Why Startups can’t afford to ignore their CRM in 2025
Good CRM adoption and usage is table stakes for startups. According to research, 65% of businesses implement CRM within their first five years of operation and this obviously isn’t random, as according to CRM Org, businesses using a CRM are 86% more likely to exceed their sales goals than those without. The CRM market is huge and still growing, expected to reach $145 billion by 2029, growing at 10% annually according to market research.
For startups specifically, CRM delivers measurable ROI, and choosing wrong is costly. Migrating tools can take time, which is one resource startups don’t have. Research indicates close to 20% of users switch systems because they found their CRM is not user-friendly, and slightly more (30%) found their CRM tools inefficient. It is therefore a crucial priority for startups to pick a tool that feels right, and will continue to scale with them in the coming future.
This is becoming more and more difficult in the AI era, as the market shifts rapidly. The majority of businesses have already adopted CRM systems with generative AI, and it’s not hard to imagine most platforms will have some form of AI integrated by the end of 2025.
But, not all CRMs are made equal. And the choices that may have been right last year, may not be right today, or next year. The rapid evolution in the market creates a crucial decision point for startups today: choose the right CRM that is powerful, easy to use, and AI-native, or waste time in the coming years migrating to another one.
What startups need to consider when choosing a CRM
Time to value matters
Startups face unique pressures that larger companies don’t.
- Startups can’t afford lengthy setup times, that take people off high priority tasks and projects.
- Many traditional CRMs take weeks or months to implement, requiring external consultants to get to a working and useful version.
- Startups need CRMs that deliver value immediately, in days not months, as this can be the difference between meeting targets or not.
- Teams can save hours a week by implementing a CRM, but only if adoption is smooth and easy for the team.
Implementation speed directly correlates with adoption. The faster teams see value, the more likely they’ll keep using it consistently, and invest mentally into it. CRMs offering instant sync capabilities is one example of a feature drastically improving time to value, and being perfectly suited to startup teams.
Ease of use and user adoption
Your team will not use a tool they don’t understand. The number 1 reason CRM implementations fail is because teams find it too much work, and draining to manage. User adoption is make or break. We encountered research claiming 83% of senior executives report having to encourage staff to use their CRM, and 50% of CRM projects fail due to lack of cross-functional coordination.
Startups can’t afford dedicated CRM admins or wasted energy pushing team members to use it. They need tools that are easy to use, enjoyable to use and powerful to use. The solution is CRMs that combine flexibility, power and intuition, and traditionally, CRMs have never hit all these points.
Startups should avoid platforms that require 100 page manuals or 2 day training courses. One concept we encountered to help with this is the “founder test”. If your founder can’t figure it out in 10 minutes, your sales team will not use it longer term.
AI native versus bolt on features
There has been a lot of discussion about the future of CRM and software generally revolving around platforms building with AI at their core, and not just adding it on as an afterthought. Regarding CRM, it has been 25 years since the last major shift and the old guard of HubSpot and Salesforce are racing to retrofit decades old architecture for the years ahead.
AI native architecture means the entire platform is built with AI models and functionality in mind. You need modern data models, new types of user interfaces, and generally an entirely fresh approach. This matters for startups because AI native platforms will enable teams to automate very complex and previously impossible workflows in minutes and not days. AI is still being massively underused, and it’s not hard to imagine how much more powerful things will be in the near future.
As a startup team, you want to be future proofed, and not forced into a migration later in order to keep up. Startups operating on 18-24 month fundraising cycles need tools that will still be cutting edge when they raise their next round and a CRM without the startings of robust AI positioning in 2025, will be legacy technology in a few years.
Flexibility and customization to match unique business models
Historical CRMs were designed for cookie-cutter sales processes that are standardized and common, but startups contain some of the most unique business models out there. Rigid CRM structures force you to conform to the software instead of molding it to your needs, and expensive consultants are then often required to deeply customize legacy CRMs, with extortionate pricing putting them out of reach for early stage companies.
Startups should look for CRMs with a composable data model that lets you define custom objects, attributes and relationships without requiring developer resources.
Affordability and transparent pricing for managing burn rate
Hidden costs kill startup budgets. The trap in CRM pricing is attractive pricing tiers for smaller teams, which then exponentially scale in cost as the team grows. 31% of small businesses cite cost as a challenge in CRM adoption.
Startups should watch out for hidden costs like:
- Onboarding fees
- Per-contact pricing that scales painfully as you grow
- Required add ons for basic features
Unfortunately, many established CRMs use tactics like these to lure startups in, and hit them with costs when it’s too difficult to leave.
Instead, CRMs with generous free tiers like Attio and Zoho are a great way to establish product-team fit before committing to a paid plan.
Recommended CRM options for a startup in late 2025
Considering all of the above points, and following detailed research, interviews, testing and our own experiences, below are some platforms we recommend for early stage teams right now.
1. Attio
Attio is a great choice for an early stage, forward thinking team. They are a younger company, so have the advantage of building up their systems with AI and the future in mind. The platform is renowned for its design and ease of use, but simultaneously its very powerful data model. It has become a favorite amongst GTM engineers and builders forming part of a newly popularized tool stack in tech startup circles : Attio, n8n and Clay.
With newer tools, featured customers are important, and Attio has some of the world’s best startups using the platform. Leading startups like Lovable, Granola, Modal and Replicate all use Attio, which should give any growing startup confidence the tool is fit for a startup’s needs.
To date the company has raised $116 million in funding, with a recent Series B round led by Google Ventures, meaning there are resources to effectively develop the platform into not just a leader for startups, but also for the larger CRM market.
Time to value is great
The moment you sign in to Attio for the first time, you’ll notice a very cool feature which is your CRM is populated for you. It cleverly syncs with your business calendar and email accounts to create a fully populated CRM, which you can then customize as you see fit.
Reflecting back to earlier in this article, this is one of the reasons Attio is a great choice for startup teams, as the product has been designed to minimize time to value.
AI-native architecture
Attio describes a compelling story about how it is built on AI-native primitives: native data ingestion, workflow engine, programmable surfaces, agent architecture, and most importantly, a composable data model. This sets it up well for the coming years, in which software will rapidly evolve, and the most adaptable and customizable platforms will win.
Today, Attio has a number of already useful AI features, that form the start of its growing toolkit. AI attributes are an intuitive way to incorporate AI into standard workflows and frameworks. They allow users to define intuitive new attributes for records, which you can then use as though they are normal ones. To take it further, there is a Research Agent capable of deeper research via web search which can automatically enrich company and contact records with completely novel data points. Attio even has an inbuilt email sequencing feature, which again incorporates AI today in an intuitive and easy to use way. AI personalization can be incorporated natively, allowing instant and scalable customization of email campaigns for marketing and sales alike.
What is most exciting though is where the platform is going. Their blog posts talk at length about how they view the future of software, and it’s hard not to buy into this vision. As a startup team, you want to build on top of tools that are not just going to exist in a few years, but will be at the cutting edge.
Composable data model
Attio’s object based data system allows it to literally adapt to any business model if needed, unlike traditional CRM structures. Teams can model complex relationships and custom data structures. You can make custom objects for anything, and define one to many, many to one, many to many or one to one relationships with each other, or the standard CRM objects like People, Companies, Deals etc.
Startups constantly evolving need this flexibility, and combined with Attio’s beautiful design, building a custom GTM system in Attio is a joy.
Combined with other features such as their recently released programmable SDK, Attio becomes a place where anything is possible for GTM builders.
Other key features
- Native call recording: Attio has an inbuilt Call Recorder that joins calls, transcribes and extracts insights into completely customizable templates (just like Granola.ai). This is a huge win if you don’t want to pay for yet another SaaS tool, or like everything in one place.
- Fully programmable: There is a recently released Apps SDK allowing the building of custom React apps inside Attio, as well as a maintained and easy to use REST API.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot is a well known legacy option, that is great for startups where people have previous experience using the tool, or want fully integrated marketing and sales in one platform.
The headline numbers
100,000+ customers globally across 120 countries and valued at $35 billion.
Everything in one place
HubSpot has a “forever-free” tier with basic tools making it accessible for pre-revenue teams, and is definitely an all in one platform, with multiple products or “hubs”, covering marketing, sales and service. Being a legacy provider, there are lots of integrations (1,900+ integrations available for connecting other tools) which avoids having to hop into Zapier or n8n for automation needs.
Some cool features
Breeze AI is HubSpot’s copilot available across Marketing Hub, Sales Hub and Service Hub. There is AI assisted copywriting for content and email generation which allows dynamic personalization. Furthermore, again fueling the “all in one place” concept, there’s even tooling for landing pages, live chat, and CMS capabilities. Fundamentally, HubSpot has an incredibly full feature set, although it’s debatable whether all of them are useful, and people might instead want an external tool.
Drawbacks scale with scale
Arguably, HubSpot is a product designed to hook in smaller teams with appealing free tiers and startup discounts, lock them into a difficult problem to move off of, and then rapidly scale cost and complexity as the team grows. Complexity of setup increases significantly on paid tiers which can be an unwelcome burden on small teams, and during our interviews, many users were not huge fans of the UX and design. Being such a large company, there are mandatory onboarding fees on Professional and Enterprise plans (thousands of dollars), so there is certainly no white glove experience that you might get with an eager and growing product. Perhaps most importantly, pricing scales rapidly with your usage and records, which can get very expensive for certain business models.
3. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a great option for startups laser focused on pipeline, and using their CRM purely for deal tracking.
A simple option built by sales people
Pipedrive describes itself as built by salespeople for salespeople and the entire interface is designed around deals. Simplicity is a core value prop, which can be a loss for some, but a win for others.
It often ranks in the top handful of CRMs, and is a respected vendor with good integration support.
Do you love kanban?
Pipedrive builds around a visual pipeline that makes deal tracking clear, and loves the kanban view. But there are other features. There is an AI powered report builder, for building charts and metrics, which is intuitive and easy to plug into your workflow. Built in sales forecasting to understand which deals to prioritize and native goal tracking for company, team and individual performance.
Notably, many users rave about Pipedrive’s mobile app, which is designed well and easy to use.
Simplicity can be a problem?
Pipedrive is great for a specific profile of team, but is fundamentally less powerful than other tools. There is less powerful automation, a weak data model and limited marketing features compared to competitors like Attio and HubSpot.
Also, often add-ons are required for essential features such as LeadBooster for lead generation and Campaigns for email marketing, which you’d either want core to the product, or as a specialized separate tool.
Concluding thoughts
The CRM you choose today will shape your growth trajectory for the next few years. With a CRM being an essential part of the GTM stack once your team scales to a certain size, it’s one of the most important choices you will make in the early days. For startups racing to product-market fit, time to value is critical, and you should choose platforms with instant sync, ease of use and nice UX. You should focus not only on a tool that comes alive quickly, but one that your team will enjoy using.
Looking ahead, you should bet on tools that are ready for the inevitable shift coming. Platforms that are super flexible, broad, and built with adaptability in mind will be the winners in the coming years. AI-native architecture is a core differentiator you should be looking for.
The safest bet is to choose a platform that is powerful today, will be crazy powerful in a few years, and above all, your team will love using.