means you’re paying for features like social media integration and contact enrichment even if you don’t use them. For businesses that just need basic contact management and deal tracking, this might not be worth it.
The cost problem gets worse when you hit your monthly limits. Most active small businesses will quickly exceed the 25 automation limit, 1,000 email cap, or 2GB storage. The add-ons for these can easily double your monthly bill, making Nimble one of the least affordable CRM options for small businesses.
To compound the issue, the email marketing feature requires an additional fee from the start. And even then, you might need to shell out an extra $15 each month once you exhaust your usage.
The single pricing tier also creates problems for growing businesses. You can’t upgrade to a higher plan with better limits. Instead, you have to either pay add-on fees or find a different CRM entirely.
If you’re on a tight budget, Nimble’s pricing structure can make it hard to predict and control costs.
Nimble CRM does well in areas that matter for businesses that need super detailed customer profiles. The contact enrichment features are impressive, and the social media integration helps you understand your customers better.
However, several factors make it less suitable for typical small businesses.
The premium pricing puts it out of reach for budget-conscious teams, and the many usage caps mean unexpected additional costs as you grow.
Moreover, the interface complexity also works against small teams that need simple, fast tools. While Nimble isn’t overly complicated, it has way more subtabs and options than most small businesses need.
Nimble makes sense for businesses that can fully use its relationship intelligence features and are buoyant enough to pay a premium price. But for companies focused on basic sales management, simpler and cheaper alternatives deliver better value.
According to our criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Nimble’s fit for small businesses is Moderate.
If you want better value for your money, OnePageCRM just might be what the doctor ordered.
Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95
OnePageCRM focuses on what small businesses actually need: simple contact management, clear follow-up tracking, and straightforward deal progression. You get these core features without paying for bells and whistles you might not use.
The pricing is transparent with no hidden limits or expensive add-ons. Support is more comprehensive, with better hours and phone support when you need help.
Most importantly, the interface is designed for speed and simplicity, so your team can start being productive right away instead of spending weeks learning a complicated system.