Hubspot CRM is free, Hubspot Sales has affordable tiers, and they also have special discount programs for startups. I don't have any affiliation with them.
Hubspot is great since their product is designed with marketing in mind, this makes it a great fit for SaaS companies as they heavily rely on digital marketing channels to grow. They also have some great integrations with tools such as Proposify, Lucky Orange, etc. Our SaaS company just switched to Hubspot from Streak and we are happy to have made the jump.
We are on the Pro plan. They were having a promo so I think we got it for $8500 with some add-ons and more contacts. Yeah, depending on your use-case the other plans before pro can be somewhat limited in their features. I would recommend using Hubspot only once you can do Pro or higher with add-ons like the social media automation. I could see it being useful thou if you could lump multiple side-projects into it and streamline the marketing process. We started with the paid plan coming off of Streak. We simply outgrew Streak as we were using that plus Proposify, Google Docs, Mailchimp, Drip, etc. and pulling everything together with Zapier, so it was just getting complex.
Second Hubspot, great for SaaS companies that focus on inbound marketing. The CRM product is free. If you're a startup, they have a program to get 90% off their other products.
Whatever CRM you use, look for one that integrates with any customer related tools that you're using. Larger players like Hubspot can attract more developer integrations. For example, we use Drift (Like Intercom but much cheaper) for customer support and sync events in Drift to Hubspot.
Thanks for the shoutout! For OP - Streak (YC S11) works on both Gmail and G Suite and we have both free and paid versions. Give me a holler at weston(at)streak(dot)com with any questions! I'm on the support side and would be glad to help.
Yes, I agree. I tried multiple CRMs in the past like SugarCRM and Vtiger and the main issue was not the lack of features but the time you should spend to integrate with your company flow (e.g. adding customers from your inquiry managing systems).
This issue happens mainly in small companies with tiny sales and marketing teams.
What is your sales process going to look like? Figure out your requirements and it will make your search easier.
I really like Close.io for cold outbound sales. If you're doing social media then maybe look at Nimble. As someone else said you can get started for free with Hubspot. Intercom might be something to look at as well if your going for a more automated process.
You can obviously use Zapier to tie your software together so you can use best in class software for whatever processes you end up putting in place.
Office365 comes with a complementary Outlooks Contacts Manager that lives straight in outlook (well, exchange). It's a great tool for a 1 man shop with a few simple products and leads.
You need a business premium license though. (10eur/MO)
We use PropsperWorks and it works great. Amazing integration with GMail. However, watch out for their contract. We had to let go of some sales people and we're still trying to re-negotiate our seats with them.
I work for Base (getbase.com) and recently put this spreadsheet together with 45 vendor details, links to pricing, etc. Whatever you select, just make sure it scales with your business and you have a solid plan around implementation/process. Happy to answer any questions about Base (or any others if I can).
On that note, nobody pays list price for Salesforce - just because they let you purchase licenses self-service doesn’t mean you should. Call sales, negotiate your contract - your discount will scale some based on volume but there’s no reason to not ask for one.
WJ has it right. Figure out your sales process. How many customers? How do you identify suspects / prospects / likelies? How long is the sales cycle? Do your first US$50K of deals managing with tools you already own, like a whiteboard or spreadsheet or quickbooks, or with tools you have to have, like payment card processors like stripe.com and/or braintree.
Once you've got the beginnings of a process, you'll be much better positioned to decide on tools.
Tools don't close deals. You do. Go close some. Seriously.
We chose Salesforce, and haven't regretted it. The thing you need to keep in mind if you are doing any semi-complicated B2B sales, is that you will need to do some customizations, and Salesforce is a king of this. We have heavily customized it, and especially workflows have been quite helpfull for us.
It does come with a hefty price-tag, but when moving forward you will eventually outgrow most other CRM solutions, and it will be quite time consuming to switch later on.
It also helps with recruiting, since most people have used Salesforce previously.
Close.io -- clean, stays out of your way, very extensible API for when you want to tie it directly into your site/dashboard/various marketing mechanisms.
Whatever you use, here's the trick we learned from trying to use Msft Dynamics XRM: Do not make the core of your application a bunch of custom functoids. Also plan custom changes very carefully; always use what's out of the box first. Also, don't hesitate to hire pro consultants; they will reinforce what I just stated.
Even given all that, would I use XRM again? No. It just isn't there yet for a large enterprise app.
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[ 184 ms ] story [ 1496 ms ] threadThe free plan only has 5.5 of the 32 features in the next paid tier ( 600$ / year).
Thinking of using it to market my side projects.
Also, did you start with free tier for your SaaS and then upgraded once you got sales, leads, or did you directly start with 1 of the paid plans?
Whatever CRM you use, look for one that integrates with any customer related tools that you're using. Larger players like Hubspot can attract more developer integrations. For example, we use Drift (Like Intercom but much cheaper) for customer support and sync events in Drift to Hubspot.
once you really need automation features, then something like insightly or hubspot can be useful
This issue happens mainly in small companies with tiny sales and marketing teams.
I really like Close.io for cold outbound sales. If you're doing social media then maybe look at Nimble. As someone else said you can get started for free with Hubspot. Intercom might be something to look at as well if your going for a more automated process.
You can obviously use Zapier to tie your software together so you can use best in class software for whatever processes you end up putting in place.
You need a business premium license though. (10eur/MO)
HubSpot has a startup "scholarship" program, I think it is a 90% discount. Not sure about the details for applying, but it's worth looking into.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10H4p3vg_smsE54bdSJ9U...
Once you've got the beginnings of a process, you'll be much better positioned to decide on tools.
Tools don't close deals. You do. Go close some. Seriously.
It does come with a hefty price-tag, but when moving forward you will eventually outgrow most other CRM solutions, and it will be quite time consuming to switch later on.
It also helps with recruiting, since most people have used Salesforce previously.
email
spreadsheet
Even given all that, would I use XRM again? No. It just isn't there yet for a large enterprise app.