No Risk Online CRM – One Year Later

Last year ETHODE wrote an article reviewing online CRM systems.  At the time we were looking for a CRM that was a best fit for small businesses that didn’t want to put out a lot of cash, and wanted a system that didn’t have a limited free account.  Most of the web based CRM’s that we investigated severely limited what you could do, almost to a point where the “demo” was worthless.  We were first struck by CapsuleCRM which allowed us to test out their full array of features with their free account.  Not only that but we could have up to 250 contacts.

While this is a rather small amount of contacts for an enterprise business, I would suspect that most small businesses could work well within this range.  Like a lot of small businesses, the largest obstacle to hurdle was to manage conversations with clients a long with information that needed to be shared with other employees whom would be working on their projects.  I found that Capsule easily had the best features for managing conversations with with clients and client data.

The only real purpose of this article is to check back in after 1 year of use and report my experience.

Things I Love

• Capabilities of free account – 250 Contacts = AWESOME
• Contact & Company management
• MOBILE WEB INTERFACE
• Task Management (More useful with paying account, so each employee has can their own account)
• External Integration – Alot of companies are building integration with Capsule

Things I Do NOT Love

• Would be fantastic to have a conversation/thread style log for phone and meetings with contacts
• Task conversations would be very helpful.. This would allow more of a project management functionality

Capsule has added a lot of new features this year.  I am excited to see what is in store for 2012.  Any one else using Capsule, I would love to hear our feed back.  So far I think this is a fabulous Saas CRM.