Over the past few years, several new entrants buy Phone Number List have introduced free versions of their offerings with severely limited capabilities. While a 360-degree view of the customer was achieved by combining data from multiple sources has become a topic of discussion, we have remained focused on the core value of Vtiger CRM, delivered from day one.
We have a truly free open source CRM for those who want it, and we have a true customer “One View” built into our cloud offerings. When we talked about One View, all aspects of CRM - marketing, sales, support, and analytics - were running on a single database! We were not piecing together data points to get an extrapolated view of customer data.
We steadfastly stayed away from introducing a free version, offering a 15-day no-obligation trial of everything Vtiger CRM offered.
And then 2020 arrived.
It’s been a tough year for companies around the world – both financially and emotionally. We have a few scars of our own, but things could have been a lot worse. During 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the best we could do was offer a discount on billing to those who really wanted it. It’s a huge test of how much our paying customers saw the value in an offering that only a few really needed to take advantage of the discounts. (A big thank you from all of us at Vtiger.)
As the pandemic wore on, we doubled down on improving the quality of the product and enriching it with exciting new features. The all-new V9 was released in mid-November to rave reviews about how easy the new CRM was to use. The new Calculus AI engine takes intelligent automation to a whole new level. ( Take a test drive today if you haven’t already .)
We’re looking forward to 2021 with a renewed sense of hope. Businesses large and small that had dramatically scaled back operations, closed, or postponed new initiatives are now hoping to return.
And we wanted to help. We decided that in the true spirit of Vtiger, we wanted to do everything we could to help businesses emerge from the shadow of the pandemic in a sustainable way.
As my team and I discussed the best way to make a meaningful impact, we realized a few important points for these companies looking to accelerate their growth in 2021.
The marketing and sales technology landscape is complex. Even setting up a basic stack can be challenging if you want to have a 360-degree view of the customer.
Companies don't want a free version for the sake of it. They want something that solves their business problems.
Over 300,000 companies worldwide use Vtiger’s free on-premise solution. Since Vtiger CRM launched in 2004, it has been downloaded thousands of times every week. But there’s a noticeable shift. Small businesses that need CRM today are opting for the cloud version to get the latest version and avoid the hassle of managing hardware and installation.
And that led to the Vtiger Reboot program. We’re working on a lot of things under the broad Re:Boot umbrella to get companies to set up their automated sales funnels and come back roaring. (Yes, we’ll be announcing some exciting things for the open source version, too, under Re:Boot.) The Vtiger Cloud CRM
team – Pilot edition is the first of the offerings under this initiative. Pilot is a new version of Vtiger One that empowers small businesses with Customer One View. As part of the Re:Boot program, to help businesses grow stronger, we’re making it free forever for everyone who signs up in 2021 .
Fast-growing sales tools and CX tools.
Before I dive into the “free” aspect, let me first explain a little more about the complex tech landscape I mentioned earlier. The sales, marketing, and customer service tech landscape is littered with hundreds of tools. Over the last five years, tools have also expanded to leverage AI capabilities and new communication channels like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, etc.
If you look at sales tech alone, there are about 30 different categories of apps, ranging from sales coaching to pipeline management and data enrichment to technologies like document sharing and approvals. *
The marketing tech landscape has gotten even more crowded, with over 8,000 tools in 40+ categories! **
If you’re a small business with spreadsheets and email inboxes and want to improve sales and customer service, which tools would you choose? There are actually plenty of free tools out there if you’re willing to spread your customer data across a dozen different apps.
Meeting Pages - Calendly.com
Email Sequences - Mixmax
Group mailboxes - Frontapp
Contact Management - HubSpot
Document Management - Pandadoc
Managing the Sales Pipeline - Insightfully
Email - Freshdesk
Email Marketing - Mailchimp
Project Management - Asana.com
Business card scanner in mobile application - CamCard
Just think about the consequences of using these single-function tools. You’ll be asking your salesperson to log into six different apps for their daily activities. The thought of that might scare you. More importantly, it’s foolish to expect anything good from working with a dozen different tools.