Anyone using WordPress as the foundation for their CRM?

[Josh]

One of the things I've hated about a lot of software projects (especially recently) is the rates and fees get really high real fast. I've been trying a few different plugins and definitely think some are better than others.

Frank used to teach people to collect data on customers, even if they don't buy, so that way when a rate increase happened they could just run a report and reach all those customers easily. I would think for smaller agencies (and honestly even some bigger ones) it could really help keep overhead low, especially for solos and duos.

(The one I have liked the most so far is Propovoice, not an affiliate link, not associated with them, and so far I've only really used their free version).

Has anyone hear tried that? One of the biggest savings would be for agencies with a lot of users because there is no per user fee with software like this. To put it another way, for the same price of having a single user on the CRM, you could have 100 users (incremental costs incur, but nothing like the "per user" fees of a lot of other solutions).

 

[somarco]

I never thought of using Wordpress as a CRM and no idea how it would work.

My home made CRM is Google Contacts + Gmail + Sheets. They integrate reasonably well and better than they did when I started down this path years ago.

 

[Chazm]

Wouldn’t a normal CRM do that for you? Radius bob is cheap, like $34 and hasn’t changed in price in years.

 

[Josh]

Wouldn’t a normal CRM do that for you? Radius bob is cheap, like $34 and hasn’t changed in price in years.

Normally CRMs will charge per user (like the $34 you are mentioning probably is). For example, if you have 10 agents @ $34 each (for an agency), that's $340/month (just using this as an example). If you have a WordPress site (which a lot of agents use anyway), the plugins I'm using would let that same agency ad 10, 50, or 100+ agents. There would be some increased expenses with hosting at some massive scale, but it would be radically less expensive.

One of the first contractor positions I had in the insurance and technology space was as a regional sales manager for a CRM that helped facilitate transactions between carriers and government agencies. I think there are a lot of ways for small agencies and independent agents to take advantage of some tech and really build their customer bases. For example, you can also put in a plugin for customer service, which then let's your customers message you 24x7, but you can just go through it as you have time. All of that is available with no additional fees if you're "self-hosting" it. Of course, you still need to manage your backups and stuff, but there are a lot of tools that can do that automatically so even if you got hacked/ransomwared/somethingbroke/etc, you could have copies to restore from and have minimal downtime.

 

[Josh]

My home made CRM is Google Contacts + Gmail + Sheets. They integrate reasonably well and better than they did when I started down this path years ago.

I'm not gonna lie, gmail + sheets (all google drive products really), is a great tool set to start with.

 

[rmhaire]

Wouldn’t a normal CRM do that for you? Radius bob is cheap, like $34 and hasn’t changed in price in years.

I'm with Chazm on this one. Radius can do all that. When I built Radius out I created a form for that. All I keep up with now days is their current company. The rest you can do in your head.

 

[tikibarrister]

There's tons of self-hostable CRMs.

Examples: [EXTERNAL LINK] - GitHub - awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted: A list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted on your own servers

I'm sure someone has written a CRM package for Wordpress. It depends on how low-end you want to go and how much time you want to spend on IT.

Heck, I guarantee there's some grizzled old vet who still carries around an expandable file folder and a Rolodex.

 

[Josh]

I guarantee there's some grizzled old vet who still carries around an expandable file folder and a Rolodex.

I actually bet there are a lot of them

 

[rmhaire]

Heck, I guarantee there's some grizzled old vet who still carries around an expandable file folder and a Rolodex.

Who you calling grizzled? I happen to like them Rolodex watches.

 

[somarco]

I am comfortable with my G setup and too lazy to change. Since it is cloud based I can access my information from any room in my house or anywhere with a secure internet connection.

FWIW I searched for WP CRM plugins and templates and found quite a few.

[EXTERNAL LINK] - 9 Best WordPress CRM Plugins in 2023 (Ranked)

[EXTERNAL LINK] - WordPress CRM Plugin – WP-CRM System

My knock against using a WP theme or plugin is security. I have a very stable theme from one of the top builders, only use plugins as needed. Also, I use Wordfence premium to keep the bad guys out, so even though it is not my CRM the site is very secure.

Too many folks that use the WP backbone rarely update their theme or plugins and that can lead to disaster.

The WP CRM plugin linked above only has 1,000 installs which wouldn't give me a lot of confidence in that system.

Jetpack CRM has 40,000 installs while Hubspot has 300,000 installs.