Top 13 CRM for Agencies: Guide to Features, Pros & Cons

Did you know that agencies with a CRM experience up to a 34 percent increase in productivity and 52 percent more proposals than agencies without one? (Source: Nucleus Research, Aberdeen Research)

If you are still manually trying to keep track of clients and campaigns, your agency is not growing. The appropriate CRM for marketing agency teams transforms everything. It increases your productivity. It assists you in getting more clients, and retaining them.

This guide will explain to you the reason why marketing agency CRM is important. We will tell you about the best features to consider. Plus you will get the list of 13 best CRM for marketing agency needs, with pros, and cons, prices and expert advice.

Regardless of whether your company is a digital marketing agency, a freelancer or a marketing-oriented business, this article will assist you in choosing, configuring and succeeding with the best CRM to support marketing agency teams.

(How to) Build your Personal CRM in Minutes

What is CRM for Marketing Agency Teams?

A CRM for marketing agencies needs to be a customer relationship management system designed to help an agency manage the relationship between the agency and its customers, track leads, manage campaigns, and deliver results that can be measured. As opposed to simple CRMs, marketing agency CRM links sales to projects, campaigns, and team processes and coordinates all client interactions.

Instead of using disorganized spreadsheets and email threads, you gain a 360-degree view of every client and project milestone, and campaign performance, all in one place. This makes your agency structured, proactive and capable of scaling without any hiccups when you win new business.

Why do marketing agencies require CRM?

The marketing agencies are under constant pressure: many clients, shifting deadlines, and a competitive environment. It is a proven fact that a dedicated CRM for marketing agency needs makes a difference. Here’s why:

1. Increase Productivity: Nucleus Research reports that agencies that use a CRM experience a 34 percent increase in sales productivity and more than 50 percent increase in the number of proposals.
2. Acquire More Clients: Agencies also will be able to convert 23 percent more clients with CRM (Aberdeen Research), and increase sales by up to 29 percent (Salesforce study).
3. Keep and Delight Clients: More effective follow-ups, data centralization, and reportable actions will increase client retention and long-term happy relationships.

“With CRM, agencies have an opportunity to send 52 percent more proposals, and close deals quicker, with streamlined processes and automated reminders.” (Source: Productive.io / Aberdeen Research)

Bottom line: The most effective CRM for marketing agency teams is not just a database but rather a growth machine. And that is why selecting a scalable and growth oriented CRM for a marketing agency is necessary.

Top 6 Features of CRM for Marketing Agency Needs

Not every CRM is an effective agency tool. To make the right decision, pay attention to the following six features that will make your work at the agency life easier, quicker, and more profitable.

1. User-Friendly Interface

Search for tools that have a drag-and-drop interface, easy-to-use dashboards, and simple navigation. A complex CRM will make your team sluggish. Stackby, say, also provides flexible grid views like a spreadsheet and visual workflows, which allow teams to adjust rapidly.

2. Customization

Two agencies do not work in the same manner. Your marketing agency CRM must give you the ability to make custom views, Kanban boards, and forms to suit your workflow. Stackby enables individualized pipelines to be constructed with rich column types such as dropdowns, attachments, checklists, and collaborators.

3. Reporting & Analytics

Whether it is visual dashboards, pivot tables, or KPI tracking, reporting should be real-time and simple to create. Stackby enables teams to build live dashboards with charts, graphs, and page designer apps.

4. Automation & Integrations

Save Time by using links between CRM and other platforms such as Google Sheets, Meta Ads, Shopify, or WordPress. Using Stackby, you will be able to automate the data collection through column linked API connectors or webhooks and minimize manual updates.

5. Collaboration Tools

Your team should not work in silos with the assistance of the CRM. Checklists, reminders, team activity logs, and 2-way email sync (provided in Stackby) are some of the features that enable teams to stay on track.

6. Scalability

The best CRM for digital marketing agency teams should be able to expand with your list of clients and the level of complexity you have, without bogging down, whether you are a two-person agency or a 50-person team.

13 Best CRM for Marketing Agency Needs

Now, let us take an in-depth look at the 13 best CRMs for marketing agency needs in 2025, including their major features, advantages, disadvantages, and areas of excellence.

1. Stackby - 30+ Sales & CRM Templates

Stackby can be used as a  marketing agency CRM that is highly customizable and allows you to manage clients, content, campaigns, and everything in between within a single software. Not only can you manage your clients but also content, campaigns, social media posts for each client and create separate views for your client and give them read only access. From client onboarding via custom forms to client billing tracking, end to end client CRM and project management can be managed in a single place.

• Features: Grid and Kanban views, 50+ integrations, APIs, forms and custom dashboards.
• Pros: Very customizable, no-code interface, marketer-built. You can also build custom portals/views for your individual clients and give them view level access.
• Cons: Less built-in marketing automation than other choices (more workflow/project-based)
• Pricing: Free plan; paid starting at $10/user/month.
  

Why Stackby is special: Stackby is one of the best CRM for marketing agency tools as it integrates CRM, automation, project management, and reporting into a single tool, which is why it is a perfect fit in an agency that has to work on a range of tasks on a daily basis.

2. Productive

• Features: It is designed to optimize your business at different levels with great features.
• Pros: Time recording, budgeting of projects, monitoring of performance
• Cons: The CRM module, compared to others, is poorer, although they are doing well in the rest
• Pricing: Starting at $11/user/month

3. HubSpot CRM

• Features:  It is a full-fledged solution to deal tracking, managing sales funnel, and optimize email campaigns.
• Pros: Free version available, powerful automation
• Cons: Add-ons are costly
• Pricing: Free basic plan; advanced plans starting from $50/month

4. Monday CRM

• Features: It is developed with the specific goal of enhancing customer interaction and handling of deals.
• Pros: Super easy to use, really flexible boards
• Cons: Less in Sales Pipeline Tracking
• Pricing: Starting from $10/user/month

10 Best Monday CRM Alternatives For 2025: Features, Pricing & Comparison

5. Apptivo CRM

• Features: It is a cloud-based customer relationship management application that helps in managing your sales and marketing process. Ideal for small businesses
• Pros: Simple to use, has invoicing and helpdesk included.
• Cons: UI is old
• Pricing: Starting at $10/user/month

6. Podio CRM

• Features: It is a flexible, collaboration database that enables your processes to be streamlined and your information to be shared with key stakeholders.
• Pros: Modular, flexible
• Cons: Very hard to learn.
• Pricing: Starting at $7.20/user/month

7. Insightly CRM

• Features: It is a marketing agency CRM from various industries such as consulting, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and more.
• Pros: Manages projects and customers
• Cons: Limited integrations
• Pricing: Starting from $29/user/month

8. Salesforce

• Features: It is a CRM solution that is customizable and comes along with robust sales pipeline management.
• Pros: Very powerful and customizable
• Cons: Very costly, difficult in small groups
• Pricing: starting from $25/user/month

9. EngageBay

• Features: It is a business operations platform with modules for marketing, CRM and sales and customer service.
• Pros: Great deal, good feature set
• Cons: UI is cluttered
• Pricing: Free plan available and paid starting from $14.99/month

10. Pipedrive

• Features: It is an all-in-one CRM for marketing agency.
• Pros: Pipeline sales visualizer
• Cons: The poor marketing features
• Pricing: Starting at $14.90/month

11. Pipeline CRM

• Features: Pipeline CRM is a software that aids in sales and marketing of professional services and consulting firms.
• Pros: Clean interface
• Cons: Not created for marketing
• Pricing: starting from $25/user/month

12. Sage CRM

• Features: Business CRM designed to support sales.
• Pros: Solid reporting
• Cons: The third-party apps are limited in support
• Pricing: Custom

13. Zoho CRM

• Features: CRM that fits any size at an affordable cost
• Pros: General purpose, smartphone app
• Cons: Overwhelming interface
• Pricing: Free for 3 users and paid plans starting from $12/user/month

6 Best Stackby Templates in a CRM for marketing agency:

Stackby templates are a massive time-saver in case you would like to run on the ground. Six of them that agencies will love are:

1. Marketing Agency Client CRM - Control contacts with clients, plans of campaigns, and deliverables.
2. PR Tracker CRM - A tracking system of journalists' contact, media lists and press releases
3. Simple CRM — Great option for small businesses and for startups with the simplest lead and deal tracking and is one of the best templates for setting up a CRM for marketing agency for leads tracking.
4. Business Development CRM - Get back to possible partnerships and cold leads
5. Meta Ads CRM – Follow up to know where your leads are coming from, Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram).
6. Agency Content Calendar – Schedule blog posts, advertisements, and social campaigns, set deadlines and get approvals from clients.

All the templates are customizable, and you can add fields, automation, or integrate with the tools you already use to be as efficient as possible.

Conclusion

A CRM is not a tool, it is the backbone of an effective marketing agency. The proper CRM of marketing agency will allow you to manage the whole process of your clients and take care of the whole journey in a single location and location: lead generation, reporting, and all the results.

Although the number of CRMs available to the market is significant, not many of them are designed with a marketer in mind.

This is what Stackby excels at: it can be used to manage CRM, automation, project tracking and reporting all at once and without any limitations. And having ready-made templates that are specific to agencies, you can get going quick and grow quicker.

If you're looking for a best CRM for digital marketing agency give Stackby a try and make the first step to make your agency operations smarter and better organized.