Alternatives to Highrise: Which One Should You Aim?
Nowadays, implementing the CRM system is a key to your business organization. The platforms assist companies in identifying their audience, designing client acquisition strategies, categorizing data to build and maintain better customer relationships, etc.
Among the variety of platforms out there, Highrise stands out as a solution that helps to accomplish all of the aforementioned tasks seamlessly. The tool, created by 37Signals, has been on the market since 2007, and proved to be a great option for small businesses. It is known for its user-friendly interface, accessible even for a CRM beginner. Highrise makes it easy to scan conversation flow in contacts, deals, and more. You can create and assign tasks to teammates, track the progress and set reminders. Furthermore, it allows you to share status updates about a project or deal with your sales team or the entire company.
Reasons of Highrise Switch
Despite the numerous benefits Highrise has to offer, many customers realize the solution is no longer operating at the level they need. Instead of looking at simplicity as an advantage, they find it as a lack of features such as:
- there’s no ability to assign tasks to more than one person at a time
- there is no option for assigning leads to another team member
- the platform doesn’t offer a reporting feature, so you can’t get an accurate picture of who your customers are, which products or services they like or dislike, and which of them are performing the best or the worst
- the solution doesn’t offer custom fields and calendar
With the need for any of features above you may find Highrise insufficient. Furthermore, in 2014, it was announced that Highrise CRM will no longer be developed. So, it became a big problem for the companies that are expanding and require more advanced system functionality all the time. By and large, a lot of people started to look for solutions that could replace it.
Price as an Evitable Point
Price is certainly very important when comparing top CRM systems. Potential CRM users have very specific criteria to determine their top software choice, so in order to get a better picture at the end, let’s take a look at Highrise variety of packages:
- Solo - $29 per month/1 user/5 GB file storage/unlimited deals/20,000 contacts
- Basic - $24 per month/up to 6 users/5 GB storage/10 deals/5,000 contact
- Plus - $49 per month/up to 15 users/15 GB storage/unlimited deals/20,000 contacts
- Premium - $99 per month/up to 40 users/30 GB storage/unlimited deals/30,000 contacts
- Max - $149 per month/unlimited users/50,000 contacts/unlimited deals/75GB storage
As you can see, Highrise offers comparatively flexible pricing, yet there is a myriad of other CRM options that can boost your organizational performance for more reasonable costs. Let’s check out CRM alternatives to Highrise to help you choose the one that fits your needs best.
Target the Right Alternative
Bitrix24
Even though Bitrix24 is a relatively young solution, it became a comprehensive platform almost right from the beginning. It is a great choice for small business and provides users with the automation of the sales funnel, customizable reports, and analytic tools. You can easily improve your in-house collaboration with the help of built-in files sharing over the company.
Bitrix24 includes a free plan and 3 paid versions. The free option is a fairly good deal that includes all basic features, such as tasks, activity stream, lead and contact management. However, you can only get a limited amount of users and no access to the extranet. The paid subscriptions provide a broader range of options such as time tracking tools, reports, advanced duplicate search and backup restore. So, if you find Bitrix24 as a suitable solution for achieving your business goals, you should consider the price advantages:
- Free 12 users/5GB storage
- Plus ($39 user/month)/24 users/24GB storage
- Standard ($99 user/month)unlimited users/100GB storage/ability to add your own domain
- Profesional ($199/month)unlimited users/unlimited storage/customization with your own domain
Obviously, Bitrix24 is a budget-friendly alternative to Highrise that can empower your business in terms of easy customization and low costs. If you want to try this platform out and test its essential features, take a look at this article, describing the peculiarities of Bitrix24 setup.
Zoho
Zoho CRM is a practical and affordable alternative to Highrise that provides versions for both small business and large enterprises. You can get better prospect engagement by using advanced web-forms and lead management. The platform provides you with comprehensive analytics and report system for measuring the effectiveness of processes, as well as customizable workflow for task management.
Zoho offers 14 days trial and 5 editions that with valuable features and moderate prices. However, free plan comes with some limitations due to lack of marketing campaigns creation, mass emails sending and custom report generation options. Apart from the free version, you may benefit from the peculiarities of the paid editions that provide advanced workflow automation, sales forecasting, invoice and telephony integration as well as data sharing. The platform offers monthly and annual billing:
- Free 10 - completely free of charge version for 10 users with lead and contact managers, opportunities, tasks, web-forms, 1GB storage and 25,000 contacts, etc.
- Standard - $12 user/month (annually billing), $15 user/month (monthly billing)
- Professional - $20 user/month (annually billing), $25 user/month (monthly billing)
- Enterprise - $35 user/month (annually billing), $40 user/month (monthly billing)
- CRM Plus - $50 user/month (annually billing), $60 user/month (monthly billing)
Clearly, Highrise takes an upper hand in the pricing matter. But if you are looking for the solution with more features and effective tools, then Zoho should be your platform of choice.
Sugar CRM
SugarCRM attracts the organizations of all sizes. The solution offers advanced workflow that allows to increase operational efficiency and consistency.The automation of sales funnel helps to ensure timely follow-ups and emails sending out. The system is also popular for its multi-channel marketing, highly targeted email campaigns and simple reporting that can help you to track visitors, customers, and prospects.
Sugar CRM comes in 3 versions. All editions include a deep feature set, integration with social media and third-party apps as well as an online support portal. With more expensive plans, you can benefit from opportunity management, additional forecasting options, customer portals, and customizable activity streams. Consider the diversity of SugarCRM editions:
- Sugar Professional - $35 user per month/15GB storage
- Sugar Enterprise - $60 user per month/60GB storage
- Sugar Ultimate - $150 user per month/ 250GB storage
As you can see, SugarCRM is a flexible solution that prevails over Highrise with more advanced functionality and higher efficiency.
Insightly
Insightly is popular for its powerful integration with many applications and social media. Its specific reports and analytic options can be easily customized to your needs. Furthermore, the ability of linking related items together allows you to move between the different records in the database easily, making them intuitively connected and just one click away.
Insightly comes with a free edition and 4 paid subscriptions. All plans include accommodation for unlimited organizations, opportunities, and projects. The paid ones provide a few more extras such as MailChimp integration, Google Contact and Calendar Sync, custom branding, and API access. A number of supported records of all editions varies in the following way:
- Free up to 2 users/10 custom fields/2,500 records/up to 200 MB Storage/500 rows file import limit
- Basic - $12 user per month/50 custom fields/25k records/1 GB storage/5,000 rows file import limit
- Plus - $29 user per month/250 custom fields/100k records/10 GB storage/25,000 rows file import limit
- Professional - $49 user per month/500 custom fields/250k records/100 GB storage/50,000 rows file import limit
- Enterprise - $99 user per month/1000 custom fields/500k Records/250 GB Storage/50,000 rows file import limit
So, aside from attractive pricing policy, Insightly gets an advantage over Highrise with effective features for advancing sales, marketing and support service performance. In case you considering Insightly CRM, check out this article about basic features of the solution and its setup mechanism.
Get into Conclusions
We have outlined the main alternatives to Highrise above. In order to hit a right target, you need to weigh all pros and cons, think about your business objectives and identify the platform that fits your needs. What’s more, you don’t have to worry about data switch. An automated migration system Trujay can transfer your information in a fast, direct and secure way. Try free demo migration right now and check out the service in action.