Reviews Online Contact Management Software
Share your contacts online. Stop using desktop contact managers and consider switching to web based contact management applications. We review the best sales contact management software and give you our comparison.
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UPDATED 9/15/2008
Share your contacts online. Stop using desktop contact managers and consider switching to web based contact management applications. We review the best solutions and give you our comparisons.
Using desktop tools to manage your contacts, particularly if you share them to any extent with others, is no longer efficient.
Whether you’re currently using Act, Maximizer, Goldmine or going overboard with Salesforce.com, you need to know there are alternatives that are worth your attention. Some are free, some are expensive, some offer basic contact management functionality, others provide exciting, unique features and benefits. All are evolving…rapidly.
Below is a list of some of online contact management systems, with a summary and review of what they provide and why you should consider them. If you know of, or are creating, other online contact managers who should be on this list, let us know.
Check back often, we’ll update this contact manager review list frequently.
UPDATE: We received a quite a few emails from readers requesting for this information in a side-by-side table. We thought that was an awesome idea. So here it is - an overview of contact management systems.
UPDATE 09/15/2008: We now have Batchbook, BigContacts, Oprius, Highrise, Relenta and PipelineDeals done. More updated following soon.
Review Online Contact Managers
BatchBook - a sales contact manager from Batchblue Software
The bottom line up front: We really like BatchBook. It’s an excellent web based contact manager that needs just a few tweaks to vault to the top of our list. There are four key differentiators:
Custom fields can be established for a single contact record or for all your records. Simple data-entry fields, yes/no, multiple choice, formatted phone numbers, email addresses, or dates. Very important feature for anyone who likes to customize. In our opinion, this feature will soon become a must for any serious online contact manager.
Contact and company records can be “affiliated”. Beyond simply tying a contact to a company, you can affiliate two contacts to each other, and the affiliation can be peer-to-peer, or supervisor-to-employee. There’s a hierarchy you can apply.
Create contacts and companies on the fly by starting a new communication record. Once you’ve created that phone call/chat/note entry, you can then go back in and edit the contact, adding any relevant info.
Good old-fashioned mailing labels. BatchBook is the only system we’ve found where you can filter your online contacts, then create an email mailing list, or even print mailing labels for them.
Four things that we didn’t like: 1) you can’t attach your todos to contacts; 2) adding communication notes when looking up a contact record takes too much clicking around — edit-in-place would be really nice here (you have to either go to the communications tab, or click the person’s name twice, then click “log new communication”); 3) running standard or filtered, print-ready reports isn’t as intuitive as we’d like; and 4) you can’t demo the contact-sharing features built-in (the free version only allows one person to use BatchBook).
But we’re optimistic. Behind the scenes the BatchBlue team is working on the todo functionality (including syncing them with calendaring systems). We also have word that they’re making the Custom Fields feature more intuitive.
Pricing starts at free (1 user, 200 contacts, 1GB of file storage), with tiered pricing that runs up to a max of $99.95 monthly (unlimited users, unlimited storage, unlimited contacts).
Aside from our few gripes, we really like BatchBook. It’s well worth your deeper consideration.
UPDATE: We’ve edited the BatchBook entry above. You can add communication notes while looking at a contact’s record, and reports are available.
ACT for Web Contact Management Software
If we were to summarize ACT for Web in one sentence, we’d say it’s a robust and feature-rich contact management application - but with a pricing model that makes it ridiculously expensive to use for individuals and small to medium-sized teams.
Don’t get us wrong, we really did like the ACT for Web product. But Sage continues to sell ACT like a “buy it, install it and use it” product and, in contrast with the many alternatives on this page, not as a “subscription service”. 3rd parties host ACT for Web for you - but charge $35-$40 per user per month, which - again in comparison with the available alternatives - is simply too hard to digest.
Now, if you have an existing database with years worth of ACT contact data, you may not have that much room to maneuver - but if you’re starting with a relatively clean sheet, we think there is better online contact management software available.
You can find more details on ACT for Web here - but our reviews result in a 3.5 rating. Good product, great features for a contact manager -but a pricing and delivery model that we feel really misses the mark.
Relenta Email-Centered Contact Management Software
With an update to our review of online contact managers, we introduce Relenta. But this is a whole new world. Just to get you setup and running, Relenta requires a pretty web- and techno-savvy person. But if you can get that squared away within your company, or through your computer-neighbor down the street, you’ll become addicted to the features Relenta offers.
Relenta is really an email management and marketing system, all wrapped inside a solid online contact management program. It can free you from using Outlook or any other email client, consolidates all your incoming and outgoing email by tying each to a contact in your database, and includes killer email/newsletter marketing features. You can also share emails, contacts and contact-based notes across a team.
It is a powerhouse: it’s feature-packed and offers far more than typical contact management. But it’s also not for the faint of heart. It takes quite a bit of time to fully appreciate the concept, to get setup and to get used to operating.
But if you’re in this for the long haul, and you want more than a glorified address book, set aside some time and give Relenta a try. Relenta offers plans for $20 or $25 per month per user.
WebAsyst Online Contact Management System
If you’re looking for a simple way to manage and access contacts online and nothing other than that, WebAsyst Contacts could be an option to pursue.
Compared to some of the other tools we reviewed here, WebAsyst Contacts offers very basic online contact management functionality. The system lets you add or import contacts, it provides a customizable website widget so contacts can be captured online. Contacts can be shared online through a system of personal or group access controls.
WebAsyst Contacts can be used as a standalone application or can be extended through a number of other modules (i.e. Files, Projects, Issue Tracker and Mail) from the same developer. Use their starter plan via the web for free (with subsequent plans from $30 to $200 a month) - or purchase the software and run on your own web server.
In the midst of a tsunami of feature-rich and online contact managers and simple CRM sales tools that we discuss below, WebAsyst left us somewhat unimpressed. Its simplicity and focus on contacts only, however, may just be what you need. Take a look and give them a spin.
Highrise Online Contact Manager
We’re torn on this one. What the other online contact managers have in features and fields, Highrise makes up for in simplicity. It won’t report to you on your sales pipeline. It won’t let you enter your contact’s spouse’s information. It won’t let you add anniversaries or birthdays. It won’t even let you maintain a calendar.
Yet the interface, which, when you think about it, completely controls how regularly you use a software product or website, is so extremely intuitive, Highrise is easy to fall in love with.
And its simplicity is merely an interface thing. There’s some pretty nifty features as well. With Highrise, you can share contacts online across a team or company (other Highrise users). Tag contacts with keywords. Share with other users on your Highrise account every dated note, or selected ones, tied to those contacts and/or companies. Add tasks tied to individual contacts or companies. Upload files tied to contacts. Create short- or long-term “cases” that group related notes together. Customize permissions granted to other users on your Highrise account by grouping users however you like.
But again, it’s the ease with which you’ll get up-to-speed that will make Highrise easy to love.
So what’s not to like?
Highrise is fairly expensive, when you consider that their basic plan (6 team members and 5,000 contacts) will cost you $24 per month. If you don’t share your contacts, they offer a Solo plan which includes 20,000 contacts for $29. Included in both plans are so-called “cases” - a way to keep related people, companies, notes, files etc on one single page. It’s a nice touch that could make life easier, especially when you have a lot of contacts!
Outlook and current Act! (V9 only) contacts can be imported via CSV and Highrise supports importing vcards. There’s no support for Gmail or Yahoo address books, unlike what we’ve seen with other online contact management tools we review on this page. Exporting your contact data is easy - but tasks and notes are currently not supported.
So all in all, with Highrise you’ve got an extremely easy to use, albeit expensive, product from a company that knows what it’s doing in the online application world. And while I’ve never seen them lower a price, you may see some of the features get adjusted and enhanced a bit as Highrise’s user base grows and feedback streams in to them.
Oprius Contact Manager
This is, flat-out, a full-blown Act replacement. It offers complete contact management including extensive contact details, custom fields, contact import and export, groups, a calendar and task list, general notes and history, and the ability to link any task or appointment to a contact. You can even categorize (aside from the groups function) your contacts by customizable “lead source,” if desired.
In addition, Oprius offers the ability to send single and mass, customized emails to your database if your contacts give you explicit permission to do so. It’s all wrapped in a pretty clean interface that helps you find or filter contacts, calendar items or tasks very quickly and easily. Existing contacts can be imported easily from Outlook, Palm, Yahoo, GMail and from a regular CSV file. Finally, all contacts and related data can be exported at any time - a killer feature of which many people forget the importance until it’s too late!
Many readers of Salesteamtools.com are managers of small, local sales teams or companies, where the sales manager has influence or even responsbility to edit the company website. If this is you, you can an add a form (called a “lead capture widget”) to your site that adds contacts directly into your database when visitors fill it in (for example, to be added to your newsletter).
For only $14.99 a month, Oprius offers a very complete contact management solution. We particularly liked the “Call Manager” module which lets you organize your to-do calls by the earliest time you can call instead of when they’re due - a clever way to help you avoid procrastination and missing your deadlines - and which includes ready-made phone scripts by cold calling expert Wendy Weiss.
While we enjoyed Oprius, there were a few missing pices. The ability to sync with your mobile devices and the ability to share access to your contact database (short of giving someone your login and password) but this might be something to look forward to in future Oprius releases.
We were impressed. We recommend you giving them a try.
BigContacts Web Based Contact Manager
Great, evolving online contact management program here that goes beyond the features of Oprius. But like Oprius at its core, BigContacts offers the Act-killing abilities to create and edit contact details, add notes, manage a calendar and tasks list, group your contacts, view your activity history, and more, all within a pretty intuitive interface.
But in addition, BigContacts offers the features of file and photo uploading, tracking sales contacts (and related “opportunities”) within a customizable sales process, assign tasks to other BigContacts users (i.e., other sales professionals or support personnel on your team), and, for an additional fee, send a card (birthday, anniversary, etc.). There are a few other subtle feature enhancements as well, related primarily to contact fields, how quickly you can edit contact fields, and so forth.
Since BigContacts includes opportunity or prospect management features, it also gives you access to a sales manager’s view of your pipeline.
Now, with these advanced features comes a price tag. BigContacts has several service plans to choose from, ranging from free (2 users and up to 100 contacts) and as high as $29.95 per month (2,000 users and up to 1,000 contacts per user) with their common Sales Team Plan going for $20. But again, great stuff here.
Funclient - Free online contact management program
Funclient gets a short summary here. The service is free and allows you to easily add contacts, notes tied to contacts, “communications” tied to contacts (a communication must be called a Comment, Phone Call, E-mail, Meeting, Letter or Document), and reminders tied to contacts (which are communications that are dated).
Additional features include the ability to tag contacts and upload files tied to contacts (25mb limit per upload).
Funclient is actually pretty straightforward and simple to use, though it presently offers no sharing of contacts with other Funclient users, no importing or exporting, and certainly none of the advanced features mentioned with the others. Overall, not a bad deal if you take into consideration that it’s free contact management software.
Yes, we’ve had a love affair with Pipelinedeals since it debuted. Pipelinedeals is ever-evolving, offering very simple, but very powerful prospect management features for individual sales professionals and teams. While it’s strictly not really an online contact manager, it does what it does extremely well.
Pipelinedeals is the best pure pipeline management tool I’ve found. What they are putting together is a highly focused tool that lets you add contacts, turn them into active “deals,” and track your progress on those leads, within your customizable sales process. Contacts and deals can be shared across a team, or not. It’s your choice - it’s a powerful opportunity to manage your contacts online.
As you read above, BigContacts offers the customizable sales process feature along with advanced contact mgmt software features too, but here’s the thing: many, many sales professionals and sales managers don’t want all those bells and whistles; they want a tool that’s extremely easy to use, yet powerful. Ask yourself this: how many of the multitude fields that Act allows for do you really use? Pipelinedeals, with streamlined pricing of $15 per user per month, targets your use of the system at updating where you stand with your prospect list and when you’ll close deals.
Sales managers love this system, particularly it’s easy to access reporting (with recently added filters to drill down into the pipeline). Managers can assign leads, re-assign them, add lead sources, and so on.
UPDATE: check our post on the new release of Pipelinedeals.com, which covers some of the missing features discussed here.
LeadsOnRails.com
LeadsOnRails is a completely unique service unlike any of the others, but closely related and with a, dare we say it, attractive cool factor. It allows you to implement a manageable, accountable lead tracking system across your team. While the learning curve is steeper than with the other tools profiled above, it will change the way you think of your follow-up routine with leads.
Basically, LeadsOnRails has you enter new leads (importing is possible as long as your file is pre-formatted just the way they ask), add limited contact details, and assign the lead to one of any number of customizable “tracks” you establish. The track you put them on determines the steps you then take to sell the deal. The steps you take are also customizable and can be assigned to other users of the service that are on your sales, marketing, or support teams.
The track concept is obviously the power feature here. Instead of reporting what has been done (typical pipeline reports ask for this), LeadsOnRails tells you what this, plus what needs to be done and when. As you add custom steps to your tracks, you can also include when the step should be completed, for example, 3 days after the previous step. Talk about helping with accountability! No more, “What’s the next step? And when are you doing it?” from sales managers. It’s all there, on display for everyone on the team, and again includes who is responsible for completing the step. Pretty insightful.
There’s much more that could be shared about LeadsOnRails, such as its reporting features, email capabilities (with templates), and team concept, but you really should check it out. Really anxious about how they expand this product, but keep it relatively simple for the new user.
If you want complete and total customization of your contact management program, and you want a breathtaking multitude of advanced features, and you’re willing to incur a significant learning curve, Etelos is worth your evaluation.
Way too many features to list in a few paragraphs. It has everything the others have, with a huge assortment of additional capabilities: integration with your customized Google home page, integration with Google calendar, extremely fast contact search lookup, auto-save when updating contacts.
You can also create automated follow-up messages to prospects (somewhat similar to LeadsOnRails does) via email, full opportunity/pipeline management with revenue projections), and far more. Etelos’ team has created several demo videos you can watch online. You’ll feel like you need to take a deep breath after watching them — the feature-set is astounding.
Again, Etelos’ system is more than we initially intended to review here. The extent to which you can customize the system will be daunting for a small business owner or sales manager. Sales execs in a large enterprise can delegate this to someone more web-savvy. Excellent features, complex setup and customization. Hence, the 3.5 rating.
Thanks for the Highrise review. FYI, we’ve sweetened the deal:
http://snipurl.com/1vahk
Jason,
Thanks for posting, but most of all, I’m extremely impressed with the changes/upgrades.
Great product you’ve put together, along with the others.
Brandon
Great job on the writeups. BTW, I thought you’d like to know that the link for Pipeline Deals has a typo.
Brandon,
Thanks for the comprehensive review of “lightweight” CRM systems. My company has four people working from different offices around the country and ease-of-use is critical. After a lengthy evaluation of enterprise CRM solutions, I decided the winner (SageCRM) was just too complicated. Kept on searching, found your list and was excited to see Highrise finally debuted. As long-time Basecamp users, it was worth checking out.
After checking out all the products, I’d say the evaluations are accurate and fair. One critical factor for us was splitting CRM and sales lead management into two products. When they’re combined, you get ridiculously complicated applications like SugarCRM, SalesForce, etc. Separating the two allows us to use Highrise in conjuction with LeadsOnRails. Both are well suited for the entirely different types of tasks required. When a prospect converts, they get moved into Highrise.
Lastly, 37 Signals has been updating Highrise with record speed. Here’s a link to the “First 30 Days”.
http://forum.highrisehq.com/forums/4/topics/538
In particular, bulk importing and exporting now exist. The vCard format is an industry standard, but Outlook only attaches a single contact to a single vCard. Importing 1000 records into Highrise means importing 1000 vCards files. Bad, bad, bad. Instead, you can use an inxpensive utility that will export any number of contacts from Outlook into a single vCard file. And the Mac Address Book handles this by default. That makes importing a breeze.
Outlook to single vCard file utility: $15
http://www.soft32.com/download_190875.html
Following up on Paul Welty’s 28 Apr posted comment: when I tried the link for pipelinedeals (that you guys are so hip on) it made it look like there was no such website; here’s the shortcut I copied from http://www.salesteamtools.com/online-contact-managers/
http://pipelindeals.com/r/BHL (note the “e” missing between the “n” and “d”).
Thank you for the helpful reviews. Any plans to review Zoho CRM?
Cheers.
What about ZohoCRM? http://www.zohocrm.com. I use it and is happy with the functionality and for up to 3 users it’s free.
[…] Online Sales Tools comparison Published June 28th, 2007 Sales , CRM , Uncategorized SalesTeamTools.com does a good job of comparing online CRM tools. I use ZohoCRM and sofar I’m satisfied with the application. It’s free for less than 3 users. Also check out other open source alternatives including: SugarCRM and vTiger. […]
Die Macher vom Salesteamtools-Blog haben ein halbes Dutzend online Kontaktmanager (Kontakt-Management-Software) untersucht und bewertet.
Die Leistungsfähigkeit dieser Online-Software ist mittlerweile so gut, dass sie echte Konkurrenz zu den allseits bekannten Installlationsprogrammen wie ACT! und Goldmine sind, sagen die Tester. […]
Brandon, I don’t know why it took me months to find your list of Web 2.0 CRM tools - I am grappling with this right now - between Pipeline Deals, Etelos with Google Apps, or ? - glad to see you are thinking and writing about this. Many small businesses are confused.
I wish there was a solution like highrise that was cheaper. I love the software but its just too expensive. The personal account for $29 a month! And Opirus is not free any more. I wish there was a cheaper solution.
I agree with Matt. My company won’t allow any installs onto our internal system - I can’t even get Flash - so I use my home pc to get things done. I’d like to use Highrise, but at $144/year, that I’d need to pay, it’s just too expensive.
I currently pay for Carbonite and Mozy for backups for my data, I can’t justify the Highrise cost as well. Too bad.
I’m currently reviewing hosted CRM for my small insurance/mortgage brokerage. Having reviewed the likes of Salesforce and other full blown apps I have concluded that they are just too bulky for my needs. I am already using Google Apps for e-mail and calendar sharing. I really like Big Contacts, Leads On Rails and Pipeline Leads so far, Etelos is also gettin a look in. Will keep you guys posted.
@Matt - Highrise is $12 for the Personal plan. Still not free, but less expensive than the $29 you mentioned.
@Colin - I am not extremely familiar with Mozy and Carbonite, but I use Amazon S3 for backups. It’s reliable and very low cost - especially if you mostly store data and don’t retrieve often. Take a look, it may free up some financial resources towards Highrise. You can also look at some of the newer tools we reviewed, such as Relenta CRM.
@Bob - Great initiative. Please feel free to post your findings here or contact me and we can create a seperate post for it.
Highrise does have a free plan. It doesn’t include SSL and only includes 1 “case” (which I’ve not found a real use for), but it does allow for up to 250 contacts. Use it creatively with a $5 per month Backpack account (http://www.backpackit.com) and you can expand its value nicely.
I guess the question is: do you want a full Rolodex replacement, or a way to keep track of the people you really know (see what I mean here - http://snipurl.com/250contacts, it’s a shortened Google search results page).
Highrise isn’t a Rolodex or full address book replacement, but it’s good for managing you’re most regular business contacts.
I think I’ve found my ideal solution, bizarrely it is a mix of PipelineDeals and RelentaCRM.
PipelineDeals will be my “new business” system, I have customised the system to match my sales process and am very impressed with the flexibility and reporting capability.
RelentaCRM will be my “customer service” system and handle my pre sale marketing including web lead management , mid sale customer communications with BCC’d e-mails to Pipleline Deals, and post sale customer service, case handling and follow up.
Unfortunately I can’t get the system set up yet as Relenta are still working on their secure IMAP e-mail integration. Their POP integration will only pull in e-mails that haven’t already been read (which is pretty useless for me as I have other mail clients constantly accessing my main e-mail account, such as Outlook using IMAP, gmail and mobile).
Previously I was looking at BigContacts and I still really like the system, the AJAX stuff in there is neat and as an overall contact manager system it is very good. The problem with it is that you are limited to 1000 contacts per user and it doesn’t do sales pipeline management as well as PipelineDeals and it doesn’t appear to do Contact management as well as Relenta, mainly due to the lack of e-mail integration.
I have also discounted Leadsonrails as it is similar to but not as good as PipelineDeals, Etelos because I found it is too difficult to use, Highrise because it doesn’t do anything that I can’t get from my Pipeline/Relenta combo and there are storage restrictions and Oprius because it is very similar to BigContacts so the same reasons for not liking it apply.
I have used or tried to use almost all of these. Highrise is teh simplest and thus is the one I have used the most. Relenta is a second, Etelos is horrible. Their customer service does not exist.
All teh rest are too load with features that you rarely have time to understand.
@ Bob Gill -
Bob, JP here from PipelineDeals. We are stoked to have made the cut. Please do not hesitate to give us a call 1-866-702-7303 or email customercare@pipelinedeals.com as you get up and running. I think some of our future development will more fully address your stated contact management needs, but probably not until Q1 next year.
Happy Selling,
JP Werlin, Co-Founder/Owner
http://www.pipelinedeals.com
I wanted to give you guys an update on where I’m at. I reviewed all the contact managers / smb crm products available, I said I was going for a relentacrm / pipeline deals mix, that fell by the wayside however when I tested Oprius. Oprius does pretty much everything you need if you are a sole salesperson and importantly it does it all in one system.
I think if you look at each component individually (contact management, task management, and e-mail) you could probably say that there are other systems out there that do each individual thing better, but Oprius integrates all of these well enough.
For example, if I look up a contact I can see full contact detail, log or book every phone call, task, meeting, sticky note and e-mail or send e-mail all from the same screen.
I can also set up custom groups to segment my customer base, send out permission requests for opt in to list mailers (the functionality for this is only just short of Aweber or Constant Contact) and create as many automatic e-mail/offline marketing campaigns I want with the Relationship Builder tool which I can then associate with Contact Groups or to Contacts at different steps of the sales process.
No I’ve made my choice I just hope that Oprius can attract the numbers they need to invest and improve the service even more as with any new service, although it is well rounded now there is definitely room for improvement such as improvements in the user interface, full import/export capability, integration with Microsoft Office (outlook, mail merge), integration with complementary web services through API (i.e Google Apps, Echosign, Efax), Sales Financials reporting and Group functionality.
Bob,
I’m very glad to hear that Oprius has again risen to the top. Like yourself many find a huge benefit of having their key sales tools all in one place. Having your contacts and sales processes in a different system then your list mails, and marketing campaign etc just doesn’t make sense. Yes I would agree with you that others do the individual parts better, but having everything integrated together is just so valuable.
What we are finding, is that although our initial focus is on Network Marketing (you will find this on our website), many others are also starting to use Oprius. I think the reason is due to our initial focus. SalesForce and such, who had to sell their product to upper management (the decision makers) built a lot of the tools around reports and tracking sales people. We on the other hand started with the individual sales person. We focused on the things that will close more deals, and improve your sales. Reports and all that can come later.
Thanks again, and have a great week!
Owen Mead-Robins - VP Operations
Oprius
http://www.oprius.com/
1-877-7-OPRIUS
IS there any chance of a review of offline (i.e standalone) contact managers? I work at home, but for a company who won’t allow contact details and emails to be stored online - they are supposed to be stored and accessed from the company intranet (via an provided, but underpowered, laptop).
I therefore have to log on (a tedious and time-consuming process) even if only to reference a email. So, I download all my emails via Thunderbird and tag and store them on my pc here (contacts are already mirrored). Ideally, I want to link/tag/store emails to/with - sometimes multiple - contacts/ projects. Any suggestions gratefully received. Thanks for your time.
Colin,
Thanks for commenting and for the suggestion. We’ll take a look at doing a roundup of traditional software-based contact management solutions. As you probably know, there are countless solutions here. So, since this series would take a little time, if we can fit it in in the not-too-distant future, we’d probably have to still limit it to the 10 or fewer options.
Stay tuned.
Any views on Microsoft’s Business Contact Manager which comes free with Outlook for Small Business? I’ve got the 2007 version and it’s working well for me. Not online, but free. i don’t have much experience with other cheap ‘n cheerful CRM tools - only the biggies like Siebel & Dendrite - so interested how BCM stacks up.
Ian
Hey Ian,
Welcome to STT - good to see you found us!
Regarding BCM - free is a relative term, especially considering you have to (as far as I understood it) buy Outlook in order to use it.
In regards to looking at BCM in this series; we may do that. The starting point for our reviews has been a desire to move contact management away from the desktop. It’s the same reason we haven’t looked at ACT!, one of those other 800 pound gorillas in this market. With Remote ACT and Act for Web in our queue, we may make an exception for BCM as well.
Thanks for leaving a comment!
Jan
Thanks Jan.
You’re right about the “relatively free” side. In fact that’s what sparked my interest in the reviews. I’m currently trialling Outlook 2007 and the fact that BCM comes bundled in (together with some other factors like easier compatibility) is swaying me towards purchasing it rather than running with Thunderbird and OpenOffice. If I did go down the TB/OO route I’d need a good contact manager to replace BCM. I’ve got a month left to make up my mind - and your article is a real help with the decision.
Ian
Good to hear, Ian. We’ll be publishing a brief update to the list later this week. Stay tuned and check back often!
All the systems you’ve mentioned are great if you’re just starting out a database.
But, if you already have a lot of information in ACT! or Goldmine, you’re going to loose some of it when you migrate.
Valid point, Craig.
I went ahead and edited out the promotional part of your comment. We’ll look at salesnexus a bit closer and will consider it for this post in the future.
We now added ACT for Web to our list of reviewed online contact management software.
“Now, if you have an existing database with years worth of ACT contact data, you may not have that much room to maneuver”
Although Sage and ACT make it difficult for you to switch to a better system, you can bring your notes and extra contact information with you. This is one of the better pages if you want to do it yourself:
http://snipurl.com/1wsoe
Alternatively, a couple min with a search engine will return a number of companies that will help you with the migration, as well as a handful of products. You should never feel locked in to any system.
I will bite my lip when it comes to ACT!. In short it used to be a great product. Used to be…. Have a look at some of the reviews out there:
http://snipurl.com/1wsoq
http://snipurl.com/1wsos
Owen, thanks for that last comment - good to see there are tools to help with ACT migrations and I appreciate you pointing our readers to them!
As far as the feedback links…in defense of ACT, for any product with the market share and period of dominance of ACT - you’ll be able to find people that are unhappy with one or more aspects of the product.
While I can’t assess the validity of those comments because we haven’t done any in-depth technical testing, I would suspect it’s also easy to find ACT users raving about it. We’re critical of ACT for Web - not so much for technical reasons but because we believe it’s a difficult proposition for most people that read this site - small business owners and members and managers of small sales teams.
I would encourage people with an interest in ACT to review the product themselves to determine a fit, given their unique situation and requirements. Hopefully our review can be used as a starting point in that process.
Regarding the migration process, I’ll toot Craig’s horn here just a bit. If you’ve grown so accustomed to the ACT look and feel, and would hate to have to learn a new system, SalesNexus is one place to turn. For all intents and purposes, it IS ACT online.
The views are similar, including the little left-side options; the fields are largely the same (in fact, they allow you to customize quickly, which ACT doesn’t); it syncs with Outlook; and it’s a pretty fast system. Plus, they’re ACT certified consultants, so they “get” where you’re coming from.
Having said that, you’re looking at $24 per user per month ($299 per year). And it takes $499 per year per user to get the upfront ACT import (see here: http://www.salesnexus.com/product-comparison.php).
Thanks for the BatchBook review, I’m glad you liked it. I appreciate the time you put into learning all these systems - there sure are a lot of them!
We’re coming out of beta in a couple of weeks and are heads-down working on making all sorts of tweaks and improvements. I think we’re going to call this phase “shooting for the half-star”…
Thanks again,
Michelle Riggen-Ransom
Communications Director
BatchBlue Software
Thanks for the shout out Brandon!
SalesTeamTools.com is an awesome resource and I respect your efforts at remaining objective.
[…] out their site to read the full review, pick up some tips on increasing sales and learn more about other technologies that can help your […]
Has anyone looked at, or have thoughts about Heap CRM (http://heap.wbpsystems.com/)? I have been looking at both Heap and Pipeline … and learning toward Pipeline.
BTW - I just recently stmbled upon Salesteamtools - great resource; kudos.
Great post! Thought I’d drop a tip for those on a budget or those looking for a good source of business data. Manta.com has a pretty light - but very useful web-based CRM. The coolest part is that you can very quickly & easily build up a lead / prospect list with their business data. They have information on millions of companies including yearly sales – number of employees etc. The company info and the CRM are both free.
John and Tim, we’ll take a look at these two systems to see if they should be added to the Online Contact Managers’ page. Thanks for pointing us to them.
As the market for online contact manager / simple CRM matures it would be interesting to find out how many users each of the above has.
I personally wouldn’t like to get too far down the road with a service provider only to find out that I’m the only user and my $15 a month can’t even feed the office cat.
I just ran a quick check on Alexa to look at traffic for the homepage of each of the services above. The top 3 are 1) Plaxo 2) Highrise 3) Oprius.
@ Bob - I agree fully with your concerns. You can rest assured that you won’t be alone at PipelineDeals. We have been in business since 2006 and you can see on our blog that we are trusted to handle CRM for a $1B+ company. I know we lost your business to Oprius (another great choice as Owen and his team have done some great work) but would welcome you taking another look.
@John Halsey - The guys at Heap are another group who has done some innovative stuff with CRM. I would also offer to give you a personal tour of PipelineDeals. You really can’t go wrong with either choice.
@ Brian and Jan - This post (and comments) continue to be a great discussion around alternative hosted CRM solutions. Thanks! A friendly reminder that above in your review of PipelineDeals you mention we don’t do mass uploading, which was true at the time of the post, but no longer is the case. We support import from vCard, Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Salesforce, SugarCRM and a generic bulk upload template. We do support Highrise import, however we have to do it manually since 37Signals doesn’t play nice with their customers on data export by inserting rogue characters into their field headers.
** This was an oversight and has been fixed - jv
Bob and others,
A few thoughts. My personal feeling is that you’ll see some concentration here. There are a few tools that now have critical mass, there are others that offer a very unique perspective.
What I expect to happen is the same as you see everywhere when technology matures - you’ll see a few big ones and a number of smaller players that fit a very specific niche or user base.
It’ll be hard for “generic” players without critical mass to win here. You’re either big or you’re really different and focused. I don’t want to go as far as ranking these tools in terms of economic viability because I just don’t want every vendor we discussed here to feel the need to argue the size of their user-base. I also don’t think it’s the MOST important argument, at least not for me.
As an end-user, my list would ALWAYS have seamless import/export data capabilties on top, regardless of the size of the company you deal with.
What’s hot today, may not be so hot tomorrow - and todays “big guys” may just flunk it and be bypassed by mini-companies at some point. We’ve seen plenty of that as well.
Don’t rely on any product when it comes to securing the future of your company or your personal financial success. Make sure that you can take your data wherever you go when you feel the time is right to move. No matter how good things may look now, you just never know.
By the way, Alexa is generally considered very unreliable - so I would be careful making your judgement *just* on that tool.
Again, just my 2 cents.
Jan,
I know Alexa will be unreliable but they have to get their data from fact somewhere down the line and it’s the only way I’m aware of currently that you could run such a study, without asking each provider and them telling you (this could be their chance!).
I’ve become pretty reliant on Oprius the short period of time I’ve been using it so if I’m going to continue to use it I would want it to be adopted by my thousands so they have lots of money to invest and make the service they give me even better.
Also, on your point regarding data import/ export. Lets say I wanted to move from Oprius to Highrise or Pipelinedeals if their service was to evolve to be significantly better or more suited to my needs.
All I can do is import my contacts. All the other stuff such as emails, notes and tasks wouldn’t. I’d have to ask Oprius to send me the data in whatever format they would send it to me in and then I would just have to archive it. Unless anyone knows any different?
Oprius has a nice product. See review, we enjoyed it too. Also gave Pipelinedeals.com a quick update based on JP’s input.
One thing with Oprius we were a bit ambivalent about was the embedded and closed email/calendar system. It’s great that’s all there out of the box - but I’d personally rather see the ability to use existing email and calendaring systems (ie Gmail and Google Calendar) and simply set up Oprius mail/calendar via IMAP/iCal so things stay 100% in synch. What Oprius does offer is a way to forward existing mail to your Oprius account and to use your existing mail address as the outgoing mail. If you do it that way, your “old” email address will hold all your emails so there’ll be nothing to export.
On the other hand, out of the box it require little fiddling - the embedded system Oprius offers is really easy to get started. Plusses and minuses on both sides, I’d say.
@Bob - As our user agreement states, you own *all* of your data. So if you ask us, we will send you all of your data to be imported into another system. For the most part people just need their address book, so we provide a tool to do that right inside Oprius. We would rather keep you by building the best online contact management system, rather then locking your data in.
@Jan – We made the decision to put everything in one place because as you said, out of the box everything works, first time. We also knew people would want to keep their existing email addresses. For this we have instructions for how to send and receive from your current email addresses within Oprius. Regarding using other tools, we run a full IMAP server, which mean you can use a desktop client to access all your email, alongside our web based client, with everything synced up. I agree in some cases it is nice to use other tools such as Google Calendar and have all your information synced up. We are working on syncing which will allow you to use mobile devices, and could be extended to work with things like Google Calendar.
Has anyone tried the Franklin Covey online CRM? They supposely are releasing a business platform that is very customizable. I am in the real estate business any suggestions for up to 1000 contacts? Thx’s
We haven’t tried FranklinCovey’s online version of PlanPlus, though I’ve used their planners in years past. The online tool has a “basic edition” at $9.95 per month and a “sales edition” at $25.00 per month. Here’s a link: http://www.planplusonline.com/pricing_overview.
Seems awfully expensive compared to some of these other alternatives, but it’s likely comparing apples to oranges. FranklinCovey is a productivity company, not a pure contact management or CRM company. Here’s their features and benefits: http://www.planplusonline.com/features_benefits.
Thanks for pointing them out as another option, Dave.
I am both pleased and impressed to find this article and discussion thread. Thank you all. My company is frustrated with ACT! and I am beginning the process of searching for a CRM that will address both the sales needs and organizational processes of our small monthly newspaper.
I need to find an online product that will allow my staff to access contacts for writing and editorial; writers to access article assignments and deadlines; and my sales staff their prospects/contacts/materials, etc. Each category of user needs to have a different permissions set.
It’s feeling like a tall order, and the more research I do, the less enthusiastic I become.
I’ve read posts from several “representatives” of products reviewed, and as a media outlet (and small business) I find it refreshing. Small businesses need to be nimble to survive and this site clearly demonstrates that some businesses respond and react to input.
If an online solution/product exists that would address my goals above, and nudges in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. One poster above referred to SugarCRM and SalesForce as complicated. I found them complete, customizable, but genuinely cost-prohibitive.
How can you call Oprius a full blown online version of ACT.
Field customization is almost non existent. add fields but can’t define a field type?
No pop up reminder (receive via email only).
Requires permission for me to mass email clients who have been in my database for YEARS.
No document library.
Cant Query the database (boolean lookups etc..)
Full blown version of ACT is called sales nexus. The problem with Nexus is no integrated pop email.
Oprius please allow field definitions, add a pop up reminder, and remove permission based requirements at least for initially imported leads. Please allow the email editor to allow us to paste our current HTML templates to ease in the conversion from ACT to your program. The rest of the program is perfect in it’s simplicity. Shame it’s just not where it needs to be. I would subscribe immediately.
Any Ideas?
I appreciate any reccomendations. Here are my requirements.
1. Built in POP email.
2. Add custom fields and perform advanced lookups/queries.
3. No additional fees for my mass emails. No daily or monthly limits.
4. No require to obtain email permissionat least for imported initial contacts.
5. HTML mass email templates and ability to also apply a template for each individual email being sent to an individual contact.
6. Reminders which pop up or alert rather than just email me.
7. Web based.
Willing to pay up to 25.00 per month. ACT is not an option (I use it now and I have heard hooror stories about the upgrades. Also isn’t web based).
Thank you.
contact@kevinschuyler.name
Just tried the Franklin Covey CRM at 9.00 per month and it beats everything else I’ve seen hands down.
Give it a look.
Manages email within program
import export
total field customization
advanced queries and lookups
clean interface
html templates
doc storage
bookmarks
Can’t be beat IMHO at least for my needs and purposes.
Kevin,
I wanted to clear up a few things with Oprius:
Reminders – Oprius can send them to both your email, as well as your cell phone. You won’t always be in front of your computer, but you will probably have your cell phone with you.
Email Permissions – We are big advocates for fighting spam, and in fact we have had people try (emphases on try) to use Oprius to send spam. With that said if you can prove to us that your contacts have given you permission to list email them, then you can.
Email Templates – There have been a handful of requests for this. As such we are considering adding it to Oprius. Currently we provide full IMAP access so you can easily use a desktop mail client to paste in email templates as you have asked.
Custom Fields - I admit Oprius does not have strong advanced customization compared to other programs out there. If this is a deal breaker for you SalesForce’s Personal Edition might be another good option for you. However, many find simply adding a couple needed fields fills their needs for customization.
As for Franklin Covey’s PlanPlus price, keep in mind if you want Opportunity Tracking and Sales Process you have to pay $25/month as well as $20 every time you call tech support (unless you pay an additional monthly fee). Just as a heads up considering your budget.
Owen Mead-Robins - VP Operations
Oprius
http://www.oprius.com/
1-877-7-OPRIUS
A newbie looking anew at this whole world of contact management software; I’ve only used outlook. Two quick (?) questions:
1. Do you have any access to the database if one’s connection to the internet is down?
2. Is there a similar (and recent) review of non-online contact managers?
Thank you (all) in advance.
Barry,
Good questions. Short answer to #1, no. That’s of course the thing with online contact managers. You could set a routine where you backup or download the data each week, then you can at least see it at a glance, without updating it.
On #2, we’ve been asked that before (one of the comments above), and it’s at best a maybe. The reason being, software-based contact managers have been around FOREVER, so you can find comparisons of ACT!, Maximizer, Goldmine, even Outlook, and others all over the Web with a few smart Google searches.
I’m in the same boat as Barry Hull (last comment posted). I’m a newbie to the concept of online contact management and must admit my head is spinning after reading all of the reviews here. I have one of the same concerns too regarding acessing contacts off line. I saw where one of the systems can sync with palm. Couldn’t you just do a sync and view your contacts on the desk top palm software and your palm hand held? This is ideally what I am looking for so I can take my contacts with me on the road like I do now on my palm but have a much more powerful system when I’m in the office.
Steve
And this is exactly why we are currently working on syncing. So you can take your contacts with you, and still have powerful sales software when you are by a computer (any computer with Internet)
Well, I’m really, really a “newbie” here — can someone suggest a CRM solution for one person, me. I’m in new business for an ad agency (and all prospecting info is currently on slips of paper, hand written notes from the president that say “check into these people” — and excel charts, etc — so there is NO system. I’m looking for a low cost solution as a way to manage contacts, info etc.
All of the options seem a bit overwhelming and complex — which don’t really need, since it will be maintained by me — possibly with help from someone else to input info.
Salesforce is great, but expensive — and I don’t really know about these others. At this point, not really even concerned about syncing things up.
We’re talking basic here.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Hi Andria - please allow me to be the first to say hey, give our product a try :)! BatchBook (see review above) is great for sole proprietors like yourself. It’s simple, inexpensive (we even have a free version) and pretty fun to use (if you think organizing contacts is fun. Which I kind of do.)
Have a look and if you have any questions, feel free to write me at mriggen@batchblue.com. Cheers and happy organizing!
Andria,
Great to hear that you are looking into getting your system organized. Having things on slips of paper everywhere is a great way to lose leads and sales.
It is hard to say “this is the best CRM” as each CRM system will have strengths and weaknesses. I would suggest you spend a little bit of time looking into each one and finding which fits your needs the best. Many have videos, demos and even live demonstrations.
Personally I think Oprius would be a great fit for you as Oprius is built for independent people like yourself, simple an easy to use, and only $14.99/month. However, I am one of the founders of Oprius so I’m a bit biased ;-)
Good luck in your search,
Owen Mead-Robins - VP Operations
Oprius
http://www.oprius.com/
1-877-7-OPRIUS
This is really a question for the software developers of several of these great tools that frequent this site/discussion, but anyone can chime in.
A key missing feature missing from all is Outlook sync-ing (bi-directional —beyond being able to subscribe to iCal). Beyond being somewhere in the development pipeline, are there any real estimates when this feature might be available? I am particularly interested with respect to Pipeline, BatchBlue & Oprius.
I recognize that there may well be competitive reasons not disclose this information, but any insight would be helpful.
Thanks
John
John,
One of the major reasons we have not given a date is due to the cost of failure. When you first signup for Oprius it is independent of your current workflow. You are trying Oprius out to see if it will meet your needs. If something goes wrong when importing your data it in no way affects your current data. Importing is one-way. Your contacts are still in your old system and you can carry on if something goes wrong. The cost of failure to you is very low, but high to us as you will probably go somewhere else.
Now if you sync up your data with a service and something goes wrong it is now two-way. It is possible that all your data could be deleted; a very high cost of failure to you. Especially if that prospect you have been trying to get a hold of for weeks finally calls you back and all your critical data is now missing. As such we are putting a great deal of testing into syncing to ensure this situation doesn’t happen. We want to make sure syncing is ready and tested, and not held to a hard date we tell everyone.
With that said, our developers have made great progress on our syncing solution. We will be running a syncing beta group soon where a brave select few will have early access to our syncing module.
Sorry I can’t give you a date, but I hope that gives you an answer as to why we have been so shy about giving one.
Owen Mead-Robins - VP Operations
Oprius
Hi John-
We should have BatchBook to Outlook synching in place within the next couple of weeks. Maybe sooner. Outlook to BatchBook will be one of the next big things we tackle since, like you, people are asking for it. There, I’ve said enough!
Our blog is a great way to keep an eye on what we’re adding, as our VP of Tech posts product updates every time we add cool new features, which is pretty often.
Thanks for thinking of us — we’re excited to have made your “short list”!
John - SalesNexus offers bi-directional sync of contacts and calendar with Outlook. http://www.salesnexus.com
I have exactly the same concern as John Hasley. It’s ages I’m looking for a solution for synchronizing my MS Outlook Contacts with my assistant in a simple, efficient and safe manner. I tried this on an MS XP network with OfficeCalendar. It simply never worked. I tried to use ScanCard online. I never managed to upload more than three contacts. Part of my problem may be that I’m in China and don’t enjoy net connections as fast as in the U.S. whereas most if not all the servers of these service providers must be located in the U.S. I noted ZeusMan’s advice as to softwares enabling to convert any number of Outlook contacts in one vCard file thus facilitating the upload of a large number of contacts (I have approx. 1′500). Which software do you then recommend for Outlook sync with minimum bandwidth requirement, possibly using vCard format as recommended above?
I need to find a cheap, easy to use, contact management software program. I’ve look at the Act it seems expensive. I am a single user need to manage contacts, addresses, emails, notes, need to be able to send out a newletter via email to all contacts, to do, calendar, etc…. Can anyone make a suggestion other than the monthly charge systems?
Nancy,
My company, SalesNexus, is one of the “monthly charge systems” or subscription based, hosted service.
From your question, I’ll assume that you’re not interested in a subscription based system due to the fact that you have to keep paying for it. If that’s incorrect, I’m sure many of the readers of SalesTeamTools.com would find it informative to hear your perspective.
To the extent that the on-going cost is the problem for you, I think you would be wise to conside the “Total Cost of Ownership” of software you install and maintain on your own system.
Buying the software license is just the tip of the iceberg…
If the system is intended to be “mission critical” for your business, then it will warrant attention and investment that is far more costly that the license itself.
In fact, our analysis of typical ACT installations shows that our hosted, monthly subscription service works out to be 65% less costly than running ACT yourself.
For a small business with countless priorities to manage, a hosted solution that allows you to focus on marketing and selling rather than servers and software may be worth another look. Your stated requirements put you in the situation of being able to pick from a large universe of providers.
Nancy, most tools we review here come on a monthly subscription. We reviewed two free tools (Funclient and Keepm) and Highrise (discussed above) offers a free plan which is actually pretty functional. In general and as with many things in life, I’d say you get what you pay for. If needs are modest, that can work. If you need more, we’ve received tools on this page that are certainly worth their monthly fee. Your call, really.
I have been a long time subscriber to ACT (from Symantec to Sage) and want to explore other CMS options. My business is executive recruitment and I have about 24K contacts. I really don’t use a lot of the whistles and bells that ACT provides and really only need a solid note taking software with customized fields. Does anyone use a CMS in the recruitment world and if so, what software do you use and why? Thank you.
Steven - you might want to check out Big Biller for recruiting. I did their hosted demo and was impressed - was looking for an alternative to ACT!, my final decision was to buy Outlook 2007 With Contact Manager.
My new PC is 64-bit and ACT! does not support it, the Outlook 207 WCM works fine.
@John Liebeskind - I had to synchronize 2 user’s Outlook Calendars and PIMShare was a decent tool that got the job done. It will sync Contacts and Tasks as well, but i didn’t use those features. It works a little strangely, sending emails back and forth to synchronize, but it deletes the emails quickly and automatically after processing them. You need to keep your inbox small otherwise Outlook will pause while it scans your inbox every minute few minutes for new incoming messages to process. It’s $40 a year per user, so 2 users is $80. There’s a free 30 day trial.
http://www.pagethink.com/pimshare.asp
To all who may benefit. I was trying to sync up my Outlook contacts, calendar, tasks, etc between a PC a laptop. Many people struggle with this as it is a tuff thing to do. Not anymore. Talking to a friend a learned a little about .pst files and where to find it. Now I save my .pst file to a flash drive, set my Outlook to look for that file and not for the file in my PC. Now the only thing I have to do when I get back to the office is take my flash drive out of my laptop, and plug in to my PC before I start up Outlook. Everything is right there because it is actually the same file! It took a little experimenting to get this set up, but in the end works pretty nice. The most important thing is to make a backup copy of the file regularly in case the flash drive is lost. Hope this is helpful.
After having test driven about two dozen online CRMs, I am so relieved to find this site.
We have used Goldmine for many years but no longer want to deal with hardware issues and $165 per GM techs.
We are in commercial real estate and pricing for our 5 person team is very important.
That said, has anyone tried Boss CRM? At $20 per month per user, it is a bit pricey but the pages load quickly; there is unlimited storage; and it seems to have most of the bells and whistles. The idea of having “cases” is attractive to us, but not available here.
Would love some feedback on it before taking the plunge and will also check out some other options mentioned in comments and reviews.
Thanks for your wonderful site.
KH
Online Contact Management Software means: companies in the B2B market.
So many different needs, so many different solutions.
Still the word “cheap’ is used in many cases.
But what is cheap ?
If you miss a deal because of a missing functionality, then cheap is expensive.
These CRM’s are web based.
Most of our companies have a website.
At the same time most of your customers will visit your company website before or during the purchase process.
Thus your contacts and leads are actually on your website.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to know who is visiting your website?
a) If a contact visits: probably time to contact him.
b) Lead generation: visitors from new companies visiting are interesting to know: identify by company name. Next qualify these visitors as leads or not based upon what they did on your website.
Thus combining contacts (& leads) and website visits can bring significant additional value as your CRM/Contact manager becomes a source of information instead of a contact data storage.
I am glad to find this post. I also have a very small business, but have interest from people in other area to sell our product. To that end I started looking for a good, yet simple CRM. It seems that too often you wil find a solution that is “Almost” perfect.
I actually train Salesforce and therefore know it’s power, but also know how few of the features are actually used in the field by salespeople. We are looking for a fairly simple solution and thought that I found the solution in Big Contacts. However, their limited custom reports creates a problem. For instance I cannot create a custom commission reports. In fact, I can not see where I can even include anything to do with opportunities in a custom report.
So here is what we need, if anybody has any thought….
1) Ability to track all customer interactions
2) Relates “Sales” or “Purchases” to individual clients and pull reports based on those purchases.
3) “Workflow Tasks” or “Action Plans”.. Where a template of activities can be assigned to an event (Sales, new client, etc.)
4) I would love to be able to create custom commission reports.
5) Built in e-mail client of some sort.
6) Simple mobile synchronization or use.
Thanks for any help.
@John Stewart
John, you are totally correct in that many of your leads are coming to your website. Why spend all that money on SEO etc. if you can’t capitalize on it? It is for this reason that Oprius comes with a Lead Capture module. You can either create a website from scratch, or add a form to your existing site. Those leads go directly into your CRM, and in Oprius’ case can be automatically started on your defined sales pipeline via our Relationship Builder. This could send an automatic thank you email, then schedule a phone follow up reminder, or whatever works best for your business. And of course all those correspondences are tracked for that contact.
Owen Mead-Robins - VP Operations
Oprius
It looks to me that Highrise only has a 30 free trial with a minimum subscription of $25/mo. That may be a recent change.
David, you’re right. Thanks for pointing it out - I updated our review page.
This has been an extremely helpful article.
I’m really torn between Highrise and Relenta (with Batchbook in the middle) - the only problem is that i want calendar functionality, and i really hate the fact that 37signals’ products don’t play nice with each other - why can’t they all be integrated?
Highrise + Backpack + Basecamp is the dream for so many companies; why can’t these all be offered together in a seamless integration.
Things like SugarCRM would be fantastic, but are ultimately too cost prohibitive - even for high end real estate agencies…
Stop the presses! They still offer their free plan, you just have to look closely below the three plans they highlight. On their signup page it states: “You can also choose our free plan which allows you to manage 250 contacts with two users, but doesn’t include file sharing.”
What is the best service that I can backup directly to, or integrates with Outlook? Have you ever reviewed Prophet or CLP Suite?
Check out http://www.octopuscity.com. They offer a very intuitive free contact management system that is also a social (business-oriented) network. You can sync with webmail accounts and Outlook and there’s also a bunch of other free business services like teleconferencing.
I tried CLP suite for about two months as a replacement for Goldmine. While I loved the product, I was just to used to having my email integrated with my contacts. CLP did this only manually - I found it frustrating to have mail spread across outlook and CLP.
On the positive side, I like the user interface and snappy performance even over the web. The “configurator” (run it when you start using the system) asks all the right “setup” questions.
I’m still looking and Relenta and Oprius look like my top choices now but I’m still looking for an iphone connection. I use iphone’s calendar often and would like changes on my iphone to upload to the crm tool and of course go the other way too… Relenta does not have a clean way of doing this and I find no reference to iphone on Oprius’ site.
Another, minor thing, we print a lot of labels via our dymo label maker. In Goldmine, I can click a add-in button (written by Dymo) and the dymo label maker software launches with the selected contact ready to print on the label. Then I can format the label (if necessary) or use Dymo’s nifty “address check” feature.
Which tools in the list above have figured out the PDA/smart phone connection?
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark… Adam from BatchBook here.
We recently released an iPhone version of our small business contact manager, BatchBook. Currently, you can view your contacts and To-Dos in an iPhone-optimized interface. Soon, we’ll be adding the ability to add and edit from the iPhone version.
We also have an ICAL feed for our To-Do List that can be synced to the iPhone calendar (I actually have two BatchBook accounts, Google Calendar, and some local geek calendars all feeding into my iPhone via iCal).
I invite you to check us out. We love feedback, so please let us know what you’d like to see from the iPhone version.
Thanks!
Adam Darowski
User Experience Designer
BatchBlue Software
Mark,
Thanks for jumping in on this. Both PipelineDeals and BatchBlue are focused on the iPhone at this point. I believe Blackberry support is on the radar for both of them as well.
Hope this gives you a start…
Brandon
Nicole,
Thanks for introducing another one to everybody. Have you used this one?
Brandon
Hi Mark-
We actually do have a Blackberry Read-Only version of BatchBook already in place. Also, you can easily create mailing labels from your contact lists.
Just wanted to let you know!
Michelle Riggen-Ransom
Communications Director
Batchblue Software
[…] it’s time to think about doing this. More and more of our online contact management friends are including these capabilities to help you preplan your contact management. LeadsOnRails […]
Great article! First thing, let me thank you for putting it together.
Now, here is what I’m looking for to be used by a growing real estate training company:
1. scalable users up to 20 with simultaneous access
2. contacts up to 5000 but scalable
3. import/export capabilities
4. scheduling appointments and reminders, calendaring
5. launching plans for both contacts and users
6. email and mass emailing
7. ability to view single or all calendar activities
8. be able to add comments, notes, birthdays, etc.
All of this for a modest monthly fee, or free!
Any help is very much appreciated.
Thanks.
Ron
I am looking at a hosted CRM and recently came across Entellium. Does anyone have experience with them?
Bob
Hopefully somebody can help me out here. I am looking for a solution which includes the ability to send invoices, quotations or better yet purchase orders. I think I came across one just like this while looking at one of the companies on this page, but now I can’t seem to find it. If anybody can point me to such a solution I would greatly appreciate it.
I am also thinking that I will use a solution that we host on our company’s servers rather than a software as a service solution. Hosting on our servers in the end will be cheaper and more secure, but there doesn’t seem to be a good list of companies which sell the entire solution (aside from WebAsyst). Can anybody suggest some solutions like this or point me to another website?
i am always scared to use online contact management software, even when they offer for free. i prefer keeping it offline of security and internet connectivity reasons.
Well, when you think about it - most of these services run on highly secure and controlled servers. I think your data is safer on their servers than on your PC - but I do understand the sentiment here.
Based on popular demand, we added a side-by-side overview of almost 40 features to this page. Scroll up and click the red banner image.
Read http://snurl.com/3r3yi for an explanation. Enjoy!
Hello, checking to see if you’ll be reviewing Zoho’s online CRM product. Also it’s free for up to 3 users. I had a freelancer try it out, seemed promising.
Hi Jacqueline,
Zoho’s CRM is on our list to update the new spreadsheet mentioned with the update above and here: http://www.salesteamtools.com/2008/09/16/sales-contact-management-side-by-side-overview/.
Stay tuned, that embedded, side-by-side comparison will unfold to many more providers very soon.
@Charlie,
Regarding your search for a solution that includes invoicing, check out this one: http://www.bizzvo.com/. There are many online invoicing solutions that include limited contact management, this one focuses on both. Don’t know of any that allow you to send purchase orders or quotations.
Brandon