Agile CRM

Comments: I feel like I am becoming a CRM expert. I have used and suggested many CRMs over the years, and I feel like I have seen it all. When I look for a CRM in 2018, I ask myself 3 questions. Question 1: Who is going to use these features? If my team lacks tech savviness, if they are going to be picky about the UI, or if they are used to a different platform, you could run into problems. At the end of the day, a CRM should be invisible, and it should be as natural as using your body. If you team struggles to use their tools, you will run into problems. There's no point in blaming your team if the tool is hard to learn. The job needs to be done either way. (Keeping a mobile option in mind is a good idea as well. Don't underestimate the value of client's won at a bar.) Question 2: How quickly will the system be up to 100% functionality? Every day that you team has to track client data on Post-Its is a day that you're throwing information in the trash (and hanging your Marketing + Support out to dry). Expect a month to get set up, but anything over 3 months is too long. Even if you're an enterprise, you can't afford to fly blind for that long. Also, integrations, integrations, integrations... If the sales rep can't demo a tool you use daily running on their CRM, demand a "no commitment demo" period. Most companies will try to lock you into a one year commitment, but it is perfectly reasonable to know everything works together in harmony. Question 3: Is this the right price for me? The thing about CRMs is that there are hundreds of them. It's impossible to say which one is right for you because in reality, there are probably a dozen you will love. If you feel that you are down to 2 or 3 CRMs that seem identical, they probably are... Go for the one that is priced right and ready to scale WITH YOU. Agile is great on all these fronts. Easy to use. Beautiful UI. Easy to set up. Very affordable option. Love 'em. You won't be disappointed.

Pros: Agile is so clean. The UI is easy to use right out of the box.
Great for small to medium customer bases that use social media.
Quick and easy to set up.
Support is FANTASTIC!
Great automated features.
All the great things you would expect from a cloud based CRM: Customer + Deal tracking, notes and communication history, marketing analytics, scheduling, etc.

Cons: It's hard to call all of these "cons", but let's say "growing pains". Agile is still a young software. We had some problems setting up links between our WordPress site. They were quickly resolved to 100% satisfaction, but they had my boss pulling his hair out for a few days. We have run into a few other issues that I would call "buggy". Some graphical, some needing to refresh a page, but nothing has halted production. All have resolved themselves.

Comments: As a small business owner, and founder of Bloominari.com, a digital marketing agency helping small businesses to grow their companies online through beautiful design, automation and marketing tactics I was in search of the best CRM and marketing automation software for a truly affordable price. After literally about 2 months of research of various CRM and marketing automation platforms I finally decided to take AgileCRM for a spin (It was easy to try it, as they have an always-free lite version). Immediately I fell in love with it's interface, ease of use, and easy-to-setup platform. I previously worked with Salesforce.com and Solve360 CRMS, and have also tried BaseCRM, SugarCRM and many others throughout my business life.

Pros: - Super affordable for the amount of tools, features and applications it includes. Starting at $10/user/month for it's starter version.
- Great user interface
- Easy to setup and use
- Lots of native integrations with lots of web-based (Saas) apps such as Gmail, Quickbooks, Twilio and many many others.
- Integration with Zapier, which basically let's you now integrate AgileCRM with 700+ other web apps, so this feature was a KEY for me.
- All your emails automatically load from your Gmail inside AgileCRM, no need to BCC some email address.
- Lots of sales, marketing, support, landing page, and amazing features added on at no additional cost.
- Now you can purchase add-ons such as user permissions, triggers, additional automation campaigns and others without having to upgrade all your users to the next subscription level (this is something I requested, and their team listened and did implement this).
-Their tech support is great, they care, they listen, and they modify/improve their system based on your feedback
- Their team update the app every few days

Cons: - Their standard subscription is $30/user/month if pre-paid for 2 years, otherwise $50/month, without too many added benefits for this level
- Their starter subscription limits your marketing campaigns (automation) to only 5 campaigns, with 10 nodes (steps) on each. The standard gives you 10 campaigns, with 25 nodes each (much better).
- Some updates happen without prior notifications to the user, and sometimes changes the User interface too drastically for some features.
- Their E-mail templates are limited, but you can still bring in your HTML templates or use their WYSIWYG editor.