Compare CRM Software in Australia

How we compare CRM software

We list 11 CRM platforms sold into Australia, and every one publishes a rate card. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, in Australian dollars. Some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, so read the Contract row beside the figure.

The calculator takes the number of users and the number of contacts you enter, plus whether you need automation, and costs each vendor's published plans at those inputs. It picks the cheapest plan whose caps cover you, and skips a plan that excludes automation when you have said you need it. Commission does not change the order.

Per seat, per contact or one bundle: how CRM software is priced

There are three pricing shapes here, and comparing figures across them is the fastest way to get the answer wrong. Most vendors charge per user per month. ActiveCampaign prices on the size of your contact list. Keap sells a bundled platform with a base fee that includes a block of users and contacts.

A per-user price that reads as small is a price per person: multiply it by everyone who needs a login, including the bookkeeper, then by twelve. A seat minimum turns that on its head at small sizes, because a two-person business pays for an empty seat. Keap's platform fee is $417/mo (Ignite, includes 2 users and 1,500 contacts), and it lists an implementation package at $2,091 one-time (Ignite Implementation Package), which tells you how much implementation it expects you to need. Every other row lists no setup fee on its entry plan.

Seats or contacts: which cap a free CRM software plan hits first

A free plan is capped on users and stored contacts at once, and the two do not move together. Seats change when you hire, and you see it coming. Contacts change every week you trade and rarely go down, because a CRM keeps the people who never bought as well as the ones who did. So the cap that ends a free plan is often the contact cap, and it arrives mid-quarter rather than at renewal.

Paying does not always remove the ceiling: the second column is the contact cap on the entry paid plan, and some are small. Estimate the list you will hold in two years and check it against the plan you would actually buy.

Quoting and chasing jobs: CRM software for a local service business

A trades business, a salon, a clinic or a consultancy is not running a sales team. There is an enquiry that has to become a quote, a quote that has to be chased before it goes cold, and a customer who should be contacted again before the next service is due. Your seat count is small, so the per-seat price is not where the money goes. What costs money is the plan the automation sits on, because follow-up is automation and automation is often gated by plan. The phone matters more here too, because a service business rings people rather than emailing them.

Then read the Integrations row for the name of your own accounting file, because a CRM that cannot push a quote into your ledger leaves someone retyping it.

Retail counters, walk-ins and where CRM software stops helping

A shop may not need a CRM yet. A retail customer arrives without an appointment, pays and leaves, and no deal record is ever created, so the pipeline has nothing to hold. What a shop wants is the repeat purchase: a list of customers, what they bought, and a reason to contact them again. That is closer to email marketing with a customer database than to sales software.

Where that row says add-on, the sending is a second subscription on top of the seat price, and for a retailer it is the part actually being bought. The contact ceiling matters more than the seat count too, because a retail list grows with foot traffic. If your POS already holds the customer list and you send the occasional email from a mail tool, a CRM is probably the wrong next purchase. The trigger is a customer relationship with stages (quotes, bookings, accounts), not simply having customers.

AI in CRM software, and the plan it usually sits behind

Every row here lists native AI, so "has AI" no longer separates anything. Two things still do: whether the AI is part of the plan or sold on top, and whether your own AI tools can reach the CRM through a Model Context Protocol server.

A row naming add-ons alongside the native features is describing a second line on the invoice. On the MCP row, beta means the vendor can change it, and read-only means an assistant can answer a question about your pipeline but cannot update it.

CRM software an owner can set up without a consultant

What decides whether a non-technical owner gets a CRM running is not the software. Every row here is self-serve, with custom fields and API access. The work is the data, and three decisions taken before you import anything: one deduplicated list with one owner; one pipeline with the stages you actually use (enquiry, quoted, won, lost is enough for most service businesses); and what counts as a record, since a customer being a person, a household or a business changes every report and is near impossible to change later.

Two rows carry real signal on how much help you will get, and for an Australian buyer the timezone is the point.

Business hours in a distant timezone means a Tuesday morning question gets answered on Wednesday. An annual contract changes what a bad first month costs you. Buy the smallest system that holds your list and reminds you to follow up, and finish setting it up inside a fortnight or do not buy it at all.