What's the best free or cheap CRM for a small UK charity?

Start with your questions, not the software

Before you compare a single product, write down the three or four things you need to know about your people that you can't easily find today. Who gave last month? Which volunteers are free on Saturdays? Which families did we support this year, and what changed for them? A CRM is just the place those answers live. If you can't name the questions, no product will answer them for you.

Then count honestly: how many records you hold, and how many staff and volunteers need to log in. Those two numbers decide most of the cost.

Free and donated tools worth claiming first

A surprising amount of good software is free or donated to eligible UK charities, and most of it is less well known than it should be.

• Google Workspace for Nonprofits is free for eligible charities. With Google Forms and a well-designed shared sheet, it covers a lot of what a very small charity needs.
• Microsoft still donates its basic Microsoft 365 plan to eligible charities, which includes the web versions of Excel, Lists and SharePoint. Its free premium plan ended in 2025, so check which plan you are actually on.
• Salesforce gives eligible charities ten free licences through its Power of Us programme. The licences are free; shaping a platform that big around a small charity is not, and that is where the money goes.
• HubSpot's free CRM is free with no end date, but it is limited to two users and 1,000 contacts. Fine for a tiny team, tight for anyone with volunteers.
• CiviCRM is free, open source and used by many charities. The software costs nothing; hosting it and setting it up properly does.

CRMs built for charities

There is also a healthy market of UK CRMs made specifically for charities. Their big advantage is that they already understand donations, Gift Aid, supporters and volunteers, so there is less to build. They are usually priced per month by users or records, and many have a plan aimed at small charities.

Ask every supplier for the price at your size today and at twice your size. Growth is where per-user pricing bites, and a few pounds a head looks tiny until you add every volunteer who needs to log in.

The UK details to get right

• Gift Aid. If you claim it, HMRC expects a record of each Gift Aid donation and the declaration behind it. A CRM that keeps declarations alongside donations saves a painful scramble later.
• Consent. Record how and when each person agreed to hear from you, and keep only what you need. UK GDPR expects you to be able to show it.
• Access. Volunteers come and go. Pick a tool where everyone gets their own login that you can switch off the day they leave, never one shared password.

What it should really cost

For most small charities: nothing or very little for the software, plus the time to set it up well. If you pay someone to configure a ready-made CRM, move your data in and train your team, expect a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, once. That is usually the best money you will spend on it, because a CRM nobody trusts is a CRM nobody uses.

When building your own makes sense

Sometimes nothing off the shelf fits. You take referrals from other agencies, support people over months, and report outcomes to three funders who each want different numbers. Bending a generic CRM to that can cost more in staff hours than it ever saves.

That is when a simple system built around your work earns its place. For a small charity it usually starts in the low thousands, has no per-user fees and is yours outright. I price charity work at cost plus a small margin, and I will tell you if a free tool would do the job instead.

My honest shortlist

• A handful of people and a few hundred contacts: a free tool you already have, set up properly.
• Donations and Gift Aid at the centre: a CRM built for charities, priced at your size.
• Lots of volunteers who need access: avoid per-user pricing, or take a donated platform and budget for the setup.
• Referrals, cases and funder reports that nothing fits: a small custom build, scoped honestly.