Best Free CRM For Schools In 2025.avif

Managing a school isn't nearly as easy as it seems. It involves complex administrative processes from attracting and enrolling new students to managing their entire lifecycle and communicating with their parents. 

Most schools, however, are scattered across multiple spreadsheets, siloed systems, and email threads, creating a level of administrative chaos. This means missed inquiries and a lack of consolidated data and follow-ups, which makes it harder for schools to make data-driven decisions.

Then what if you had a single, cohesive system to organize that chaos? In this situation, CRM software for schools can help your admin staff manage student lifecycles and staff collaboration. With this CRM tool, schools can save a significant amount of time each week while improving both communication and enrollment management.

The best part? Many of these CRM platforms are free or offer trial versions, making them accessible to schools of all sizes. To help you simplify your search, we have curated a list of the eight best free CRMs for schools in 2025, built to tackle the biggest administrative challenges without financial burden.

Top 8 Free CRM For Schools

Software

Our Ratings

Features

Zoho

4.7

  • Business intelligence 
  • Canva design studio 
  •  

HubSpot

4.6

  • Contact management 
  • Pipeline management 
  • Task management 

Pipedrive

4.5

  • Project management 
  • Pipedrive AI 
  • Instant sales insights 

Agile CRM

4.5

  • 360-degree contact view 
  • Appointment scheduling 
  • Email marketing 

Vtiger

4.2

  • Calculus AI 
  • Performance insights 
  • Document management 

eWay-CRM

N/A

  • AI-powered contact suggestions 
  • Custom workflows 
  • Sales executive dashboard 

PHP CRM

N/A

  • User management 
  • Lead management 
  • Document and file management 

EspoCRM

N/A

  • Marketing automation 
  • Business process management 
  • Reporting and analytics 

1. Zoho CRM

zoho.avif

Zoho CRM software is a cloud-based solution that offers a comprehensive suite designed for educational institutions to boost engagement, drive enrollments, and manage the entire admission lifecycle. The platform provides a 360-degree view of contacts and leads, along with self-service portals for teachers, administrators, parents, and students.

With Zoho CRM, it’s easier to automate the school management operations. It categorizes students using customizable criteria. This guides them through a smooth enrollment process without manual intervention.

Key Features

  • Business Intelligence: Helps schools make data-driven decisions through in-depth reports and customized dashboards. The AI assistant helps schools stay up-to-date with changing trends.
  • Canvas Design Studio: Enables users to create custom fields, layouts, and modules without coding. This allows the team to manage data more efficiently for streamlined operations.
  • Zia: An AI-powered sales assistant that prioritizes leads and analyzes sales trends, helping the sales team make smart decisions.

Integrations

Zoho CRM connects with 1100+ third-party applications and tools, including:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Easy to keep an eye on information using the filtering and sorting options
  • Highly customizable to fit unique business needs
  • Allows customer segmentation for the delivery of personalized services

Cons:

  • Initial setup is time-consuming and requires support assistance
  • Tedious to generate customized reports due to user permissions

2. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot.avif

HubSpot CRM software is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solution that combines sales, customer service, and marketing capabilities. The platform centralizes school data and automates workflows to eliminate operational silos.

For schools, HubSpot's social marketing enhances online visibility to attract students. Automated email marketing engages website visitors and nurtures leads to increase student enrollments. Moreover, the tool simplifies the student's admission process through customizable segmentation and progressive profiling.

Key Features

  • Contact Management: Create and organize contact records, store communication history, customer data, and track sales activities.
  • Pipeline Management: Manage and visualize the entire sales lifecycle to close more leads. The software helps track performance and identify roadblocks.
  • Task Management: Store, track, manage, and report activities and tasks to streamline sales processes and build customer relationships.

Integrations

The platform connects seamlessly with industry-leading third-party applications and tools, including:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Easy to import contacts from Excel, map columns, and create new fields
  • Efficient reporting tools with live visual dashboards that provide real-time insights
  • In-depth tracking system allows for enrollment in automated workflows and scoring leads

Cons:

  • Does not allow easy access to create organizational charts
  • Difficult to find the meeting scheduler on the desktop

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive.avif

Pipedrive CRM is a cloud-based CRM designed to streamline customer interactions and manage sales processes. The platform combines leads, deals, and parent contact information in one location. This helps in streamlining the student recruitment process.

Schools can manage student data, record and track communications, and automate follow-up sequences. This ensures that no potential enrollees fall through the cracks. The kanban-style dashboard and AI insights help schools make admin workflows easier while improving enrollment conversions.

Key Features

  • Project Management: Intuitive kanban boards, custom fields, task organization, and collaboration tools help in streamlining workflows.
  • Pipedrive AI: Automation tools generate customized email content and highlight high-priority deals. The AI sales assistant and email summarizer speed up daily tasks.
  • Instant Sales Insights: Visual dashboards and custom reports refine strategies, identify bottlenecks, and monitor performance to empower sales teams.

Integrations

The software integrates with 500+ third-party applications and tools to automate tasks, including:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Flexible configuration allows customization of workflows and pipelines
  • Streamlines communication through the campaign tool between the lead and the customer
  • Easy to add tasks and receive reminders for efficient task management

Cons:

  • Custom reports are limited in higher-tier plans
  • Can be cumbersome to manually complete data-related information

4. Agile CRM

Agile CRM.avif

Agile CRM offers an all-in-one solution that combines CRM, marketing, sales, and customer support automation features. For schools, this cloud-based platform excels at managing relationships with students throughout the enrollment journey.

The platform nurtures leads through organized communication channels. This helps in maintaining stronger connections and improving admission conversion rates. Moreover, centralized student data enables staff to focus on educational excellence, thus reducing administrative workload.

Key Features

  • 360 Degree Contact View: View complete information, interactive history, and communication records in one centralized dashboard for customer relationship management.
  • Appointment Scheduling: Sync calendars and allow contacts to book appointments in real-time for streamlined communication.
  • Email Marketing: Create customized email campaigns for targeted outreach using pre-packaged templates and a drag-and-drop builder.

Integrations

The platform offers integrations with various third-party applications and tools, including:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Easy to navigate and set up due to the intuitive drag-and-drop interface
  • Automates email marketing, workflows, and routine operations
  • Simplifies planning and scheduling with built-in calendar and time management tools

Cons:

  • Offers limited customization options to fit business requirements
  • Constantly asks to re-authorize Twitter and Google integrations

5. Vtiger

Vtiger.avif

Vtiger CRM delivers a comprehensive CRM solution powered by One View that unifies marketing and sales operations through centralized data management. This cloud-based platform transforms student recruitment and enrollment management. It consolidates student information from inquiry to enrollment in one location.

The system tracks student interactions at all touchpoints, allowing institutions to enhance their enrollment conversion rates and reduce processing work for their teams.

Key Features

  • Calculus AI: Automate workflows, manage customer queries, and maintain data records through ChatGPT-integrated AI.
  • Performance Insights: Access detailed tabular data related to organizational growth trends, performance metrics, and sales pipeline tracking.
  • Document Management: Store, share, track, and organize sales and marketing documents. The software also allows integration with Google Drive and Dropbox for extra space.

Integrations

The software integrates with more than 500 third-party applications and tools, including:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Offers a bulk database holding capacity for efficient flow of data
  • Provides lead management and import modules to easily track the team’s progress and history
  • Easy to use and highly customizable according to your needs

Cons:

  • Workflows are a bit complicated for beginners
  • Quote module is beneficial for inventory only

6. eWay-CRM

eWay-CRM .avif

eWay-CRM integrates with Microsoft Outlook, which helps to organize projects, deals, and customers. It eliminates the need to switch between multiple platforms and manages the student’s administrative processes and communications.

The AI-powered feature prioritizes urgent messages and automates routine tasks. This enables school administrators to focus on building better relationships while maintaining organized communication records. Thus, this Outlook-based approach reduces adoption barriers and training time, making it an ideal solution for educational institutions.

Key Features

  • AI-Powered Contact Suggestions: Save complete information of new contacts by letting the CRM analyze your mailbox and convert them with a single click.
  • Custom Workflows: Create custom outlines for your projects, deals, and customers to automate tasks and ensure everyone follows the company’s practices.
  • Sales Executive Dashboard: Access detailed stats and reports using the Power BI Sales Executive Dashboard, which works on mobile, web, Mac, and PC.

Integrations

The platform provides integrations with more than 300 third-party tools and systems, including:

  • Power BI
  • WordPress
  • QuickBooks
  • Make
  • Adobe Sign
  • Power Automate

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • AI-powered tools create tasks and contacts, reducing manual efforts
  • Customizable modules support workflows efficiently
  • Seamless integration with Outlook makes it easy to add contacts from email

Cons:

  • Cumbersome to add customers with complex company structures
  • Does not allow customization of pre-templates in the tool

7. PHP CRM

PHP CRM.avif

PHP CRM is a web-based software solution that plays a significant role in managing leads, customers, support tickets, staff attendance, and invoices of the education system. Particularly for schools, this flexible platform transforms student relationship management by providing complete control over sensitive educational data through self-hosting capabilities.

The system’s adaptability enables schools to customize features according to their enrollment processes. Additionally, it offers the ability to use their own servers. This ensures data privacy and compliance with educational regulations.

Key Features

  • User Management System: Manage users and authenticate access to limited sections, with administrators able to oversee various departments and create new users.
  • Lead Management System: Captures, tracks, and qualifies leads from initial contact to conversion. The software provides personalized follow-up capabilities and reduces manual tasks.
  • Document And Files Management: Manage customer documents and files securely as a central record-keeping system, enabling effective creation, storage, and retrieval of important business files.

Integrations

The software hasn't disclosed any information regarding its integration capabilities.  

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Offers self-hosting, so you can launch it on your own server
  • Comes with built-in email functionality with multiple currency support and languages
  • Offers customization to modify the software according to your business needs

Cons:

  • Lacks AI integration in the CRM
  • Causes performance issues due to the large datasets

8. EspoCRM

EspoCRM .avif

EspoCRM is an open-source CRM that helps manage operations, customers, projects, and opportunities through its on-premises and cloud-based solutions. The platform gathers core data to enhance customer relationships and experiences, increasing the efficiency of marketing initiatives.

For schools, the CRM centralizes student enrollment management, recruitment, and parent communication processes. The project management system provides admission departments with the ability to organize and track admission campaigns and automate subsequent follow-up communications.

Key Features

  • Marketing Automation: Easily build target lists, design campaigns, and manage mass email communications. This strengthens relationships, engages audiences, and monitors campaign performance.
  • Business Process Management (BPM): Automates complex operations and improves efficiency through no-code and low-code solutions.
  • Reporting And Analytics: Build grid reports and detailed lists, visualize results as charts, export them to Excel or PDF, and sync with target email lists.

Integrations

The CRM seamlessly integrates with various third-party tools and systems, which include:

Pros And Cons

Pros:

  • Easily configurable due to the user-friendly interface
  • Easy to add new fields, reports, and forms
  • Offers flexibility due to the cloud-based version

Cons:

  • Lacks a comprehensive structure and formulas in the documentation
  • Difficult to customize the PDF templates using the old PDF library

Which Free CRM For Schools Should You Choose?

Which Free CRM For Schools Should You Choose

Choosing the right free CRM can make a significant difference in streamlining your school's operations. Our list of the top eight free CRMs for schools enhances student engagement, streamlines the admission process, and fosters stronger long-term relationships. All you need to do is assess your business needs, integration capabilities, scalability, and a user-friendly interface tailored to your school's requirements.

If you want help in finding the best free CRM for your school needs, contact us, and let's make sure you do student relationship management successfully!