Daylite for Mac Reviews

Pros

When I realized my peace, sanity, and time were worth protecting and was fed up with complaining to my wife about a piece of garbage software I was currently using, I did not have a solution to replace it with. I had no knowledge about Marketcircle's Daylite. It wasn't until I threw the gauntlet down that there had to be something for the Mac that was serious for running my small business did I discover my new-found love.

I have scars from using other programs. That’s how bloody it got, how costly. But for a precious fraction of the cost with Daylite, I have peace like a river flowing out of my personal and professional commitments. I am in control. Thank you, Marketcircle!

This year marks my 11th anniversary with my new love, Daylite. She has been so good to me. She is flexible, customizable, expandable, able to take on new tasks and projects without fuss. It's been a peaceful 11 years since our new relationship began, and God forbid that I would do anything intentionally to harm that relationship.

It wasn't long after being introduced to Daylite that her hidden capabilities came into view. The more time I spent with her, the more I became grateful for her creator. "You mean this company fosters feedback from the experience I am having with their prize creation? You mean I can have a hand in the engineering enhancements beyond what she is doing for me today? This is phenomenal!”

Cons

When I select an object and create "New Appointment" from that object, the title field for the Appointment should automatically be populated.

Phone support, when needed, would upgrade Marketcircle on par with companies of excellence like Apple, Bluehost, and Cannon. There's always room for improvement in service to the customer.

Pros

It is relatively intuitive and easy to use. Also good for people with a mobile office set-up as it interacts well between iPhone, iPad and MacBook. Customer support is good, albeit only via email and chat.

Cons

It has some limitations and inflexibilities that sometimes frustrate me, or force me to use "old-fashioned" work-arounds, but I must also say that a number of these have been corrected over the years.

Pros

It doesn't seem to lose any data or break in a way that destroys the work that goes into it.

Cons

It is buggy, inconsistent, hard to use (and thus hard to teach to use), and, most of all, badly designed. It attempts to match a Mac app sort of feel by having things almost look and act like they do in a stock Mac app like Numbers, Preview, etc. But they fail in actually making it intuitive and useful. The most obvious example is the way it "pulls in" information from the left side of the window in a thing that I don't even know what to call, maybe it's a page? Anyway, these "pages" (for lack of a better word), stack and cover up everything below, and they are also temporary. This causes a few problems. First, you can't go back to the ones below without closing the ones on top, they go away and if you're trying to reference previous "pages" you keep having to go back and forth, sometimes between multiple layers of pages. It's extremely annoying and very unintuitive. There are plenty more examples of its design ineptitude, but I'll give 1 more: The way you edit the "pages" is to aim for a tiny little edit button on the very bottom of the sidebar. And your edits are not applied until you click "done" which appears in the same place. If you accidentally exit the "page", it loses all your edits. And it's waaaay too easy to accidentally exit a page. You should be able to open these "pages" in a new tab, or window, or anything else besides its current functionality.

Pros

It is like an agenda taken to the next level, it allows you to have all the notes and reminders, the data and everything perfectly controlled. something that just makes your life easier.

Cons

Maybe at first, when you start using it, it is not so intuitive

Pros

Love the clean look of Daylite, and I love how it connects things together. All the info I need is right there.

Cons

I haven’t found it brilliant for Sales Analysis, such as things like conversion ratios, value of projects / customers etc. But maybe I’m just not good enough with the software. Also not great for tracking time management.
The software is designed for Macs - great. But some of my colleagues need to run financial software and so have to use Windows machines. It would be great if they could use Daylite too - but they can’t. So we have to run multiple systems.

Alternatives Considered

Agile CRM and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Daylite for Mac

Better for Mac. Liked the look and feel of it better.

Pros

I love that it works seamlessly with all my Apple technology. I don't have to log into anything special or remember to mark anything and yet all my important communications are logged automatically whether I'm communicating via mail or my iphone. I can add notes, add a picture of handwritten notes to contact records, easily schedule followup, and nurture series to contacts. People always remark how organized I am and that I never seem lose track of things, and that's due in part to how easy Daylite makes it easy to store info, schedule followup, and manage open projects.

Cons

It still needs some work to be robust in pipeline management, but that's balanced out by the fact that all my information is easily accessed.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to Daylite for Mac

The integration with my apple tech and not needing to log into a web based service.

Pros

Daylite is user friendly with many customizable functions which suit our business well.
The task system keeps us on track and nothing gets lost in the shuffle. We also are utilizing the activity sets to create systems and projects for workflow.
Daylite will enable a new untrained employee to enter into our business and take care of our clients easily Some much information is captured and stored in a sensible manner, it creates a continuum of customer service.

Cons

At times, there are too many reminder boxes popping up on screen.

It would be beneficial if we could like directly to the companies with who we do business, rather than logging on another screen.

Alternatives Considered

UKG Ready

Reasons for Switching to Daylite for Mac

Ease of use and familiarity. Time invested in learning the functionality.

Pros

The customer support really treats this like a software that is integral to your business.

Cons

I think they could really benefit from exploring a Facebook integration to keep track of people I interact with on Facebook without a lengthy contact creation process for each person.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho CRM

Reasons for Switching to Daylite for Mac

Because it seemed cleaner and more well thought out, especially on Mac.

Pros

The integration of the CRM with the ability to have discrete files for different projects (matters) for the same client.

Cons

Sometimes attachments do not remain attached to emails when saved to a Daylite project.

Pros

Organizing prospects and managing the relationship connections

Cons

Time to fix glitches when they occur. Response time for emailed support.

Pros

Flexibility and many features, versatile links between objects, hybride technology (cloud and on premise)

Cons

Problems in integration with Zapier, poor integrations, unable to sync with google calendar, old fashion face, limited functionality of the mobile version.

Pros

Daylite is robust but not overly complicated. The customization aspect is excellent. Our team loves using it for a myriad of reasons including - customization of reports, the plugins from IOSxpert - they are fantastic(!), the mobile version on iphone is completely wired in an user friendly, the new team-view features are superb as we are all able to help deliver on tasks and projects when it counts, the user interface is very clean and organized, the calendar integration with iCal and Google is excellent, the smart lists for projects and opportunities are totally functional and help speed up large scale project accessability while connecting team members...and the list goes on. I particularly like the option of dragging up the most pressing opportunities and project to the top tool bar and having them right at my fingertips.

We also integrate Merlin Project into the larger projects and it's compatibility is excellent. There is a bit of learning curve but once our team took the time to dig in and get under the hood of the cross functionality, it only made our project management easier. In fact, I would say that through Daylite, we have come to sell our project management skills and realize this vertical as a profit center for our small company.

Honestly, Daylite is a game-changer. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished and we look forward to continued roll-outs and developments.

Cons

Need to continue improving Apple mail to Daylite and it would be great to have a slack-like messaging component. Probably the biggest 'want' is the ability to output to word and excel in some capacity. Daylite will output to excel in a very limited fashion - it works, but it could be smoother. I realize that this 'ask' would probably require licensing from Microsoft in some capacity and it may be cost prohibitive.

Otherwise, Daylite is a fantastic platform for Apple shops. We have been using it since 2012.

Pros

Rich linking -- My ADHD mind isn't deficient in attention - it makes rich connections. Daylite allows me to do that, too. If I think an association is important to capture, Daylite lets me do that. Many other CRM's force an association model on me. I like it that Daylite allows me to make the associations that make sense for me because it let's me later view different perspectives of those links -- everything (yes, everything) that's relevant to a person, an appointment, a note, an opportunity. If I think that's an important as it's top-of-mind, I capture that relationship for later use.

Integrated with native Mail.app -- It's great to link mail to sales opportunities (and people, and tasks and appointment, and projects) all without leaving mail. Then, when I'm back in DL, all that mail shows up when it's relevant. I don't have to go searching through INBOX.

Customer service -- World class. I wouldn't doubt if I were in the top 1% of customers requesting support. I've contacted them A LOT! I always get personal, courteous, expert responses. That's rare. I value that deeply.

Apple first -- The interface does not make concessions to Windows look-and-feel or UX. Yeah! As an Apple-only user, that suits my thinking and muscle memory just fine!

Underdogs -- I feel like I'm part of a movement -- an all-apple CRM that kicks butt for usability and productivity.

Cons

* Beyond-expert-level features and keybindings. Marketcircle is small, and doesn't (yet) have the customer base to get to the kinds of features that my power-user toolsmith mindset would want. For example, some actions require use of a mouse, and I'm a HUGE fan of keeping my fast fingers on the keyboard. That's a nit to pick, but it's the kind of detail that comes from a larger customer base.

Missing - a browser-based (or API) interface -- There are some times that I just don't have my phone or MacBook with me. It would be nice to use any-old-browser. Ah... the tradeoffs for being tightly coupled to Apple-only devices (BTW... See "pros" for same issue).

Pros

Daylite doesn't seem to differentiate between B2B or B2C. You can add appointments, tasks, notes, email, pipelines, etc to people, or businesses. You can add single tasks, activity sets (groups of tasks, appointments etc) or pipelines (stages with groups of tasks, appointments etc. within each stage). Whether you are managing a sales cycle or a project, data entry is minimal. I love that with one click, all our carefully considered steps can be applied to any situation, whether it's a sales cycle or the projects that result from a sale. Combinations are possible and I'm confident that no step is overlooked or omitted and they pop up at exactly the right time. Customization of the task list or pipeline task set is also possible "on the fly".

Their service is unbelievable. I haven't had a lot of interaction with Daylite support over the 12 years I've been using Daylite, but the followup I recently received for questions I had offered service at a level to which I would like to become accustomed! I had support sending me emails some days later asking if everything was okay - not an automated survey question, but someone in support that actually cares! When do you ever get that level of service? A big thank you!

Cons

I don't use Opportunities for prospects since it's not possible to convert an Opportunity (and everything recorded & saved) to a Contact. I set up any prospect as a full contact then tag them with a category of Prospect. I then set up a smart list that displays all contacts that have a category of Prospects.

Also, it would be great if PC users could access Daylite too. Not everyone on the team uses a Mac.

Pros

I can capture client data and then track sales progress, email and other communications to ensure I provide the best service to my customers.

Cons

Taking the time to maximize my use of forms and other templates that could improve my productivity

Pros

I appreciate the fact that a template for the database came pre-installed and that it was easily modified to suit my needs in terms for categories of contacts and projects/objects. The e-mail integration is important to me as mails are generally attached to the relevant contacts/projects. The integration of pages and numbers templates provides for a smooth process of drafting letters, contracts, income sheets etc. The task system of setting dates to keep me alert on dead-lines is crucial as I do a law practice and dead-lines are an integral part of my couselling.

Cons

I was worried about transferring to the cloud as I couldn't get an authoritative answer from my association as to whether I was really allowed to store sensitive client data this way. Consensus now seems to prevail that this is OK, though.

Pros

I work on a team, coordinating transactions for 4 brokers as well as assisting with various projects ranging from social media content creation to client events. Daylite offers one place to hold details and to track tasks. Transactions are Opportunities and everything else is a Project. Attaching emails is easy and super useful. Contacts we use over and over again only have to be entered once. No one on my team has to keep a million details in their head so it helps us all stay on the same page. Now that we have switched to the cloud its faster, more reliable, and I've been able to install it at home so working remotely is seamless.

Cons

Daylite mail assistant for iphone/ipad has been needed for years. Also really wish I could copy and paste multiple fields from people or company records.

Pros

This software is like an assistant to me. Once out of my head, I know the information will come back at the right time reminding me what I have to do.

Cons

The app has a lot if limitation. The mail assistant is great, but complicated for answers on the go via the Iphone.

Pros

This is a great tool for our time - it feeds and tracks all information about the all important customer into one location, allowing consistent and relevant information to be channeled to and from the prospect and customer. I love this CRM! The team of developers and customer support professionals are quick to respond, bright and friendly, and take my concerns (a sole practitioner) seriously every time.

The ios Daylite app is just as powerful and new features, such as an integrated mail function, are being developed all the time.

Cons

I would want better integration with texting and calling from my iphone. Texting is now handled by a third party developer which doesn't meet the standards of function and ease of use set by Daylite developers.

Pros

Allows me to store all my contact communications and relationships to me so that I can efficiently respond to any questions as well as send out notices. For example I have a patient category that I can send group communications regarding treatments and government subsidies as well as I can send group emails to other traders regarding our outcomes. The program does a lot to systematize the information provided over the Internet and as such is a very valuable if not essential hub of my business. I am particularly appreciative of the support that I get which includes staff logging on and showing me on my computer what I need to do.

Cons

I have been using Daylite for several years now and have become accustomed to working with it. Difficulties have arisen typically in synchronizing the Daylite database with other programs such as Apple Mail.

Pros

Daylite is a superb application which should be used as an example to developers on how to create a complex applications which are user friendly and easy to use without being dumbed down for power users.

Excellent integration with Apple mail makes processing incoming e-mails into Daylite take only a few seconds.

Cons

Due to its incredibly full feature set it creates an impression that it is complex to configure for specific use which is not at all the case.

Pros

The integration of email, and tons of fields plus 13 extras, gives me plenty of flexibility to sort/select and find the record I'm looking for.
Fr'instance, say, it's somebody I met at a Rotary Club in some state, but forgot the name, I simply do a search on any word or phrase (not necessarily a keyword) and Daylite finds the likely matches, whether in an email, or a note, or whatever. The associations of who is connected to who (whom?) and how, helps to connected the dots even more.

Cons

While there are plenty of report formats, and capability to modify somewhat, this could be improved. The Access database (at least from what I recall years ago) had a neat way to select/order reports & forms, such as listing, say, customers by city, within county, within state, within region, etc.

Pros

Ability to interrelate people, companies, locations, business types etc etc in an almost infinitely customisable way.
Ability to maintain comprehensive records of activities, communications and relationships with contacts.
Powerful search criteria and ability to create smart lists from them.
Facilities to plan and follow up, linking multiple people, activities, companies, resources etc.
Having all my data in one place.
Intuitive, once you have understood all the available options.

Cons

Not really a "con", but rather a recommendation. Have a clear idea of what you want Daylite to do for you, and structure the highly flexible options, keywords, relationships, locations etc. accordingly before you start. You can edit reasonably easily, but it's best to get it approximately right at the outset.

Pros

Daylite leverages the power of the Mac OS to allow you to manage your data using Smart Lists and incredible searchability. It integrates with Mail to automatically import communications. It is easy and intuitive to use and works offline with sync for increased speed.

Cons

Daylite has limited functionality when it comes to quoting and invoicing as well as limited integrations.

Pros

1. It does everything I want it to, including keeping track of contacts, calendars, tasks, projects pipelines, emails, notes, etc.
2. It integrates perfectly with David Good's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. In the past I've had to use two or three apps to do this. Daylite does it all in one place and does it very well.
3. It's reliable. I rarely have a glitch and - when I do - it's minor and tech support already has a fix.
4. It automatically creates backups of the data. I don't have to worry about that.

Cons

The biggest drawback is that it isn't easy to create templates for documents, labels and reports. To create a new label or report template, I need to go to my Daylite consultant, which costs me money. To create a new Word document template is clunky and requires experimentation.