11 of the Best CRM Solutions for the Education Industry

The editors at Solutions Review have compiled the following list to spotlight some of the best CRM solutions for businesses in the education industry. Solutions Review participates in affiliate programs. We may make a small commission from products purchased through this resource.

Developing meaningful, lasting relationships with students and families is one of the foundational pillars every educational institution bases its success. With a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, the education industry can use marketing, sales, and service tools to manage relationships with active, prospective, and graduated students and deliver unique, personalized service throughout the student lifecycle.

However, finding the best CRM solution for your company isn’t always easy, especially since every educational institution has unique needs and requirements. With that in mind, Solutions Review developed this list of top-rated CRM solutions for the education industry to help connect buyers with leading providers in the marketplace. The Solutions Review editors selected these solutions based on each provider’s Authority Score, a meta-analysis of user sentiment through the web’s most trusted business software review sites, and our proprietary five-point inclusion criteria.

The Best CRM Solutions for the Education Industry

Pipedrive

Description: Pipedrive provides a clean, intuitive, and interactive CRM tool to help sales professionals manage leads, track communications, automate tasks, measure performance with detailed metrics, and improve sales processes. With Pipedrive’s university and higher education CRM solution, users can track stakeholder interactions across platforms, increase admission rates, and improve communications between staff and students. The platform can also help educators record information, automate acceptance offers, track email activity, build a pipeline that fits their application process, streamline enrollments, and more.

Zendesk

Description: Zendesk provides customers with a CRM experience focused on customer service and sales needs. With Zendesk Sell’s sales CRM platform, users can access sales automation software, pipeline visualization and management tools, mobile access, lead management, reporting capabilities, and more. Education businesses of all sizes can use Zendesk for their omnichannel communication needs, provide personalized experiences to users, build a knowledge base to help visitors answer common questions, share customer feedback, identify content trends with reporting tools, and boost staff productivity.

Maximizer

Description: Maximizer is a feature-rich CRM product highlighted by sales function capabilities alongside marketing automation, contact management, business intelligence, cloud-based data storage, deployment tools, customer service features, and a companion mobile application. Maximizer CRM also offers a solution for higher education institutions. It comes equipped with student accommodation management, assessment service management, student lifecycle management, employability management, disability service management, and add-on capabilities that businesses can use to create a tailored solution for their needs.

Freshsales

Description: Freshworks provides business software solutions designed to be ready to go right “out of the box.” For example, the company’s CRM platform, Freshsales, comes equipped with the tools businesses need to identify loyal customers, improve engagement, personalize the shopping experience, and unify customer data. With Freshsales’ education CRM solution, users can improve how they attract prospective students, automate data entry, boost enrollment rates with personalized outreach, match students with the right courses, track sales processes, and unlock 360° views into the student lifecycle.

Salesforce.org

Description: Salesforce is a global provider of CRM and marketing solutions for financial services, retail, healthcare, consumer goods, manufacturing, automotive, transportation, education, and other industries. Salesforce.org is the company’s social impact center focused on building technology solutions and products for its global community of nonprofits, schools, and philanthropic organizations of all sizes. The company offers CRM solutions for higher education and K-12 institutions with tools for admissions, enrollment, student experience management, fundraising, family engagement, and digital campus management.

TargetX

Description: TargetX provides CRM solutions to help the higher education industry recruit and retain students. The company’s Recruitment Suite includes email, SMS, event management tools, and other features for improving enrollment management, increasing applications, and streamlining admissions productivity with mobile-first functionalities personalized for higher education users. TargetX’s Retention Suite includes an appointment scheduler, SMS functionalities, action plans, and a Student Success Center to help users increase retention, optimize the student experience, and maximize student success initiatives.

NetSuite

Description: NetSuite, a property of Oracle, specializes in cloud-based solutions, including CRM, ERP, and e-commerce. NetSuite’s cloud-based CRM updates in real-time. Its cloud-based CRM tool updates in real-time and provides standard features such as SFA, customer service management, marketing automation, and advanced services like order management, commissions, sales forecasting, and integrated e-commerce. NetSuite’s CRM capabilities can help educators establish customized workflows, manage the lead-to-cash cycle, target prospects with personalized campaigns, and manage relationships with a 360-degree view of their constituents.

LeadSquared

Description: LeadSquared is a provider of marketing automation and sales execution solutions designed to help marketers and sales teams capture lead and activity data across channels to make each engagement meaningful and targeted. The platform uses machine learning to forge a deeper understanding of conversion attributes. LeadSquared’s education CRM capabilities include applicant nurturing, workflow automations, performance analytics, email marketing, retargeting channels, centralized lead management, marketing performance dashboards, drip campaigns, integrations, and more.

HubSpot

Description: HubSpot is frequently brought up in discussions on CRM integration, as most of the providers in the marketing world offer integrations with the company’s software. HubSpot is perhaps the most popular small business CRM since its core capabilities are free. Additional features, like enterprise licensing, can be purchased as an add-on to the commercially free options. HubSpot also has platforms and solutions for sales, service, content management, and operations. HubSpot’s CRM is affordable for small businesses and organizations, especially with its negligible contact and data space limits.

Kapture CRM

Description: Kapture CRM startups and enterprises across industries with cloud CRM and SaaS-based customer support automation platforms. Educators can use the Kapture CRM cloud-based solution to improve their prospect management efforts, collect real-time data on events, track progress on active programs, connect with students on their preferred channels, manage student groups, and streamline how faculty and students share information. Other capabilities of Kapture CRM include data consolidation tools, workflow automation, data security, a student portal, and third-party integrations to expand functionalities when necessary.

Qualtrics

Description: Qualtrics is the “Experience Management (XM)” service category creator and works with organizations to improve and manage their customer, employee, product, and brand experiences. The XM Platform is designed to help its users create customer-centric products and develop memorable brand identities that attract, retain, and delight customers and employees. Qualtrics offers faculty and student experience management solutions for higher education, academic research, and K-12 educational institutions.