Sage CRM can help you keep track of your funnel easily

10-second breakdown:

With a user-interface that’s much easier to navigate than the competition but still packing in the features, Sage CRM offers a solid CRM choice for small to medium sized companies.

Sage CRM is used in small (0-50 employees) and medium (51-1,000 employees) companies.

The good:

Top of the good list has to be the usability of the software Not only is it easy to use, but you should have a decent working knowledge of the software after a couple of hours if this is your first time using a CRM.

There are numerous configurations that can help you make a truly unique workflow that is setup specifically for your industry.

In addition to being easy-to-use, it’s also highly visual. Everything in the dashboard can be quickly understood. A helpful feature to aid businesses keep their contact data up to date.

The bad:

Having so many options can distract, or at times, confuse users and create frustration. But once you get things moving you won’t look back.

Reports and email integrations are limited. If you don’t use Outlook and need more than CSV’s, you may want to keep searching.

How it works:

Navigating through Sage CRM will be familiar to anyone that uses a web browser. There are tabs along the top and image-filled navigation icons down the left side. With the navigation menu, you can get to all of your daily activities like searching for records, creating new ones, view your team’s status or run a report.

For managers, Sage CRM made it easy to modify users and change permissions. There’s an ‘Administration’ option where you can manage your users, change their authority levels and even configure how you want reports to display. If you find yourself bouncing between a few different screens, the designers at Sage put in a very helpful ‘Recent’ tab that will show you all of the recent pages you had open.

Sage CRM’s dashboards are notably a joy to work with. You can add up to six different reports or components to each dashboard, and there are preset templates for sales, marketing and customer service if you don’t have the time or interest to build your own. Each of the six reports can be minimized, maximized out to full screen or you can even modify them right from the dashboard like adding more columns or changing a parameter. It doesn’t pack the sheer customization punch some of the competitors have but in return, you get a clean, visually appealing and easily customized dashboard that you can get set up to your liking in no time flat.

All of the normal CRM bases are covered, Sage CRM comes packaged with workflow automation, contact and customer management, leads, opportunity management and more. Sage CRM’s campaign management goes above the call of duty, making it stand out from the competition. Using what they called ‘waves’ and ‘wave items,’ you can set custom parameters and time limits that you can use for later analysis.

Another neat feature is Sage’s support plans. They offer the usual live chat, phone and email support you expect from CRM software companies but they also have ‘remote diagnostic capabilities.’ When you explain an issue to the technical support rep, they can remotely log into your system to take a look and get a better understanding of your issue.

Sage CRM also offers a few mobile apps if you want to take your data to go. They are one of the few companies to support Windows Mobile OS devices in addition to the industry normal Android and iOS, if you have a windows tablet there’s a native app in the store waiting for you.

One downside to keep in mind, many reports are only exportable to CSV format. You can print them right from Sage CRM but if there’s something you want to modify that you can’t change in the system, unless you’re a spreadsheet wizard you’re out of luck. In addition, it’s more of an annoyance than a show stopper, but there’s no way to delete more than one record at a time. With no global delete or similar function, you have to go one by one if you want to delete all leads you haven’t heard from in a few years or whatever other criteria you deem too cold to reach out to.

Pricing for Sage CRM is mercifully easy to navigate, you can find all of the features for each of their packages online and there’s even a downloadable PDF for the on-site plan with all the nitty-gritty details you can go through with a fine-tooth comb. Be sure to change the country on the top right before you look at prices, it doesn’t auto detect your region and the prices as well as packages vary by country. In the United States, Sage CRM offers two separate packages.

While there isn’t a free option, the cloud plan has a no credit card 30-day free trial to give it a test drive before you decide if you want to commit. Deciding on which plan you want to go with is much easier than competitors, you just have to ask one question. Would I prefer a cloud solution, or run the software on-premise?

First up is their ‘Sage CRM Cloud’ plan, it costs $40 per user per month. It comes with literally everything we listed, it’s Sage CRM’s one and only cloud-based solution so they won’t be stripping out any features. All of the tools to help you accelerate your sales and increase business productivity are here and counted for.

The second solution is the ‘Sage CRM On-Premise’ plan. There’s no pricing listed on the website, so you’ll have to give Sage CRM a call. Basically, it offers all the same features Sage CRM cloud does, but you get a whole lot more customization options and it’s all hosted on servers you own and maintain.

With a user interface that won’t scare your less tech-savvy employees, Sage CRM is a great solution for smaller businesses looking for a cost-effective CRM platform.

For complete rankings of all CRM software, go here.

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