Highrise

Pros

If you're ever skeptical that you need a heavy piece of software like Salesforce or Microsoft's CRM, you're probably right. This is lightweight, zippy, and constantly has new features that are coming out from the team behind Basecamp.

Cons

I wish there was an easier way to remind me of my follow ups. I don't like manually having to set the next follow up date. There's still a lot of human involvement in the software.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Highrise

Pros

You can use any data from a 3rd party site that can be uploaded using the Highrise which makes my job way easier when it comes to sales. Highrise also saves your contact information which helps to manage your businesses.

Cons

I like everything about this platform. It's great

Pros

What I like about Highrise is that all communication, attachment, employees, employee profile and notes are stored in Highrise. You can easily backtrack on employees profile, projects handled, commendation, areas for improvement for future promotion recommendation or to assess a resigned employee and wants to go back. Groups can be formed per project and you can add all emails of the employees within the group. Each group has its own designated high rise and each member will receive emails and important information or actions to be taken that should be addressed by the group to close a case. This is a cloud based application to track all open cases within a project to easily assign the action item to the person or group to accomplish tasks within given timeline.

Cons

The key here is to document everything in High rise and handle all open cases within a given time frame. However, each project or case should have a designated Team Leader to give directions per case and assign tasks within the group step by step and close the case if done. If no Leadership and delegation, still everyone can open the case if he/she is included in the team without knowing what needs to be done or who should be tapped in order for the case to move. Some cases should already been closed but was not tracked well. Some forget to put notes or document daily itinerary, progress and failures. If this happens, this software fails to achieve what the application was built for.

Pros

The user interface was amazing. We learned the founders issued Ruby which became their greatest success.

Cons

No complaints, our company used the product for some years and it served us well.

Pros

I like how easy it is to view email communications and client information in a portal the whole team can use.

Cons

I do not have any issues with the Highrise platform.

Pros

I have been running two companies for the last ten years out of Highrise CRM. PROS: Only useful features included. I use ALL the features in highrise and feel that nothing is lacking. I can do sales, customer service out of the same database for two companies. The tags structure allows me to segment my contacts like no other system I have ever tried. The ability to now send mass emails to segments of or my entire database is extremely useful. The ability to create custom fields and then be able to search by them as well is simply amazing. Task management is very simple in Highrise, perhaps, the most intuitive I have ever seen. Deals and the search capabilities are the icing on the cake, but what truly sets this CRM apart from all its competition is how simple it is to use. You can start using it immediately. No videos to watch or learn. The system is that intuitive. I highly recommend this CRM to anyone running a small to mid size business.

Cons

From my perspective there are only two "cons" regarding Highrise. The first is the absence of a calendar, and second the inability to establish "relationships" between different objects in the database.

Pros

Aesthetically, I find the website to be pleasing and easy to use. It's second nature to us now as we've been using Highrise for almost 7 years. All our accounts that used to live in my head are now neatly organized and accessible by my team and our clients. Amazing to be able to offer that transparency. We use the deals function and send out samples and orders. Highrise links with some other sites we use - mailchimp and easy insights to name a few. I love how you can set permissions and tailor each users view. When we were searching for a CRM we researched many options before settling on highrise. It's been critical to our growing business.

Cons

I haven't tried the app in awhile but it used to be abysmal. Creating a new user and assigning permissions is a huge chore for us. Creating a deal is very manual and there are lots of opportunity for human error.

Pros

You quickly get an understanding of the overall situation between the firm and your client. If you have have multiple people in your organization interacting with a client for customer support you will get a very nice overall picture quickly. The layout for this and organization of data on the screen is excellent for this purpose. The history is very easy to see and it would allow an organization to work with clients without having to ask them to tell the story over and over to different departments.

Cons

While CRM is client relationship management, HighRise performs well. It's not as robust a tool for an outbound sales campaign for a sales rep. The task and calendar management functions are good but it's not as slick for planning a territory based on how you search against clients and firms. The tagging feature if creatively used can overcome this minor issue

Pros

It works, the team do great work, features trickle in, you provide great support, easy to use, easy to share with other people,

Cons

The lack of the following features creates work and reduces quality of our use

- ability to use proper formatting of notes, basic bold, underline, bullet lists, numbered lists. Surely this is easy using Markdown and a toolbar
- Google drive and docs integration
- ability to have one person working at more than one organisation without using tags, we need this.
- ability to track history of a persons organisations and roles
- producing funnel charts and graphs from pipeline to improve dashboard reporting
- more text space for tasks window of entry too smal

Pros

The interactivity with programs like Linkedin and customers websites, etc. And you can sync with your mobile for portability.

Cons

Challenging to navigate initially ...still don't know how to operate all things. Simple things like finding my original user ID to sign into mobile app required contacting customer service and lost time awaiting a response. I'm old school and like to speak to a warm body for expediency in these cases, however, I'm aware this is the new norm.

Pros

Before we began using Highrise, we thought that we were going to have to hire someone to create a database for us, then hire someone to maintain it. When we discovered Highrise, this solved our issues. We are an executive search firm, and Highrise allows us to keep track of every job candidate who sends us a resume. We have their contact information at our fingertips, and we can attach their resumes and any other pertinent info to their Highrise entry. We have also found it extremely useful to use the tags. In this way, we can differentiate our candidates by the type of work that they do, and also by what positions they have applied for in the past. If we are trying to reach out to someone with a financial background, we do a Highrise search using our financial tag, and everyone who has financial experience will come up in the search. We can even narrow it down to region, city, state or zip code. We like using the notes so that any of our team members who look at a Highrise entry can see if there's anything about a particular candidate another team member found notable during a phone conversation, for example. We also really like how integrated Highrise is with LinkedIn, because we use LinkedIn quite a bit.
There are a lot of features of Highrise that are automatic that help us a lot. For instance, as long as a person's profile in Highrise has their email address, we can forward emails to a dedicated Dropbox email and Highrise will automatically pick it up and add it to that person's Highrise profile.

Cons

It's not very hard to overwrite an entry and you have to be careful when you are importing contacts from other software programs. It's time consuming when setting up the database to enter all of the data, however, Highrise has made it as easy as possible.

Pros

You have a lot of options with Highrise. You can send mass emails, store databases, assign tasks to employees, set reminders, and more! Great task manager in my opinion.

Cons

The UI is hard to navigate at first. The tabs on the side are simple enough to understand, but I definitely think it could be organized and maybe explained a little better. But I have tried similar software and they have similar issues. Still this is my favorite.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Highrise

Pros

I evaluated a bunch of CRM tools, and found that Highrise offered perfectly adequate functionality for my needs at a fraction of the price of other CRM tools on the market. I was able to track customer contacts, share customer contact details with members of my team, set up reminder tasks, and easily import and export lists.

Cons

Nothing. It did everything I needed it to do and was easy on the budget.

Pros

I like the fact that all information I need about any of our clients is on one page which is really helpful!

Cons

It's getting slightly outdated as newer and more intuitive CRM programs enter the marketplace. It can't do everything that the new guys do.

Pros

This program is a great way that our company files it's paperwork instead of physical files. It has great functionality there. Along with customization in fields to keep track of profiles and things specific to the company using it.

Cons

I find myself having to backpedal a lot while using this software. If you forge to tag another person, you have to delete the whole message rather than edit. The search is very sensitive to what information you put into it, results won't quite pop up unless you type in just the right thing.

Pros

Easy to use and learn especially in team settings
Email drop boxes that can be used for emails to contacts, cases, deals
Use for support helpdesk functionality and it works great (check out the blog for more details)
Bulk emailing that can be tracked and separate segments created

Cons

Sometimes filters are hard to navigate
Could be better with integration from other SaaS products
Limited reporting

Pros

Simplicity. Ease of use. Speed of familiarisation. Completely intuitive. Price. The Support system sets a standard far, far higher than most multinationals or multi-billion dollar companies could hope to even aspire to. It really is the Gold Standard of support systems.

Cons

Clearly this package will not suit every company but for our very short sales cycle and a customer base of around 1000 active accounts this package is faultless.

Pros

I love the tasks - that's how I keep up with contacts and reminders to myself. I really like the custom fields which help you to customize information for your organization and team. The app is also very helpful while on the road or if I'm at home without my computer and need to add a quick reminder for the next day or get a contacts phone number, email, etc.

Cons

It's been tough to run the specific reports we need but have adjusted and I really appreciate HighRise constantly updating even most recently with more reporting features.

Pros

This is a fantastic piece of online software for my small business, allowing me to keep in touch with all my customers and potential customers. It's great for logging information about the little snippets of conversation I have, or the information I have learned, and keeping hold of them all in an easy format. I also love the fact that I can bcc emails to link them straight to contacts - no more searching through my emails for the main information or my last contact with a customer.

Pros

The software is wonderfully simply and efficient. We tried other CRMs and hoo boy were they overwhelming to the point of absurdity. I think the CRM space is filled with products designed for companies that are size of small countries. Highrise understands reality better than most.

Cons

My only gripe is the number of "Deals" I get for my tier. It's a tiny gripe to be sure, but an extra five would be great.

Pros

I have been able to get an "in real time" update on how all of the care-givers in my congregation are doing related to their specific care-receivers. This makes my life much less complicated, constantly wondering where care priorities need to be placed.

Cons

It has not always been perfectly clear how the communication aspects work, especially how to send a copy of my entry to only one person, or to the whole group.

Pros

Intuitive
Customer Service
Value

Pros

I can categorize and organize my clients and candidates in a way that makes searching for characteristics a breeze.

Cons

Sometimes I am working so fast that I forget to his save and lose what I was working on it I flip to another page. Auto-save would be great.

Cons

I have no complaints.

Pros

Highrise changed the game for us in track leading and follow up

Cons

Takes a few days to really figure out how to use