What is the best CRM system available (easiest to use and best value for the money)?

You should have a look at https://sellsy.com. I'm not pretending to be better than SFDC (who would anyway) but we have dozens of company choosing us everyday so it's worth a try.

You might want to see a demo of my company's product. We're affordable, and passionate about more efficient CRM. Just let us know if you'd like a demo. Write to and we'll be happy to help. You won't get a sales pitch -- you'll get a personal demo. No strings.

With the plethora of CRM products in the market today, most businesses find it hard to select the right CRM solution for their business. Check out this article to make an informed decision- http://www.nablasol.com/blog/which-crm-is-best-sme/#sthash.kEJjUREi.dpuf

http://www.convergeenterprise.com is a leading Cloud CRM company offering an innovative collaboration network portal connecting Customers, Partners and Employees through social and mobile cloud technology. Converge Enterprise is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. The powerful cloud-enabled CRM application is designed to enable the SMBs drive better revenue by running all customer-centric activities from a single integrated application.   The CRM framework offered here is widely acknowledged as the most intuitive yet rigorously functional solution for all business verticals. Simple and Intuitive UI, easy navigation, partner network collaboration, inbuilt advanced document management, DRIP, Multichannel marketing, personalized settings, social feed integration and complete data backup are a few USPs that distinguish Converge Enterprise CRM (featured in Boston Herald, Los Angeles Times, and The Miami Herald etc) from its counterparts.

There are many CRM systems available in market, you can use one of the them for your business. But as I suggest you if you are looking for proepr system which is more flexible and useful to you in your enterprise, you should have to build customize CRM for your business. Cygnet infotech is a leading CRM solution provider, they will analyse your requirements clearly and help you to build proper application which reaches your requirements. You can get more detailed info about them at http://www.cygnet-infotech.com/enterprise-business-solutions/crm

Interesting question, recently produced a blog and white paper on this subject.  surveyed their customer base (globally) and compiled the results.  It's interesting to see where the costs and usage come from. Their report goes through costs, onboarding costs, total cost of ownership and adoption.  Here's the link:  http://blog.pipelinersales.com/crm-sales-software/our-new-white-paper-confirms-the-importance-of-crm-onboarding-experience/?utm_source=Quora&utm_medium=QuoraQA&utm_campaign=RDY

If you are going to pursue Salesforce, make sure to check out add-on products such as ExactTarget and Pardot. Why? Because every business with an online presence should be using marketing automation. For huge enterprises, the big-business marketing clouds and CRM solutions make sense. They're expensive and hardly intuitive (though the UX is improving across the board), but they work and you get what you pay for. Why am I talking about marketing when you asked about CRMs? Because sales and marketing are becoming increasingly intertwined in the new cloud-based, user-driven economy. The "easiest to use" CRM providing the "best value" will inevitably be one that makes your marketing efforts easier and more effective rather than making the sales pipeline easier while stuffing up your marketing and customer service efforts. In any case, SF is great, but I'd recommend starting with a more affordable and streamlined product until you receive that multi-million dollar acquisition offer :) In fact, with an eye toward SMBs like ourselves, we've built http://www.agilecrm.com to be a complete sales and marketing solution, with marketing automation, product management, and a complete email client included at no extra cost. Our email feature is at the heart of the product, designed to help startups scale quickly and efficiently with automated lead scoring and sophisticated campaigns. The drag-and-drop interface is remarkably easy to use, with the added value of eliminating the need for products such as MailChimp and Pardot : https://www.agilecrm.com/marketing-automation-software. We even include A/B testing,  auto responders, and a range of customizable email templates for use in our in-built email tool or in your existing webmail using our Chrome Extension and 2-way Gmail/Google Apps integration. Social interactions on Twitter are included, with SMS on the way shortly. Here's how we compare with some of the other products mentioned in this thread (Nimble, Sugar, etc.): https://www.agilecrm.com/compare

I have used SalesForce, Harvest, ZenDesk, Zoho, FreshDesk, SugarCRM, CapsleCRM and other home-grown solutions.  We found Work[etc] to be the best bang for the buck and it does it all versus just CRM.  For our business to succeed we needed Customer Relationship Management(CRM), Project management(PM),  Customer Support, Time & Expense(T&E), Reporting, Knowledgeable and Document Storage.  We stumbled upon Work[etc] which did all of those and well so we jumped on it and have never looked back. Let’s look a very basic sales and project life-cycle… A sale begins with a lead A lead becomes a customer A project scope is defined with specs and deliverable dates There are project expenses and billable hours to track Invoices get created Customer goes live Ongoing support is provided via email, phone, website contact, etc Support expenses and billable hours to track More invoices are created Project reaches end of life What ever product you choose should be able to do all of that in one place and easily or else let's face it you wont do it.  There are tons of tools out there and you should check them out for yourself but WORK[etc] (http://www.worketc.com) worked for us. Here is a link to an article highlighting some of the features they offer. https://www.worketc.com/cloud-crm/ultimate-crm-checklist/ Good luck in your search. David

I am a bit partial here but I would say that the best alternative to Salesforce could be bpm’online (http://www.bpmonline.com). It is a CRM product built on the powerful business management processes engine which allows users to develop processes based on their unique business needs. The system is ready to use on-demand which gives you an advantage to employ tools and functionalities from day one with no add-ons and hidden charges involved. From lead management, to sales forecasting, mobile sales, multichannel communication and pipeline monitoring to name a few, the bpm’online is an out-of-the-box solution developed for different verticals. Add clean and easy to use interface and you’ve got a solution that worth taking consideration. I would encourage you to take a look at this product. It is very attractively priced and come with free try-it-now model (with no credit cards involved) that lets you see for yourself how easy and efficient this alternative is. Try the system at http://www.bpmonline.com/demo or contact me directly for a free personal demo.