Close Reviews

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.

Pros

Easy setup, analytical and simple-to-understand dashboards, predictive dialer rocks, voicemail drops, call cadences, and email marketing tools are all available. I enjoy the Smart Views in Close function and the inbox tool, and I like the fluidity of the email follow-up. I feel so much better knowing that everything is in one place and that I can simply exchange information with my team; my customer service experience has also been excellent.

Cons

I don't like how Close retrieves my planned send emails before they send; if I modify the email I'm scheduling, Close logs all versions. I also believe filters take time to get used to, and I'm not always sure I'm filtering correctly. I wish there was a one-stop video that answered all of your questions or walked you through the intricacies of Close.

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

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

Alternatives Considered

Streak, Pipedrive and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Close

Email inbox management in Close

Switched From

HubSpot Sales Hub

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)

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.

Pros

Very clean UX/UI and easy to use and navigate, everything is sort of "on one page" so you don't really need to scour around or click on weirdly/technical verbiage-marked buttons.

Cons

It's actually almost too simple to the point that it can begin to feel cluttered. You can too easily create multiple entries because of how the integrations are set up, so it's not always clear what the "right" profile is. Similarly, there's very little tracking of progression, it's quite rudimentary in that sense.

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.

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.

Pros

- Connected email - Sequences are easy to design on multiple channels - Very customizable and dynamic copy in sequences

Cons

- Email inboxes get disconnected from gmail occasionally - Some customizations, which are nice, make it a little complicated

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

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.

Pros

I have used close for more than 12 months and I can say that this is the best CRM for startups, I have used it mainly for sending email campaigns and lead management. it has a very simple interface and is easy to use.
Previously we were using a different CRM where you are able to send mail only but not able to see those email responses, you will have to check your email for that but in Close CRM we can send mail and also see if we have any responses.
Managing leads are also easy, either we can bulk import it as a CSV file or we can manually add it so it was very easy to manage the leads and contacts in close CRM.

Cons

Close is very expensive so it was very hard to pay for small startups. Lead management and email campaign were good but apart from that we have not used anything else so for us it was very expensive.

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.

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.

Pros

Awesome UI
Best filtration and search
Nothing extra
Not overloaded
Very fast

Cons

If your database more than 100K contacts, you will be disconnected, because you will ...."impacted our infrastructure".... When you try to solve a problem and chat with technical support, you will be ignored.

But there is no public limitation. Try to use. Are you lucky? Maybe not and your work will be suspended immediately. And then you will long try to switch to another platform without any help from those support. Maximum you will have a day.

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to Close

Built-in calling.

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

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.

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!

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.

Pros

Sequencing, calling from the software, activity tracking, call recording, relative simplicity to use

Cons

no comment yet, i am just beginning to use it

Pros

Automated tracking, in-app calling, in-app email, bulk email, filtering, reporting, real-time dashboard.

Cons

Higher cost per seat than some others (but obviously well worth it for me, and most others).

Pros

User-friendly, great support staff that reaches out to the user, making sure they have everything they need to be more successful. The CEO truly cares for his clients, even taking a little time to give free consultation to help educate in sales.

Cons

Only thing is when you select back to get back to the main list of contacts, it takes you to the top every time and not where you left off in the list. Probably user driven and not the software.

Pros

I like the automations, data, and insights it provides. Also, the task & Pipeline management are pretty solid.

Cons

Smartviews even tho it is one of the main features is not that easy to customize or get used to if this is your first CRM. There are better solutions that make this type of customization easier.