What contact management software/service do you use?

I am starting to build a list of business contacts and need to organize them.


I am I blown away by how many choices their are for contact management solutions.


I would prefer free, but for the right features I am willing to pay a small fee every month.


Problem is, once you spend between 100 and 200 hours building your contact database, you are probably stuck with that solution, even if you are not happy with it. it takes a lot to move that much information to a new solution if they don't share the same database type.


SO, I would really like to hear what most of you guys are using for this purpose to help me decide which one to invest my time and money into.


THANK YOU so much for your input.

Great question NotTheDude!

Depending on the volume and number of clients, and I know this might sound elementary, but what about using excel as your free option. I have personally used SalesForce and found it useful to manage and track sales, contacts and followup. The final route might be to have a system created that is customized for your business.

Hope this helped!

Shawn

TheContentAuthority said:

Great question NotTheDude!

Depending on the volume and number of clients, and I know this might sound elementary, but what about using excel as your free option. I have personally used SalesForce and found it useful to manage and track sales, contacts and followup. The final route might be to have a system created that is customized for your business.

Hope this helped!

Shawn

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Thanks for the help Shawn.

Salesforce looks good but they seem pricey and I don't know if I can easily import my contacts from them if I choose a different solution.

Is there an excel template you can recommend and link me to?

I would always prefer developing my own excel customized program to play with it as and when required. As a backup any free software can be used but excel would be my primary source.

We use Salesforce at my work and it is really nice. If you can afford it I would highly recommend it. Though if you are capable and dont want to spend the money i would suggest making your own.. It would be really easy to do with say C# in Visual Studio or something. But, that is if you want something free and basic. But, if you have a business and want to be all professional I suggest Salesforce. You can import from tons of different file types and such. It is really worth the money

Have a look at Sage act on the cloud, it's really cheap for one user and you can get a free trial. Although I'm not sure if it's only available in the UK.

Sales force seems cool. I was using Gmail contacts to keep track of them though. But I have less clients and it is easy to keep track of them.

If you wan't a free and good approach, I used my gmail account. Then when I started using raven tools, I automatically exported my contact to that. Works for me.