
Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014? - KhalPanda
There are &lt;Dr Evil&gt;one million&lt;&#x2F;Dr Evil&gt; choices when it comes to CRM&#x27;s and from using Google and HN Search, I haven&#x27;t found any decent threads on this for a while.<p>What CRM are all the freelancers out there using? I&#x27;m about to go solo and am not sure what to go for (Salesforce, Zoho, Highrise (though I&#x27;m put off a bit by 37 Signals&#x27; Basecamp direction) all seem &#x27;up there&#x27;). Too many choices, could really use some HN advice.<p>I was planning on using Wave for accounts, and still undecided on project management, but I guess any integration possible would be desirable!
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keithwarren
You are doing it wrong.

I don't mean to be contrarian but if you want to be successful as a
independent developer (I have been for almost 15 years now) and you are
looking for a CRM you are off the rails.

CRM systems are for the most part, for companies or sales individuals who need
help managing the number of contacts they have at any given time and ensuring
they follow a structured interaction pattern.

I know about a dozen people like me, some of whom float in and out of full-
time gigs and consulting and others who are years or decades into the
independent consulting arrangement. Not a single one interacts with a high
volume of customers. At any given time I have two or three I interact with and
maybe one in the pipeline. If I make contact with new potential customers I
create a contact record for them in Outlook/Gmail/Whatever and record any
extraneous details in the notes section. That is all, if you need more than
that I question the approach.

ps - Another tip. 'Freelancers' are cheap and not serious, 'consultants' or
'developers' or 'independent developers' take home the big checks. Just a
perception thing.

~~~
brudgers
I'll go further and say that researching CRM's only feels like work. It isn't.
Cold calling and chasing contracts and closing them and completing the
contracted work is all that counts as actually working. Choosing and
installing and learning a CRM is easier. That's why it doesn't count.

~~~
marvin
Perfect observation of real, honest-to-God procrastination. You are usually
better served taking the time researching the CRM and slacking off. Or at the
very least admitting that the CRM research is part of your time off, not your
job.

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
No. You're both missing the whole point. This is like researching a move to
Node from Rails, or something similar. In fact, using the right tool for your
sales has a direct effect on your bottom line, so I'm going to say it's far
more important if you like stuff like money.

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soci
In our company we use plain TXT files with an agreed formatting between the
team mates.

We have the plain TXT files stored in dropbox shared location.

Easy, slick, cost 0, and accessible by search through OSX Spotlight. Also, we
don't depend on third parties (we can move disconnect from dropbox at any
time)

~~~
EC1
Could you post a template? That's a neat way of doing it.

~~~
soci
Sure, here you have it, very simple.

EDIT:: The formatting got corrupted when I posted the comment. Feel free to
contact me and I'll send you the format by mail. marc /at/ kitebit /dot/ com

 __ __ __ __* CUSTOMER2 NAME Contact details Where we did find about him __ __
__ __* \--- > who_contacted_the_customer DATE CONTACT_CHANEL (mail, phone...)
Description of what we talked about

\---> \---> who_contacted_the_customer DATE CONTACT_CHANEL (mail, phone...)
Description of what we talked about

 __ __ __ __* CUSTOMER2 NAME Contact details Where we did find about him __ __
__ __* \--- > who_contacted_the_customer DATE CONTACT_CHANEL (mail, phone...)
Description of what we talked about

\---> \---> who_contacted_the_customer DATE CONTACT_CHANEL (mail, phone...)
Description of what we talked about

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girvo
Okay, so this is going to be a bit of a random one, but hear me out.

I personally use Pancake[0]. It's a self-hosted, one-time-payment (but comes
with updates) web application that will handle invoicing, CRM, time-tracking,
and do it all with a really nice interface.

Also, if you know PHP at all, it's quite fun to hack on, but of course a lot
of people dislike PHP. Even if you don't do that, it's a brilliant web app
that was a life-saver[1] for myself when I was freelancing. Give the demo a
try, see what you think.

\---

[0] [https://pancakeapp.com/](https://pancakeapp.com/)

[1] I just took a full-time job, so I won't be freelancing anymore, but I am
going to continue to use it for my time-tracking and project management for
personal stuff :)

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ommunist
Thank you for the link. This is a decent system for a simple small office.

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j21
Agree with everyone saying to use something like Trello, Asana, Google Docs,
etc.

Unless you need a "special" CRM feature, I think you can get by on using a
generic tool that fits your workflow, and is simpler to get going with.

I'm building Notedock[0], it's really a general tool underneath all messaging
on the homepage. I actually use it as a CRM, with a page for each contact (you
can put all relevant details here, discussions, contact info, etc.)

If anyone's interested, send me an email and I can show how I get by with this
"CRM".

[0] [https://notedock.com](https://notedock.com)

~~~
girvo
Oh wow. I've been looking for something exactly like this: basically similar
to the new Basecamp but more focused. I really dig it, only I can't decide
what to call my Notedock :P

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cmadan
Hey there, ClinchPad ([https://www.clinchpad.com](https://www.clinchpad.com))
has a large number of freelancers using it. It is a CRM targeted at small
teams and focused on the process of moving prospects towards a deal (something
that freelancers do often as they look for clients).

We're always improving the application and welcome any feedback on it. Feel
free to reply to this comment or email me at cheenu@clinchpad.com.

Disclosure: I'm the Founder of ClinchPad.

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alphydan
As explained by some posters above we did the procrastination thing and spent
time researching CRMs :). Our situation however was 3 people selling lots of
leads, managing mentors and investors and keeping track of a few hundred
customers. I wrote a review of our findings,
[http://renooble.tumblr.com/post/79551891411/crms-for-
small-s...](http://renooble.tumblr.com/post/79551891411/crms-for-small-
startups)

~~~
joshdance
Honestly it is easy to say researching CRMs is procrastination, but if you
really need a CRM, you need one and it is going to take time to find the one
you like.

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gexla
I remember seeing an article from the guy who built this where he mentions
that you shouldn't bother with a CRM until you get to a certain number on
sales.

[http://spreadsheetcrm.com/](http://spreadsheetcrm.com/)

I couldn't find the article. Seems about right though. It's easy to spend a
lot of time looking for something that we feel we need when a simple
spreadsheet app probably works well enough for solo use.

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zeroDivisible
At one time in my life, when I was still in love with Emacs, I was using org-
mode to do that kind of things as it wasn't breaking my workflow.

The thing is that you're a single developer, so don't you waste time managing
customers and choose the simplest tool which gets the job done.

I know that others are saying Asana or Trello - and those are good tools, but
with a bit of customisation and 20$ you might get yourself Jira + Confluence -
those will work like a charm and you will be able to not only manage
customers, but also projects and all that crap, everything in one place. One
often overlooked fact is that customers like to ignore all those sexy markdown
files with requirements and they don't care about code versioning - you will
be receiving PowerPoint presentations and Word documents and Excel
spreadsheets - all of which can be easily managed / kept in Confluence.

Remember - CRMs are for business people and whatever you choose, the time
spent using it should be as minimal as possible as it is not directly bringing
you any revenue.

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stigi
We've been using Highrise a while ago, but moved away from it quickly.

These days we use Trello with a card for each lead, where we keep track of the
current status. The card moves between different states as we engage with the
client (kanban style).

If you keep your mails in Gmail you already have a powerful tool to handle
them and don't need CRM support for that.

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samspenc
We've been using Zhen CRM at my company for a while now:
[http://codecanyon.net/item/zhen-crm/4149099](http://codecanyon.net/item/zhen-
crm/4149099)

The cool thing about Zhen CRM is that its self-hosted and a one-time fee - so
you pay for the software one-time, and download and self-host on your local
server (LAMP stack) and off you go! You can create as many users as you want,
and you don't have to worry about it being hosted at a third party.

What I find really cool about it is the price - right now its only $25! (used
to be even less, the price must have gone up recently) I purchased it to
experiment, but found it has enough features to use as a primary CRM.

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egeozcan
Create folders for your customers. Save important stuff like contact details,
mails, contracts and whatever else you wish in those folders and organize them
in sub-folders when necessary. Also use the SCM of your choice with those
files. You're welcome.

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ohado
Disclaimer - I am a co-founder at ONDiGO Mobile CRM.

I completely agree with what I've read here on previous answers.. Being a solo
freelancer or a small business owner you don't need a CRM. At least not the
good old fashion CRM solutions our there.

What you do need is a simple to use, easy to on-board and free solution. It
should also be mobile as we're constantly on the go and rarely sit all day in
front of the desktop.

That is exactly what we had in mind when we started working on ONDiGO. Check
it out.. I'm sure you are going to love it!

[http://ondigo.me/](http://ondigo.me/)

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joshcrowder
We are building a tool that really scratches our own itch. We needed a tool
that:

1\. Manages projects - Like Jira but simpler

2\. Allows us to create documents and share them with clients - Like email but
with commets

3\. Track time - Like the notepad that lives on my desk

4\. Keep everyone on the project informed

Its called [http://matterhorn.io](http://matterhorn.io) and its coming along
we've been using it for months. We are a small agency (6 of us) and its
designed mainly for teams from 1 - 20 who work directly with clients.

If you're interested drop me a line I'd love to get your thoughts on it.
josh[at]seriousfox.co.uk

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ukoki
Streak is a dead simple way for managing "things with workflows/pipelines". It
lives in gmail so the overhead pretty low.

[http://www.streak.com/](http://www.streak.com/)

~~~
danvoell
+1. This is what I use as well. It is dead simple to use and free.

~~~
chadkruse
I also use Streak for a very lightweight CRM. Works great for identifying
prospects and moving them through the close process.

I'm also keeping an eye on FullContact. A few slight tweaks to their tagging
feature and they'll be a great lightweight CRM for solo folks.

[http://www.fullcontact.com/](http://www.fullcontact.com/)

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dmoo
Try [https://www.vtiger.com/open-source/](https://www.vtiger.com/open-source/)

open source so you can install it on your own box or sign up to one of their
plans.

~~~
mschuster91
Oh god no. Twenty steps to send out a newsletter and it STILL appears buggy on
the clients (if it sends out at all).

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rschmitty
Trello or Asana is pretty easy to use

[https://asana.com/guide/explore/videos/crm](https://asana.com/guide/explore/videos/crm)

Plus you can use those for your projects/tickets/personal todos too.

I hate having <Dr Evil>one million</Dr Evil> webapps to do <Dr Evil>one
million</Dr Evil> things. Even if they aren't best in class for _everything_
there is something to be said for _good enough_ in a single location

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Battochon
Make your own dude. That's a good way to show your skills! That's what I did
for me at [http://marques.io](http://marques.io)

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Battochon
Took me about 3 weeks (working after work and week-ends) so anyone could (and
should do it also).

~~~
stevoo
looks nice, i like the scrolling but there is a bug there ... if you highlight
something that is more than a line it will scroll to the next article.

~~~
Battochon
Yeah! I already noticed it but never had time to correct it! Thanks for the
highlight! Ps : it's for mobile/tablet compatibility but yeah, it should be
disabled in desktop! Thanks for checking!

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ZanyProgrammer
I think using a CRM is massive overkill for being an independent developer. My
own company is going through a CRM migration, and given how much of a pain
that's been, you're being needlessly complex. Of course, this being HN, people
want to show off their own companies/personal projects, but that's needlessly
complicated. Keep it simple.

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xerophyte
[http://www.orocrm.com/](http://www.orocrm.com/) OroCRM is an easy-to-use,
open source CRM with built-in marketing tools for your ecommerce business.
It's the CRM both marketing and sales can agree on!

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wj
I asked the same question a month or so ago. I also was hesitant to get
started with Highrise. Right now I'm testing Nimbly and Pipeline Deals. Nimbly
seems to be more about generating leads through social media. Both have a nice
interface.

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mariuszlusiak
Disclaimer - I work at Base CRM.

You should consider using Base CRM
([https://getbase.com](https://getbase.com)). We focus on great UX so that you
can get value without much effort and have fully-featured mobile apps.

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josephby
I've been using Pipedrive ([http://bit.ly/1kpPlYZ](http://bit.ly/1kpPlYZ) \-
my referral link) for over a year now. Nice integration with Google Calendar
and great mobile Apps.

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grageth
My personal favorite task list app is asana. You can actually set your email
system up to forward emails to you from specific people directly into asana
applications which makes it a great way to handle things.

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gadders
I always recommend Capsule CRM:
[http://capsulecrm.com/](http://capsulecrm.com/)

You get a reasonably generous free allowance if you try it with Google Apps
for your Domain.

~~~
KhalPanda
Looks promising!

I've actually found a truck load more tools on their add-ons/integrations page
that will probably be of use to me too:

[http://capsulecrm.com/features#/addons](http://capsulecrm.com/features#/addons)

Thanks!

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digitalengineer
Good question, I'm looking for one as well. Preferably a pay-once and not a
pay-monthly. Or something I can install on my own domain.

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heeton
Trello? Asana? I'd tend towards a more flexible tool, and create your own
simple workflow that works.

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andreash
Google Spreadsheets

Why? \- Free \- Collaborative \- Supported by Google. Aka. will not close down
in 6 months. \- Customisable

~~~
Moru
You really sure about that 6 months term? Google does have a reputation of
just shutting down stuff now and then, don't they? :-)

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espeed
See [http://close.io](http://close.io) by Elastic (YCW11)

~~~
alexatkeplar
Ouch, that's 6x more expensive for the Basic than Pipedrive, which we use and
is awesome.

~~~
joshdance
6x more expensive because it ties into telephony. That gets expensive. (No
affiliation, just work with telephony solutions etc).

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Kanbab
So far, I love Podio, flexible, free. CRM & Project Management.

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dschiptsov
github?)

