Best CRM for agencies: what to track and what to pay

The right CRM for a small agency is the one your team keeps up to date, and that's usually a tool built around deals and follow-ups rather than a full CRM that needs someone to run it. An agency selling retainers and projects needs to see every live opportunity, know who to chase this week and know whether next quarter's revenue is covered. Anything beyond that is cost and upkeep you'll carry every month.

 

Why do small agencies struggle to keep a CRM up to date?

 

Small agencies usually choose a CRM, use it properly for a few weeks and then let it drift, because the people selling are the same people delivering the work. When a client deadline and a pipeline update compete for the same hour, the client deadline wins every time.

 

In an agency of between 3 and 10 people, the founder typically leads new business, one or two senior people look after client relationships, and everyone is billable. Nobody's job is to maintain the CRM, so it gets updated in bursts, usually the night before a board meeting or a quarterly review. Within a couple of months the pipeline shows deals that died weeks ago and leaves out the ones that came in through a referral over coffee.

 

Most CRMs make this worse because they're designed for sales teams with a dedicated admin. Custom objects, territory rules and multi-step automation make sense when someone is paid to look after them. In a small agency they turn into fields that are left blank and settings nobody understands, and once a few deals are out of date, nobody trusts the pipeline enough to use it. The founder goes back to their inbox and memory to work out who to call, which is exactly the problem the CRM was bought to fix.

 

What should an agency track when it sells retainers and projects?

 

An agency should track every live opportunity with its value, its stage, the date of the next follow-up and whether it's a retainer or a one-off project. That last detail matters more than most tools assume, because a £3,000 a month retainer and a £15,000 project can look similar on a pipeline board while doing very different things to your year.

 

A retainer is recurring revenue, so its value to the business is the monthly fee multiplied by however long the client stays. A project is a single payment that has to be replaced once the work is delivered. If your pipeline treats both as one number, you can have a strong month of new business and still be heading for a thin quarter, because most of what you won was project work that finishes in eight weeks.

 

Repeat work from existing clients deserves the same attention as new business, because it's often the easiest revenue an agency can win and the easiest to forget when nobody is chasing it. On our Team plan, when a deal is won its company moves into Accounts with its recurring revenue, renewal date, health and next check-in, so a client you worked hard to win doesn't quietly go cold. Reports then show monthly recurring revenue against the target you set, which answers the question most agency founders ask on a Monday morning.

 

Keep cold outreach out of the pipeline total. A prospect who hasn't replied to an email isn't an opportunity yet, and counting them makes the forecast look healthier than it is. Your pipeline value should only include conversations where the client has engaged, which keeps the number honest enough to plan hiring around.

 

How many pipeline stages does an agency need?

 

Most small agencies need five or six stages: a first conversation, a qualified opportunity, a proposal sent, negotiation, and won or lost. If you can't say what has to be true for a deal to move from one stage to the next, that stage isn't earning its place.

 

The proposal stage is where agencies lose the most deals, and they usually lose them to silence rather than to a competitor. A proposal goes out, the client says they'll come back after an internal meeting, and three weeks later nobody has followed up because the date lived in someone's head. Every deal at proposal stage should have a follow-up date, and that date should appear somewhere you look every morning.

 

Your sales cycle is the average number of days from a first conversation to a signed deal, and it tells you when a quiet deal is normal and when it's slipping. Pipento works out your average sales cycle from your own deals and uses it to suggest when to follow up next, which is what Smart follow-ups does. Pulse then lists the deals that have gone quiet, so you can pick them up before they go cold. Both only work if follow-up dates are kept current, which is why setting one takes a single click. If you want a simple daily routine for spotting slipping deals, our guide to sales tracking for founders walks through it.

 

What does a CRM cost a small agency in the UK?

 

Most CRMs charge for each person every month, so an agency's bill grows every time someone new needs to see the pipeline. On 5 November 2026, Pipedrive's UK pricing page listed its plans at £14, £39, £59 and £79 per person a month on annual billing, with VAT added on top.

 

Take a six person agency where everyone who talks to clients needs access to the pipeline. On a plan priced at £39 per person, that's £234 a month before VAT, and hiring a seventh person adds another £39. That's an illustration based on Pipedrive's Growth plan price on the day we checked, and the principle holds for any tool priced per person: the bill follows your headcount rather than your revenue. If you'd like the full comparison at different team sizes, we've set it out in our article on what Pipedrive costs as your team grows.

 

Pipento's Team plan is £69 a month including VAT for everyone who sells, whether that's 3 people or 10. Solo is £35 a month for one person, which suits a founder running new business alone for now, and annual billing on either plan gives you one month free. You can compare every plan on our pricing page.

 

The larger cost for most agencies isn't the subscription. It's the hours spent setting up a tool and keeping it current, and the deals that go cold when it isn't. A low-priced tool that nobody updates costs more than a dearer one that the team uses every day, which is worth remembering when you compare price lists.

 

What should an agency CRM leave out?

 

A small agency CRM should leave out anything nobody in the team will look after: marketing automation, an admin console that needs a setup project, a built-in dialler and deep customisation. Those features suit businesses with a sales operations function, and in a small agency they become settings nobody touches.

 

We left all four out of Pipento on purpose. James and Axel, who built it, tried the big CRMs first and spent more time learning how to use them than selling. They built Pipento to run their own pipelines, so every feature in it is one they decided on because they use it every week. What's left is a tracker that lays out every deal by stage and value with its last contact and next action beside it, a calendar that holds every follow-up date, contacts that link to deals automatically and reports you can download as a PDF before a board meeting.

 

That focus means Pipento isn't the right fit for every agency. If you run outbound at volume with a team making calls all day, or you want email campaigns and your pipeline in one system, a pipeline tool built for founders who sell personally won't give you enough. It suits agencies where the founder and a few senior people win the work through conversations, proposals and referrals, which describes most agencies of fewer than 10 people. If you're weighing up tools that don't charge per person, our guide to choosing a sales pipeline tool covers what to check.

 

What should you check before choosing an agency CRM?

 

Before you choose, check how the price changes when you add a person, what's on each plan, how long it takes to bring your current pipeline in, and how you'd get your data out again. Those four answers tell you more about the next two years than any feature list.

 

Plan limits are easy to miss. In Pipento, Solo is for one person, and Accounts, Tasks and team access are on the Team plan, so an agency with more than one person selling will want Team from the start. Other tools have their own limits, often on reporting or automation, so read what's on each plan before you compare prices.

 

Getting started should take an afternoon at most. Pipento imports your deals and contacts from a CSV file, whether that's a spreadsheet or an export from another CRM, and it learns your sales cycle from your own figures, so there are no workflows to build. Your data stays yours, and you can export everything to CSV whenever you like. Solo and Team both come with a 7 day free trial, and you're not charged until the trial ends.

 

It's worth testing your current setup against a few plain questions before you decide anything.

 

1. Could you name every proposal that's waiting on a reply without opening your inbox?

2. Does every live opportunity have a date for the next follow-up?

3. Do you know which retainers come up for renewal in the next 90 days?

4. Is cold outreach kept out of your pipeline total?

5. Could you say how much of next quarter's revenue is already signed?

 

If two or more of those were hard to answer, the problem is usually the upkeep the current tool asks for rather than the effort your team puts in.

 

Questions agencies ask about choosing a CRM

 

What's the right CRM for a small agency?

 

For an agency of up to 10 people, the right CRM is one the people selling will update every week without being chased. That usually means a tool focused on deals, follow-ups and forecasting, with a price that doesn't rise each time you add someone.

 

What does sales pipeline software typically cost a small business?

 

Most tools charge per person each month. On 5 November 2026, Pipedrive's UK plans ran from £14 to £79 per person a month on annual billing before VAT, so a five person team would pay between £70 and £395 a month. Pipento's Team plan is £69 a month including VAT for everyone who sells.

 

Should retainers and projects sit in the same pipeline?

 

Yes, as long as each deal records whether it's recurring or one-off. Keeping them together shows all new business in one place, and the recurring value tells you how much of next year is already covered once those deals are won.

 

Can an agency import its pipeline from a spreadsheet?

 

Pipento imports deals and contacts from a CSV file, whether it's a spreadsheet or an export from another CRM. You can export everything to CSV again whenever you like, because your data belongs to you.

 

Is there a free trial?

 

Solo and Team both come with a 7 day free trial, and you're not charged until it ends. The Founder plan, which is £24 a month for one person and limited to 50 places, doesn't include a free trial.

 

Choose the CRM your agency will still be using in three months

 

The useful test for an agency CRM is whether it will still be accurate in three months, when the team is busy delivering client work. A tool that tracks opportunities, follow-ups, renewals and next quarter's revenue, and leaves the rest out, passes that test far more often than one that tries to do everything.

 

If your new business lives in a spreadsheet and your follow-ups live in a few people's heads, Pipento's Team plan puts everyone who sells in one pipeline for £69 a month, however many of you there are. Start a 7 day free trial of Team and bring your current pipeline in from a CSV on the first day.