The free CRM business model is designed to force you to upgrade to an expensive paid plan when your business outgrows the free features. Why an affordable CRM is better than a free CRM If your CRM’s free plan comes with just one custom activity field, you can’t document both. However, free plans often set limits to that functionality. Another salesperson thinks a different approach will work better with their lead and wanted to create “Send an instant message” as a custom activity as well. For example, one of your sales reps just created the custom activity “Dinner with client”. Some leads want to be wined and dined, others appreciate the convenience of talking via email or text.īeing able to create custom activities makes documenting different methods of closing simple. The activity that closes a deal depends a lot on the style of the sales rep and the needs of the client. The result is more manual work for your team and reduced effectiveness for your email campaigns.Ĭustom fields and activities. However, free plans often limit the number of email templates your team can create leaving them stuck with only a few templates to use for hundreds or thousands of diverse clients.
Sales professionals want to send personalized communications to their unique leads. Without full functionality, your sales team will waste time manually tracking emails and data once they reach the limits of the plan.Įmail templates. Many free plans limit history to the most recent weeks or months, accommodate only a few email clients and restrict the number of emails you can sync per day. With full email sync, sales reps can quickly get up to speed on a customer’s situation and email them directly from your CRM. It also seamlessly connects your email client (Gmail, Outlook etc.) with your CRM tools. Email sync stores your communication history and all your customer data. Let’s look at some of the ways oversimplified software limits your team.Įmail sync. Major limitations and restrictions on important featuresĬonstant prompts to upgrade to a paid version The free version of many CRM products is often intentionally stripped of key benefits so that customers, already used to using it, will be forced to upgrade to a paid plan when they need more features.įree CRM software often leaves you wanting more with: Reduced functionality hinders your sales team