[Hidden-tech] ACT! vs. SalesForce

[Joseph Steig]

Price points for Salesforce now start at a single user, at $99 per user per
year. If you scale up to 7-10 users it starts to become pricey until you
consider that it's still much cheaper than ANY of the equivalents and even
more so when you factor in the cost of maintaining your own server etc.
GoldMine has moved significantly upmarket, no longer offering their entry
level product, leaving ACT and a few others on the PC side. On the Mac side,
Marketcircle makes a great GoldMine-equivalent called DayLite. But ACT is PC
only and DayLite is Mac only. Salesforce is a good cross-platform
alternative, with the caveat that syncing your data from the "cloud" onto
your PC only works on Windows--there is no OS X equivalent sync. So, if you
use a Mac with Salesforce you're almost stuck to the cloud . . . the
"almost" is because there is a Salesforce-GMail sync for contacts. It has
real limitations but these should be fixed as the sync product matures. And
if you have your contacts in GMail, you can get them into your Mac through
other sync mechanisms--all this can happen in the background, again with
caveats.

You could also take a look at the much less fully featured HighRise from
37Signals (but "much less fully featured" is their raison d'etre).

More on my blog www.2muchtech.blogspot.com and click the category "CRM."

---------
joseph at steig.com | 617-500-7376 EST


On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Michael R. Hegarty <
mhegarty at sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:

>  ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>  ** If you did, we all thank you.
>
>
>
> My personal experience is that for a small to medium sized sales force, (1
> - 50 users) that a traditional client/app like ACT! or Goldmine is easier to
> manage and less expensive to support in the long run.
>
> SaaS/ASP CRM are targeted at large Enterprise users with large Enterprise
> customers and, for my money, do not offer the flexibility and scale I need
> to manage a small sales team, (7 - 10 users) or to track and manage our
> activity with a primarily mid-market customer base.
>
> Other undoubtedly have differing and equally valid opinions.
>
> MRH
>
> On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, DAVID F. FARKAS wrote:
>
>  Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:34:34 -0400
>> From: DAVID F. FARKAS <david at farkas.com>
>> To: Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>> Subject: [Hidden-tech] ACT! vs. SalesForce
>>
>>  ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>>  ** If you did, we all thank you.
>>
>>
>>
>>
> mhegarty at sdf.lonestar.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net
> Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net
>
> You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list.
> If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members   page
> on the Hidden Tech Web site.
> http://www.hidden-tech.net/members
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20080922/1abcd97a/attachment.htm