I use Dabble for everything -- dabbledb.com -- which is a paid, hosted relational database platform. But you have to design your own database -- fields, relationships, etc... -- and you can't program actions. Though you can very easily generate Web forms for entering data. I love this part of it. I've also played around with Zoho CRM a little bit, but we never really used it. - Maria On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Don Lesser <dlesser at ptraining.com> wrote: > ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. > ** If you did, we all thank you. > > > > My two cents: > > > > ACT, since 6.0 has declined steadily in its usability and stability. I > recently received a check for $35 as my share of a settlement for a suit > that someone brought against ACT 2005 for not delivering the promised > features. I have one client in ACT 2007 who has problems with it. (Birthday > fields do not refresh—you are always looking at the birthday of the previous > contact you viewed, even though the correct birthday is in the record). ACT > promised that the new version will fix the problem, but wants to charge them > full price for each copy to fix an acknowledged bug. It locks down the MSDB > engine, making backup of the SQL versions hard (at least it used to). I got > the impression that the newest owners were trying to upsell you to their > higher end version by providing the minimal support needed to keep current > ACT customers from leaving. > > > > I used Goldmine for one client, but was not very happy with it. It has a > lot of fans, so I think that if you take the time to learn it, you'll like > it. ACT, through 6.0, was so easy to use, set up, customize, and link to > with an SDK that I think I became spoiled. Microsoft's offerings are either > Business Contact Manager for non-Exchange offices or CRM 3.0 for large > organizations. The Business Contact Manager package won't work if you do > have Exchange and CRM 3.0 is aimed at large corporations and I never wanted > to take the time to work with it. (It's not that I am so Microsoft-centric > that I have to have an MS solution; I get all MS software "free" as part of > my paid Certified Partnership with them, so I tend to look at their stuff > first.) Business Contact Manager is a free download for any Outlook user and > installs into Outlook, if you want to look at that. > > > > I implemented SUGAR CRM for one client. I found that, if you are willing to > do some PHP programming, you can do whatever you want. However, the > documentation implied that you could easily convert a group of LEADS to > CONTACTS and COMPANIES (Sugar keeps these separate from leads and when you > convert a lead to a contact, you need to create/link it to a Company > record). You cannot—you must do it one record at a time. I also found the > reporting and display not very flexible unless you were willing to modify > the forms using PHP. My Sugar contact apologized for the error, but with > 2,000 leads already entered, I was pretty disgusted. Since they had been > modified, it was not practical to simply recreate the database. My own > fault, I suppose, for not testing it more extensively before deploying. > > > > I like the idea of a hosted web program, especially for a geographically > diverse group of salespeople or for cross platform compatibility, but for my > own office, I bought a program that would extract my existing ACT data into > an Access database, then spent about 5 hours tweaking the resulting database > so that I could use it for new contacts, notes, and opportunities. We do > scheduling in Exchange and I have to copy and paste the e-mail address from > the ACT.mdb to Outlook, but when I get some time, I'll import the e-mail > addresses from the database into Exchange and make it a public address book. > It is not perfect, but it works for our needs and since the data is in > Access, I have complete control over it. > > > > I haven't used Sales Force and the people I know who do are part of a large > organization. For me, the issue with open source is that you have to be able > to and want to get into the guts of the app if you want to modify it more > than casually and you have to do it with a minimal amount of documentation > and support. That limits something like Sugar for me, although if you are > comfortable with PHP/MySQL, it makes it a good business opportunity to sell > and customize for a client. That's part of a larger question about open > source, I suppose. > > > > Don Lesser > > Pioneer Training, Inc. > > 139B Damon Road, Suite 2 > > Northampton, MA 01060 > > (413) 387-1040 / (413) 536-1030 > > (413) 586-0545 (fax) > > dlesser at ptraining.com > > www.ptraining.com > > > > *From:* hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto: > hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] *On Behalf Of *DAVID F. > FARKAS > *Sent:* Monday, September 22, 2008 12:35 AM > *To:* Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > *Subject:* [Hidden-tech] ACT! vs. SalesForce > > > > Hi folks... > > I'm wondering if any of you can either compare or share your strong > preferences for one of these two CRM solutions: ACT! software or > SalesForce.com online (the free minimalist solution.) > > If you have experience with SalesForce, have you tried the integration with > GoogleApps? > > Anything you can give me will be helpful. Thanx! > Blissings, > Da/\id > > > ------------------------------ > > * LOVE is the Renewable Resource *** > > *DAVID FRANKLIN FARKAS* > > www.HouseHealing.com <http://www.househealing.com/> > > www.YourChocolateHeaven.com <http://www.yourchocolateheaven.com/> > ------------------------------ > > * How can they say my life is not a success? > Have I not, for more than sixty years, got > enough to eat and escaped being eaten? > ~ Logan P. Smith* > * > ------------------------------ > * > > No trees were destroyed by sending this message. However, > a significant number of electrons were sorely inconvenienced > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > -- -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Maria Trombly | TROMBLY LTD Covering Asian securities, payments and technology for the world's top trade magazines Work: 413-323-4356 | Cell: 413-559-9055 | maria at tromblyltd.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20080924/e68a7264/attachment.html