Free Excel CRM Templates, Tested (2026)
TL;DR: The free Excel CRM templates are real and they are useful: as storage. None of them has macros, so none of them can tell you who to call today. They work until roughly 50 active relationships. That is not our opinion: it is the number HubSpot prints on its own template page. After that you either buy discipline or you lose deals.
Full disclosure: we sell CRM in Excel, our own product. So read this the way you would read any review written by a competitor: check the quotes, they are all linked to the vendors' own pages.
How we judged them
Not on looks. Three questions only: does it install anything, does it have macros, and does it tell you what to do today? The first question decides whether it is really a spreadsheet. The second decides whether it can ever do more than store text. The third decides whether it changes your revenue.
HubSpot's free CRM template
The most-linked template on the internet, and the most honest one about its own limits. It gives you a contact sheet, a deal pipeline and a dashboard, and it is genuinely well built. To get it you hand over your email address, which is the price: the template is the front door to the paid platform.
What makes it worth citing is the sentence on its own page: it is "perfect for your first 2-6 months managing up to 50 customers", and once you are "tracking more than 50 active relationships, manual updates get time-consuming". A vendor telling you where its free thing stops working is rarer than it should be. Believe them.
Vertex42
The purist option. Vertex42 describes it in one line: "no installation, no macros: just a simple spreadsheet". That is exactly what it is, and for a lot of people it is exactly enough. Clean columns, a status field, no marketing wrapper, no email gate. If you want a structured list and nothing else, start here and stop reading.
Someka
The most complete of the four, and the only paid one. Someka gives you dashboards, a sales funnel view and a properly designed layout: it looks like software. But its own product page states that it "does not include any VBA macros", which means the same ceiling as the free ones: it can present your data beautifully and it still cannot ring a bell on Tuesday morning.
Salesflare
Salesflare publishes a template with no email gate: the file is simply there. Worth respecting. What is odd is the argument around it: the same page explains that manually entering data "gets time-consuming and unreliable", and then offers you a subscription as the cure. The diagnosis is right. The prescription is not the only one available.
Side by side: which template wins
| Template | Price | Macros | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free | No | Anyone who wants a pipeline view and a dashboard on day one | Email gate; it is the entrance to a paid platform |
| Vertex42 | Free | No | The cleanest possible simple list: no marketing attached | Plain by design; it will never do more than this |
| Someka | Paid | No | Anyone who wants a polished, dashboard-heavy sheet and will pay for design | Paid, and still no macros: same ceiling as the free ones |
| Salesflare | Free | No | Downloading without giving up your email address | The page is an argument for a subscription |
| CRM in Excel (our product) | $50 once, free trial | Yes | One person who needs to be told who to call today, not just where the numbers are kept | One user, Windows + Excel 2016+, no integrations, no automation between tools |
Our pick among the free ones: Vertex42 if you want a clean list, HubSpot if you want a pipeline. Both are good at storing. Neither will make you follow up, and that, not storage, is what closes deals.
The 50-relationship wall
Every template hits the same wall and HubSpot named it: about 50 active relationships. Not because the spreadsheet runs out of rows (Excel does not care) but because a static sheet has no memory. It does not know that you promised to call someone back on Thursday. You have to remember, and you will, right up until the week you are busy. That is the week it costs you.
Our free trial holds 50 clients plus 50 cold leads, with no time limit and no card. That is not a coincidence: it is the exact size at which templates start failing, so you can test whether a real follow-up routine changes anything for you before paying $50 for the full version.
When a template is enough, and when we are the wrong answer
A template is enough if your list is short, your memory is good and nothing in your business depends on calling back at the right moment. Take Vertex42 and get on with your work.
And CRM in Excel is the wrong answer if several people need to work the same contacts at once, if you need integrations with mail, calendar or web forms, or if you sell mostly from your phone. A cloud CRM wins those, free tier included. We are built for one person on one Windows machine who lives on the phone.
What actually goes wrong three weeks in
Almost nobody abandons a template on day one. The failure has a shape, and it is the same one every time.
Week one is great. You download the file, you fill in every column, and it feels like the problem is solved. The sheet is complete, color coded, and the columns you added yourself are the ones you actually care about.
Week two is when the first field goes empty. Usually it is the one that takes the longest to fill in and pays back the slowest: the note about what was actually said on the call. You skip it once because you are between calls, and nothing bad happens. That is the problem. Nothing bad happens for a while.
Week three is when the sheet stops answering the only question that matters. You open it in the morning and it shows you everything at once: people you already sold to, people who said no in March, people you have never called, and somewhere in there four people expecting to hear from you today. The sheet knows all of it and tells you none of it, because a spreadsheet stores rows, it does not decide anything. Deciding stays with you, and you are the part that gets busy.
What breaks is not the file. It is that the file has no opinion about today. Every template on this page stores your clients correctly. Not one of them wakes up in the morning and says: these seven, in this order, and here is what you promised each of them.
That is worth knowing before you judge a template. If you keep re-downloading new templates because the last one "stopped working", you are not looking for a better layout. You are looking for something that decides.
Still true? Checked on August 17, 2026
On August 17, 2026 we queried all four pages and files again, straight from the servers: nothing downloaded, no email address handed over, no account created. Here is what came back.
| Template | Price | What you hand over to download | File last modified |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free | A filled-in form (the official download path) | June 12, 2020 |
| Vertex42 | Free | Nothing: direct link | May 27, 2020 |
| Someka | Full version $39.95 single user, $79.95 multi-user; demo free | Your email address, even for the demo | Not checked: the file sits behind the form |
| Salesflare | Free | Nothing: direct link | January 22, 2025 |
Start with the one that is not free. Someka's full version costs $39.95 for a single user and $79.95 for multiple users, with optional extras in the cart: technical support at $19.95 and a customization service (basic plan) at $250.00. The "free version" is a demo: you hand over your email address to get it, and the terms forbid removing the vendor's logo from the file. That is a watermarked trial, not a free template.
Now the dates. Both pages look alive: HubSpot carries 2026 in its footer, Vertex42 declares a page update from 2021. But the servers tell a different story about the files themselves: HubSpot's spreadsheet was last modified on June 12, 2020, and Vertex42's on May 27, 2020. The templates that top every list of the best have not been touched in more than six years.
Salesflare's file is the freshest of the four (January 2025), but look at its name: sales-funnel-template.xlsx. It is the same file that powers their sales funnel template page: a pipeline sheet, not a contact database. And one honest caveat: this is a photograph of a single day. Vendors change prices and download pages without notice, so check the source before you lean on any row above.
FAQ
Are free Excel CRM templates any good?
For a first list, yes. They give you structure (one row per contact, a status column, a place for notes) and that alone beats a notebook. They stop being good when the list grows: nothing reminds you who to call today, and keeping it current becomes a daily chore you eventually skip.
Which free Excel CRM template is the best?
Vertex42 if you want the cleanest simple sheet, HubSpot if you want a pipeline view and do not mind handing over your email address, Salesflare if you want the download without a form. Someka is the most complete, but it is a paid product and it still has no macros.
Do Excel CRM templates have macros?
Almost none do. Vertex42 states plainly that there is no installation and no macros, and Someka says its template does not include any VBA macros. That matters: without macros a template cannot plan your day, stamp a call date or find a contact by phone number. It can only hold data you type.
Where can I download a free CRM template for Excel?
HubSpot, Vertex42 and Salesflare all publish one. HubSpot asks for your email first; Salesflare links the file directly. Before you download, decide what you actually need: a place to store contacts, or something that tells you who to contact today.
When should I stop using a template?
When you stop trusting it. In practice that is around 50 active relationships (the point HubSpot itself names) or the first time you realize you forgot to follow up on someone who was ready to buy.
How many contacts can a free Excel CRM template really handle?
Far fewer than the row limit suggests, and the row limit is the wrong number to look at. Excel will hold a million rows without complaining. The practical ceiling is how many open relationships you can personally remember to follow up on, and for most people that lands somewhere around fifty. Past that, the sheet is still perfectly accurate and you are still perfectly forgetful, and one of those two is the bottleneck. If you are storing a list you rarely act on, a template scales indefinitely. If you are calling people and promising to call them back, capacity is measured in memory, not in rows.
Is Google Sheets better than Excel for a free CRM?
It depends on one thing: whether more than one person touches the list. Google Sheets wins clearly when two or more people need the same data at the same time, because that is what it was built for and no offline file will match it. Excel wins on speed with large sheets, on working without a connection, and on keeping the data on your own machine rather than in someone's account. Neither one fixes the problem described above, because neither one decides who you call today. Pick Sheets for shared access, pick Excel for local control, and understand that you are choosing storage, not a system.
What should a client tracking spreadsheet actually contain?
Five things, and everything beyond them is optional decoration: who (name and phone in a consistent format), what stage (a fixed list you pick from, never free text), what was said (one line, written during the call and not after it), what happens next, and on what date. Templates usually fail on the second and the fifth. A stage typed by hand becomes three spellings of the same word within a month, and Excel treats them as three different stages. A next step without a date is a wish, and it will not surface on the morning you needed it.
If you want the template that actually plans your day, take the free trial of CRM in Excel: 50 clients plus 50 cold leads, no card.
Prefer owning your tools instead of renting them? Read our honest comparisons: Best offline CRM and CRM without a subscription.
Read next: CRM in Excel Explained: A Small Business Guide · Benefits of a CRM Built in Excel for Small Business
Michał B. Fedor