How We Write CRM Software Reviews: Quality You Can Rely On

What Makes Us Qualified To Write Reviews?

We aren’t new when it comes to testing customer relationship management software. We’ve been using, reviewing, and evaluating various CRM solutions for many years. We’ve been testing CRM software for many years, and some of our qualifications include:

• We have years of experience using various CRM systems in our own business.
• We have done dozens of CRM software reviews in the past.
• We understand the importance of CRM software in helping drive business success.

The Three Pillars of Our Reviews: Usefulness, Honesty, and Trust

Our dedicated team of software reviewers are committed to bring unbiased evaluations and information related to CRM software. As such, we expect every member of our team to conduct their research while adhering to our three pillars of conduct: usefulness, honesty, and trust.

Usefulness

Our CRM software reviewers agree to provide useful and relevant information to the reader. Our reviews are free from fluff and fillers that take up space on the page without providing any value to the reader.

We understand that as a business owner, your time is limited and better spent attending to other business processes. As such, we’re determined to help make the decision process as smooth and fast as possible. This way, you can end up with a great CRM tool without spending too much of your most valuable resource – time.

Honesty

Our CRM software reviewers agree to provide honest, independent information free from third-party influence. Our opinions are based on our own experiences, not those of other reviewers or software providers.

We know how easily information is regurgitated online, which can lead to misinformation and a loss of value for the user. As such, we’re determined to ensure that every opinion, review, or information article we posit is original and honest.

Trust

Our CRM software reviewers agree to act in a trustworthy manner at all times. This includes trusting their own judgment when evaluating software. We’re also dedicated to building trust within our community by establishing ourselves as experts in CRM software.

We understand how important trust is in a business. There are so many different reviews and best articles for you to consider, so why should you trust our opinion? We’re determined to continue learning, evaluating, and researching the best ways to review CRM software to provide you with superior information that you can trust.

How Do We Test Software?

We understand that all businesses have different needs. In addition to their individual needs, they also have different ways of interacting with their clients. All of these various factors are taken into account when we test CRM software.

When reviewing individual programs or creating lists, we use the following processes to test the software.

Hands-On Testing and Evaluation

It’s crucial throughout our testing that we use the software ourselves. This is the best way for us to accurately evaluate the tool, its strengths, and its shortcomings. By using a hands-on approach when it comes to testing software, we can truly see how it performs in a real-life scenario.

Our testing process typically includes the following:

• Reviewing a software demo
• Registering for a product trial
• Hands-on software testing
• Feature benchmarking and evaluation
• Functionality gap analysis

Before we start testing software, we first set specific criteria that we want to test. This enables us to ensure that our reviews are thorough and relevant to the problem we’re trying to solve. 

For example, when evaluating the best CRMs for startups or small businesses, we know that pricing is an important consideration, whereas advanced features might not be. Similarly, large corporations might value customization and easy onboarding more highly than the cost of the tool.

By taking a detailed approach to our software testing, we can offer helpful information and insights. 

User Feedback Analysis

To provide a more well-rounded approach to our testing process, our software reviewers also conduct a detailed analysis of user feedback. Not only does this enable us to provide a more detailed overview of the software, it also helps with quality control purposes.

Our feedback analysis process includes:

• Gathering diverse feedback: Our review team collects opinions from various users across multiple platforms. This includes third-party review sites but excludes any testimonials from the software company directly.
• Analyzing real-world use: By evaluating user feedback from real-world cases, we can gain insights into how the tools perform in specific work environments and industries.
• Assessing effectiveness: We then evaluate the practicality and efficiency of the software based on the various user experiences collected.

By using the above approach, we ensure that our reviews aren’t only informative based on a single user’s experience. Rather, they’re directly applicable and useful to help you select software for your particular needs.

Conversations with Software Vendors

To ensure that our reviews are as accurate as possible, we also communicate directly with software companies. This enables us to better understand their customer offerings, product roadmap, features, and functionality. Having access to this first-hand information ensures our reviews are up-to-date.

Additionally, our reviewers also communicate with the developers as clients to get a deeper understanding of how the company addresses and supports its users. This is vital to know as the customer experience with a CRM platform is important, and we want to recommend only the best experiences.

Our Comparison Criteria

CRM software isn’t a single-feature tool. In most cases, CRM has many different features and functions. This can make it difficult to directly compare one tool with another. This also contributes to the challenge of choosing the right software to meet your needs.

Our goal is to help you make an informed decision about the software by making that comparison easier to understand. 

Let’s take a closer look at some of the aspects we consider when evaluating CRM software. Using these aspects as a general guide is essential to ensure an accurate, comprehensive, and relevant review.

Features and Functionality

We begin our analysis by looking at the feature set of the tool and gaining a deeper understanding of what functions are included. 

Our process for evaluating the feature set involves the following:

• Feature set understanding: We check which features are included and which functions are missing.
• Functionality testing: We test and evaluate each feature to see how well it works. When comparing multiple tools, we compare similar features.
• Evaluation of standout features: We look at features that are more advanced or offer more value than those in generic or comparison software.

We understand that most users don’t just want the basics. They want value. As such, we feel it’s important to highlight any standout features that make one tool different from another.

Usability and Onboarding

Next, we start to use the software ourselves to assess how easy it is to implement. If the onboarding process is too intricate or the tool is too difficult to use from the get-go, we know that might be a dealbreaker for many users.

Our process for evaluating the usability and onboarding involved the following: 

• Learning curve assessment: Evaluate how easy it is to learn how to use the software. Do your teams require extensive training?
• User experience and design evaluations: Review the software’s user interface and design elements to determine how easy and enjoyable they are to use.
• Onboarding feature analysis: Examine templates, mobile apps, and automations to determine the speed of team adoption.

During our testing we evaluate how well designed the software is. We consider how user-friendly the interface is. Finally, we also check if the software truly saves the team time as that would indicate a better investment.

Integrations

When introducing new software to your tech stack, you want to make sure that it works with the other tools you already use. As such, we understand how important integrations are.

Our process for evaluating the integrations involves the following: 

• Integration robustness evaluation: Evaluate the strength of native and third-party integrations.
• Ease of setup assessment: Examine how easy these integrations are to set up.
• Live integration support analysis: Determine the effectiveness of live integration and data exchange systems.

During the testing, we make sure to evaluate the level of integrations and how useful they are. There’s no use in offering hundreds of integrations if the user is going to have to struggle to set them up. There’s also no point in offering integrations that don’t bring value or aren’t relevant to the user.

Support

Support is essential when introducing a new program to your business. You and your team need to be able to get help when you need it. We know how important it is to have good quality customer support.

Our process for evaluating the support involves the following:

• Help and support testing: Review how quickly you get assistance and how effective the support is.
• Support tools review: Determine the range and quality of support options available. This includes FAQs, wikis, forums, live chat, phone support, ticketing systems, and more.
• Response time and thoroughness assessment: Test the response speed and comprehensiveness of the support provided.

During the testing, we make sure to check the quality of customer support. Having access to good support is essential as it saves businesses time and resources. Having an issue and not being able to get help to solve it can slow down other processes and cause a bottleneck and delays. 

Price

The price of a new tool is another important consideration in any SaaS tool. These tools typically don’t require a one-time purchase, which means they will be an ongoing investment. Also, switching tools is expensive and inconvenient. Therefore, it’s important to choose your CRM software carefully.

Our process for evaluating the pricing of the CRM involves the following: 

• Cost-value evaluation: Review if the software’s price aligns with its value.
• Price-functionality comparison: Compare the price and functionality, including how the features vary across different pricing tiers.
• Cost-effectiveness: Determine the tool’s affordability and whether it’s a fair price for the value received.

Throughout our testing, we want to make sure whether the price being charged provides value. Businesses want to keep costs as low as possible while receiving the maximum amount for their investment. 

Our Ethics

We feel strongly that our audience understands how we earn money. To support this goal of transparency, we include the following statement at the top of every review or story posted on our site:

The reviewers and editorial team don’t handle commissions in any way. Additionally, they don’t receive any of the commissions earned. Our reviewers are paid for the work they deliver and don’t earn commissions or bonuses based on referrals. Sponsored articles may be posted occasionally, but they’ll be disclosed as such.

How We Address Specific Business Challenges

Different CRM solutions exist to address varying business challenges. In our evaluations, we focus on the practical application of these tools to real-world situations. Some of the business challenges we aim to address in our reviews are as follows:

Customer Relationship Management Software for Startups

Our reviews focus on the CRM solutions that provide the following benefits:

• Easy adoption across the company
• Simple to understand pricing plans that scale with your business
• Essential features for a startup
• Improved workflows for sales, marketing, and support teams

Why? The first time you purchase a CRM for your new company, you want to make sure it’s the right one. Businesses don’t want to waste time and resources experimenting with different tools.

Customer Relationship Management Software by Industry

Our CRM reviews based on industry focus on software offering these key benefits:

• Industry-specific features
• Competitive price point
• Relevant integrations
• Customization options

Why? Certain industries benefit from industry-specific CRM solutions. These tools often include features that aren’t in any of the general CRMs but that improve functionality and processes for certain business types.

Customer Relationship Management Software by Location

Our CRM reviews based on location focus on offering these benefits:

• Best tool based on your location
• Multilingual and multi-currency features
• Centralized database for storing information
• Document sharing features

Why? When operating from a particular location or multiple areas, you want to ensure that your CRM is useful in that area. Additionally, you want to make sure it supports your native language and currency.