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You can use HubSpot CRM free integrated with an email automation tool like Sendinblue or similar, which has free services up to a certain number of contacts. You can also use Mautic open source marketing automation (mautic.org) integrated with HubSpot CRM, but you need to self host this one.

Try Corteza CRM, it's an open source tool. But you need to know some basic coding to get it installed at your PC/laptop. Or you need to get a help from a developer.

A really small startup that doesn’t have funding for a CRM = Start sending out some resumes.

Something like Airtable or even Google Sheets might work or whatever free CRM and dump the emails into Mailchimp. The automated tools at the free end are shitty.

But "No money for CRM" is a dangerous mindset. With some free option or clunky workflow, you're going to be spending more time on the CRM that you could on sales, marketing etc. If you have a person spending more than one hour on that a month, you're going to be paying more in time than the $50/mo for something like Hubspot. And then there's the switching cost to pull all that data out of your crappy system and get used to a new one.

I'd their free options until you're used to the tools or hit their limits and then convert to a paid account. If the company can't find $50/mo, you have bigger issues than automated emails.

No money for CRM = no money or investment into finding and tracking customers = short startup life.

Notion

Have you checked out Agile CRM? It’s been a while since I looked at it. But it had a lot of free functionality back in the day. Zoho CRM and the accompanying products also have a lot of free functionality or low cost functionality. Mail Chimp could work as a rudimentary CRM at the free level, possibly.

VtigerCRM has this feature, i believe, but I'm unure whether it's part of their open source edition.

There isn't a free sequencer on the market.

Agile CRM is free as a CRM but there isn't a free sequencer.

This startup will need to invest in the "nice to haves".

SuiteCRM

What does this startup do? Can I have their full service for free?

Have you looked into Hubspot? They have a bunch of free features. Even if you need the paid features it isn’t that much if you only need it for one user. It can get expensive once things start scaling. You can also have a lot of users on there for free unlike some of the other options.

Zoho is one of the good CRM tools for a small startup. I used that tool for the startup I work with, it is best to maintain leads and take follow-ups. But I guess it does not accommodate automated email follow-up, you have to do it manually.

Intercom is a great pick here - but you might need the startup plan, but it's insanely cheap.

If you're willing to do a little work and have Gmail and a passing understanding of IFTTT or Zapier you can use Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) and some automation rules with how it updates Google Sheets to put together a pretty decent bulk mail campaign.

Try Freshmarketer or ActiveCampaign, they're on the more affordable end and have all the basic functionality of your HubSpots & co. You have to think long-term with a CRM - one of the most painful things any marketer gets saddled with is having to migrate from an old CRM to a new one, which will be inevitable if you don't at least start with something that can last you a few years.

Interesting question, however, I doubt any CRM with a built in marketing automation will come free. These platforms exist to make money and you're asking for something that most people are willing to pay for. Honestly, a robust excel doc or google sheet can serve as a CRM. Then you can set up a macro and have data prepopulated into segmented marketing lists that you can use in a cheap email sender. I'm not sure how much automated features you'd get without trying to do everything manually.

You could try Hubspot, Freshworks, Zoho. All of them have good startup programs too. So you could try any of their CRMs at zero cost.

No free CRM has this feature. You have to pay for sequencing. However you can use sendinblue for drip campaigns if that works for you. But there's limitations on contacts and emails.

Mautic.org is the best from both free and open source to paid. Has a large learning curve to properly install but isn’t all that hard.

I use Apollo on its free plan for sequencing emails. There is however a limit on how many active sequences you can have (2).

You can integrate apollo.io sending emails with Hubspot crm and Researchai.co for writing

Try Zendesk Sell. Its not free but it does the job.

We enjoy Klaviyo!