23 Best CRMs For Universities & Higher Education

The table below shows a quick price comparison of all the University & College CRM system solutions that we’ve researched:

Company name	Starting price	Free trial length
Salesforce	$25	30 day
Zoho CRM	$20	15 day
Freshsales	Free plan available then $11	21 day
Hubspot CRM	Free plan available	Free plan available
Pipedrive	$24	14 day
Monday.com	$15	14 day
Zendesk	$69	14 day
Salesmate	$29	15 day
Quickbase	$35	30 day
ActiveCampaign	$19	14 day
ClickUp	Free plan available then $7	No trial available
Nimble CRM	$29.90	14 day
Kylas Sales CRM	Free plan available	15 day
LeadSquared	Not stated	No trial available
Creatio	Not stated	14 day
Podio	Free plan available	No trial available
Oracle NetSuite	Not stated	No trial available
Nextiva	$30.95	No trial available
Element451	$1167	No trial available
Slate.org	Free plan available	Free plan available
TargetX	Not stated	No trial available
Blackbaud	Not stated	No trial available
Shape	$119	No trial available

*The prices in the table above (where available) come directly from each company’s website and were accurate at the time of writing. Since then, those prices may have changed.

We’ve listed the results of our CRM systems research and the features of each company’s product in a bit more detail below. You’ll be able to see the benefits of their service and some general information about the company as well.

*companies are ranked in no particular order.

1. Salesforce

They offer an Education Cloud which they claim is the number one AI CRM for learner and institution success.
It provides an integrated journey that can manage every stage of the journey.
They provide intelligent automation which can save time and help you predict trends.
It can manage recruitment and admissions, student success, advancement and alumni relations, and academic operations.
The CRM enables you to nurture prospective students and increase your engagement with them using AI-powered automation.
Applicant experience can be tailored to individual needs to drive completion rates and track applicant activities throughout the applicant journey.
It can support you in reviewing applications and it can integrate with third-party applications data.
It enables teams to work collaboratively using shared records so personalized care plans can be delivered.
They provide key metrics that enable you to get actionable insights including engagement, participation trends, fundraising, and evaluate efficiency.
You can book a demo of the software or utilize the free trial for 30 days.

Website: https://www.salesforce.com/education/cloud/

2. Zoho CRM

Offers a CRM that is tailored for educational institutions and it is designed to boost enrollment and streamline operations.
They cater for colleges, universities, schools, online schools, coaching and training centers, and more.
The CRM helps you to nurture all your relationships including students, parents, staff, donors, and alumni.
You can manage the complete application relationship lifecycle from initial inquiry to enrollment to support the sales teams with conversions and it incorporates automation.
They can help your communications be streamlined through automated emails, alerts, notifications and follow-ups.
A self-service portal can be created so that students, teachers, admin and parents can use it.
The CRM allows your staff to collaborate with shared information, trends and alerts.
Access in-depth reports and analytics about your organization and students.
You can integrate it with other apps and tools to extend its useability.
They offer a 15-day free trial and a demo of the software.

Website: https://www.zoho.com/crm/solutions/education/

3. Freshsales

Offers an education CRM which is designed to support the whole student lifecycle.
The CRM will manage admissions through to alumni with seamless communication.
It can manage all student admissions and enrollment from lead generation, application, acceptance, and enrollment.
They provide the ability to manage multiple stakeholders with tailored communications across multiple channels which include students, parents, staff, alumni and donors.
It can help you to manage all communications channels including email, phone, chat, social media and web forms.
Their CRM provides a comprehensive overview of the student database which gives eadvanced list views and customizable columns.
You can automate repetitive tasks which can include emails and reminders.
They provide customizable fields to enable you to visualize and manage contacts better.
They provide dashboards and reports that provide valuable insights to help you adjust your strategies.
You can try the software for free on the 21-day trial or use the software for free if you have under three users on their free plan.

Website: https://www.freshworks.com/crm/industries/education/

4. HubSpot CRM

Offers an education CRM that is designed to help you manage applications and inquiries.
They provide a Marketing Hub that enables you to manage all your website traffic, qualify leads, respond to queries, and manage applications.
Deliver seamless communications to prospective students either individually or in bulk with personalized messages.
They provide email automation to help you engage, build, and maintain relationships with students.
Utilize AI and communication tools to gather data and streamline services using chatbots and live chat.
Empower your students by enabling them to book their own appointments.
Help your staff to be more informed and collaborate more effectively through shared data.
Access metrics compiled on your data to get a better understanding of your students, conversions, and lead generation techniques.
They offer a range of plugin opportunities with hundreds of useful apps and tools including email, live chat and scheduling.
Offers a free CRM plan for up to five users.

Website: https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm/education

5. Pipedrive

They offer a CRM that caters for universities and higher education institutions.
It is designed to increase admission rates and improve communications.
The CRM can track all interactions across a variety of platforms with your stakeholders across the world.
It can streamline the entire student lifecycle including recruitment, enrollment, admissions, and retention activities.
The CRM can nurture all relationships with students, staff, alumni and donors.
You can tailor communications and create meaningful touch-points in the student journey.
Enrollment processes can be automated to send messages at the right time and reduce admin tasks.
They provide flexible integrations and apps to increase the functionality of the CRM.
Gain insights from your data by analyzing your metrics and reports to help make data-driven decisions.
They offer a 14-day free trial of the CRM.

Website: https://www.pipedrive.com/en/industries/higher-education-crm

6. Monday.com

Offers an education CRM which provides a single platform to manage and organize your information.
It enables you to manage all your communications from departments and programs to students.
The CRM can manage all your relationships including faculty members, staff, contractors, students, parents, and more.
Manage and track all student information in one place and share this with staff so there is one consistent view.
They provide customizable workflows and templates to manage your workload better and streamline operations.
You can customize the platform with flexible columns and views so you can record and see what you need to.
They provide advanced reporting facilities with drill-downs to allow you to gain valuable insight into your data.
It is accessible on a desktop and mobile app on iOS and Android devices to enable remote access.
The CRM can integrate with over 72 third-party apps and services to unify your systems.
They offer a free trial of the CRM for 14 days.

Website: https://monday.com/blog/crm-and-sales/crm-in-higher-education/

7. Zendesk

They offer a CRM that caters for education with the ability to support students, parents and faculty.
It provides a flexible solution that is designed to be easy to use.
The CRM allows you to interact and communicate with your audience using their preferred channel of communication.
It can record interactions from email, phone, chat and social media.
The CRM provides automation, tools and workflows that can streamline your operations and ensure smooth conversations.
It can assist you in managing your staff as you can manage requests, collect and distribute content with them.
The CRM can be integrated with a range of tools and apps to provide additional capabilities.
They provide reporting capabilities that enable you to review and analyze your data.
The CRM can be set up in 30 minutes or less and doesn’t require extensive training.
Offer a demo of the software or you can take advantage of the 14-day free trial.

Website: https://www.zendesk.com/education/

8. Salesmate

They offer a CRM that caters for higher education to assist with improving relationships and communication with students.
It is designed to help you increase your admissions and retention rates to grow your student numbers.
The CRM can manage every stage of the student lifecycle using the CRM which can be tailored to meet your needs.
Your admission process can be automated and synchronized with your calendar and activities.
It can manage your registrations seamlessly and send timely reminders about fees.
You can manage communications, send bulk emails, and track their performance.
They provide automation that builds workflows to send emails and assign tasks to team members automatically.
It can integrate with over 700 business apps such as Google apps, Microsoft and Zapier.
Provides insights with detailed reports that can reveal demand patterns and students’ behavior.
Offers a 15-day free trial and a demo of their CRM.

Website: https://www.salesmate.io/crm-higher-education/

9. Quickbase

Offers an education database software that helps improve the student and staff experience.
You can reduce your admin by digitizing and streamlining workflows through the software.
It enables you to collect, track and report on your students and faculty more effectively.
Provides a complete education management solution that can improve staff and team collaboration through a single source of information.
It allows you to manage your courses, internships, attendance and administrative processes to help improve experiences.
The software can be adapted to keep you on track and in line with new requirements of your establishment.
It can help you reduce errors in communications.
The software can be customized to match your needs and is easy to use.
Access information about your students and organization through the real-time dashboards.
Book a demo of the software or take advantage of the free trial for 30 days.

Website: https://www.quickbase.com/solutions/education-database-software

10. ActiveCampaign

They offer email marketing and marketing automation designed for higher education.
It enables you to track students and alumni across departments.
The software can assist in finding the best-fit candidates for your courses.
You can identify prospective student interests to help you with follow-up to attract the students to your institution.
It can assist you in creating attractive emails to promote your classes, campus, and extracurricular activities.
You can manage your alumni to send messages, track donations, and arrange events.
They provide automation to assist with managing scheduled communications such as welcoming and orientating new students, and follow-up activities.
It can integrate with over 870 apps including Gmail, Office 365 and Zapier.
They provide advanced reporting to allow you to monitor and track campaigns and students.
Offers a 14-day free trial of the software.

Website: https://www.activecampaign.com/industry/higher-education

11. ClickUp

Offers a customized CRM designed for universities that will assist with revolutionizing your organization.
It can help you streamline your student interactions, manage academic records, and improve your communications in a single platform.
They provide a user-friendly platform that caters specifically for educational institutions.
It can streamline your intake process, organize data, automatically create tasks, and automate communications to reduce admin.
The CRM can store, analyze, and track your contacts and store related documents.
It provides a range of tools to track prospective students, manage applications, manage alumni relations and fundraising, track student progress, manage resources, and schedule appointments.
You can also manage research projects through the CRM with grant management, collaboration tools, publication tracking, and compliance monitoring.
It can integrate with existing systems and databases to provide a centralized information platform.
You can track interaction and generate insights from the CRM to help inform your decisions and plans.
They offer a free plan but it is for personal use only but this could be used for a trial.

Website: https://clickup.com/teams/education

12. Nimble

Offers a customized CRM platform designed for educational institutions.
The CRM can manage sales and marketing, attract students, organize your learning processes, and control payments.
It brings together all your communication platforms including email, phone, social media, messengers and online chats.
It can automatically record interactions with prospective students.
The CRM can help you to automate your processes to reduce administrative tasks.
They offer integrated video links to enable you to deliver online lessons.
It can create records for every course request which can be distributed to the right manager.
You can open a transaction for each student to create invoices and collect payments.
It can integrate with a range of software including Microsoft and Google products.
They offer a 14-day free trial of the CRM system.

Website: https://www.nimble.com/crm-software/crm-system-for-educational-institutions/

13. Kylas

Offers a CRM that is designed for higher education institutions.
It can assist with streamlining your inquiries, applications, admissions, enrollments, and retention in one platform.
The CRM can help map your entire student journey and manage every step of it.
You can capture, track and manage all applications and increase the number of enrollments through personalized communications and targeting supported by automation.
Provides a centralized database for all inquiries generated across all channels to help track inquiries through to enrollment activities.
It enables you to assign applicants to the right people based on their characteristics.
You can create personalized communications via email, SMS and WhatsApp to nurture prospects and retain students.
Pipelines can be created and customized to manage your process more effectively.
They provide insights and analytics which can include admissions rate, marketing channel success, and counselor efficiency.
They offer a free plan for up to 1,000 records and a free trial of the software is available for 15 days.

Website: https://kylas.io/industry/higher-education-crm

14. LeadSquared

They offer a CRM designed for higher education to manage your complete student journey.
It provides a complete admissions platform to manage student acquisition, track applications, track student journeys, enrollment, and more.
The CRM can automate your application processes and student enrollment.
You can personalize your student engagements which can improve student retention with communication automation.
It can capture your inquiries in real time from both online and offline sources to reduce leakage.
You can set up automated responses to nurture prospects and distribute prospects to the most suitable admissions person.
Workflows can be designed to automate repetitive tasks to manage every step and give visibility of the pipeline, tasks and calendar.
The software is easy to use and customizable to meet your needs with the ability to integrate with other apps and tools.
It provides the ability to measure, optimize and forecast through analytic tools.
Book a demo of the software to learn more about it.

Website: https://www.leadsquared.com/higher-education-crm/

15. Creatio

Offers automation software designed for educational institutions and training companies.
It enables you to manage a range of resources and communications.
They provide class and course management tools.
It enables you to send bulk SMS messages to targeted audiences.
They provide facilities to send email notifications including promotions and events.
Provides event management tools to assist you in running courses.
The CRM enables you to select and target audiences based on characteristics.
You can control payments and track them in the CRM.
The CRM enables you to analyze your courses and review them and their budgets.
You can request a live demo of the software or arrange a 14-day free trial.

Website: https://marketplace.creatio.com/app/education-creatio

16. Podio

They offer a CRM that is suitable for educational institutions.
It can assist you in organizing your classrooms and running critical processes such as course planning.
They offer a customizable CRM that can track your students and prospective students as well as organize your teams.
It provides a centralized database that allows you to share information between teams to aid collaboration and improve data quality.
You can create pipelines to track progress and organize your staff’s workloads.
It is customizable to fit your sales process so you can record the details you need.
You can manage your relationships more effectively with real-time communications.
They provide a range of tools including task assignment, chat functionality, file attachment, and mobile app for remote access.
You can monitor progress and run reports to review performance.
Offers a free plan for up to five users to try the software for free.

Website: https://podio.com/site/use-cases

17. Oracle NetSuite

Offers a range of software catering for educational organizations including a CRM.
It provides a 360-degree view of your constituents.
They provide an overview of all student aspects including communications, support, and financial transactions.
The CRM provides a unified set of tools to manage the entire lead to enrollment cycle.
A centralized database that can be shared to provide consistency and collaboration.
It can assist you in managing and nurturing your relationships as it provides a 360-view of your contacts.
You can create segments to enable you to run personalized and targeted campaigns.
They provide customizable workflows and processes to match your needs to enable you to manage your organization more effectively.
You can monitor and track all actions and activities in the CRM to assess their effectiveness and aid with planning.
Book a free product tour to learn more about the software.

Website: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/industries/education.shtml

18. Nextiva

They offer software that is AI-powered which caters for educational institutions to help streamline communications.
It is designed to assist with communications and connecting your students, staff and campuses.
You can deliver consistent communications and enhance student experiences through the unified communication ecosystem.
It enables you to strengthen relationships with students, parents and staff through targeted communications including text, email, phone and video messages.
Bulk messages can be sent to multiple channels to promote and engage the target audience.
You can manage incoming emails, texts and calls by routing them to the right person.
The single platform provides opportunities to streamline your systems and processes.
The software includes video meetings that don’t require a download which can be used for hosting classes.
It boasts advanced security measures and the capacity to manage users easily.
Offers a 30 minute product demo to get to know the software better.

Website: https://www.nextiva.com/industry/education

19. Element451

Offers a CRM and student engagement platform backed by a team of AI assistants to support higher education establishments.
It has been designed to enhance staff productivity and enrich student engagement to create a more connected experience.
Their software helps enhance the educational journey by providing personalized support to students and creating efficiencies by streamlining operations.
It provides marketing automation so you can deliver personalized campaigns by email and SMS and utilize templates for landing pages and forms.
Create unified experiences by managing every interaction with students with tools to assist with appointments, events, surveys, and microsites.
They provide custom applications that are intuitive and collect all the information you need.
It incorporates AI which includes a digital support squad to support students in navigating campus life and education, and staff AI assistants to assist with copywriting through to campaign strategy.
They also provide knowledge discovery assistants which revolutionize how students navigate your website.
It offers advanced insights and interactive reports to provide you with information about what is working and happening so that it can inform your decision-making.
Book a demo to learn more about their software.

Website: https://element451.com/

20. Slate.org

They offer software that supports the entire college admissions process to connect students, schools and colleges.
It provides an application management system that assists you in visualizing where every application is in the pipeline.
The software enables you to batch upload materials and verify individual applications to multiple universities.
It allows colleges to connect with counselors to share information such as visiting dates.
The software enables you to track the outcome of students’ applications and view admissions decisions.
You can upload additional materials to support enrollment.
It provides up-to-date information on schools and enables schools to manage their profiles.
They enable you to share information with students and counselors.
It provides an application portal where you can manage access for your staff and give permission levels.
Offers the software free to students, counselors and colleges.

Website: https://slate.org/

21. TargetX

Offers a dedicated higher education CRM solution that manages the full student lifecycle.
They provide a recruitment suite to manage applications and enrollment activities.
It incorporates a retention suite to provide the tools you need to maintain relationships and keep them engaged.
They enable admission teams to track student engagement through the recruitment cycle and build stronger relationships.
It allows you to personalize communications and create seamless experiences between channels including campus visits.
They support email management, SMS integration, event management and UChat communications.
They provide workflow automation to assign tasks, reduce admin and manage follow-up.
It offers a student portal that enables students to submit documents, review decisions, pay enrollment deposits, request appointments with counselors, and see upcoming events and news.
Access real-time reporting with customizable reports that can support data-driven decision-making.
You can request a demo to see the software in more detail.

Website: https://www.targetx.com/

22. Blackbaud

They offer customizable software and CRM solutions that are designed for higher education.
It is designed to assist you in driving engagement with students, staff, alumni and donors.
They provide a purpose-built cloud-based digital transformation solution that is flexible and scalable.
It provides improved student and alumni experience through the provision of a high-impact lifecycle management.
They help you to bring together your advancement, enrollment and admissions, alumni relations, academics, finance and operations, marketing and external relations.
It can support award management with cloud-based scholarship and donor stewardship solutions.
They offer fund accounting, fundraising and peer-to-peer fundraising management to enable you to manage and expand relationships and streamline processes.
The software is available both on desktop and mobile devices.
Provides in-depth reporting and analytics to enable you to review your performance and aid decision-making.
Offers a demo of their software that allows you to view the platform.

Website: https://www.blackbaud.com/who-we-serve/higher-education-institutions

23. Shape

Offers an all-in-one platform that assists higher education establishments in managing enrollment and retention.
It can help you by automating your outreach, admissions and application processes.
They provide a cloud-based platform that integrates a phone system, email management, text and MMS.
It helps you to increase and manage your application and maximize enrollment through automation and marketing tools.
You can increase your student retention by identifying high-risk students, track progress, and communicate with them to keep them engaged.
They offer a student-facing interface to enable secure applications which can be supported by automated follow-up to increase conversion.
You can run campaigns including bulk messaging, drip campaigns and video messaging.
The software deploys AI lead scoring to allow you to filter your leads to find those that best match your student profile.
They provide over 50 pre-built reports and the ability to customize your own reports to allow you to track your campaigns, enrollment trends and more.
Book a demo to view the platform for yourself.

Website: https://setshape.com/education