Close.io for therapists, tutors and coaches

I have been looking at various CRM's for my private practice. I provide online therapy for speech, language and learning. Close.io impressed me with its rich features and customizations. I loved the fact that Close.io works perfectly for one person. So many of the other CRMs are for sales teams.

Pros

Everything functioned flawlessly on the first try. I was able to set it up to use my domain name email. I imported all my contacts from Gmail. I could add customizations that would make it easy to keep track of my clients. The search function knocked my socks off! I couldn't remember the name of a certain funding agency. Just by entering the client's name, it gave me the funding agency. Close.io was created for people trying to make an initial sale. I keep my clients three or four years and they often need a break from therapy for a few months. It was easy for me to give clients a status, such as "paused" or "completed goals". I was able to collect leads from my Wordpress website using Planso Forms. These create a new lead in Close.io. The options to add a phone line and bulk email surprised me. I haven't seen this in any other CRMs. I can create email templates and send out messages to groups of people using my domain name email. The messages are plain text, which is just right for smart phones. I tried out the phone function on my computer. I have been using Magic Jack, and getting complaints from clients about MJ. The Close.io phone line is from Twilio and is much clearer. By installing the app on my phone, I can have a second phone number on my cell and I don't have to give clients my personal number.

Cons

I'm in Canada. I wish the price wasn't so high, especially with the exchange rate. As an online therapy provider, I also have to pay for a telepractice platform and an online scheduler. If Close.io offered integration with Verishow and Accuity Scheduling, they would be able to offer a complete virtual office for online therapists, tutors, and coaches.

Close - Marketing Agency

Overall I would highly recommend the software to other businesses users I think it is far better than its competitors.

Pros

It is a great CRM for marketing and sales agencies. I would recommend the software if you do a lot of outbound sales and need to assign tasks to team members.

Cons

It is a little bit of a steep learning curve however once you get the gist of it everything becomes very easy.

Most your organization will ask, "why aren't we using Salesforce?"

Skip it.

Pros

Great if you have the patience and developments resources to help you customize everything. API is good, but for most non-enterprise organizations, who has time to be messing with APIs? Built in VoIP is a nice feature, but do your math and make sure the price is worth it.

Cons

- Searching for data is near impossible. Can't filter for anything logically without getting into "raw queries," so you better be half an engineer if you want to search for anything. - Reporting is a joke. The reporting tools might as well not exist. Be prepared to ask developers to leverage the API and sync into some other tool. - No matter what they may sell you, it's a CRM best used with small sales teams. It's not for account management or companies that expect anyone without an engineering degree to figure out how to analyze the data inside of it.

Great CRM

Overall my experience with Close has been a positive one. Customer service is responsive.

Pros

The pros are that is a pretty straight forward CRM to use. It integrates well with many other applications.

Cons

Overall, I cannot really think of any cons. It gets the job done as a reasonably priced CRM. It does not have as many features as salesforce but for the price its great.

Close is great for startup sales but lacks some simple features

Overall it's been a good but not great experience. The basics are covered for a CRM but some what seems like basic features are still missing.

Pros

I love the automated email sequences to help with my outbound prospecting efforts. This enables me to 'set it and forget it" to ensure proper follow up is happening with prospects.

Cons

I don't like that you can't map specific email chains to specific opportunities. Furthermore, you can't upload files which is a real drawback and support suggested I just link to google shared drives.

It's like magic

We have a startup focused in ticket sales for events in Mexico. We were looking for in-depth data of our salesmen and to make easier for them to keep track of their clients by client type. We used a CRM (highrise), but the data it gave us was no longer enough to know more about whether the size and type of clients - and opportunities - our sales team were generating was the right kind given our current strategy. We initially requested a trial by importing a subset of random data of our former CRM but we felt this was not useful, because not all of those imported leads were relevant to us at the moment. When support from close.io gave us the option to extend our trial period, we deleted all of the previous leads and instead started adding new leads into the platform. That's when we notice the main strong point of close.io: by adding our first lead's email, within seconds we had a full history of each email we exchanged in the past. The desktop app works like a charm. Also, when you have a small sales team like ours, it's great to add a lead and check if one of your teammates already make a contact. Finally, it's amazing how easy is to categorize leads, we even use it to keep track of investors, allies and competitors. The call feature is also a huge breath of fresh air into a follow-up process. The fact you can make calls straight from the app, that those calls get recorded and also get tracked into a lead's history ensures automatic track of almost every kind of interaction with a lead. In our case, although we tried it and it worked great, we won't make use of it because our small office space forces us to do calls by getting outside the office, and given our internet connection is not that solid we will keep making calls the way we are right now and evaluate a full switch later. In a few words: if you have a small sales team and you want to make them doing more closing and less data insertion into follow-up tools, consider switching to close.io

Pros

The email auto-tracking is by far the the tool of close.io. The fact you can create a lead and it automatically brings all of the history of emails you exchanged with them gives a lot more insight and visibility into salesman follow-up performance. Also, the call feature; if you have a strong internet connection, and especially if you're a startup and your salespeople is constantly on the run. Support also responds very quickly to feedback, which made a lot easier the switch from our former CRM.

Cons

For our business, it´s very important to do bulk imports. However, the tool does not let you to opt out of duplicating leads, which makes us take longer to "curate" each file we want to import.

Great Beginner CRM Tool

Great tool overall to get started for a founder with little sales experience

Pros

- Very easy to get started / intuitive interface - Enables you to send emails straight from tool and manage inbox - Ability to set reminders and follow ups - pipeline UI, similar to salesforce or hubspot

Cons

- analytics on emails (open rates, campaigns) hard to understand. Ended up using persistIQ for this - hard to tell when prospect opened email

A modern sales platform optimized for outreach

While Close.io is a CRM by definition, I consider it more of a sales platform. I consider it as a platform because of it's flexible and rich API that allows you to customize any component. Close.io is a fantastic tool that teams should use for interacting with their customers. With built-in call and email integration, Close.io is designed for salesperson outreach. It eliminates unnecessary data entry, and is the perfect companion for any sales team using the "Predictable Revenue" (A book by Aaron Ross) approach to sales. All activity (calls, emails, lead status changes) is automatically tracked, leaving the sales rep to just write contextual notes for each activity. The automatic tracking of activity leads sales managers to easily determine how much activity yields certain sales results. Those answers are the holy grail when it comes to building a scalable sales process.

Pros

- Built-in call and email integration. - Flexible and powerful API w/ great documentation. - Dynamic lead lists (called "Smart Views") powered through search. - Native Mac and WIndows apps. - Responsive support team. - Custom fields

Cons

- Costly for budget conscious teams. (But not less expensive than Salesforce and like platforms) - No native mobile apps yet. (Not recommended for outside sales teams)

Best CRM I've had the pleasure of using

Close.io has been a huge help to our small B2B sales department. Before close.io we were using multiple programs to email, call, track, notate, and manage customers. It was a mess!!! Now we can do everything within the app itself. No more transferring information from one source to the other.

Pros

The features that helped us the most: -real-time integration with gmail. We send and receive all our email through the app. Besides being more convenient it also keeps all correspondence logged in an easy to reference way. -recorded calls - all calls and voice-mails are automatically listed right along with notes and emails. This is incredibly useful with longer sales cycles. We are able to go back and actually hear what the customer said on the call two months ago. So much better than just notes, especially if there is every a disagreement. - Support is amazing. Always very responsive and timely and walked us through our limited implementation issues, (see below). Additionally, they are always improving the app, so about the time I suggest an option I'd like to see it is already slated to be rolled out.

Cons

Not really any cons to speak of, but we had a couple issues at first: - call quality was poor. This was due to trying to use a wireless connection and after switching everyone over to wired, it went away. So while not an app problem, something to consider if you or your team work remotely. -Some merging issues when pulling lead data from our web form. Again, this was not an app problem so much as a developer problem on our end, but it was a headache for a couple days none the less.

Fantastic software!

Pros

This is a great email software. It keeps teams informed, inspired and on track for sales!

Cons

At this time I do not have any complaints about the software - all good!

Highly Recommend It

I can tell you that I have used over 20 different CRM systems over the past 10 years. We do a tone of cold calling and we need to just blaze through calls fast and I never could find CRM that allowed us to do this. I was so frustrated that I needed up even creating our own CRM just to do this very thing. I can’t tell you how much money I spent in development of our CRM to make a product that blazes through calls fast. We used that for about a year or two then I stumbled on because our in-house custom CRM was having problems and we didn't have the resources to fix it so I figured I would try again. I cannot tell you how incredibly excited I am about how amazing Stop logging calls and emails and start making them instead. truly is. This CRM is unlike any product on the market it is exactly what we wanted our in-house product to be and more. It’s so awesome we scrapped our in house product and started exclusively using Stop logging calls and emails and start making them instead.. You do not truly have an appreciation for “next gen” this thing really is, there is literally nothing like it on the market and honestly I’m a bit shocked no one seems to get the amazing this thing is. This is a pure sales communication tool that cuts out all the BS of a CRM and is a real actual tool that a sales person can use to increase their sales and not just some data collection thing that salespeople are forced to you. If you actually give a go and start using it you’ll never want to use anything else if you do cold calling. The thing seamlessly interfaces all your calls AND even all your emails! You no longer need to be jumping in and out of outlook, you don’t need to check your outlook or Gmail calendar, and you don’t need to do anything except pull up the Stop logging calls and emails and start making them instead. and do the stuff in your inbox and make money. It pulls in not only your tasks, and follow up meetings but it also syncs your emails and voicemail sand phone calls. It takes every single bit of communication you do and puts it in one quick “to do list” automatically with ZERO data entry. It’s blazing fast and it just works. The voicemail drop thing is really dope, I can’t tell you how many times a day I find myself having to leave voice mails for people, they have this thing that you hit a button and it automatically leaves a voicemail so you can go to the next call, just amazing in terms of productivity.

Pros

There are too many to list – If you do cold calls this is a no brainier, you need to buy it today! It support The best apps. Better together. as well which means it hooks into hundreds of other marketing tools also. Their support is second to none, these guys seems to be hustling hard with support, product development and just providing a kick ass experience for their customers. I recommend this product.

Cons

This thing is EXPENSIVE.. but the truth is you get what you pay for and you geta lot. Your paying for the best and it has a price tag which clearly says it’s the best because it’s more than double the cost of other competitive products. The downside is though I have 3 team members and I’m paying close $300 to $400 a month for 3 people that’s crazy considering there are other products that do VoIp with Twillio for less than $10 a user. So I went from paying $50 a month for CRM and $80 for Twillio VoIP($180) to $300 a month. So my prices doubled, which sucked however after using this product it is worth the extra price but if they raise the prices anymore that is just pushing because it really his priced rather high for the market it’s in. Even the enterprise “SForce” CRMs are not as expensive as that (course those CRMssuck compared to this when it comes to cold calling). The problem is I can’t easily scale with it. So I’ll be stuck with a 3 users fora while where if they had it at a lower price point I would buy a license fore very one of my staff but since it’s so expensive I can’t justify it for anyone but my sales people. I think they are missing out on revenue by not having license does not have the VoIP stuff for like $5 a user so my support team could use it without VoIP and be on par with other CRM price points. It’s clear though this is a nitch product for telephone sales teams. SO that being said if you do not do a lot of phone sales then this product is probably overkill for you and there are many others that are more of “client manager”type of product where this bad boy is a pure sales beast and nothing else.. It will help increase your sales without a doubt! In terms of client management and being asingle point for all customer data it does the job but it does not really do that any better than other products out on the market for half its cost. It’s really the phone cold calling stuff is what makes it so awesome so if any other CRM companies ever figure this out and try to clone/copy it they will have some real competition but so far there is nothing like it and I would buy all over again! Also I really never write reviews either so the fact I’m even doing this speaks to much this thing rocks!

The best CRM for the sales team to do the cold calling at an ease.

Pros

We use pipedrive for email marketing and Close.io for cold calling. Our system works like this. Our marketing team use pipedrive to send out email to possible leads and follow up with them and when it results in a successful response from the prospect the sales team collects the phone numbers. Then these prospects with phone numbers have been downloaded to csv and transferred to Close.io CRM for sales team. Then they do all the cold calling with in Close.io CRM. Our department also have access to this CRM to make support calls later on. We can say our sales team's productivity has increased a lot after implementing this CRM. They do not need to manually do the sorting and recording of calls made and everything can be done in settings just one time.

Cons

When importing the prospects from a CSV if there are duplicates in the file, it doesn't detect that and gets added just like an other contact. There are no option to segment the contact in to different categories.

Best CRM for managing relationships

Love how simple Close.IO is. There's one list of contacts , and then an infinite ways of segmenting the data after that in powerful ways. It's a very powerful concept, and they do it in a way that makes it super easy to manage lists of leads/clients/whatever, and to help make sure you're on top of it. They do this, however, in my opinion, by sacrificing features available in other top CRMs, some that seem like they should just be there. For us it has been worthwhile nonetheless.

Pros

By far the easiest and most intuitive way to manage relationships that I've come across. If it's a big struggle for you to have a bunch of lists of leads, and with your limited time you struggle to stay on top of each and every one of them, then Close.IO is awesome. It has helped us make sure none fall through the cracks, and does that in a way where I don't have to think about it. It just lets me know. Integration through Zapier also brings it to another level of automating workflows.

Cons

It's missing some features that other CRMs have, especially for the price. Although the 'smart views' (how you segment the contacts into different lists) is really really awesome and VERY powerful, there are some limitations that sound like should be there but are just missing (e.g. having different default columns per 'smart view', which sounds like a given to me since someone cares about different data depending on if the contact is a cold lead, qualified lead, or client). Instead now I have a bunch of columns that some people within my company don't care about but are just confusing to them. Also, you have to get the pro/business to get several features that I initially expected would be part of the main one, e.g. there's not a single report that can draw a graph to visually get at-a-glance info of any kind in the basic version. They also don't post their roadmap openly, so I have no idea what features will be coming. So in this respect it feels slightly like an incomplete product, but as mentioned, worth it for how incredibly well they execute the main function we need it for (effectively managing relationships/lists of contacts for both sales and client relationships).

Close - Great CRM for small to medium sized busniesses

Overall Close (close.io) was a great system for our high volume, low price software product. We recently switched from Close to Salesforce and It has been a very bumpy road that more than one department in our company has struggled with. Looking back on our decision, I tend to look fondly on Close's simple and straightforward CRM capabilities.

Pros

Kept all communication and information for a given account/lead visible on one page. Made it very easy to navigate and get an idea of everything surrounding a given lead quickly. - Perfect for high volume telesales - Reporting and lead management was great - Filtering lists made it easy -Phone and text worked great

Cons

The way things were set up, it made it difficult to manage Parent Child orgs for our Enterprise department. Less ability for customization and integrations. - We had a few problems with customer support/account manager getting back to us a few times. (Our account maxed out on calls and we needed to add more several times, but this took a while to flesh out and it completely shut our sales department down a couple times. This happened a few times and we wanted to set things up so it would have added time to our account before we ran out. This should have been addressed so it did not happen and never was.)

Not a CRM

In the end it's very expensive for a bulk lead calling tool.

Pros

This is a great tool if you are just bulk burning through new biz leads and have a fast sales cycle. the calling through Close.io is great, call recording great, ability to create custom lists for lead calling also great

Cons

This is not a CRM period! I would only recommend this if you were integrating it with a dedicated CRM system. The notes are chaotic and very difficult to look back through history and find important past conversations. There is no ability to do ANY form of contract management once a customer is closed and there is also no ability to attach anything to the opportunity info. So if you have a relevant presentation or any documentation relevant to a potential sale you best save it in a google drive and make a custom field to stick the link in.

Great CRM for Early Stage Companies

For an early stage company I think Close.io has everything you'll possibly need. The higher tier plans also let you forgo a phone system in your office to make it even more cost effective. Overall the system is very easy to use and the visual layout of the platform is very nice. And really most of the basic things you'd need out of a CRM are all there. My only qualm with this system is that there are minor annoyances like not being able to unmerge leads in the event you accidentally might have done so. And overall contact management could be slightly improved but it's not enough to ruin the experience in my opinion.

Pros

I really like the ease of use and graphical interface. I also love that I'm able to dial straight from the platform and the templating system is fairly easy to use as well.

Cons

Contact and lead management could be slightly improved. Unmerging leads is not possible from what I can understand so be careful not to merge the wrong leads. Also if your working specific verticals, it's nice to be able to port a contact from one lead to another should they have switched companies but that's not a possibility either.

Rigid structure means only certain sales processes fit (adaptations to all processes are necessary to use effectively)

Overall, Close.io is a B2B CRM where each client has only a few main contacts and they all go through a specific, well-defined process, regardless of whether or not the deal is closed. It's a very expensive platform, especially if you want calling features, so keep that in mind. My two cents: you should assess how well Close.io meets your needs before deciding that this is the right CRM (vs. a different CRM or a custom CRM if you're at higher volumes). Once you decide that it's worth exploring, my recommendation is to figure out how much you'll be paying in annual costs vs. a custom CRM implementation. Close.io pretty much won't prioritize features for you, so if you need anything custom done, I recommend going somewhere else.

Pros

- Easy to get started - Easy to import leads - Easy to keep track of how everyone at your organization is interacting with the client - Pretty simple, but effective reporting

Cons

- Expensive - Low quality call audio - Low customization - Rigid sales structure set-up

Close.io Review

Pros

I like that you are able to track all forms of communication with a potential business. You can crack phone calls, notes, text messages all in the order that you had the conversation with your business. I also like that you are allowed to send text messages to business if they are hard to get a hold of via phone call.

Cons

I think that they could have better integration with other platforms. Our support team uses fresh desk and fresh chat as their source of emails and chats and with no integration it makes it hard for the support person to see the conversation that goes on between the sale person and the customer without having close.io open.

Far Superior to Salesforce

I just want anyone reading this to know that I went from using Close to using Salesforce. Originally I didn't think Close was anything particularly special, because I hadn't tried out any other CRMs. Working with Salesforce has made me change my mind completely - Close is a far superior product.

Pros

Extremely intuitive, clean and smooth. Intelligently designed and sets you and your employees up with a great work flow to stay organized

Cons

The view set ups can take some getting used to (IF, OR, AND) but once you have it figured out your workflow will go so smoothly.

Close helps you close.

The sales team uses close everyday. It has helped us stay organized, keep customer data up to date and stay on top of opportunities.

Pros

-Easy for the team to use. -Calling system is great -Fast customer Service. -Call recording is fantastic. -Easy onboarding

Cons

-Reporting is lacking for what we need. We would like to see more detailed reporting. -Company Hierarchy. No way to easily setup parent and child companies - Limited field for opportunities -Smartviews are difficult to use. - Few direct Integrations.

The future looks bright with Close.IO

I have used Close.IO at my past company and this is the only CRM that I can endorse. When I told my team that I was going to update the current CRM tool I was met with a lot of questions and concerns. After showing the video on the Close.IO site and taking questions for about 20 mins my team was buying into the idea of changing over. I was also able to prove to them that there would be a minimum of an hour that each of them would save a day, so that peaked their interest. Then as we ramped up for the change the nervousness kicked in again, so I made sure to stage the rollout in an effort to handle all questions in a controlled manner and prepare for more users. The employees were blown away by the ease of use! And I was impressed at just how smooth it all went. Being a tech guy my learning curve is quick, but from employees in their 20's-50's we had a hugely successful transition into Close.IO. While my team is still early in the game, about 3 weeks into Close, we are seeing AMAZING results. One of my sales guys is up 50% in his personal sales! Others are up 10-20%. My entire team has said that they cannot wait to see what the future holds as we are continuing to find more ways to improve our process. Close.IO has convinced my team that it is the choice CRM tool.

Pros

Automation and their inbox is a huge pro. Their search feature is arguably the best anyone could ask for. We are still discovering search tricks. GREAT ROI! A great help page on the Close.IO site for finding suggestions and troubleshooting.

Cons

We did have a tough time with our firewall when first setting up Close.IO, so make sure to include your Network Admin in the conversation of switching to Close.IO early on in the process. Sometimes getting someone on the phone can be a challenge, but email and scheduling a call have never been a problem.

Great Sales Tracking Management

Close.io is great for tracking leads and customer bases and the communication timeline as well.

Pros

My favorite thing about Close.io is the ability to add custom fields that help with reporting and overall ease of use. Also being able to call directly from the software and have the calls recorded and task creations are very simple.

Cons

The user interface could use some improvement. The flow of things can sometimes get a little chaotic so creates extra time to learn the system.

Works as promised

Close has been great and their customer support is really awesome.

Pros

Close is an easy way to keep track of leads and customers alike. We can set tasks, see who is calling, and have visibility to communication the client has had with other people in the company.

Cons

I really don’t have many complaints. One tiny nitpicky thing: the icon in my tool bar continues to bounce even after someone else has answered a call. It can get confusing.

A must-have for sales

Pros

As a huge fan, I have nothing but great things to say. Some of the biggest wins: -Fast interface -Robust and extremely powerful search tools -Syncs with gmail (IMAP) perfectly. -Ability to set custom SMTP servers for outbound email, while maintaining sync for inbound. -Excellent support team -Custom variables for leads. Allows sales team to get additional key insights -Tasks manager and assignment

Cons

Only one feature that I can currently think of that I'd love to see and that's the ability to add custom fields to contacts within a lead.

Great for Team Alignment

We're not the "target market" for most of the sales management solutions out there. We just needed something that could let us keep track of key accounts easily, give us a snapshot, and keep everyone on the same page..... and specifically me as a CEO to be able to bullshit check what the sales people are saying is the status of accounts (because now I can read all the emails and notes related to the account). Priceless. We liked it so much, that we started another "organization" to keep track of our Series A fundraising... so we know where every investor is in the process, who has gotten what info, etc.

Pros

Flexible - easily tweaked Not overkill

Cons

No mobile interface - nobody in our company sits at a desk and "does sales"... we are all on the road on jumping meeting to meeting, so it would have been awesome to have an app version or a more user friendly mobile version.

Great outreach tool for calling prospects

Very easy to use tool for sales reps who do a lot of calls in a day.

Pros

Very easy to use with an intuitive interface. Easily create followup sequences and the best feature is the one-click calling SMS. It is just so easy to call ANY Country on your computer. With great audio quality.

Cons

The startup plan is fine, but if you want to use multiple phone numbers and call recording, it is only in the most expensive plan. Also, you cannot see which calls cost how much money, it is hard to track back your charges.

Has worked really well

We run an online insurance comparison site in Colombia. We generate leads through our website that we have to close by phone and mail. A sales cycle is in average for around 20 days. Our requirements were: 1. Scalable (Apt for Small and Medium Businesses) 2. B2C focus 3. Lead integration 4. Mail integration 5. Phone integration (including possibility to store calls) 6. Easy to use 7. Reminders 8. Spanish would be a plus 9. Good and fast ROI I studied 36 different options before making my choice and I demoed 6. My finalists were Pipedrive and Close.io. But I found Close.io being the better one. It's really fast and easy to use and very easy to adapt as we want. So far I'm very happy. The only things so far is that it's a little bit complicated to get a Colombian phone number but that's not Close.io's fault. It's because of the carriers here. The other was the Spanish but it wasn't sch a big problem since you can name many things yourself. It excelled in everything else. It also seems to be easy to export the day we decide to swith to another platform (if we do).

Pros

Fast and easy to set up. Great customer service. Transparent costs.

Cons

Maybe I would like it to work better in mobile. But that's mainly for me and not for my sales team. But apart from that I can't fin any cons.

Turns you into a selling machine

Once you catch the vision for Close.io, it doubles your productivity in sales.

Pros

Close.io shines in two ways-- no data entry and the follow up system. No data entry means that it's reading your emails and syncing the CRM with the activity. You can also call through their phone number and it logs your phone calls to the CRM. Follow up system. Following up until you get a No is key to sales success. Close.io builds this in to the CRM so that you see who to follow up everyday and can jus work down the list.

Cons

I don't think of Close.io as having data integration with other services on a first class level. May be wrong, but that's my impression.

Great simple CRM that we actually use

Pros

Close integrates all of our customer communication into one place to make it really easy to use. Because it integrates with calling and email, most communication gets automatically logged so there isn't that annoying extra step. And because we're already in it while interacting with customers, adding notes is natural. The result is a CRM system that is up to date and gets used.

Cons

I'd like prettier reporting. The reporting screen basically counts and filters to give a table of results. I would love to have this visualize pipelines and allow us to drill down on results in a more visual way.

Great solution for medium sales teams

Pros

We've used close.io for a few years for our sales team. It has nearly any feature that you'll need. It has incredibly good system for follow ups and sales tracking.

Cons

This is not really needed when you have just a couple of salespersons and price starting from per mo is really high.

One of the best CRMs

One of the best crms I have ever used

Pros

It pretty much has every feature built into it. Very simple to use and easy to look at. Very fast and boots quick

Cons

Dashboard could be a bit better but very easy to set it up for great lead generation Must download the application

Excellent - Would recommend to anyone building a sales team

I have tried out a handful of CRMs, and they all have their pros and cons. I've found Close.io to be the best and most flexible CRM for our growing sales team (It has grown with us as our sales team tripled in size). There are two things I particularly love: The first is the timeline / history of interaction with a customer. It makes it super easy to quickly get caught up on a relationship with a client before talking to them. When trying to close a deal or when a customer has a problem, this has been invaluable. We have also connected Close.io to our support ticketing system, so I can track all communication (even non sales) that a customer has with our company which is a big help. The second thing I really like is the one touch call / email. It makes it extremely easy to communicate with the customers and saves me time. Although to be fair, there is also room for improvement. It is a little bit challenging to manage your emails completely from Poll Everywhere as it's hard to track all inbound emails. I also wish they would improve the way they organize their email templates. After you have a few sales reps each with their own templates, the list can grow very quickly. Overall, the pros far outweigh the cons and I would definitely recommend Close.io to anyone looking for a CRM.

Pros

History of interaction with customer, one touch communication, live help chat

Cons

Managing inbound emails and email templates

Close.io treated me well

Pros

Super simple for making phone calls and sending emails. Easy workflows for inside sales reps, you can make a lot of calls quickly.

Cons

The reporting is pretty barebones, but I know that's something they've been bulking up over time.

No Fluff

If you don't have a super complicated sales cycle this is perfect. Great out of the box solution for any start up and small business. This is versatile enough to rock for SaaS start ups just starting out looking for customer feedback and product market fit or easily scaled to manage a small powerful team to start scaling.

Pros

Easy to use, easy to build "smart views" (no complicated list building) to knock out activities in batches so you can be hyper efficient. You don't have to overthink the perfect stack of SaaS Sales empowerment tools and can move forward with call recordings, cadences, and pre built reporting.

Cons

Guard rails prevent you from connecting it to any platform. (Salesforce works with everything but costly to learn and run but does let you customize). Not a con unless you are hyper advanced and are looking to control everything.

Best inside sales CRM out there!

Pros

I like their all in one feature package - outreach can be done via call, sms, email. Each feature is beautifully designed. I also really like Smart Views

Cons

No cons really. It's a little more expensive than other CRMs out there - but I totally understand because the features they provide at this price point eliminates need for any other app in my sales workflow.

Good For A Small Sales Team, in The Early Days

On a larger scale, Close becomes really impractical. Sales agents lose track of contacts, there's no meaningful data analysis that can be done because of a lack of tagging and order. It's a good package to start out with, but I find that companies move along quickly for more powerful and useful products.

Pros

- really easy to use - stripped down to the bare minimum, not many tabs for the sales team to navigate - new email chain function is impractical as it's a manual task to set up for so few sales contacts - customer support a few years ago was bad but has improved greatly - price

Cons

- hard to extract data in a meaningful way. The search functionality is quite rudimentary - data analysis is barely existent - insufficient tagging - feels like a doctored spreadsheet with nicer formatting but less usability

The best CRM I've used

Used it daily as a sales rep and it made managing everyone and seeing all communication simple and allowed me to spend less time tinkering and more time closing sales. It does a great job of getting out of the way so you can focus on what's important.

Pros

So uncomplicated and straightforward to use. CRMs can be a real pain, and this one is a joy.

Cons

Although it's packed with value, it's still pricey compared to competitors. However, if you can do it, I still recommend it.

Great CRM that understands its user

I would advise this product to anyone, the pricing is correct, the product is great and does not try to lock you in but retains you through customer satisfaction.

Pros

The simplicity yet power of this CRM system is exactly what a growing company needs. It is also fantastic that the product comes with an API that can help to automate your tasks and connect the CRM to other products.

Cons

The user interface of the emails could be smarter and give a better oversight!

Powerful DUmb Tool

Sales. Closing. This is what CLose IO is best for. If you want it to do complicated tasks it would start breaking up and tearing down into nothing. For smile and dial, this is the best.

Pros

Love the fact that I can power dial a bunch of people and drop voice mails. This is a godsend for my team.

Cons

Stupid workflows, automations were really horrible and was set up poorly by the agent who worked and never was working correctly for 9 months.

Close.io is a common sense simplistic software platform that streamlines my entire day.

Close.io is simple software package that incorporated "common sense" into their sales process to help drive efficiencies in a sales persons daily outbound and inbound activity. Close.io allows me to make phone calls quicker, take notes, send emails & text messages in one simple to use UI.

Pros

I love that I can make phone calls out of Close.io using my contact information for any given prospect. It integrates with my email system and captures all my outbound and inbound email traffic and keeps a record of it. The UI is also simple and the sales workflow is better streamlined then saleforce.com in my opinion. I wasn't a fan in the beginning, but after about 2 weeks I loved it's functionality and ease of use.

Cons

It took me a while to get adjusted to their process methodology and in the beginning found it cumbersome and clunky.

A Waste!!

Horrific. I am here to warn others. Do NOT get yourself wrapped up with them. It is a horrific experience! They are there for one purpose and one purpose alone: to extort you, in any way they can find, for your credit card. They don't even hide it.

Pros

This software was a colossal waste!! DO NOT waste your time or money!! I used this software for less than a week before they were snooping around dictating my business practices and interrupting my business transactions. I am absolutely disgusted by this service. I tried to get get a hold of the sales rep 5 (FIVE) times and each and every time it goes to voicemail. They don't work weekends and wont answer you on weekends, so don't bother. They will email you a week later and if there are technical difficulties, they absolutely will not talk to you in a timely manner, they will just shut your acount down. THEN they tried to extort me for my credit card in reward for their terrible sales and joke in the form of what they call "tech support/customer service". Ridiculous! I lost so much money dealing with them! It was a horrific experience!

Cons

The joke they call "customer service/tech support". It's an extortion scheme!

A modern and functional touch to CRM

Pros

Coming from Salesforce and other CRM services, Close.io shines a much needed light for our sales team. They follow industry standards and have every feature that I've been used to having. I incredibly appreciate the ability to call and track phone calls directly from the app.

Cons

The desktop app is where it's all at, but I would appreciate a more fine-tuned web and mobile app considering what we pay and what other services offer.

Awesome product with a great search centric approach

At Duma Works, a Kenya based recruitment startup, we use close.io to keep track of all of our customer relations, existing and potential. Apart from that we're also using it as a multi-tool for everything from fundraising to recruitment. The search centric approach makes it easy to create any type of customised list of leads and treat them differently based on their unique characteristics. The ability to add custom fields to all leads in combination with the bulk email feature makes it possible to easily send hundreds of personalised emails in seconds. I would recommend close.io to anyone who wants to maintain and grow a database of contacts, be it customers, candidates or investors.

Pros

- Easy to create customised lead views and send personalised bulk emails - Stripped down feature set, only contains what's necessary - Extremely easy to get started, no advanced setup necessary - Great support and response time from the team at close.io

Cons

- I lack the ability to track meetings, it's the only part of the sales funnel that I can't follow up on - I lack the ability to mark notifications as unread

Best CRM I have used!

Pros

The best CRM tool I have used, loved the interface that is literally all in one, recorded calls to review of my teams sales calls. Texts emails etc.

Cons

None! Best CRM system I've used! Definitely recommend

The best CRM for small-team sales pros

Close is very cool because setting up a personalized workflow & follow-up sequence got me focused on what I need to do next without wasting mental energy on figuring it all out anew every week.

Pros

I can search my database by notes I've made, or specific actions like calls on a certain date. And, then set up a workflow & follow-up sequence accordingly.

Cons

Setting up a personalized workflow & follow-up sequence takes a long time, but once it's done, it saves lots of time. The email marketing feature needs improvement.

Close.io is absolutely awesome to manage your fund raising

We use Close.io to manage our fund raising and we absolutely love it! It's been amazing to manage our database of investors, track our communication with potential investors, and classify each of them based on the opportunity and likelihood we will get the investment from them. It's much easier to track who responded and when to do the follow-up. Close.io is very user-friendly, and very intuitive. We love that it adds all past emails with the investors! It has been so easy to share the emails with my co-founder. We will definitely use it to manage our customers when we are ready to start selling.

Pros

- It's easy to use. - It can easily search for past emails and share the status with other members because it integrates all the emails and calls with the leads to the platform. - It allows to add tasks and set up alarms. - Great tool to organize the database, rank potential customers/investors, and size the opportunities.

Cons

- I would suggest the users to use a isolated microphone because some times we have eco in the calls.

I use close.io and love the updates that they keep making

Keeps sales focused on relevant tasks rather than wasting time on housekeeping tasks

Pros

It makes the sales team at my company so much more efficient and keeps them focused on relevant tasks rather than wasting time on housekeeping tasks

Cons

Some small learning curve for some of the more advanced features.

Will you marry me?

I LOVE this solution. It's extremely flexible which is crucial for our company of 80. With our HQ in Europe, and a sales team poised to expand rapidly worldwide, we needed the ability to "speak" to each other by having access to all leads in the system and their history. Right now we are piloting Close.io here in the U.S. with a couple of sales people also trying it in Europe. We integrated our incoming leads from our system into close.io via Zapier and all communication via Gmail. It was a snap! Also, the support team can CC or BCC close.io on crucial matters via the ticket system and sales can now see all important transactions in one place. Just in a few short months Sales productivity has changed dramatically, and basically, I'm a happier person, which is good for everyone!

Pros

Easy to use interface. Nice upgrade with the html in the email function! Integration with the phone is great!

Cons

Fix the Tasks function to be more user friendly. allow us the hide the custom fields so we don't need to scroll through them all when assigning data.

Increases the chance of closing a deal

My team and I began using Close.io to close deals via the calling & Email features they have implemented into the software. We imported our leads very easily, and managed to start closing deals with potential clients. Close.io is a unique product that allows you to manage multiple streams that increases the chance of closing a deal.

Pros

Calling feature, Tracked emails, Work with multiple team members on closing deals. Biggest feature is the app you can download via the app store or from the close.io website, makes things super easy to manage. The Smart views and sorting filters are very useful in managing multiple leads. The support team is incredible! I've never experienced such support with any other company.

Cons

Only issue I ran into is when grouping leads under a specific category which has to be done manually in the spreadsheets, but I spoke with the support team and gave me step by step to resolve this issue.

Awesome Integration of VOIP, Autodialers, and Voice Drop

Pros

I've evaluated a lot of CRM's and Close.io is one of my absolute favorites. If you need to make a lot of calls their dialer and integrated telephony features are some of the best available.

Cons

Pretty Expensive especially if you already have another VOIP provider. Unless something has changed recently you miss out on a lot of standard VOIP features like a virtual attendant. Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Marketing, etc.