Hosted CRM Software- 8 Reviews to Grow Your Business

How do you track the success of your marketing campaigns including the ROI for promotional gifts? Several CRM solutions now have tighter integration to include budget and resulting sales,with insights by vertical market, campaign delivery method and more. Have you struggled to find the perfect CRM software solution? This article on  6 Web-based CRM Applications Side-by-Side led me on a path to review the solutions, and others, more in-depth.
Here’s my own reviews and experience points. Most are fine if you want an online solution, that might also integrate with mobile, but most also fall short on offline use such as exporting a group to send a mailing to; They typically support export all or export none instead of being able to look up a group and export for mailing labels or other uses.

Highrise–Basic plan is now $24.95/ mth for up to 6 users, but strangely only supports 10 deals. It’s $49 for unlimited deals. Or the soho plan 1 user is $29/mth unlimited deals. While other solutions record notes, calls, and emails in separate tabs, any kind of dated record is all in one tab. It has an interesting way to attach email records, plus integrated contact tweets, and you can capture data from a web form into highrise. I’m a 37 signals basecamp user and the layouts are very similar. It doesn’t have the robustness of a CRM desktop software, but as a cloud solution it’s worth a look.

PipelineDeals , from $15 per user per month, has a feel a bit more like ACT! with the way you can clone contacts and specify the type of record- note, call, meeting etc. They compare themselves to Salesforce, but easier to get started and deliver just what you need for a better value. It falls short by not having a more robust drop down to reduce time for repetitive events such as, Call and left message, Call attempted, call completed. I didn’t see an easy way to select contacts, groups, or export for a mailing list.

Pipejump that others mentioned is definitely better than Pipeline. They have a standard embedded form code (not adjustable) to capture leads from your website and a Track your lead source. When adding users, it will automatically fill in company name options as you start typing the company name. It also has a way to record emails with email dropbox like Highrise. Export is via an email they send you, not very convenient if you want to do direct mail and have groups.

Salesforce– hands down the most robust of any solution- pick your price plan and get the features you want. What I’ve always disliked in the past is the speed of using the site. Their $15/mth plan probably beats any other app on this list, but I also believe to get all the features you probably really need, including mobile, costs $60-100/mth per user.

Oracle crm on demand– This is a horrible sales pitch. What are they selling? There are no screen shots to share.

Sugar CRM is an open source solution and the only solution with fully integrated email, contact de-dupe, and multi-channel campaign management, plus it has mobile. I like this best and even looks like it is better than ACT! desktop version. Starting @ $30 month per user. Mobile apps just launching this month, and is only included with $45/mth and above plans.

 

Zoho– the most annoying thing about this one are the layouts- it’s a dealbreaker for me and not worth discussing further. If you want to add a note to a contact you have to scroll down the screen. Overall busy and not intuitive enough. However, there are a ton of features so some will probably really like the value of this solution- it’s free for 3 users. or $25/user/mth for the enterprise edition which also includes de-dupe, groups, and autoresponders. The iphone app is $3 per user per month. Integrated email is $3/user/mth extra.

 

Infusionsoft is the only one I know with fully automated marketing. It wasn’t for me when I tested last year because the print side was missing and drip campaigns were all email, however, it looks like they now have automated drip email campaigns and some direct mail feature integration. It has contact groups (segmentation), a simple web form builder to capture leads, de-dupe, and it solves the oldest sales problem- lack of follow up. At $199/mth minimum, it’s the most expensive but might also be the most valuable if you set up actions and have them occur automatically. Personally, if I can’t achieve $199/mth in new sales, I need to close my doors!

Vitger OnDemand CRM, $12 per user per month, is another open source solution with optional mobile app, $19. They offer more than just CRM, as this solution includes invoicing, email plug-ins, support automation and inventory management. This looks like it has a lot of features, but it’s open source and you’ll rely on the community for support. If you like ‘do it yourself” then maybe this is for you. There are lots of features but it’s not entirely intuitive and overall it takes more clicks for common tasks than others in my opinion. I didn’t like their help section and couldn’t find a quick answer to exporting contacts.

Conclusion:

I use ACT! Premier Desktop for workgroups now. I’ve used ACT! the better part of 15 years. I’ve also used ACT! web version for corporate, and Salesforce, among others, but I always come back to ACT! desktop. I recently added DejaOffice which syncs my contact info to my iphone; The app is free.

Of the hosted solutions reviewed, for the average small to medium business, SugarCRM, Zoho, and InfusionSoft are all worth a look. To narrow down your personal choice, determine what is most important to you. Major differentiating factors are integrated campaign management and tracking, integrated email, social networking information, de-dupe, automated drip campaign and sharing.  Check that the export feature will do what you need. All offer a free trial.