An EXCELLENT Value (but it’s not a CRM yet)

  • At the time of this review, our team of 5 volunteers has been using FluentCRM for just over one year. We purchased FCRM in 2021, knowing FluentCRM was a new plugin, with few advanced capabilities, but a dynamic dev team behind it. They haven’t disappointed.

    These are the highest priority criteria we valued most at the time, and FCRM continues to satisfy:

    ? Server-based: Control our own data & privacy
    ? WP Integration: Familiar interface for our volunteer team
    ? Email marketing: Quickly & easily provide email blasts w/o Cloud control
    ? FluentForms Integration: No-code seamless solution ?
    ? Price:?Excellent value
    ? Support: Clarity and helpful, with no over-promising

    After one year of experience with them, it’s clear that the team at WP ManageNinja is highly talented, support-driven, and they deliver progress on a consistent basis, advancing their product’s digital marketing capabilities.

    If you are looking for a full-fledged CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution beyond email marketing & automation, and those needs are at the top of your priority list, this product won’t meet your needs.

    I purchased the product not fully understanding its lack of Pipeline Management and other capabilities I had hoped were part of their solution in the beginning, but quickly came to realize my wishful thinking was just that. That error is entirely on me.

    I’m encouraged to learn from Mr. Jewel’s recent blogpost that Pipeline Management and Task List capabilities are roadmapped to debut for 2023 –?welcome advancements.

    Here is what FluentCRM is not, nor do they currently claim as features:

    ? HelpDesk Support
    ? Pipeline Management for Sales or Fundraising
    ? Task Management

    Given the unfortunate market confusion over what the definition of “CRM” is, and the fact they’ve recognized the need for additional features to satisfy their customers’ requests, I give the WPManageNinja team five stars for its marketing capabilities, workflow, UX, smart integration capabilities, ongoing advancements & support.

    The continued misrepresentation of what a CRM is systemic in the tech sector, and not necessarily their doing, but that’s what caused me to revert back to 4 stars (very good!).

    If they make good on their commitment to add Pipeline & Task List features, I’m confident given their track record so far, that they’ll do a stellar job of it.

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    *Historical context: Unfortunately, over the past decade or so, deep-pocketed upstart technology brands sensed opportunity and hijacked the term “CRM” (Customer Relationship Management). This happens often in the tech sector, when funded upstarts disrupt and buy market share, with the unintended consequence being that other subsequent upstart companies & brands like FluentCRM take on the bastardized product category brand (CRM).

    HubSpot and the like provided little to NO Pipeline Management, Task Management nor Customer Support (Helpdesk) capabilities, while pushing Email & Marketing Automation capabilities, passing it off as a “CRM.” Their disinformation disruption campaign paid off handsomely. As clients wised up to the deception, HubSpot and others have since either back-filled with more 360° conventional aspects, or positioned themselves less as CRM, and more Marketing Automation.

    Because of the big gorilla imposters in the market who inappropriately misrepresented themselves as a “CRM,” I give FluentCRM a pass–for now. It’s not by any means a 360° Customer Relationship Management system, but perhaps their definition of “CRM” is more like HubSpot’s than mine.

    • This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by jmcoonen.
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  • Plugin Author Shahjahan Jewel

    (@techjewel)

    Hello @jmcoonen
    WOW! thank you so much for the detailed review, and I appreciate it.
    I totally agree with every point you made in this review. The part “CRM” is intentional. We spent a good amount of money on buying the domain 2.5 years back.

    We wanted to keep the “CRM: because we want to build the solution. We are building piece by piece. Maybe you missed our Plugin “Fluent Support” which is tightly integrated with FluentCRM and works great in both Email Piping and web-based tickets.

    As you already read in my blog post about the task and sales pipeline management feature. We are working on it for the last 6 months, and I am pretty confident, it will be super useful for our users.

    We focused on Email Marketing at the very first because of to establish the business and get the initial attraction as Email Marketing in WordPress is a great category.

    I am super excited about FluentCRM’s future and I hope we will thrive in this category and add value to the community.

    Feel free to reach me personally to be a beta tester of our Sales Pipeline / task management feature ??

    Again, thank you so much for the detailed review

    Thread Starter jmcoonen

    (@jmcoonen)

    You’ve got an excellent team, Shahjahan. I’m quite familiar with Fluent Support, I purchased a lifetime subscription last year, and I too am very excited about your future. Happy to beta test the Sales Pipeline /Task Management feature.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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