Close Reviews

Pros

- Very easy to get started / intuitive interface
- Enables you to send emails straight from tool and manage inbox
- Ability to set reminders and follow ups
- pipeline UI, similar to salesforce or hubspot

Cons

- analytics on emails (open rates, campaigns) hard to understand. Ended up using persistIQ for this
- hard to tell when prospect opened email

Alternatives Considered

Streak, Pipedrive and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Close

Email inbox management in Close

Switched From

HubSpot Sales Hub

Pros

I love the automated email sequences to help with my outbound prospecting efforts. This enables me to 'set it and forget it" to ensure proper follow up is happening with prospects.

Cons

I don't like that you can't map specific email chains to specific opportunities. Furthermore, you can't upload files which is a real drawback and support suggested I just link to google shared drives.

Pros

- really easy to use
- stripped down to the bare minimum, not many tabs for the sales team to navigate
- new email chain function is impractical as it's a manual task to set up for so few sales contacts
- customer support a few years ago was bad but has improved greatly
- price

Cons

- hard to extract data in a meaningful way. The search functionality is quite rudimentary
- data analysis is barely existent
- insufficient tagging
- feels like a doctored spreadsheet with nicer formatting but less usability

Pros

- Built-in call and email integration.
- Flexible and powerful API w/ great documentation.
- Dynamic lead lists (called "Smart Views") powered through search.
- Native Mac and WIndows apps.
- Responsive support team.
- Custom fields

Cons

- Costly for budget conscious teams. (But not less expensive than Salesforce and like platforms)
- No native mobile apps yet. (Not recommended for outside sales teams)

Pros

The features that helped us the most:

-real-time integration with gmail. We send and receive all our email through the app. Besides being more convenient it also keeps all correspondence logged in an easy to reference way.
-recorded calls - all calls and voice-mails are automatically listed right along with notes and emails. This is incredibly useful with longer sales cycles. We are able to go back and actually hear what the customer said on the call two months ago. So much better than just notes, especially if there is every a disagreement.
- Support is amazing. Always very responsive and timely and walked us through our limited implementation issues, (see below). Additionally, they are always improving the app, so about the time I suggest an option I'd like to see it is already slated to be rolled out.

Cons

Not really any cons to speak of, but we had a couple issues at first:

- call quality was poor. This was due to trying to use a wireless connection and after switching everyone over to wired, it went away. So while not an app problem, something to consider if you or your team work remotely.

-Some merging issues when pulling lead data from our web form. Again, this was not an app problem so much as a developer problem on our end, but it was a headache for a couple days none the less.

Pros

Automation and their inbox is a huge pro.
Their search feature is arguably the best anyone could ask for. We are still discovering search tricks. GREAT ROI!
A great help page on the Close.IO site for finding suggestions and troubleshooting.

Cons

We did have a tough time with our firewall when first setting up Close.IO, so make sure to include your Network Admin in the conversation of switching to Close.IO early on in the process.
Sometimes getting someone on the phone can be a challenge, but email and scheduling a call have never been a problem.

Pros

My favorite thing about Close.io is the ability to add custom fields that help with reporting and overall ease of use. Also being able to call directly from the software and have the calls recorded and task creations are very simple.

Cons

The user interface could use some improvement. The flow of things can sometimes get a little chaotic so creates extra time to learn the system.

Pros

Close is an easy way to keep track of leads and customers alike. We can set tasks, see who is calling, and have visibility to communication the client has had with other people in the company.

Cons

I really don’t have many complaints. One tiny nitpicky thing: the icon in my tool bar continues to bounce even after someone else has answered a call. It can get confusing.

Pros

Their contact management module is very well built. Email and event tracking are efficient.

Cons

The app lacks field customization for extra lead/deal data for reports, I found their integrations really limited (you can connect with Zapier but still has some limitations). Your tasks do not have a specific section or dashboard and you can easily lose track of the daily pending tasks.

Pros

Sequencing, calling from the software, activity tracking, call recording, relative simplicity to use

Cons

no comment yet, i am just beginning to use it

Pros

We use pipedrive for email marketing and Close.io for cold calling. Our system works like this. Our marketing team use pipedrive to send out email to possible leads and follow up with them and when it results in a successful response from the prospect the sales team collects the phone numbers. Then these prospects with phone numbers have been downloaded to csv and transferred to Close.io CRM for sales team. Then they do all the cold calling with in Close.io CRM. Our department also have access to this CRM to make support calls later on. We can say our sales team's productivity has increased a lot after implementing this CRM. They do not need to manually do the sorting and recording of calls made and everything can be done in settings just one time.

Cons

When importing the prospects from a CSV if there are duplicates in the file, it doesn't detect that and gets added just like an other contact. There are no option to segment the contact in to different categories.

Pros

Love it for all businesses I have worked in. I literally have my own Personal Close I use that I bring when I take a contract, so I don't have to use something else. It is part of my working life now - Easy deployment (Even when Microsoft tries to ruin everything for you), Simple and easy, can opt into great features if you need it, export your leads, whatever it is - It is software that has clearly been made by someone who was in Business Development. The amount of time I save not having to manually document how much work I have done...Makes me more successful.

Cons

Nothing - it is great - A small deployment issue once, but that was 100% Microsofts fault. The reps were great at fixing it.

Pros

I really like the ease of use and graphical interface. I also love that I'm able to dial straight from the platform and the templating system is fairly easy to use as well.

Cons

Contact and lead management could be slightly improved. Unmerging leads is not possible from what I can understand so be careful not to merge the wrong leads. Also if your working specific verticals, it's nice to be able to port a contact from one lead to another should they have switched companies but that's not a possibility either.

Pros

-Easy for the team to use.
-Calling system is great
-Fast customer Service.
-Call recording is fantastic.
-Easy onboarding

Cons

-Reporting is lacking for what we need. We would like to see more detailed reporting.
-Company Hierarchy. No way to easily setup parent and child companies
- Limited field for opportunities
-Smartviews are difficult to use.
- Few direct Integrations.

Pros

Flexible - easily tweaked
Not overkill

Cons

No mobile interface - nobody in our company sits at a desk and "does sales"... we are all on the road on jumping meeting to meeting, so it would have been awesome to have an app version or a more user friendly mobile version.

Pros

Lays everything out in a way that is simple, functional, and very user friendly. Most things make sense at first glance without much of a learning curve.

Cons

Notification system is genuinely trash. If I have the software on my laptop, there should be some way their API talks with MacOS notifications API, I think someone just has to build the connection.

Pros

Close integrates all of our customer communication into one place to make it really easy to use. Because it integrates with calling and email, most communication gets automatically logged so there isn't that annoying extra step. And because we're already in it while interacting with customers, adding notes is natural. The result is a CRM system that is up to date and gets used.

Cons

I'd like prettier reporting. The reporting screen basically counts and filters to give a table of results. I would love to have this visualize pipelines and allow us to drill down on results in a more visual way.

Pros

I like their all in one feature package - outreach can be done via call, sms, email. Each feature is beautifully designed.
I also really like Smart Views

Cons

No cons really. It's a little more expensive than other CRMs out there - but I totally understand because the features they provide at this price point eliminates need for any other app in my sales workflow.

Pros

The simplicity yet power of this CRM system is exactly what a growing company needs. It is also fantastic that the product comes with an API that can help to automate your tasks and connect the CRM to other products.

Cons

The user interface of the emails could be smarter and give a better oversight!

Pros

Love the fact that I can power dial a bunch of people and drop voice mails. This is a godsend for my team.

Cons

Stupid workflows, automations were really horrible and was set up poorly by the agent who worked and never was working correctly for 9 months.

Pros

Easy to use interface. Nice upgrade with the html in the email function! Integration with the phone is great!

Cons

Fix the Tasks function to be more user friendly. allow us the hide the custom fields so we don't need to scroll through them all when assigning data.

Pros

The search bar makes finding ANYTHING very quick and easy. Also, the ability to see emails between colleagues and leads/customers. It's a great tool for support teams.

Cons

I love the organization of Close.io, but there are so many possibilities to keep track of, it can be overwhelming.

Pros

Easy to record calls as well as listen in on or join calls – can easily talk only to the customer service agent so the customer can't hear, as well. Calls are saved and appointments that are made/messages are easy to find and see.

Cons

There isn't a feature available (yet) to be able to schedule emails to go out, which would be helpful with appointment setting and lead management.

Pros

1) The ability to draw up call lists in 30 seconds using Close.io's search bar is brilliant.
2) There's no feature creep or anything that can obstruct you from doing what you need to do during your day of sales activities. Their design and UI is just clean and welcoming.

Cons

The only thing I might want more of, is more details analytics so we could go deeper as it pertains to metrics.

Pros

I am very pleased with more than just the program itself. I am very pleased with the interest taken from Close.io employees/members itself. I was sent emails asking how things were going to make sure that everything was going smoothly on my end. Having that kind of interest in their product and their customers who are using the product is one of the big reasons I ultimately decided to go with Close.io instead of searching or trying another sales CRM.