Have you ever noticed how quickly technology is changing? We are getting used to new systems everyday and this has become a very common scenario. From desktop applications to hosted solutions, different technologies are making our business processes easier. But, we are still searching for something more convenient everyday.
When businesses are talking about more sales and offering better services to their customers, there is nothing more suitable than a CRM system. This has made CRM one of the most demanding applications or software for successful organizations.
CRM Solutions are taking over CRM Systems
Enterprises and small businesses are taking advantage of CRM systems. As new technologies are emerging, the concept of CRM systems are becoming outdated. Thus, CRM solutions are becoming more preferable to entrepreneurs and business owners. This has given them several benefits over their competitors. These solutions comes in with different potential technologies including cloud based hosted apps, desktop applications, web services etc.
Hosted solutions are very popular among large and medium sized businesses. They provide a wide range of features along with appealing user interface. They also claim to offer better security, stability and maintenance, but the truth is, they require a handsome amount to subscribe.
But this doesn’t Benefit Startups & SME
However, things are getting complicated for small business owners though many solutions are aiming for the top by providing better enhancements to enterprises.
In case of CRM solutions, the following companies are leading the market-
- HubSpot CRM
- Salesforce CRM
- Zoho CRM
- Odoo (OpenCRM)
What are the Troubles Small Businesses are Facing
These market leaders are helping enterprise grow. On the other hand, small businesses and startups are falling behind. Now, Let us talk about the dark side of these CRM solutions.
- Firstly, pricing is the most important issue that keeps small businesses from using such extensive solutions. With high subscription fee and monthly charges leading CRM solutions are making things complicated for SME.
- Secondly, incompatibility between the service model of CRM solutions and startups can be identified as a major constraint. Startups try to keep their business model simple, but most of the leading CRM solutions provide enterprise level model which creates more complexity. As a result, startups fails to meet their expectation even after paying high subscription for the services.
- Finally, the wide range of features that the solutions provide are not suitable to small businesses. The features have several layers and segments the customer base, which may not be ideal for small businesses. Besides that, their may not be any CRM agents at all in this case.
CRM for WordPress – Start of A New Era
Who doesn’t know about WordPress? It is an open source web technology helping people to create websites easier than ever. WordPress has potentially changed the web industry. Now, you can think of any solution within your own website. This has become a great solution for small and medium sized business owners.
When we are talking about CRM, we have a surprise for you. Yes, there are many WordPress CRM solutions available both free and professional. These solutions offer almost all the features a hosted solution provides you, but they are cheaper and more secure.
WP ERP – the Best CRM Available for WordPress
WP ERP is the first ever fully WordPress powered ERP system. It has 3 core modules – CRM, HRM and Accounting. Besides these, there are 20+ feature extensions that can boost any business.
CRM module is the best part of WP ERP. Among different CRM solutions available for WordPress, it is one of the most significant ones. It offers many important features that may help you with your sales and services. You can easily follow up your customer queries and track their information to provide service with a positive attitude.
WP ERP is suitable for small and medium sized businesses (SME) as the core modules are totally free. With generous amount of budget and resource, anyone can adopt this solution and increase their productivity.
How WP ERP Serves You Better than Hosted Solutions
Hosted solutions are useful to larger organizations and they provide a wide range of features that can manage thousands of users without any difficulties. However, there are many issues that may make you change your mind at the eleventh hour. Why is that?
Now, let us discuss what could make you choose WordPress CRM WP ERP over Hosted Solutions available in the market.
1. Your Data is More Secured When it’s With You
Data security is the greatest concern of any application. If you cannot secure your information, then there is no reason of having an information system.
In hosted solutions, your data is saved in your solution providers database. This may not harm you directly, but why would you keep your confidential information on someone else’s database?
When you are using WordPress based CRM solutions such as WP ERP, you get to keep your database to your own hosting (server). This potentially reduces security breaches and keeps your valuable data safe.
2. Runs Behind your Website with Similar Interface
Hosted solutions give you enriched frontend with appealing sections and features, but sometimes this can be a distraction to several users. On the other hand, WP ERP has the same interface of your own websites backend.
When you are using a WordPress powered website, you get used to with its common interface. This makes things easier for you when you are acting as a site owner and also CRM agent.
3. Collaboration is Easier than Before
Most of the hosted CRM solutions has fixed number of admins, CRM agents and sometimes users. Several research shows, you can easily manage your business and provide services to your customers when you have more contributors. In this case, contributors are your CRM agents who takes your business to the next level. They communicate with customers to provide services like pre-sales, after-sales and also support.
WP ERP gives your the ability to create any number of admins and CRM agents. Besides that, there is no restriction on the number of users. This creates a collaborative platform, where you can work together with your team members and make things awesome.
4. Maintains Only One Database
When you are using WP ERP, you get to manage your own database. This database contains data of both your website and CRM solution. Backing up a single database and restore it when necessary is easier rather than multiple ones. You can maintain your database by yourself of hire someone to do so. Hosted CRM solutions does not give your such functionality.
5. Free to Acquire and Takes Comparatively Less for Extensions
Hosted CRM solutions require a good amount of money. This can be ideal for larger enterprises who has to maintain a lot of contacts. On the other hand, small and medium sized businesses cannot afford larger solutions all the time.
This is where WP ERP comes in as you can get the solution for free. The core CRM module does not require any money, but you can power up your CRM with many handy extensions. They are also very reasonable in price. You pay only once for the solution and use it for lifetime. There is no monthly fee or hidden charges for additional features.
6. Maintenance and Renewal Take less Effort
Hosted solutions need serious maintenance and the renewal process is complex. If you are using monthly subscription, then you have to pay every month.
WP ERP is free and there is dedicated support for every user. If you buy any extension to boost the solution, you can renew the license after 1 year. The renewal gives you regular updates and premium support.
7. Expandable and Customization is Possible
WordPress is a Open Source platform and it is heavily customizable. You can also customize WP ERP the way you like by hiring a developer. It can be expanded anytime which is totally impossible for hosted solutions. You cannot change anything. You have to use what they are providing you.
On the other hand, you have freedom of choice with WP ERP so that you can do whatever you want with the CRM solution.
What do you think?
Now, the most important thing is your opinion. After reading the article, do you think WordPress CRM plugin, WP ERP is a better choice than hosted CRM solutions such as Hubspot, Zoho or Salesforce?
Comment and let us know.
Hi,
Performance wise, how much load does WP Erp CRM put on your server by doing its things while WP is also trying to display and process your website?
What is the largest customer / user DB that WP ERP can handle? For example if you have 50000 users and hence emails with a mailout will that cause too much load on your server?
Dale.
Hello Dale,
We get this very same question a lot 🙂
If you are a developer, I would request you to have a look at our Github repo https://github.com/wp-erp/wp-erp/
We have optimized each event as much as we can. Each of the modules and features are independent and runs specific queries on custom tables leaving WordPress tables aside. (don’t worry, there is an on demand connection mechanism if you want to sync with the WordPress user table)
So we can confidently say that WP ERP will give you the same feel as any other top class hosted solution.
Till now, we have seen an installation with 30,000+ customers at Amazon EC2 free tier hosting.
We ourselves use WP ERP to serve our customers and run our promotional activities. We designed this solution out of necessity and use all the extensions to solve our own problems. So you can be rest assured that we have designed the system well and bugs will be solved as soon as we receive them.
You can have a look at our changelog to know about how often we fix bugs and release updates https://github.com/wp-erp/wp-erp/releases
Are you working in a mobile app??
Hello David,
Not yet. But we do have plans for a cross platform app.
We have already released the API on the core plugin for free. Once we are done with the core development and making it stable, we will start working on the mobile app.
If you need an app right away, you can hire a developer and we can help you with information to get started.
Nice Sekander, we will wait then for it…
Can the WO ERP CRM link with MailChimp and MYOB AccountRight Cloud 2016.3.0 in real time?
Hi James,
Thanks for your interest in WP ERP. As you may know, WP ERP is a FREE to use ERP suite for WordPress and it has 28+ powerful extensions. We have MailChimp Contact Sync extension that links MailChimp with WP ERP’s CRM module.
Currently, we do not have integration with MYOB.
If you have further questions feel free to contact our expert support team using the contact form on https://wperp.com/contact/
Cheers 🙂