What is a CRM Customer Relationship Management?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with your customers and potential customers. It helps you improve your profitability.
CRM enables you to focus on your organization’s relationships with individual people – whether those are customers, service users, colleagues or suppliers. salesforce
You might be wondering why on earth would one use WordPress as a CRM when there are a number of robust options out there. For example, Zoho CRM, Insightly, and Salesforce are widely used that typically receive positive user reviews.
The answer to this question is a little bit complicated because the needs of the business are the deciding factor here. WordPress could be the best choice for many business needs, so let’s find out if it’s right for you in this article.
Why consider WordPress as an CRM?
One of the biggest reasons why a business might go with WordPress is cost. Most of the current CRM solutions are ridiculously expensive and could burn a hole in a budget, especially in case of small companies and startups.
Let’s compare the cost of some popular options.
| Services | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Salesforce Basic | $75/user/month (unlimited: $300) |
| Microsoft Dynamics 365 Basic | $95/user/month ($10 additional monthly fee) |
| Zoho Basic | $10/user/month (unlimited: $100) |
| NetSuite CRM+ CRM+c | $129/user/month |
| Insighly Basic | $12/user/month (unlimited: $129) |
Most of the CRM WordPress plugins, however, are free.
In addition to these standard monthly fees, expect more costs while using popular CRMs. For example, Salesforce’s $75 per month is not everything you’ll have to pay, Business Insider wrote recently.
After reaching the plan’s storage limit, the users are faced with additional $125/month for 500 MB. Want offline CRM functioning, too? Great, just $25/user/month. What about 24/7 support? Additional 15 percent of license price, please.
I think the point is pretty clear. Here are more reasons you might want to consider WordPress as a CRM.
- No need to build databases from scratch. If you are already using WordPress, there is a good chance you have lots of data about customers. Moving to another CRM means losing it all.
- Automatic integration. The developers of WordPress provided CRM plugins with the ability to automatically integrate with the website. Fast and easy.
- More capabilities with plugins. A wide range of plugins available for WordPress users is a big advantage. Need some functionality to be created or extended? There is a plugin for that.
- Storing your business data on third-party servers could be a problem. With WordPress, it’s not, because it allows to store everything on your own server.
Best WordPress CRM plugins
Here is a list of 7 free WordPress CRM plugins.
1. WP ERP
This is a free plugin with an impressive reputation. It contains three core modules: accounting module, CRM module, and HR module.
Features of CRM module:
- Activity overview
- Customer listing
- Unlimited users
- Company profile listing
- Lead listing
- Built-in email communication system
- Support for over 40 currencies
2. WP-CRM
WordPress provides essential user management functionality that could be appreciably expanded by a plugin. For example, integrating it with your site will enhance the creation of contact forms, management of users, and keeping track of messaging.
Features:
- User activity
- User organization and editing
- Customizable lead forms
- Lead management
- Forms’ editing
- Unlimited users
- User CSV exporting
3. Presspoint CRM
Another robust CRM solution for WordPress worth attention. Companies that use it rarely complain about problems because Presspoint is written to WordPress best practices and tested to run great with other plugins.
Within one admin, it is possible to integrate memberships, eCommerce, email marketing, and many other functions.
Features:
- User directories
- User accounts
- Smart search
- Commerce
- Sales management
- Events with ticket sales
- Content restriction
- Customer profiles
- Integrated email campaigns
4. DX Sales CRM
An all-in- one place for leads and customers that has some essential functionality, such as tracking the volume of sales, contracts management, self-service portal, and pricing logs.
Other functions include:
- Safety control
- Sales reporting
- Pipeline management
- Progress reports
- Company details
5. WordPress Leads
This is a smart plugin that allows collecting a lot helpful information about leads and customers, including their geographical information, job histories, demographic data, social media profiles, data about referral traffic, comments, and lots more.
As the result, the users can sell their products more efficiently.
Features:
- Search, view, and manage lead data
- Leads’ previous browsing history
- First-time conversion data
- Excellent user organization
- Trends reporting
- Easy integration with other WordPress plugins
- Synchronization with other CRMs
6. UpiCRM
The next effective plugin that will save your business a lot of money. It enables the users to send emails, assign leads, group contacts, and keep a unified database of leads.
Lead assignment to teams and individuals is especially great for businesses because it allows more efficient teamwork.
Features:
- Detailed insights into lead activity
- Easy integration with WordPress
- Complete customer lifecycle management
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Multi-server environment
- Analytics, tracking, and monitoring
- Export to Excel
7. Apptivo
With this open source tool, users have an excellent chance to select the level of customer relationship management they need.
The plugin settings are stored in a local server while the content is designed to be stored in Apptivo servers.
Features:
- Advanced sale tracking
- Lead management
- Easy website integration
- Ability to track traffic sources for leads
- Excellent customization
- Mobile integration
- Customer testimonials management
- Customized contact forms
Wrapping up
CRMs are a staple of successful organizations. They are needed for identifying under-performing customer segments and chances for further development.
In case your business cannot afford to spend big bucks on monthly CRM payments, your current WordPress site might be turned into a CRM as well.
All options described in this article are suitable options for businesses that need to turn WordPress into an excellent CRM. The needs of your business should define your selection, so feel free to check out what they can do for you.
Share your experiences in the comments below!
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