There’s no doubt that Insightly is one of the top names in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for good reason. There are plenty of features and integrations possible through Insightly, including managing both the sales and project management side of your business. But are there Insightly alternatives out there that might compare favorably to this solution—and if so, can you save money on your CRM by using one of these alternatives? Let’s look a little closer to find out.

First, we have to address cloud CRM. What does it mean to manage your relationship with a customer? On one level, it means tracking all of your interactions with customers so you can stay on top of your communications. But it also means finding the ways to enhance your relationship with customers and create a great experience for them, ultimately boosting the kind of word of mouth reputation that your business earns.

Insightly Cloud CRM is one of the most powerful solutions out there for businesses that need to manage their customer relations. And though it offers project management as well, we’re going to focus on the cloud CRM services—and how they stack up to the alternatives out there. We’re going to dig up some of the best cloud CRM providers around and do 1:1 comparisons to find out which solutions out there might make the alternative that’s right for your business and your CRM.

To make these comparisons, we’re going to examine the Insightly Basic plan. Why this plan? Simple: we need something to go on. Most cloud-based services will offer some sort of basic plan, and comparing these entry-level plans will not only give us insight into which services are truly affordable and serve as an alternative to Insightly, but will make the differences easier to spot. This makes the comparisons more accurate as we look for proper CRM alternatives.

Comparing Insightly to Pipedrive is interesting, as Pipedrive is one of the rare items on our list that actually offers a lower price than Insightly, coming in at only 10/user/month when billed annually—two dollars less than Insightly. For the price, you’ll find there are plenty of features to justify the alternative, including the sales funnel and pipeline management system that you’re likely looking for—in fact, the word “Pipe” is in the title here, and that’s not an accident. The email integration and mobile apps are both functional and simple, which means it’s easy to find your way around.

All in all, it’s hard to argue against using Pipedrive as an Insightly alternative thanks to its generous price and the functionality and simple use. It may lack a few of the finer features of other options on our list, but for the price, you’ll find Pipedrive is a great “intro” system for using CRM on a regular basis. If you use it as an alternative to Insightly you shouldn’t expect to lose too much functionality—and if it’s your first CRM, you’ll do just fine.

This option is a little more expensive, so it’s worth digging into the features to find out what’s going on. Whereas Insightly’s basic version is just about $12 per user per month, Sugar CRM charges a much higher premium, looking for $40/user/month when billing annually. What do you get for the price? The first feature we should look at are the capable dashboards and reporting that monitor your sales and customer relationships. These are both sophisticated and intuitive, which in turn makes the overall “management” process here much easier.

The email and calendar integrations are both simple to use and sophisticated in their rollout, which makes them positives as well. That means you can easily handle a lot of your business work through the CRM itself, which in turn gives you more bang for your buck. We also want to address the campaign management, which makes tracking goals and the systems you use much easier over going without a CRM like this. Overall, the price is a bit heavy, but the CRM here is stout and offers plenty of functionality.

As this is the most expensive option on our list, it bears some close examination as we compare Base CRM with Insightly. At 45/user/seat for the “Starter” package, there isn’t a lot of margin for error in terms of functionality and quality if this service is going to offer you the CRM that you choose over other options on this list. Fortunately, there is plenty to like. One of the best options is 24/7 support, which makes all of the other functions a little bit easier to handle. That includes easy integration with tools you might already have, and even using APIs. This tends to be more advanced and appeals to those with a lot of experience with CRMs, but the 24/7 support is always a good safety net.

The intelligent tools really deliver plenty of quality, such as handling calls, emailing, and more features you’d associate with CRM tools. Overall, there isn’t too much that warrants a higher price if you have a need for only a basic CRM, but if your needs are more advanced, you may want to opt for a more expensive “premium” option like this.

Bitrix 24 can be a difficult alternative to evaluate against Insightly. One of the issues here is the 39/month charge — which the pricing for unlimited users! This makes a direct price comparison difficult. But when it comes to the features, there’s a lot more to love. Bitrix 24 specializes in making their CRM feel like its own major platform, thanks to a social intranet that you can use for a large workforce. This intranet has lots of capabilities that allows for swift communication between employees, project managers, etc.

The “activity” stream is incorporated into that intranet, making it possible for someone in charge to monitor the events of the day and how the CRM is being used to help make sales and manage customer relationships. Think of it as being like the equivalent of a Twitter stream or a Facebook home page. The group calendars also help incorporate this idea so that everyone can easily coordinate together. Overall, this is an ideal solution for those who love a “social” element to managing customer relationships (and the cheapest one!)

Comparing Zoho CRM to Insightly makes for more of a direct comparison, thanks to the equivalent price rates and a variety of shared features. At 12/user/month when billed annually and 15/user/month when billed monthly, Zoho CRM’s price is very reasonable and depends on how many users you’ll end up using. This is the most intuitive pricing system for a CRM like this, which Insightly also uses. But what about the features? One of the most intriguing here is the ability to view email from within the CRM, which guarantees fewer distractions and makes Zoho CRM a sort of one-stop platform for handling all of your customer issues. That’s great for working remotely or whether you simply want to keep things simple at the office. There are also real-time updates and monitors of customer activity available, which in turn lets you focus on other items while the sales funnel is in use. And when you easily incorporate social media into the sales process, you can focus your online efforts as part of your overall CRM and online sales funnel efforts.