19

Web Agency CRM

almost 8 years ago from , Code + Strategy

I work for a small web firm that provides various web services and hosting to many clients.

Our problem is that we have lots of clients and lots of domains spread over several different servers. We also have some clients that self-host.

Keeping track of all these and the changes that occur over time is a real headache. How are you guys managing similar situations? Software, service, spreadsheet?

Something that can update in real-time is preferred.

15 comments

  • Gunther GroenewegeGunther Groenewege, almost 8 years ago

    Here are two interesting CRM solutions for freelancers I noticed recently :

    5 points
    • Grégoire GilbertGrégoire Gilbert, almost 8 years ago

      Hey Gunther!

      Thanks for mentioning Story CRM :) I'm one of the founders.

      We built Story because we wanted a simple software to help us track interactions with our clients (vs most CRM who focus on the selling process).

      If you guys have questions, fire away!

      4 points
    • Alex Bestoff, almost 3 years ago

      Hey. Very interesting question. Now I choose the CRM system for myself and there are so many of them on the Internet that I don’t know what to put my opinion on. Could you tell me how to choose the right CRM? I prefer https://www.maxpanda.com/

      0 points
  • Noah SNoah S, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    The guys at Superawesøme (https://sprawsm.com/) had the same problem 2 years ago and ended up creating their own CRM which they have now bought to market as Funnel (https://funnelnow.com/). Might be worth a look see.

    5 points
  • Paul BestPaul Best, almost 8 years ago

    Try Highrise. http://highrisehq.com/

    Depending on the services you're looking to integrate, perhaps Zapier would help.

    4 points
    • Nathan KontnyNathan Kontny, almost 8 years ago

      Thanks Paul! Highrise is getting a lot of love too since we've spun off from Basecamp. Please feel free to reach out (nate@highrisehq.com). How can I help? Not just on CRM stuff, but would love to be of service to anyone here in the community.

      1 point
  • Patrick BenskePatrick Benske, almost 8 years ago

    I would love to see an answer to this as well. Having the same problem.

    3 points
  • Daniel SieradskiDaniel Sieradski, almost 8 years ago

    at the last agency i worked at, we did it with an internal wiki.

    2 points
  • James Dellar, almost 8 years ago

    Hi Rob, At Onespacemedia we use a system called Base. https://getbase.com/

    1 point
  • Bjoern ZinssmeisterBjoern Zinssmeister, almost 8 years ago

    What do you define as "changes over time"? Are they upgrading their plans? New projects coming in with existing clients?

    We built https://ivyleads.co to have a beautiful and easy to use sales pipeline tool that is popular with a lot of interactive agencies and SaaS apps. Unlike some other CRMs it has a focus on collaboration and lets you have multiple deals/projects per client... maybe it can be helpful?

    1 point
  • Adam Parrish, almost 8 years ago

    I think it depends on what you want to track. Are you waiting it for clinet interactions, or for client management?

    Some people may think this is overkill, but you could look at a cloud hosted JIRA and Confluence account for client management. We use it to manage a couple of different projects, and you can set up custom work flows, integrate it with Git repositories, and link tickets to the wiki and vice versa. Also, the smaller user accounts (under 10 people) are fairly cheap from memory. For an example of how it can be leveraged, it can even be used for Asset management. (i,e http://blogs.atlassian.com/2014/03/jira-asset-management-overview/).

    I could see any live changes being managed by the new release functionality, so you know exactly when items have changed on the website and when, and you can also use it for project management on top of this. Then you could keep all the configuration information on one of the confluence wiki pages, or as a custom issue type that is kept open in the project. It would be about $20 a month including confluence (the wiki software) for 10 users. You could also leverage Service Desk (A JIRA addon) to service customer queries.

    1 point
  • Robert BlakeRobert Blake, almost 8 years ago

    Thanks! I really appreciate everyone's responses.

    0 points
  • Ryan Hicks, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Working on a new product right now for small to mid size companies. CRM integration, marketing automation, form designer, landing page designer, analytics, and email designer in one. We have alpha software running looking to beta it here in next couple months. Not sure if that's what you're looking for. That's all the details I can give out though.

    0 points