When small businesses go shopping for CRM software, they see Salesmate in just about every โtopโ list in search engine results.
Salesmate CRM is an AI-powered solution that promises to cater to your sales, marketing, and customer service needs.
But does being on these lists mean Salesmate delivers the right mix of features and simplicity that small businesses actually need?
We tested Salesmate CRM thoroughly, checking how well it works for small businesses.
Salesmate CRM presents itself as a comprehensive customer engagement platform that goes beyond traditional contact management. The system combines sales management with marketing automation and customer service capabilities.
At its core, Salesmate provides unlimited pipelines, built-in calling and texting, and automated workflows. It also features Sandy AI, an AI assistant designed to handle routine tasks for you.
On the marketing front, the small business CRM comes equipped with a module for creating and tracking email campaigns. The marketing module also features a survey creation functionality.
For customer care, Salesmate CRM allows you to create AI agents that support your prospects and customers 24/7. Thereโs also a team inbox from which your whole team can see and respond to queries.
However, Salesmate has several drawbacks.
The first is that Sandy AI โ the one it prominently advertises โ is locked behind higher-tier subscriptions (starting from $39/month), unavailable to businesses on the Basic plan.
Similarly, essential features like email sequences, product and service catalogs, and centralized document management, among others, require costly upgrades.
Salesmate CRM also performs quite poorly when it comes to integrations. There are only around 46 business apps on the marketplace to connect with.
When you couple these ills with the CRMโs clunky navigation experience, it can become harder to tell whether Salesmate is truly the right choice for your small business.
Salesmate, like every other small business CRM, has several strengths and weaknesses worth looking into.
To see if Salesmate has what your small business needs, we’ve broken down exactly what you get on the Basic planโthe one most small businesses would start with.
Here’s the table showing Salesmate CRM’s features.
Below, weโll look at the key features in detail.
Salesmate CRM has a fairly decent contact management functionality that lets you add as many contacts as you want.
On the Contact page, you’ll see a list of all contacts, as well as some personal info (email, phone, job title, etc.), contact type (equivalent of status/stage), and tags. Via the same page, you can import (Excel & Google Contacts) and export contacts, mass delete, transfer, or update them.
What’s more interesting is that Salesmate’s main contact page has automatically-filled columns where you’ll find:
Beyond these, Salesmate offers a 360ยบ view of each contact. Click the contact to open their individual page, where you can add, view, and manage all their personal information, social media profiles, associated deals, activities, files, and notes.
You’ll also be able to add and manage emails, calls, and texts to and from the contact. And under the “All” tab, you’ll find an activity log of everything you do on your CRM concerning that contact.
Salesmate CRM does not have any specific modules for tracking follow-ups. What it does have is an activity management functionality.
Go to the Activities tab to view a list of all your tasks, as well as their details, deadlines, and statuses. And if you prefer, you can switch to Calendar view to see your to-do items date by date.
Another way to keep an eye on your tasks is by checking your contacts’ pages. Each page shows the pending activities for each contact.
When you mark a task as done, Salesmate CRM prompts you to schedule another.
However, that’s as close to proper follow-up tracking as the small business CRM comes.
Salesmate CRM doesn’t compel you to link records to tasks. Neither does it automatically prioritize tasks according to their due dates. Frankly, it does a poor job of organizing activities.
In Salesmate CRM, you can create an unlimited number of pipelines from the Setup โ Module โ Deal โ Pipeline page and customize them as you deem fit.
Once you have a pipeline in place, head to the Sales tab to find your deals. There, you can create new deals and view a list of all your deals, as well as some of their info, such as pipeline, stage, value, last communication, and last activity.
On the same page, you can import, export, delete, update, or transfer deals to another team member. You can also switch to ‘Board’ view to visualize your pipeline in a Kanban board and move deals to the next stage using drag and drop.
Salesmate’s pipeline management functionality includes the ability to manage products (or services) and track sales goals. However, neither of these features is accessible on the lowest tier at $23 per seat/month; you’ll need a Pro subscription (starting from $39 per month).
Click on a deal to view the 360ยบ item card containing all its info. From inside this page, you can see and manage all associated contacts, activities, files, and notes.
The deal page lets you manage emails, calls, and texts related to the deal. There’s also an activity log of everything you do on your CRM concerning that deal.
Full email sync is available on all subscriptions in Salesmate CRM.
That means you can connect with your email provider to send, receive, and keep a detailed record of emails with contacts. You even have a dedicated tab for emails, and it contains all messages, as well as their statuses (whether they’ve been opened or not).
If you’d rather not sync your email account, you can BCC messages to a custom email address provided by Salesmate, and the messages will appear in your CRM’s email history.
You can add your team to the tool and collaborate. This means assigning them contacts, leads, deals, and tasks, and tagging them in a note. And if youโre on a Pro or higher plan, your whole team will be able to handle customersโ queries from one team inbox.
A part of Salesmate’s contact management functionality is its duplicate management feature. Available from the lowest tier (Basic), it allows you to merge any duplicate contact or other record.
Additionally, you can create rules that prevent duplicate records in the first place.
On the lowest plan, Salesmate offers a standard dashboard that shows the state of your sales funnel. The dashboard is made up of widgets that provide an overview of various parts of your funnel, including activities, deal forecasts, individual sales performance, and more. They’re presented in tables, charts, graphs, and a host of other views.
The reports subtab also offers a few standard reports: contacts most recently created, contacts most recently updated, deals by source, and deals by forecast this year. It also has a host of other pre-built reports in the report library.
But that’s all you get. You can’t create custom dashboards or reports on the lowest plan.
Salesmate CRM possesses decent automation capabilities.
Using Smart Flow, the visual automation building tool, you can rig actions in your CRM to take place automatically.
Smart Flow lets you design automated workflows that can be triggered in multiple ways. You can set up flows that only activate when you manually launch them, or build ones that start automatically when specific conditions are met. Whatโs more, Smart Flow allows you to chain automations togetherโ meaning one workflow can kick off another.
Besides workflows, Salesmate CRM has an email sequencing module where you can create and automatically send out a series of follow-up emails. But it requires a Pro plan or higher.
This small business CRM also automates lead capture using Web Forms and two other methods. The first involves connecting a Lead Form to Facebook Ads to collect leads’ data from your campaign. In the second method, youโll use the Chrome extension to capture contact data from your Gmail.
Interestingly, Salesmate CRM has a built-in AI assistant (Sandy AI) that lets you carry out activities in your CRM without lifting a finger. You can prompt the AI to reply to emails, create tasks, add notes, and more.
Salesmate CRM also makes it possible to create your own AI chatbots that engage with customers and support them on your behalf.
Salesmate CRM is lacking in the integrations department. This small business CRM’s marketplace features no more than 46 business apps that you can integrate with.
To make things worse, being on the lowest tier prevents you from connecting with many of these apps.
For instance, you can integrate with Google Suite, Microsoft Suite, Mailchimp, Slack, Zoom, and several others on the lowest plan.
For tools like QuickBooks, DocuSign, Xero, Shopify, and several others, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription.
Salesmate CRM has a mobile app for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.
This mobile app gives you access to most of the functionalities that the CRM offers on the web version. That means you can manage contact, company, and activity records, access your sales pipelines, communicate via calling and texting, send personalized emails, and collaborate via your team inbox.
Salesmate’s mobile CRM also comes equipped with features for recording calls and transferring them to the appropriate team members.
The mobile app also grants access to the Product module, but that only works if you’re on a subscription higher than the lowest.
Although Salesmate CRM has a non-distracting color scheme, it can be difficult to navigate.
First off, there are 10 tabs on the main menu, and within those, there are tons of subtabs, which can be overwhelming for beginners.
Then there’s the overbloat issue. Although Salesmate covers many of the core functionalities of a small business CRM, it also includes features for marketing and customer success, and adds in some unnecessarily robust automation capabilities. While these contribute to nurturing leads, they make the CRM more difficult to learn.
And perhaps due to all these extra features, Salesmate CRM’s loading speed is not as fast as it could be.
Salesmate CRM has an average rating of 4.6/5 on G2 from over 102 customers. Users say that although the CRM is intuitive and user-friendly, it does have a learning curve at the start.
Customer support on Salesmate CRM is equal across all subscription tiers. The CRM delivers support in the following ways:
This support is available only during the week. If you want it 24/7, you’ll need to get on the Enterprise plan, which requires a custom quote, but is likely more expensive than the Business tier at $63 per user/month.
That said, Salesmate, like many other small business CRMs, offers onboarding support to new users. When you first log in, you’ll land on the guides page that contains video tutorials, support documents, articles, and tasks to help you get a handle on the software.
And if you want, you can schedule a free demo with one of Salesmate’s experts, who’ll walk you through the basics.
Salesmate uses a tiered subscription model with four plans. Each tier unlocks additional features and capabilities, so thereโs a significant functionality gap between pricing levels.
The structure starts with a Basic plan, moves to Pro, then Business, and finally Enterprise. Pricing is per user per month, with discounts available for annual billing versus monthly payments.
What makes Salesmate’s structure notable is how it gates critical features. Unlike some competitors that include most core functionality from the start, Salesmate reserves some key features for higher-priced plans.
This creates a situation where the advertised starting price may not reflect what you’ll actually need to pay for a fully functional CRM for your small business.
Salesmate CRM is slightly more expensive than other small business CRMs. It has no freemium, and the lowest among its three paid subscriptions costs $23 per user/month (if paid annually).
To compound the problem, this plan has some limitations that include:
Sandy AI is also not accessible on this tier. It’s quite strange that Salesmate advertises itself as an AI-powered CRM, but its native AI assistant is not available for use on one of its subscriptions, even if it’s the least expensive.
To access the built-in AI, sales email sequences, a larger file storage (5GB), and more robust integrations, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription to the next tier (Pro), and that costs $39 per user/month.
It’s a premium price tag, but you need it if you want to use Salesmate without sacrificing sales email sequences.
However, you can test this small business CRM software before committing. There’s a 15-day free trial for each plan, and you don’t need to submit your credit card info to use it.
For most small businesses, Salesmate’s pricing is hard to justify.
At $23 per user/month, the Basic plan already costs more than the typical $10โ20 range for small business CRMs. But that’s just the beginning of the problem.
If you need product or service management and email sequences (and most businesses do), you’ll have to pay $39 per user/month for the Pro plan. That’s $16 more per user just for two basic features. For a team of five, that adds up to an extra $960 per year.
With only 2GB of storage and limited integrations on the Basic plan, you’ll probably need to upgrade much sooner than you’d like.
Besides, if youโd like to use SMS and calling features on the lowest plan, you need to buy a phone number from Salesmate, since the CRM doesnโt allow you to use an existing number on its basic plan. This further drives up your monthly expenses.
When you add it all up, Salesmate becomes an expensive choice for small businesses looking for an affordable CRM.
Salesmate CRM might work for small businesses that communicate with customers using calls and texts. It might also be suitable if you need to automate your workflows and not only run, but also track email marketing campaigns.
But there are several problems with this small business CRM.
The interface has too many tabs and options, making simple tasks more complex and time-consuming than they should be. Even its prized CRM automation capabilities are so robust that beginners might have a hard time using it.
And letโs not forget how expensive Salesmate CRM is. Its lowest subscription plan is well above the average for a CRM built for small businesses. To make things worse, the pricing structure forces you to pay extra for basic features like email sequences, file management, and the ability to connect with a wider range of business apps.
What’s especially frustrating is that Salesmate advertises itself as an AI-powered CRM, but then locks the AI behind a paywall. This can be misleading for small businesses interested in said AI features.
Based on our evaluation criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Salesmateโs fit for small businesses is Moderate.
If you have a fairly technical team and can shell out $39 per user each month, this CRM might be ideal. But if you need something simple and affordable, Salesmate probably isn’t the right fit.
If Salesmate feels too complex or expensive for your needs, OnePageCRM is worth considering.
Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95
Unlike Salesmate, OnePageCRM focuses on what small businesses actually need. You get proper follow-up tracking, automation, and email features without the confusing interface or high costs.
Starting at less than half of Salesmate’s price, OnePageCRM gives you better value. It’s simple enough to use right away but powerful enough to help your business grow. Thatโs why itโs loved by small businesses in over 80 countries.