Base CRM by Future Simple

Update: Novem­ber 2018: Base has joined with Zen­desk Sup­port. Their new name is Zen­desk Sell. Their pric­ing struc­ture has changed as well. It spans from $19, $49, $99 and $199 per user. I use the words Base CRM in the arti­cle below, writ­ten in 2012. I’ve been keep­ing an eye on Base CRM (for­mal­ly Pipejump) for over a year now. The thing that attract­ed me to Base CRM orig­i­nal­ly was the design and User Inter­face (UI). It was a very sim­ple UI. It should be, as it was devel­oped by a com­pa­ny called, Future Sim­ple. So far they seem to make sim­ple, easy to use web and mobile apps. So what makes Base CRM spe­cial or worth check­ing out? I won’t go over all the details, just the key fea­tures I liked:

• iPhone & Android Native Apps: This is where Base CRM Shines more than most oth­er Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment pro­grams on the web. They have not pro­mot­ed their prod­uct much until the Native Apps were released (at the same time too). I think this was a very smart busi­ness idea. Many peo­ple, includ­ing myself, have worked with one CRM after the oth­er, hop­ing and pray­ing for a good mobile solu­tion to be released. Small busi­ness peo­ple are on the move, not always in front of a desk. Most soft­ware com­pa­nies will release a web app ver­sion before a native app, when their cus­tomers want a native app. (If you don’t know the dif­fer­ence, com­ment in this post or email me. I’ll explain.) The Base iPhone App works very well in my test­ing. Once again, it does­n’t have a lot of fea­tures, but it has just enough: Con­tact Infor­ma­tion, Task and the abil­i­ty to cre­ate and mon­i­tor deals on the go. The con­tact area works sim­i­lar to the iPhone con­tacts too. What more do you need? I’d love to see the cal­en­dar fea­ture, but that is not a must at this point. The design and UI of Base CRMs mobile apps are very slick. In fact, I like it bet­ter than Sales­force (the leader in Cloud CRMs). The rea­son why most oth­er CRM devel­op­ers do not have native Apps is because the expense and updates. First it is very expen­sive to cre­ate an App: as high as $50,000 some­times. Then get­ting updates pushed can take awhile: Google or Apple has to approve them. That is the main rea­son most devel­op­ers steer away from them. The con­sumers (you and me) have got­ten addict­ed to the easy of native apps, so we like them bet­ter than going to a browser.
• Inte­grates well with Google Apps for Busi­ness. If you don’t real­ly know what that means, read my post about Google Apps vs Gmail. You can for­ward the emails you want quick­ly and eas­i­ly into Base. You can also cre­ate Notes, Task, View Exist­ing Notes, Cus­tomer Details all with­in Gmail. See Screen­shot.
• Export Task/​Events to Google Cal­en­dar with One Click: Base keeps every­thing very sim­ple, includ­ing nam­ing things. For exam­ple, Task can mean either an event or to do. Instead of hav­ing two many but­tons and options, Base makes it sim­ple to cre­ate a task. When com­plet­ed, you have an option to send to iCal or Google’s Cal­en­dar. See Screen­shot.
• Cus­tom Fields & Cus­tomer Infor­ma­tion: Again, no infor­ma­tion over­load with the Con­tact Man­age­ment area. It starts out with the very basic infor­ma­tion, and you can then add cus­tom fields, which in my test, worked great! You can eas­i­ly look up cus­tomers and con­tacts using their easy to find search sec­tion and dig deep­er using Tags. I actu­al­ly like how sim­ple the UI is for the Con­tact Man­age­ment area. Many small busi­ness own­ers are over­whelmed with too much infor­ma­tion. It is also one of the rea­sons I still eval­u­ate CRMs…looking for sim­ple solu­tions for that one audi­ence and more advanced pro­grams for those who want more! This CRM is easy to learn and do what most small busi­ness­es need (at least start­ing out).
• Deals and Report­ing: This is where Base seems to spend a lot of time in devel­op­ing a good user inter­face with the design and report­ing. Once you start fill­ing in your deals, Base begins cre­at­ing a cus­tom data­base for good report­ing. (note for the old Act! users read­ing this: Deals are Oppor­tu­ni­ties). You can quick­ly look at where all your best leads are com­ing from, how many you’ve closed, lost and what still needs to be done to close out a deal.
• Sup­port: Very quick response and help when I need­ed it. They lis­ten to me too!
• Import­ing from Oth­er CRMs: They make it easy. I tried it and had no issues. They’ve also offered to help import exist­ing deals (and have them postdated)
• Price: The price is free for any­one to start using Base. So how do they make their mon­ey? Well, they give you a cer­tain amount of free DEALS. Once you reach that amount, I think it is $150, then you go to a paid account, which starts at $29.99 a month. This could still be a very afford­able option for many small busi­ness­es. Lets say you are a remod­el­er who does 50 bids a year. It would take you 3 years before you’d reach the paid ver­sion. If you are a paint com­pa­ny that does 20 bids a week, it would take you a cou­ple months before you hit the paid ver­sion of $29.99 a month. Where it can get a lit­tle pricey for the small com­pa­nies is when you hit 1000 deals. Base charges $99.99 for from 1,001 to 10,000 deals. If you have a larg­er sales staff 5 esti­ma­tors, $99.99 a month is nothing.

The Bot­tom line about Base, so far in my ear­ly test­ings of it’s abil­i­ties: I like it. I’ve sug­gest­ed a num­ber of fea­tures to the com­pa­ny, and I hope they will imple­ment them. For exam­ple, their Task Times only give you 1 hour options. I’d rather make task with 15 min incre­ments. Seems like an easy update, and they’ve already said it is in the works. Inte­gra­tion with Google Doc­u­ments, a File stor­age (Drop­box, Egnyte, Box​.net) would also be nice. They are work­ing on a Quote sys­tem (to send esti­mates and invoic­es sim­i­lar to Fresh­books. It is already released, but improve­ments are under­way). Base CRM is your sim­ple and easy to use CRM. I think by not hav­ing too many fea­tures, it will make some of you very hap­py and have less frus­tra­tions. I’d like to see Google Apps have more plu­g­ins and keep the CRM sim­ple. Let me know if you’ve tried Base and what you think about it.