Base CRM's Fall 2012 Update (Now Zendesk Sell)

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. Base CRM from Future Sim­ple keeps get­ting more robust every month I use their prod­uct. To learn more about the details of what this sim­ple CRM can do, read my pre­vi­ous reviews on Base 1 Post Here and 2. Post Here In short, Base CRM is the best small busi­ness CRM on the mar­ket that works beau­ti­ful­ly with mobile smart­phones, tablets, Macs, PCs and Google Apps. Key fea­ture updates: 

• It offers both online and offline access of your data when you are on the go, which many com­peti­tors do not cur­rent­ly offer.
• Incred­i­ble native apps (installed on your device): iPhone, iPad, Android & Win­dows Phone (offline).
• Inte­gra­tion with Mailchimp for Email Mar­ket­ing: This is a brand new fea­ture this month. It works well. You can add peo­ple to select list. I am a huge fan of Mailchimp for send­ing emails, so I am excit­ed about this new feature.
• Send­ing emails with­in Base CRM: If I’m too lazy to send an email with­in my Google account, I can do it with­in Base. If I real­ly want­ed to, I could just use Base for sending/​receiving. (I still like my Google Apps though). It noti­fies me if the per­son has received and read my email as well. It then stores a copy with­in the cus­tomer note sec­tion. New Fea­ture: All my emails sent from with­in Google are auto BCC’d to Base. No more hav­ing to remem­ber to auto BCC or for­ward emails.
• Sales Automa­tion: Those of you who have a set sales sys­tem in place will love their easy to use Sales Automa­tion fea­ture. You can set­up all your Sales Stages and what Task will auto pop­u­late when you’ve told it to do so. This is per­fect for those who have a sales team and want to make sure you remain con­sis­tent. Some­times this fea­ture can be over­whelm­ing, because you def­i­nite­ly will get reminders and task that you have to check off to move on. Regard­less, this fea­tures is a real plus. (Paid users only)
• Deals: Easy to cre­ate, track and man­age deals from a desk­top or mobile device. You can add files to Drop­box, set fol­low up task, run quick reports on where you are at in the pipline/​sales stage and more. The deals in Base CRM are a real plus.
• Pipeline & Reports: Their report­ing fea­tures got a major upgrade and facelift this Sum­mer 2012. The graphs and reports are clean­er and eas­i­er to view.
• Easy Tag­ging and Con­tact Look up. (Mul­ti-Tags too)
• Cus­tom Fields
• Task Fea­tures are get­ting bet­ter. The task fea­tures with­in Base CRM are pow­er­ful but still need a bit of improve­ment. They work just fine, and I use them every­day. My main ​“beaf” with their task man­age­ment is that cur­rent­ly I can only set task on the hour: 12, 1, 2, 3. I then get a reminder 1 hour before. I’d like more cus­tomiza­tion here. That is com­ing, from what Base has told me. So expect some Task improve­ments Short­ly. I’d like to add a fea­ture request to have Google Cal­en­dar be 100% synced to Base…no bounc­ing back and forth. I want to cre­ate an event with a cus­tomer with­in BASE and have the inter­face be Google. It is ok to have a wishlist!
• Google Gad­get. See Above Pic­ture. I can add a note, a task or a new con­tact right with­in my busi­ness Google Apps account.
• iPhone and iPad Apps: When Base released their almost com­plete­ly bug free iPad ver­sion in late August, they gave the iPhone a facelift too. I liked the old ver­sion, but this one still is quite user friend­ly and bug free.
• Over­all New Design: Base CRM also was giv­en a com­plete­ly new and improved look. It is clean­er, faster and easy to use.

Base CRM is real­ly a great Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment pro­gram for the small and medi­um size busi­ness­es. For the lit­tle guy who does­n’t need it for lots of sales, he cause use Base for free. For every­one else, $15 a user for the basic plan and $45 a user for all the advanced fea­tures. It is worth the cost based on all the fea­tures and easy of use.