Ask HN: For your startup, do you use a CRM?
I'm doing research on CRMs and am interested in what are some of the major problems with CRMs that startups use.
Seems like there are a million CRMs out there so I'm curious about the pros and cons of each one.
Hoping to get a great discussion and insight.
11 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] threadWe support our 4,500 active users with a combination of a shared gmail support account, admin screens on the core web app, and a tiny globally distributed team.
One day that won't be sufficient, but it's seen us through the first five years.
Our original intention was to automate some of the standard interactions, that we would just manually process the transactional emails 'for a while'. But funny thing is, the human interaction has proved to be a critical and valued part of our service. We’re pretty sure those actual humans will always be part of the service Beeminder provides.
Would you care sharing what are some of the key functions that the combination of a shared gmail support account and admin screens that made your team so effective?
1. HelpScout -- http://helpscout.net -- Seems nice
2. SupportBee -- http://supportbee.com -- Almost want it for the name alone but we got an anti-recommendation from a friend at Gratipay
3. BeSnappy -- http://besnappy.com -- Possibly recommended by patio11 but then I heard they shut down?
4. Intercom -- http://intercom.io -- Recommended by Matt at HookFeed
5. FreshDesk -- http://freshdesk.com -- Recommendation from friend at Gratipay
6. Front -- https://frontapp.com/ -- Lots of funding and big names behind it; Patrick Collison recommened it now too (coupon code for 3 months free: startuppack)
7. FogBugz -- http://blog.fogcreek.com/fog-creeks-email-workflow/ -- Blog post by Fog Creek about what they do
I've heard a lot of good things too. It was discussed the The Steli and Hiten podcast. Steli thinks Hubspot went and took certain features that people like from various CRMS when they built this CRM. Seems solid.
I'm using it by default since I use their Gmail chrome extension. I think each time you send an email using the email tracking, that contact is automatically created in the CRM. So it should be able to track each email I've ever sent to each person as long as I had the tracking on.
https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm
(edited to add link)
On the flipside, any reason why you think Hubspot CRM isn't a good tool for small startups? Is there anything that you don't like about it or that it can't do?
It's easy to use, it has tons of integrations and it's cheap. About why you should use a CRM, for example, to classify different leads.
What are some of the things that you don't like about Pipedrive or that it can't do?