Find the best customer management software online

For sales and marketing departments, online customer management can be critical across the board to: achieve greater productivity, a leg up in managing the sales process, and better customer relationship management and increased roi. With the premise that the average cost is 1,500 euros* per year per user for an installed and running crm can be prohibitive for a small business, considering free or Open Source crm solutions can be a good option from an economic point of view. In which case is it a good choice? Which open source crm are really interesting? We evaluate customer relationship management software in this article.

*Average price observed on the 5 market leaders.

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What is an online customer management software?

An online customer management software refers to software that helps automate the sales force and the relationship with potential and current customers. The premise behind "Open Source" is that the software must meet certain characteristics such as :

• The program cannot be sold;
• Source code is accessible and can be modified;
• Applications derived from Open Source crm sources must be possible.

The pros and cons of Open Source crm software.

The arguments in favor

• The software itself is free. You can download crm online directly from the community website;
• Evolutions are fast due to the large community of developers and if you have the technical skills it has high customization margins;
• User communities are very engaged on the forums and answer your questions when they have not already been dealt with functioning somewhat like classic customer support.

Arguments against

• Crm implementation, upgrades, maintenance and hosting at your expense. The time spent on these tasks is long and the journey is full of technical pitfalls from start to finish. This time spent often costs more than a proprietary crm license.
• The functionality of open crm is high and sometimes too much for the needs of a small business.
• The ergonomics of free crm often lag behind proprietary software. However, this is less and less true.

Open source crm applications.

1. vtiger crm: the most popular since 2004.

Vtiger crm is a BtoB oriented software created in 2004 from a Sugarcrm database. Vtiger does not make any particular innovations over its competitors, but it does very well what each must allow for in marketing crm: account and inbound contact management, customer service, reference product catalog, analytically tracking sales performance, customer loyalty, and personal agenda. The functional coverage of vtiger crm is at the level of that of its competitor Salesforce crm. vtiger primarily addresses the business needs of small business crm.

2. Civicrm: crm for associations and nonprofit organizations

Civicrm is a crm designed for the tasks of nonprofit organizations. It includes unique features not usually found in a traditional crm: membership management, donations, family reunification. Civicrm, therefore, does not manage clients and sales teams, but members or benefactors. It is possible to adapt Civicrm to a business context, but this application is not recommended because it can create bugs. Finally, Civicrm can only be used in addition to a CMS (Drupal , Joomla! or Wordpress) and not independently like any other crm. Civicrm is used by NGOs such as Amnesty International and Creative Commons.

3. Suitecrm: the new free crm is already a hit

Suitecrm is described as a marketing automation software suite for customer relationship management (crm). It, too, grew out of a Sugarcrm base and is maintained by SalesAgility. It is a free and open alternative application to Salesforce. Suitecrm has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since the first version. It has been adopted by very demanding organizations such as the NHS (National Health Service) in England, which seeks to promote Open Source internally. The Suitecrm project has been repeatedly awarded for software quality. The Suitecrm community now consists of 25,000 members.

4. Zurmo: crm & gamification

Zurmo is written entirely in PHP. It managed to stand out in the market because it combined functions typical of simple crm software (targeting, customer data,sales automation) more playful tools such as employee rewards. This novelty plus an ease of use from various platforms (mobile crm application), make it a tool that encourages employees to use it. Other interesting features include: multi-language support and integration with Google Maps.

5. Espocrm: the easy-to-use crm

Espocrm is a crm that is perfectly suited to SMEs. Its highly intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate through all the functions a medium-sized company needs: marketing campaign management, account management, diary, sales process monitoring and automation, messaging, and activity tracking. This tool is an option for companies that want to start with a simple tool that does not require special training but brings consistent benefit to sales. This crm is relatively young, but it benefits from very favorable word-of-mouth due in part to the Saas mode that allows for streamlined contact management through a cloud-based crm service.

Sugarcrm is no longer open source

You will not find Sugarcrm in this ranking because it has not been an Open Source crm tool for several years. The company is now positioned as a direct competitor to Salesforce. That said, vtiger crm and Suitecrm have taken its place with great success.

Paid alternatives

Of course, if the free tools do not offer features you seek, you can always opt for a paid salesforce automation solution. In this case the variety is definitely greater and also possible to find a cloud-based crm system. If what scares you is the financial investment, companies often offer a 30-day free trial to get familiar with the tool before investing in it.

Let's look at some famous software:

• Zoho crm
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics

From CRM to ERP, there is only one step

Many CRM tools are evolving to ERPs, and in most ERPs you can integrate a customer relationship management module. In fact, if you haven't found the software you needed with the above solution, then the CRM you are looking for may be a module within an integrated ERP software. The list of ERPs that offer crm-such as Panthera, Sage100cloud, Netsuite-is large enough to offer more choices and opportunities for your company.

See all software Customer relationship management

Conclusions

Open source CRMs are a good option from an economic point of view if their implementation and maintenance is easy. This depends mainly on the product and your team. However, the advantage of open source crm is mainly functional because the development rate is faster than that of a proprietary crm. You can also use a specialized hosting provider who will make the crm available on their Cloud to solve any technical problems. The list of trusted open source crm is relatively small, so open source ERPs with a crm module should be considered in the list of available options.