Freshworks CRM Overview

Freshworks CRM, or Freshsales, is an AI-powered customer relationship management platform designed to enhance sales efficiency and engagement. It offers users a comprehensive suite of tools, including contact and deal management, email tracking, built-in phone and chat solutions, and customizable dashboards. Freddy AI, the platform’s artificial intelligence assistant, provides additional features like lead scoring, sales forecasting, and behavior analytics, which help sales teams prioritize high-value prospects and take the most effective approach to engagement. 

Through the Freshworks Marketplace, the platform integrates seamlessly with business apps across marketing, HR, finance, marketing, IT, service, success, development, and fulfillment departments for a centralized view of customer data and a more streamlined workflow.

Targeted primarily at small to medium-sized businesses, Freshsales stands out for its user-friendly interface, affordability, and extensive feature set. Its intuitive design minimizes the learning curve for sales teams, and its competitive pricing (with plans starting at $9 per user per month) makes it accessible to companies with tighter budgets. 

The sales CRM is part of a larger ecosystem of business tools, which include a helpdesk software (Freshdesk), an IT service management platform (Freshservice), and a multichannel marketing automation platform (Freshmarketing). Together, they centralize every aspect of a company’s operations, from customer support to marketing campaigns, streamlining communication and data sharing between those otherwise disparate departments.

Freshworks CRM is an AI-powered sales CRM that more than 72,000 businesses use to build out their sales pipeline, automate their sales workflows, and manage their ongoing customer relationships. Also called Freshsales, it works natively with the rest of the Freshworks ecosystem (and hundreds of tools through its app marketplace) to help businesses across dozens of industries connect marketing, fulfillment, customer service, and finance operations to their sales processes.

Features of Freshsales CRM include:

• Intelligent deal insights with Freddy AI
• AI-powered chatbots and automation
• Omnichannel sales engagement
• Built-in cloud telephony
• AI-driven email and sales sequences
• No-code customization and workflow building
• Seamless integrations through Freshworks Marketplace

Intelligent deal insights with Freddy AI: Freddy AI enhances your sales workflows by automating lead scoring and providing predictive deal insights. It evaluates leads based on engagement, behavior, and demographic data to assign scores, enabling your team to prioritize high-potential prospects effectively. It also tracks events within ongoing deals, tagging them as “Likely to Close,” “Trending,” “At Risk,” or “Gone Cold,” offering a clear view of your pipeline’s health. These insights allow your sales organization to focus efforts strategically, optimize resource allocation, and proactively address deals requiring attention, ultimately improving conversion rates and sales performance.

AI-powered chatbots and automation: With Freshsales, you can take lead management to the next level by deploying conversational chatbots that handle initial lead interactions, qualify prospects, answer common inquiries, and schedule meetings — all without human intervention. It also analyzes customer behavior and engagement patterns, giving your sales reps the ability to create personalized follow-ups and respond at the right time. For instance, if a lead frequently visits your pricing page or opens emails, Freshsales’ AI can trigger automated actions, like sending targeted content or alerts to sales representatives for immediate follow-up.

Omnichannel sales engagement: Freshsales consolidates email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp, and chat within the CRM platform, facilitating easy communication and automated follow-ups on whatever channels your prospects prefer. All interactions are centralized, providing your sales team with a comprehensive view of each prospect’s engagement history. For instance, a sales representative can initiate an email conversation, follow up with a phone call, and address further inquiries via WhatsApp. The CRM reflects these interactions in the prospect’s timeline, so the seller always has context and continuity.

Built-in cloud telephony: Unlike most CRMs, which require third-party phone integrations, Freshsales offers built-in VoIP calling, call recording, and auto-logging. Its built-in cloud telephony (powered by Freshcaller) enables your sales team to make and receive calls directly from the Freshsales platform. By consolidating telephony within your CRM, your team gets immediate access to contextual information during calls and won’t have to worry about updating the associated contacts or deals manually. Freshcaller also supports virtual phone numbers in over 90 countries, so you can establish a local presence and expand your global reach.

AI-driven email and sales sequences: The platform’s two-way email sync automatically maps incoming emails to the appropriate contacts, streamlining email campaign creation and tracking. Beyond that, personalized email campaigns, predictive email engagement scoring, and automated follow-up sequences optimize communication strategies, improving conversion rates with minimal manual effort.

No-code customization and workflow building: With Freshsales, sales teams can automate follow-ups, assign different types of leads to specific reps, trigger alerts, and update deal statuses dynamically — all without requiring IT support. Visual workflow builders let users define conditions and trigger actions based on lead behaviors, deal stages, or other predefined criteria. And customizable dashboards let them configure data visualizations tailored to their sales KPIs, so every department is looking at meaningful, real-time insights into sales performance.

Seamless integrations through Freshworks Marketplace: Freshsales enhances its functionality through one of the most comprehensive app marketplaces in the CRM industry. With Freshsales, it’s easy to tailor your CRM experience to meet your exact needs. For example, you can sync marketing leads from Mailchimp with your CRM contacts, use accounting software (e.g., QuickBooks, Xero) to manage payments and invoices for your contacts directly within the CRM, or use PandaDoc to build sales documents with pre-filled CRM data and send them out for e-signatures.

 Freshworks CRM is a feature-rich enterprise tool with many benefits, including:

• Easy to use: It has an intuitive design, so users can easily navigate through the application without needing extensive training.
• All-in-one solution: With its comprehensive features and integrations, it is a great all-in-one CRM that can help streamline customer relationships.
• Mobile app: It has an app that can be used on both iOS and Android devices, making it possible for digital sales teams to be more efficient and productive, no matter where they are.
• Automation capabilities: It offers automation tools and features that make it easier to manage tasks and keep on top of customer interactions.
• Reporting insights: With its dashboard reporting, users are able to quickly gain insights into their sales process and improve productivity. 
• Scalability: From free to enterprise, there is a plan and product orientation for just about any size budget or business.
• Support: Freshworks offers a great customer service team that is always willing to help answer questions and solve problems.

Freshsales offers some of the most competitive and straightforward pricing for a CRM of its caliber. It’s broken into four different tiers to accommodate different types of businesses and budgets:

• Free: Designed for small teams, this plan supports up to 3 users and includes its core features. These include a Kanban view for contacts, accounts, and deals; contact lifecycle stages; built-in chat, email, and phone; email templates; custom fields; a sales dashboard; mobile app access; an activity timeline; unique fields; and 24×5 support.
• Growth ($9 per user/month, billed annually): This plan includes all features in the Free Plan, plus web forms, SMS & WhatsApp integration, basic workflows, collaboration with Slack, product catalogs, curated dashboard reports, access to the Freshworks Marketplace, 1 CPQ license, basic call queues, a team inbox, custom domains, and rotten deals management.​
• ​Pro ($39 per user per month, billed annually): Freshsales Pro offers everything in the Growth Plan, along with Freddy AI’s features, including contact scoring, sales email automation, and deal insights. It also supports full customization — you can use it to build workflows and automations for custom sales activities, auto-assignment rules, sales sequences, and account hierarchies across multiple sales pipelines and generate custom reports.
• Enterprise ($59 per user per month, billed annually): Freshworks’ most comprehensive Freshsales plan includes everything from the Pro Plan, plus field-level permissions, custom modules (plus workflows for them), a sandbox environment to test new features and configurations, sales forecasting insights, and audit logs for all the changes your sales team members make. It also comes with a dedicated account manager.

Each package comes with two add-ons: CPQ software (more on this below) and additional AI agent session packs, so you can offer more support sessions to customers.

Freshsales has users across several industries. It’s designed to be highly versatile, and its app marketplace provides even greater extensibility. Industries like manufacturing, telecom, technology, ecommerce, financial services, healthcare, real estate, and education use its product suite to centralize customer data, automate workflows, and personalize engagement across sales and support channels.

Here’s a look at three of the most prominent industries using Freshsales’ CRM solutions:

1. Manufacturing

Unified distributor management: Manufacturers deal with a complex network of distributors, retailers, and suppliers. Freshsales consolidates distributor details within its centralized repository, giving manufacturing companies a 360-degree view of interactions across all their touchpoints. The unified approach means sales teams can tailor their engagement strategies to each distributor’s unique needs and buying behaviors.

AI-powered demand forecasting: Accurate demand forecasting is crucial for balancing production schedules and inventory levels. Freddy AI analyzes historical data and current market trends to deliver actionable insights that help manufacturers predict future demand. That way, they can optimize production planning, reduce waste, and ensure timely delivery to meet customer expectations.

Automated lead qualification and routing: Freshsales automates lead qualification by assessing engagement levels and demographic information, assigning scores to prioritize high-potential prospects. The system then routes these qualified leads to the appropriate sales representatives, streamlining the sales process and improving conversion rates. ​

2. Software as a Service (SaaS)

Integrated subscription management: SaaS companies often require seamless handling of recurring billing and subscription lifecycles. Freshsales and Freshchat integrate with platforms like Stripe, Zoho Subscriptions, and Pabbly Subscription and Billing, so SaaS companies can manage users’ plans directly within the CRM. The integration automates tasks like creating new subscriptions, updating billing information, and tracking payment statuses to create a cohesive and efficient subscription management process.

B2B contract and deal management: Freshsales provides a comprehensive 360-degree view of customers, enabling SaaS businesses to efficiently collect, organize, and manage leads and deals. Its Products module allows you to manage a diverse range of offerings with different variants and pricing structures. It supports multicurrency transactions, making it easy to sell internationally. And, through the add-on configure, price, quote (CPQ) module, you can create and deliver personalized quotes, then get documents signed right within the app (powered by Dropbox Sign).

Ongoing account management: The Accounts module allows you to create detailed profiles for each client organization. It consolidates contact details, communication history, associated deals, and support tickets into a single view. With all account information centralized, analyzing usage patterns and customer feedback becomes more straightforward. You can use that feedback to upsell users on additional features or services that align with their changing needs.

3. Retail

Identifying and rewarding loyal customers: Freshsales helps you identify your best customers, focus your sales efforts, and reward them with exclusive offers to enhance their customer experience. You can do this with Lead Scoring, which involves assigning points to customers for various interactions and attributes (e.g., opening emails, clicking on links, visiting specific web pages, or even buying certain products). By filtering customers (and potential customers) based on these scores, you can pinpoint your most valuable ones and tailor your marketing strategies and promotional offers in a way that incentivizes repeat business.

Data-driven personalization: Freshsales gives retailers valuable insights into customer behavior. With tools like Event Tracking and the Segment integration, you can monitor customer activities and page visits to figure out what draws them to your products and services. You can then use those insights to group customers into segments and design tailored marketing campaigns using the Sales Campaigns feature within Freshsales. Freshsales also lets you customize form fields to create detailed customer profiles. You can add details like birthdays, preferences, and notes from their visits, so you can easily recall past interactions and purchases simply by opening the Freshsales app.

Integrated sales, marketing, and service hub: Freshsales integrates with Freshdesk, allowing sales and support teams to share customer data instantly. Support agents access CRM insights in Freshdesk, while sales teams track support tickets in Freshsales. Email marketing and native Mailchimp integration take it further by facilitating real-time contact list synchronization. This solves the complexity of data silos and makes it easy for each department to collaborate with each other.

Several CPQ solutions integrate seamlessly with Freshworks CRM. These include:

• Freshworks CPQ
• DealHub CPQ
• GetAccept CPQ

Freshworks CPQ

For $19 per user per month, Freshworks offers its own CPQ as an add-on for Freshsales. It allows Freshsales users to generate branded documents (onboarding, pricing, MSAs, NDAs, and more). Within CRM, you set up and manage your product catalog. The CPQ system handles both one-time and subscription pricing, with support for multiple currencies and installation fees, plus localized tax calculation.

Within the CPQ, reps can send documents directly from Freshsales, then get notified when they’re opened and track individualized steps based on the nuances of their specific sales process. Since everything is synced bidirectionally, sellers don’t have to update it based on documents or changes — that happens automatically.

DealHub CPQ

The DealHub revenue platform, which includes CPQ, a digital sales room (DealRoom), and billing, offers a practical and user-friendly interface with 24/7 customer support. And it integrates seamlessly with Freshworks. DealHub CPQ makes it easy to create accurate quotes, contracts, and sales collateral directly within the CRM environment.

Beyond CPQ, DealHub’s contract management capabilities further enhance the sales workflow. Sales representatives can generate, redline, and manage contracts within Freshsales. E-signature functionality accelerates the closing process. Features like automated workflows and approval routing streamline decision-making. And real-time engagement insights provide visibility into buyer interactions.

GetAccept CPQ

GetAccept’s CPQ solution enables sales reps to craft and deliver precise quotes for potential buyers. A few clicks is all it takes for account execs to customize pricing tables based on the customers’ individual requirements, meaning a shorter sales cycle for the organization. GetAccept is one of Freshsales’ listed native plugins, and it enables buyers and sellers to send, receive, and e-sign sales documents right inside the CRM platform.

GetAccept also supports personalized video introductions and live chat features, so sales representatives can add a human touch when they reach out to prospects or respond to inquiries from MQLs. And real-time notifications let reps know when recipients view, download, or forward them. This helps them push action items quickly, which improves their chances of closing a deal.

Out of 250 ratings, Freshsales CRM has a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Gartner Peer Insights. In their reviews, users say it’s an excellent all-in-one CRM for sales, marketing, and customer service teams and praise its customizability. However, some say its enterprise features are lacking compared to other CRMs, and implementation is sometimes tricky.

The reviewers and customer demographics are as follows:

Reviewer’s Company Size

• <$50M USD: 39%
• $50M-$1B USD: 41%
• $1B-$10B USD: 9%
• $10B+ USD: 6%
• Gov’t/PS/Ed: 6%

Reviewer’s Industry

• IT Services: 28%
• Services (non-Government): 10%
• Media: 9%
• Telecommunication: 9%
• Other: 44%

Reviewer’s Deployment Region

• Asia/Pacific: 50%
• North America: 31%
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa: 17%
• Latin America: 3%

Gartner Peer Insights affirms that Freshworks CRM is intuitive to use and enables companies to visualize the performance of their sales teams.

Andrew Parker

Andrew is a professional copywriter with expertise in creating content focused on business-to-business (B2B) software. He conducts research and produces articles that provide valuable insights and information to his readers.

Freshworks CRM Overview

• 1Why this product is good
• 2Product Details
• 3What are the advantages of using Freshworks CRM?
• 4Prices
• 5What industries are best suited for this solution?
• 6CPQ Integrations
• 7Valuable Insight From Real Customers