Nutshell Reviews

Pros

Our primary goal was to have a high-functioning CRM that supported lead nurturing and helped us close sales. Nutshell does that exceptionally well, but that is just the starting point. Automating tasks and communication through multiple sales pipelines is easy and intuitive. We are already seeing results from the automation. Tracking our current clients for upsells and renewals is also intuitive and easy.

Our next step is to use the marketing potential of the platform to increase our lead generation as well.

The implementation went very smoothly, support from Nutshell staff was great, and I was up and running with Nutshell in days, and now I can track leads, make calls, and send emails and never have to leave the platform. It has greatly increase my efficiency.

Cons

Not sure how to answer the cons. There are a few areas where I would like to customize fields, or change their location, but it is a small complaint

Pros

Easy to use, it doesn’t take a data wizard to configure and manage.

Cons

Limited automations, limitations to what can be customized.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

End of life for Highrise. Glad it died now, Nutshell is so much better

Switched From

Highrise

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Way easier implementation. Cheaper. Don’t need dedicated people to manage it

Pros

Nutshell offers a unique ability to tag people in activities and run reports on calling activities for my sales reps.

Cons

Every lead typically has a company or contact. But if you don't save the activity in the lead, and instead under the company or individual contact, you can't see it when your client calls in regarding the sale they want service for, so your customer service is hindered and your sales people look like they don't know the history of the account. It's embarrassing to use this software because Nutshell says they are only helping to land the sale, not support it, but this mindset about how they build their software results in a horrible disconnect with regards to how we are forced to serve our customers, and thus we are using a CRM that doesn't support the full life cycle of a sale. We keep hoping Nutshell will fix this and improve because their customer service is great, and their people mean well, but after several years of patiently waiting, we are concerned that we may never see this problem fixed. The mobile app also has so many glitches with the UX that it can't even compare the experience to how you can use leads in a web browser. Further, when we have a customer call in to ask about their account, the recent leads puts the oldest first in the list, which means we have to scroll through several hundred orders just to open the last order we did for that client. If you are trying to sell to a major corporate account with multiple facilities / departments, forget it with Nutshell; linking subcompanies / vendors / partners / other locations is a nightmare in Nutshell.

Pros

One of the first things that I want to see in a great CRM platform is excellent, and timely customer service. The nutshell team delivers that in spades.

Cons

Some of the "lookup" tools do not get me where I need to go. It might be user error or not knowing how to use the available tools, but I sometimes have to give up on getting the data segment I need.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho Desk

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

Nutshell was the most/best built out for my particular business model

Switched From

Zoho Desk

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Nutshell was the most/best built out for my particular business model

Pros

My favorite thing about Nutshell is the ease of reporting analytics. After an email broadcast I can report the open rates and engagement to my team super fast. It's nice to have it at all at one click!

Cons

The hardest part of Nutshell to understand and use is the Dashboard. I still don't have it figured out and I've been using it since February.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

We were using Active Campaign for emails which is not efficient. And the reporting is terrible. All the contacts that mattered were in Google docs and sheets, which was a disaster.

Switched From

Google Docs

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Nutshell is so much more intuitive. I have used Hubspot in the past and it takes so long to get anything done.

Pros

Its ability to review people and companies for possible duplicates. Ability for tasks and action steps as 2 different items to keep track of what needs to be done by when. Tagging others and notifying them of question or next step.

Cons

The app is no where near as efficient and easy to maneuver as the website and just as easy to open up a browser on the phone instead of utilizing the app. If a lead gets to be too long, it can bog down and make Nutshell non-responsive at time when in that lead. When assigning multiple tasks back to back, despite the time showing the same time as previous task, it will save as a defaulted 5pm forcing to go back and edit.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Platform

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Their price point when we started was unbeatable and their willingness to grow the Nutshell platform around our needs and utilize our feedback for improvement.s

Pros

I like that Nutshell is straightforward to build. As an admin, it's easy to set up the pipelines, add users, and the interface is easy to follow. Some of its capabilities are very helpful, such as tasks/automatic tasks, automatic emails, email integration, RingCentral integration, etc. The fact they track audience engagements is also helpful to get a feel for the audiences. There are some limitations, of course, but it's possible to use it well based on the lower price point than other competitors.

Cons

The features are sometimes limiting. They intend to be helpful but actually cause more work. For example, I dislike how you can't choose a certain date for an automatic task but rather have to delay it by X amount of business days—it becomes such a pain. I also dislike the same feature for the automatic emails, it becomes a pain point. The pipelines are good to use but have a limit on how many steps can be created as well, which is also limiting. I also dislike how you can't use the same trigger in different stages of a pipeline—this can be so unhelpful at times. Lastly, there's something very off with the AI used to identify duplicates. Sometimes the suggestions are close to each other but sometimes they're VERY unrelated and it keeps getting flagged as a duplicate.

Pros

Nutshell is a cost-effective product. Most other similar products are a lot more expensive. One of the unique things about Nutshell is its custom email templates which engage placeholder settings. This means you can customise an email template but include elements or placeholders that need to be customised on a per-email basis so the software will not let you send the email unless the placeholder is attended to.

Cons

Sadly Nutshell is very buggy and the CS and developer teams seem completely uninterested in resolving my complaints about the software. These are basic features mainly within the templating software which I have told Nutshell about countless times, yet they seem uninterested in resolving them. Sadly the bugs can make for a frustrating experience on some occasions. What is even more annoying is that they continue to turn out useless features that are half-baked rather than spending some time fixing the issues at the centre of their core product.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Starter

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Nutshell felt a lot easier to setup and use and the sales team were a lot more attentive and helpful!

Pros

Ease of use. All can be done in browser.

Cons

Lack of dynamic custom tagging (had to be pre-set tags).

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Price was the reason we didn't go for Salesforce

Pros

The most useful feature of Nutshell is the sales pipeline management where it managed every complex and monotonous stage of sales that in turn also provide analytics and reporting functionality for research purpose and presentation for the stakeholders.

Cons

When it comes to documents storage then there are lot of improvement required as the platform involved in holding the document is fishy and complex to deal with.

Alternatives Considered

Copper

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

Doesn't matched with the current requirements and current budgets that could have passed from the audit team

Switched From

Freshsales and Zendesk Sell

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Doesn't matched with the current requirements and current budgets that could have passed from the audit team

Pros

I was tasked with finding a CRM and did extensive research. I chose Nutshell and have never looked back. This CRM is super user friendly and easy to train sales people who are usually up and running within 30 minutes. This is NOT Salesforce - no degree required to use it! lolI love Nutshell so much, that I recommend it to my other customers who retain me to manage their marketing. I have over 6 customers using Nutshell and they are all happy with the product!

Cons

There are a few features I would like to see added... when "starring" the main contact within the company filed- that information should bleed through to the lead, or at least have the same option available within the lead. That same "starred" contact should move to the 1st place in the contact list.

Pros

We explored a number of CRM solutions and initially selected Insightly after trying to get Tiger CRM working. Insightly functionality was too limiting and consequently was not being used. Our second round of trials lead us to Nutshell, which we have been using for about two years.

We found Nutshell to be reasonably robust and easy to use. We have been using it for about two years now. We have about 30,000 contacts and 11,000 companies.

Cons

We are now running into some functional issues which we have to address with addons, including Mailjet for email campaigns and Zapier for data transfer. The lack of a quoting interface, manual address entry into Quickbooks, lack of phone integration, and incomplete email integration. With the exception of QB integration, the other functions can be addressed with more addons. By the time we get done adding on the functional holes, the price becomes quite high.

The reliance on addons also means that the system becomes unwieldy; a different system, management interface, and subscription for each function.

At this time, I don't think there is a good solution for QB integration at all. This may not be significant since QB for Manufacturing is below our needs anyway. Our next step may be to use PostBooks, Xtuple, or some other MRP system that includes CRM. But, those also carry their own management burdens and costs.

Nutshell does have a reasonable email interface to send correspondence through our IMAP server, but the markup tags are cumbersome, are error prone, has no CC or BCC field, and the reply emails don't populate under the Nutshell customer(s). Consequently, only half of the conversation is visible. Of all of the above, this is the most significant limitation at this point.

Pros

I appreciate the constant updates. Nutshell has some ways to come, so it is nice seeing changes be made. Customer service is always on spot and very friendly. Nutshell support page is great for new employees, referring them straight to there for advice. The adaptability & usability of the interface is very user friendly.

Cons

I have been using this software since October of 2014. So far, I think what needs to be implemented on the "Admin/SetUp side" is making sure Products, Reasons why Leads Close, the Sales Process Competitors, and so much more need to be added from the start with Nutshell and the business buying the service. The reason being is because over the last two years, slowly things have been added/removed/changed. So now we have 2 years worth of jumbled data IMO. Going through a thousand leads that only a handful of them have tags on to find out why something was closed via notes or what product was sold is a little silly. I think the setup process should include this for the end user (being our company). Mind you, I was not the one to set up the account with Nutshell so I am unsure if this is something offered, but It helps a lot when running reports on products, etc.

Pros

I can dump tons of data into the CRM, which I do for each customer. If I work on something that ends up going to anther salesperson, I can already have TDS and SDS information. Visit notes, I can make changes to contacts within a customer in seconds. The world changes quickly, and Nutshell lets me change with it.

Cons

Leads is convoluted. Each sales person does things differently. For example. I sell Industrial. Many times my sales cycle can be two years long. I have trials and approvals to get from Engineers, Maintenance staff, and sometimes plant managers. Where a Fuel sales guy just quotes total gallons at a certain price, my job is highly detailed, constantly changes, So my leads don't fit into Nutshell very well at all. I struggle with the leads funnel. (It makes me look inefficient) I do not like the sales portion of Nutshell at all.

Pros

My favorite thing about this software was its mobile interface through the iOS app. Having your CRM in the palm of your hand proved to be incredibly powerful for me. My role is inside sales and account management thus this tool was mostly used while traveling and in route to meet with clients. It was a huge leg up in my ability to prepare, research and plan on the go. Absolutely love it. All of my most important data in a very easy to access format.

Cons

The application was great to catalog your inbound contacts through integrations with Gmail. One thing I did not like was that I encountered quite a bit of duplication. It resulted in some manual management of my data to ensure my accounts remained clean and that duplication did not occur and or was reconciled. The system was great to pick up all of this data and to store it but it does need to be something that you keep tabs on and are accountable to manage on a regular cadence.

Pros

I like that it holds all the information for my accounts and that I can set reminders for phone calls.

Cons

I wish everything on the lead for a shop page showed up on the store page, i'm always having to flip from page to page to get a name and it seems redundant and time consuming to re input that information everytime I start a new lead when I just put it on the store page. Same with logged activities, I often have an activity on an account and then I have to put one on the lead I wish the activity showed up on both. For my use all calls are for the same purpose and it doesn't make sense to have two places to put independent activities. This creates a sense of Deja Vu or worse I call someone a second time and don't realize until they pick up which hurts my cause. I don't like that I have to assign a time to a phone call, my days are hectic and I can't keep to a strict schedule so things slip into unlogged activities and go missed and my day seems way more hectic than it is. I wish it was just a daily list so I could let my day evolve, I also do CS and warranty at my job so this time stamp constantly makes me feel behind the gun and I spend a lot of time just updated and re-organizing nutshell, time that I should be spending selling.

Pros

Tasks per stage is something most CRM’s missed, but Nutshell did well at.

Cons

Somehow they missed a very important aspects of customized fields that exists, the ability to create a field that searches the people in database.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho CRM, Pipefy and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

Tasks per stage

Switched From

Pipedrive

Pros

It is similar to Pipedrive but has more features specific and beneficial.

Cons

We could not do task lists that were shared.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

We did not choose over, we supplemented

Pros

It's designed for super easy customization for what I do, and I lean hard on this feature! I also love how the Dashboard feature is set up, allowing me to see at a glance which activities should be tackled each day, and when I've scheduled future to-dos. Nutshell's approach feels like 'the little guy' was thoughtfully considered--and that's me!

Cons

I have a tough time with my leads fields frequently reverting back to the default setting that shows all fields, not just the 4 custom ones I've created. This is more of a tech issue, not really a dislike of Nutshell in general.

Pros

This CRM walks the less experienced sales rep through the entire sales process even recommending when to follow up even suggesting additional steps should be taken to get to the close. Upon close it automatically updates the customer database and the task management features facilitate the onboarding process. It also has a neat "Click-to-Call" feature that calls and optionally records directly from your prospect list providing an excellent sales training vehicle.

Cons

We would like to have seen the developers respond more quickly to feature suggestions but as a Sales CRM it is untouchable.

Pros

First and foremost, nutshell has a #1 Customer Service Team! This, in my opinion, is the sole driving force toward effective sales on the part of its users, regardless of the platform/system being used. Then I would add a few other benefits; 1. lead page shows important info all at one glance, 2. availability to search everything (albeit, excluding info logged in the activities section by each individual user), 3. fast input of info when saving info, and many other specific features you've built into the nutshell system.

Cons

why not build an automatic clock, showing the time the caller is calling into lead location, maybe next to a number lead. additionally, you would raise the value of your product substantially if you were to build a functionality that allowed a search of the words in the activities (message) section of your lead page. this would allow users an ability to quickly zero in on valuable leads based on previous messages noted. just think when users leave or when their leads are reassigned to different users, how valuable a tool that would be to follow up on hot leads that need to be brought to a close.

Pros

It is pretty easy to get up to speed with the software which has been a nice feature for our organization as we've had multiple people needing to use Nutshell...the reporting and tags have been really helpful..I run a lot of custom reports and using the tag feature on a daily basis.

Cons

It has been challenging to be able to connect with support staff about a technical issue. About a year ago, I really enjoyed being able to message with support staff if I had a question..now it seems like I have to wait a day or two for an automated email reply with some links to some possibly related topics of interest.. my questions can be fairly technical and multi-faceted where either use of messaging or simply talking to another human would be more beneficial.

Pros

Customer information storage, Lead priority organization. I like that I can get on any computer when out of the office and the screen looks exactly as at my desk.

Cons

Slow recall for data, Search feature often does not find client easily. I feel that the system was never set up properly by our team. I am certain that we are nut using the best of the software's capability.

Pros

* Easy to Use* Super Helpful to keep on top of leads * Helps us keep on top and communicate to our 7,000 client base easily

Cons

Wish it could add Texting to clients for Free!

Pros

Setting up and importing our current customer information was easy. Once you wrap your head around the Nutshell way of doing things, you can easily manage a large database of customers.

Cons

Nutshell does not integrate easily with WooCommerce which leads to using third-party plugins that are limited due to NutShell API.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Ease of use