Best Low Cost CRM System

Implementing a CRM system is cheap and fast – a popular marketing promise in the implementer market. What is behind them? Invoices for any hidden costs that the integrator will charge your company. So that the purchase of CRM for startups does not fit your budget and nerves, we tell you what awaits you during implementation and what additional costs you should prepare for.

Buying CRM: What to Pay for

The cost of a CRM system is formed from the price for the license and implementation.

License. The price depends on the type of CRM system – cloud or box.

Boxed CRM is installed on the client’s servers. You buy a license for the program, and then the specialists install it on your server.

A boxed CRM is not a low-cost CRM, it is more expensive than a cloud one, but it is bought once and for all. The price depends on the number of users. For example, Bitrix24 – from 59,000 to 139,000 rubles and Megaplan – from 45,000 to 499,000 rubles. Updates are installed automatically, payment for updates comes from the next year.

In cloud CRM, data is stored on the server of the developer company. You can work in the system when connected to the Internet from any device through a browser. You pay a monthly subscription to access the service.

You can subscribe and pay once every few months or a year. The cost depends on the functionality. On average, it turns out from 5,000 to 8,000 rubles per user per year. Updates in the cloud version of the system are free and installed automatically.

The choice of the type of CRM depends on the capabilities of the company. The boxed version is more suitable for large businesses. For small companies that are not profitable to keep a programmer on the staff, to pay extra for technical support and updates, the cloud version will be enough.

Also Read: Starting a Financial Service Brand

Implementation

This is the most expensive part of buying a CRM system. The price varies from 5,000 to 200,000 rubles, large implementations can cost several million rubles. It all depends on the complexity of the business processes in the company and the problems that it wants to solve.

Implementation is a complex and multi-stage process that the team is working on: 

1. business analyst;
2. technical specialist;
3. technical support.

If the customer wants to make individual modifications to the system, then the development department is also involved in the process.

Free Systems

And there are those too. Is it cheese in a mousetrap? Judge for yourself: you were provided with a limited version of CRM for free. Your employees learn to use it, get used to it, fill the available space with data and run into a lack of functionality. You are forced to buy additional features and in the end, you still use CRM for money. For those who strongly doubt the justification of the costs, this is an option, but for those who want to implement and make a profit as quickly as possible, it is not.

What You Can’t Save On

In the implementation scheme, there are mandatory costs that will help you use the implemented system to the maximum:

• Initial setup. CRM partners are called integrators for a reason: they know how to customize the system for each business. Experience shows that after trying to configure it on their own, customers still resort to the help of integrators, only having already spent money, time, and nerves.
• Data import. Let the integrator transfer all your data when moving from another CRM or enterprise software.
• You cannot sacrifice customer contacts.
• Education. The sooner your employees learn to work with CRM, the sooner you recoup the costs of it and start counting profits.
• Technical support. It is necessary. High-quality and efficient technical support is the key to successful work in CRM.
• Updates. If the integrator offers to upgrade your capabilities, agree. For your hard-earned money, you will receive stable and up-to-date functionality.