Too much Ala Carte

  • Not ready to actually attempt to use this plugin. I’ve got extensive experience with small, medium and enterprise level CRM’s. I understand these folks need to make money. But, to split out every bit of needed, though rated as advanced, or extended, functionality, and charge on a “per piece” basis is not something I find acceptable. I do not mind paying for CRM, and know it’s a good hit. But, I want all of it under a single roof, so I can see how the system works, all together, without getting nickel and dimed. Give me a break. You have to pay to add fields under the system. That is ridiculous. Any good CRM comes off the shelf with a full ability to add, and modify fields, with a whole variety of types available. They would be better off, just going rogue, and charging what they think it’s worth, with a short term sample. Getting you hooked, then popping you with an “extension fee” for basic functionality is a barrier.

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  • Thanks for the feedback. To clarify, we offer add-ons on an a la carte basis as you described for a few reasons.

    1) Unlike other hosted CRMs you may be used to, this one “lives” on your website. Ideally a plugin’s footprint will be as small as possible. Therefore we broke out functionality that is not essential to all users into separate plugins.
    2) Some of the add-on features are redundant and may not be needed on all sites. To have an all-inclusive version of the plugin would be overkill, and possibly detrimental to the site’s performance.
    3) Naturally, we need to get paid for the time/effort it takes to build and maintain these plugins. Without a revenue stream, this and any other plugin will likely get abandoned very quickly.
    4) Some users may get confused when there are more options than they need. With that said, if you look at v1.0 of this plugin and compare it to what it is today, there are a lot more features in it now than there were before.

    One of these features you mentioned is the ability to add custom fields. By default, this plugin does allow anyone with a little coding knowledge to be able to add new fields or modify/delete existing fields. There is even documentation on how to do this. We don’t ask for any payment for you to be able to do this.

    If this isn’t something someone can do on their own, we do offer the option to purchase a (very reasonably priced) add-on to add your own custom fields. Someone could also hire a developer to do all of this for them, but it would surely cost more than the price we charge for the add-on.

    Additionally, you want an “all-in” solution. We do provide substantial discounts on our bundled plugin plans. Even our most expensive plans are a bargain compared to other leading CRMs on the market. If you want to see how the plugins work, we have a free demo site available, where you can try before you buy. We don’t ask for your name, email address, or anything else to be able to use the demo.

    I also think it’s unfair to be accused of nickel and diming when other CRMs: charge per user fees (we don’t), limit the number of records you can have (we don’t), limit the number of custom fields you can have (we don’t), limit the storage space you can use (we don’t), or provide limited support (we don’t).

    If your only complaint is on the cost of our plugins (or that we charge for certain features), I’d invite you to look at any other CRM on the market and see where you can do better in terms of cost. Insightly and Zoho, for example, would cost a small team of 5 users over $700 per year on their basic plans. No one should ever pay us more than the cost of our lifetime plan, which is currently a one-time fee of $449. That includes all of our current add-ons and any add-on we develop in the future, as well as an unlimited number of sites that the plugins can be installed on.

    Thread Starter huntergatherer

    (@huntergatherer)

    Scott,

    I appreciate your extensive response. I have looked at the other WordPress CRM’s and anxiously await one that provides the type of functionality we’ve had with premise based systems.

    Yes, your lifetime plan (once you find it) is a good value compared to the cost factor on others. I’ll give you that. It’s basically less than the per seat cost on any of the decent systems out there. But, I loaded up your plugin and didn’t get that far. That should tell you something. I’m actually one of those who knows these systems, and needs a WordPress interface for one. We built a web lead interface for Goldmine a few years ago for WordPress and Gravity Forms.

    Maybe the issue wasn’t “nickle and diming”, although that was the feel of it. It’s the whole apparent Ala Carte system. That is what caught my eye. My impression, right or wrong, was that YOUR extensions were needed to add features, like custom fields, that would act WITHIN your plug-in. There is a lot of code to keep all the fields working together in any CRM. My suspicion, or first impression, was that I would be locked in to extension after extension, starting with custom fields. I would be scared to put in the time and resources needed to get into the code to develop my own version. I would wonder if any of the other custom field plugins I use would work within yours, or if their contents could be used to trigger automated actions. We rejected Ferrara’s Nimble over exactly this issue. I wanted that one to work. Coming from broad and deep use of Goldmine, and as a contracted marketing company, I’m looking for something that has decent set of dual sided (customer facing – and – client facing) abilities. I need custom fields, custom drop down and selection lists to populate those fields, interface with Gravity (which I have a Developer’s license for), and behind the scenes ability to fill in hidden fields. I need them on both sides of our operations.

    All I am saying is that yours looked good enough to install it, and then it looked piecework. I do not know if I’m correct. I do know that is how appeared. And, any CRM without custom fields front and center, would be difficult to take to market.

    Again, I appreciate your time and attention. Thank you for replying. Let me know if you want to take this to a private conversation.

    HG/mws

    Thanks for the reply.

    Currently we give the impression that only our plugins work as add-ons because as far as I know, we’re the only ones who have developed any add-ons for it.

    With that said, it isn’t a closed system – anyone can develop a plugin to extend it’s functionality. Actually, I wish more people would come up with custom solutions so it could be more obvious that it isn’t proprietary. You can get more information on it towards the end of this document.

    As soon as we’re made aware of any third-party integrations that work with our CRM, we’ll promote them on our website and plugin description as well. Even competing add-ons will be promoted – develop a better custom field add-on and I promise it’ll be the first 3rd party integration we’ll promote!

    If you would like to offer any additional feedback, please feel free to reach out on our contact form.

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