Hosted CRM with non-Outlook email integration?

May 5, 2008 4:24 PM

Can you recommend a hosted CRM system that lets me create a new contact by forwarding an email to a drop box? I'm using Highrise and looking for a replacement.

I'm losing patience with 37Signals' refusal to respond to questions about the data export feature they promised more than a year ago, so I'm looking for a Highrise replacement. The main features I really really want:

1. The ability to create a new contact simply by forwarding an email to the system. Highrise does this nicely, but the bajillion other systems I've looked at apparently don't, unless I use Outlook, which I don't. My previous failures with other CRM systems proves that if I have to manually enter every prospect, they won't get entered.

2. The ability to export all contact info, including notes, comments, and tags.

3. The ability to enter longish free-form comments and notes.

Have I missed a good system?

posted by PatoPata to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I feel your pain -- i spent months searching for a replacement to Highrise, only to come back to it after finding nothing else. The closest thing we came to was Relenta CRM, which isn't one where you forward your contacts to the CRM, the CRM is your inbox. It's one of the few systems that works like this, and it works pretty well. It was a no-go for us because of price, but looks like a pretty good solution.
posted by ukdanae at 2:22 AM on May 6, 2008

Response by poster: ukdanae, thanks for the link to Relenta, which I hadn't heard of. I'll give it a try.
posted by PatoPata at 10:05 AM on May 6, 2008

Response by poster: Update: I signed up with Relenta but during my testing found 2 deal-breakers.

1. Emails were very slow to show up in Relenta--average 15 minutes; one took 25 minutes. This happened whether the email was being forwarded to Relenta from my business email or sent directly to my Relenta address. This would be a problem for me because clients often send me files during phone conferences, and I want to use just one (fast!) email address. Relenta should replace my standard email inbox, but not at those speeds! The same emails sent to Highrise showed up in the Highrise dashboard almost immediately. System messages from Relenta were also slow to arrive.

2. You can't enter long notes. When I tried, the "save" button simply didn't work. Only short notes could be saved. I need to record lots of info about phone conversations, etc.

So I'm back to Highrise, too, and trying to figure out some other workaround.
posted by PatoPata at 11:29 AM on May 7, 2008

Sorry to hear Relenta didn't work out. I just started trialling Zenbe which is kind of like highrise + backpack + campfire all rolled up into one - it's a touch light on the CRM contact grouping capabilities just now but might be worth looking at - the UI is very nice and like Relenta, it replaces your inbox and auto-creates contacts from emails.
posted by ukdanae at 3:44 AM on May 9, 2008