Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system for managing a company\u2019s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.<\/p>\n
– Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Basically, we need a way\u00a0to share leads, keep ad-hoc discussions and deals in one place, and forecast our sales a bit. Some systems are better than others for this.<\/p>\n There are a ton of enterprise solutions we didn\u2019t evaluate. \u00a0First, the elephant in the room. We did not even consider Salesforce<\/a>. I have evaluated in the past and it seems\u00a0kludgy, has too many features, and is the design equivalent of Microsoft Word. (Worse, every time I\u2019ve had a conversation with someone there, I\u2019ve walked away feeling like that was a company I would never give my money to.)\u00a0Instead, we began testing and evaluating a handful of the best CRM solutions out there for small team such as ours.<\/p>\n The service hasn\u2019t changed much in the interim. 37signals changed their name to Basecamp and effectively discontinued Highrise, which was recently resurrected by another company. Improvements, however, will take time and it\u2019s not completely clear what direction Highrise is headed in.<\/p>\n It\u2019s great that Highrise retains\u00a0the simplicity of the original product, but it feels five years old. For example, the graphics are not retina and the font is still Lucida Grande, which feels weird now that even Yosemite has moved on. There\u2019s a reason the Highrise website doesn\u2019t have screen shots.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the mobile experience is absolutely terrible, which was the nail in the coffin for us on this product. An\u00a0app has been mentioned as \u00a0forthcoming, but these\u00a0things take time. Until then, Highrise is useless on mobile, where we spend a majority of time.\u00a0Ultimately, the lack of features and unsure footing has kept us away and we\u2019ve moved on to more promising alternatives.<\/p>\n Our cost: $49\/month (the 10 deal limitation makes the $24\/month plan useless for us) The key feature is that you see your pipelines across the top of your email. This means you\u00a0can have a pipeline for sales, one for recruiting, and so on. Switch between them at will. This is clever because all correspondence from someone simply\u00a0shows up in that pipeline automatically.<\/p>\n The key drawback is, of course, that it\u2019s in Gmail. There\u2019s no simple way to include calls or other arbitrary notes. I also sense that it\u2019s extremely hard to add new features since the product hasn\u2019t evolved much since it launched. Further, the mobile app for iOS hasn\u2019t been updated in a while (also a bad sign).<\/p>\n Streak was interesting to play with, but isn\u2019t a good fit for our team. It has some nice extras for email, such as view tracking, send later, and shippers\u2026 but for us, the limitations are too great and I\u2019m not confident about its future.<\/p>\n Our cost: $19 to $39 per user per month<\/em> Base emphasizes a mobile first approach, which is actually a much better fit for us these days given how much time we spend on mobile devices. Base also explicitly exposes a customizable pipeline, something that Highrise didn\u2019t have for us. This\u00a0was a welcome change.<\/p>\n Base seems to also have gotten a bit stuck, however. For\u00a0one, it is over complicated and all of the apps have some idiosyncrasies that drove me crazy. The integrations never quite worked the way we wanted and you didn\u2019t get a very good visualization of the pipeline. The web app was clearly just a themed version of something written in the Bootstrap CSS framework and looked like it was never going to be \u201cfinished.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of the day, Base drove me crazy. I kept having support issues. Plus, its attempt to manage my email was hopelessly underpowered. It was expensive\u2026 with reporting, it cost us $75 per person.<\/p>\n Once again, we began looking for alternatives.<\/p>\n Our cost: $75 per user per month for a plan with basic reporting\u00a0<\/em> Their goal seemed to be a rethinking of the CRM space and so they threw out all assumptions like the \u201cpipeline.\u201d I think this was a poor choice, but we gave it a shot anyway. Like Base, they had a decent mobile app and seemed to be actively developing it. The service is not cheap, but is about equivalent to Base. We figured if it did save us all that much time, why not give it a shot.<\/p>\n Once again, it didn\u2019t take long for RelateIQ to drive us crazy.<\/p>\n The interface got confusing fast. I could never make out what was shared with Kandace, what was in a pipeline, or even how to do a simple export of my data. RelateIQ has the feeling of being designed by someone whose first love was spreadsheets, not great user interface. It feels akin to using Excel.<\/p>\n Worse, their support was not just bad, but bordering on Comcast-esque pushyness. They were\u00a0more focused on selling their own service than hearing our feedback or concerns. Furthermore,\u00a0they were just bought by SalesForce.<\/p>\n Our cost: $49 per user per month (jumps to $99 if you want real time reporting)<\/em> If Sellf had a pipeline view, we might have been sold. As it is now,\u00a0it\u2019s too simple for us. If several of our team are going to use it, it needs to be a little more flexible and robust. For example, I like the idea of having a pipeline for more than one thing, but\u00a0this is aimed solely\u00a0at sales.<\/p>\n It is very affordable. If you\u2019re just getting started, it\u2019s free. The basic plans are about the cheapest around.\u00a0I would plan on checking back in a year or so, because it will probably have improved significantly.<\/p>\n Our cost: $3.99 per month<\/em> Getting your head around Pipedrive is easy, mostly because it is so visual. You can also switch to a \u201ctimeline\u201d view that shows your forecasted sales by month, in columns, or using the likelihood of each deal closing. This quickly\u00a0helps you see at a glance how well you\u2019ll be doing in the coming months.<\/p>\n Adding new leads is fast. You can enter a person and company name and add the rest later if you’d rather. I love this! Many of the other solutions overburden you with questions that made me reluctant to dump my info in there.<\/p>\n The biggest shortcoming is the iPad app, which\u00a0only lets you see one column at a time. At least there is<\/em> an iPad app, something which many of the other services cannot even claim.<\/p>\n Finally, it\u2019s $12 per user per month. No pricing tiers, no extra paid features\u2026 This is refreshing and makes it among the more affordable options we\u2019ve explored.<\/p>\n Our cost: $12 per user per month<\/em> For us it really came down to a choice between Sellf and Pipedrive. If your needs are modest, I would definitely recommend Sellf<\/strong>. It is by far the most attractive and modern of the services. Both the iPhone and the web app are terrific. I expect it to go places.<\/p>\n However, if your needs are little more substantial, we would recommend Pipedrive <\/strong>(despite its horrible name). It lets you manage your pipeline in a visual way that no other CRM does, and is a good fit if you, like us, enjoy using Trello.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the trenches reviews of six contenders: Highrise, Streak, Base, RelateIQ, Sellf, Pipedrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/o-p\/o\/origin_4329950828.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Highrise<\/h2>\n
![\"Highrise](\"https:\/\/needmoredesigns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-highrisehq-1672x960.png\")
<\/a>
\n37signals were the first to convince us that a CRM could be useful. Highrise<\/a>\u00a0accomplished\u00a0this with a casual, simple, and friendly interface. Years ago, we gave it a go. Suddenly, Kandace and I could both see our deals, contacts, and even some emails that were forwarded into the system. But, that’s about all we could do. (For example, there is no way to move projects through a linear pipeline.)<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>Pros: simple interface, easy email forwards
\n<\/em>Cons: lack of deal stages, horrible on mobile<\/em><\/p>\nStreak<\/h2>\n
![\"Streak](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-streak.png\")
<\/a>
\nStreak<\/a> is a fascinating service. It\u2019s one of many apps that exists more or less inside your Gmail interface. Since our team uses Google Apps anyway, this seemed quite promising.<\/p>\n
\nPros: multiple pipelines, right in Gmail<\/em>
\nCons: cannot log activity that occurs outside of email, not being updated often<\/em><\/p>\nBase<\/h2>\n
![\"Base](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-base@2x.png\")
<\/a>
\nWhen the discontinuation of Highrise was announced, we settled on Base<\/a>,\u00a0a service that is designed to automate more of the work for you.<\/p>\n
\nPros: customizable deal pipeline, mobile friendly<\/em>
\nCons: over complicated, buggy, drove me mad, expensive<\/em><\/p>\nRelateIQ<\/h2>\n
![\"RelateIQ](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-relateiq.png\")
<\/a>
\nRelateIQ<\/a> promises automation. They use big Data to pull in information about your contacts with implication that\u00a0it saves you a ton of time. In practice, this was rarely the case for us. They were constantly telling us to reply to emails that had already been replied to or importing data into contacts that was\u00a0absurdly incorrect.<\/p>\n
\nPros: some automation useful, decent mobile app, active development<\/em>
\nCons: wonky automation, confusing as hell, pushy sales<\/em><\/p>\nSellf<\/h2>\n
![\"Sellf](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-sellf.png\")
<\/a>
\nWe only briefly tried Sellf<\/a>.\u00a0It is still quite new and has promise.\u00a0The big win is the design. Far and away, this app has the most striking and contemporary design. It\u2019s lovely and, considering that we obsess about design day in and day out, this is important to us.<\/p>\n
\nPros: design<\/em>
\nCons: no deal pipeline view, too simple<\/em><\/p>\nPipedrive<\/h2>\n
![\"Pipedrive](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/nm-blog-pipedrive.png\")
<\/a>
\nPresently, we\u2019re settling into\u00a0Pipedrive<\/a>.\u00a0Pipedrive lets you view your pipelines in columns, dragging people between the columns. We use Trello a ton<\/a> and this feels a lot like that.<\/p>\n
\nPros: simple pipelines and reporting<\/em>
\nCons: ipad app<\/em><\/p>\nConclusions<\/h2>\n