Most gels will make your hair crunchy and hard to some degree, because of the nature of gel. I use gel anyway, the trick is after it dries completely you scrunch your hair again (if indeed you scrunched it in the first place! I’m assuming you have curly hair). This makes it not crunchy and hard, but it’ll still hold the way you styled it. In fact the crunchier the gel, the better it’ll hold after the second scrunch.
I usually use Tizz No Frizz Aussie gel, which actually leaves my hair a lot less crunchy than most. I also have their Instant Freeze gel which holds longer, but is a lot crunchier. It’s annoying if I’m going out right after showering and don’t want to wait till it’s all dry to scrunch again and have not hard, weird looking hair. (If you scrunch again before it’s completely dry you end up with frizz!)
So if you have thin/fine curly hair then gel is the way to go because it adds body, whereas if you have thick/coarse hair I’d go with one of the above products. I’d love to use something like the products linked above, but they’d make my hair flatter than a pancake. :)