CleverTim CRM Review

CleverTim is an ideal web based CRM application for small businesses that want a hassle-free, affordable and easy to use solution to manage their contacts, opportunities, cases, to-do lists, and even files online.

If, in the past, you’ve suffered business loss only because you failed to follow up your (most prospective) clients in time, or you couldn’t manage your records efficiently, CleverTim is worth a try. Before we go into the in-depth review of the software, let’s take a look at the most important facts:

Quick facts:

• Our Rating: 75/100 (OR 7.5/10)
• Free Trial: Yes (for 30 days)
• Ideal for: Small businesses
• Training required: No
• User Limit: Yes (up to 40)
• Mass import/export: Yes (only vCard format)
• Email marketing campaigns: No
• Capture Leads: No
• Browser used: Google Chrome (22.0.1229.94 m) with Windows 7 Ultimate.

Clevertim Ltd., 212, Wickham Chase, West Wickham, BR40BP, United Kingdom

Getting started with CleverTim – the free trial & the free forever plan (5/5)

The sign-up process takes less than a minute and the trial version is available with all the features for full 30 days – no credit card, no contracts, no downloads.

What’s more, if you’ve just two users, and up to 250 contacts, you can enjoy the Free Plan for the rest of your life without having to pay a dime.

User Interface (18/20)

CleverTim has an extremely simple user interface with all the basic tabs right on your dashboard. Since the main menus don’t change even when you switch between them,  you’ll grasp the interface in a few seconds. No matter you want to add new records, access the stored ones, traverse the upcoming tasks, or just check out the contacts that need your utmost attention, you have everything right on your dashboard.

For its simplicity and intuitiveness, the user interface deserves full marks, however, there is a minor glitch which we hope will be fixed soon: when you’re adding a contact/company, no matter which country you select, the State dropdown menu shows only the states of America.

Price (16/20)

We may not call CleverTim the most economically priced CRM solution, but it’s one of the affordable options. It offers flexible plans according to your particular needs, plus if you run a small-time business with a few contacts, you can enjoy almost all the features in their forever free plan.

Customization (10/10)

You can’t customize the dashboard; but you really don’t have to, since it’s a simple app with a few necessary menus which are already there on the dashboard.

You can, however, customize CleverTim in a more efficient way i.e. by adding custom fields. This actually is the software’s biggest plus as you can add as many custom fields as you want (and under any menu you want) according to your particular business needs. Isn’t it a godsend?

Integration with 3rd party apps (0/10)

Currently, CleverTim doesn’t integrate with any other application.

Mobile Support (2/5)

Though there isn’t a native mobile app, CleverTim interface is mobile friendly and can be accessed seamlessly on most smartphones.

Scalability (4/10)

As CleverTim is targeted at SMBs, you can only add up to 40 users to your team.

Customer Support (10/10)

Their customer support hours are between 8am – 9pm, UK time, Monday – Friday, to offer you a detailed and instant response. Moreover, they also have someone on support at weekends, but the wait time is a bit longer.

Back up & Security (10/10)

We give CleverTim ‘thumbs up’ for back up and security. Your data is backed up twice a day , and is securely residing on regularly updated servers.

CleverTim Features

Welcome

This tab basically a welcome screen that teaches you how to import your contacts and other data in vCard format, plus how to export vCard though several other apps including Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, Yahoo etc. As communicated by the vendor, they’re enhancing the import functionality to allow the users directly import contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail & Yahoo.

At the bottom, there are quick links to menus that let you change your business preferences & settings, change your user preferences & settings, let you invite other people to join as your teammates, and open the CleverTim blog where you can find the latest tips on how to get the most out of CleverTim and some best practices for small business CRM.

Adding new data

There are fixed buttons at the top for adding new contacts, companies, tasks, cases, and opportunities. In other words, you can add any info with just one click.

What’s new

This tab shows your most recent activities e.g. adding or updating data, assigning tasks etc.

Contacts

This section features all your contacts in the sequence they were added, though you can also sort them by first/last name. Important contacts can behighlighted by adding them to Favorites, or to Need Love. Moreover, you can filter your contacts depending on their names, location, types or tags.

Click on any of the contacts, and you’ll have all the relevant information: from contact info to notes to custom fields to tasks to opportunities to cases, at your fingertips. Adding new info or updating/deleting the existing info is just a matter of one mouse click.

In short, you can organize your contact in any way you want and modifying them is as simple as it gets.

Companies

If you deal with organizations, this menu lets you manage them just as your contacts but, understandably, with slightly different options. You can also sort, tag, categorize and edit companies just as your contacts.

Tasks

You’ll love the handiness and simplicity of your task list. The to-do items are arranged according to the due date. You can filter tasks to sort out similar items, add a location and a start/end date, link to a contact/ opportunity, or file under a Case.

Cases

This feature is an edge over CleverTim’s rivals. A case is actually a virtual folder where you can group and keep related notes and files on various contacts together. Let’s pretend you’ve a job opening at your company, a case will help you store notes of all the applicants which can help you choose the best candidate rather easily.

Opportunities

CleverTim also helps you manage your business opportunities in a rationalized manner. You can link your opportunities to a contact, assign it to a team member, add value, add notes or a related task, and update the status for better decision making.

Files

If you want to manage your business online, you can’t store everything in the form of contacts and tasks – there will be videos, audios, text files, and data in various other formats that you need to access now and then. Most other CRM solutions lack file management, but this is not the case with CleverTim.

You can add files and folders to organize your important data, which can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. Just hover your mouse over the file/folder icon, and you’ll get the options to rename, delete, move, copy, and download your items.

Today

It gives quick access to your tasks for the day to make sure you don’t forget any important event.

Recently viewed

As the name suggests, it shows the ten records you’ve accessed recently. If you need to access the same records frequently, searching them again and again can be a sheer pain in the neck. But this handy widget really makes life easy.

Your favorites

As a matter of fact, some clients are more rewarding than others – if you want to keep a keen eye on them, just add them to your Favorites and you can access them quickly from this shortcut menu.

Need Love

We just loved the Need Love feature. If some of the clients, especially those who once used to be your favorite ones, start losing interest in your business, what will you do? Obviously, give them more attention. But keeping track of such contacts/companies can be a time taking activity unless you have the choice to tag them as Need Love.

Common filters

If you’ve created any custom filters, they’ll appear here. This is another feature that takes organization and accessibility to the next level.

Accounts

It’s a dropdown menu with submenus including My info & settings; Business preferences; Users; Custom fields; Email dropbox; Contact us; and Account, upgrade, billing.

Under My info & settings, you can add/modify your personal information, or set Date & Time and personal preferences. Business preferences allows you to add your logo, business name, business slogan etc. Users menu can be used to invite new users or manage the existing ones. Email dropbox gives you a unique mailing id which accepts emails from your personal email account(s), it’s a great option to incorporate notes and other info for your contacts via email messages. And if you’ve a question or complaint, Contact us is the way to go.

Custom Fields

This is the most powerful – and our personal favorite – feature in CleverTim. It gives you the control to add different types of fields under any menu.

For example, in the below screenshots, you can see how we added a dropdown custom field named MyCustomField under Companies with two options.

Pros

• Forever free plan for small businesses
• Intuitive and user-friendly interface
• Every field is editable in place: click, update, save
• Manage your tasks, sales opportunities, reminders, follow ups, and share your progress with your team in one place
• Assign & resolve support tickets, cases, projects through the application
• Quick & responsive Web 2.0 one-page application for high productivity, no annoying server refreshes
• Add as many custom fields as you want, and under any menu you desire
• Email dropbox to keep all the related info in one place
• Regularly updated, secure servers and secure site
• Data is backed up twice daily
• Choose from various currencies to pay

Cons

• No email marketing and autoresponders
• Limited number of users
• Limited number of contacts and opportunities
• Currently, it only imports data in vCard format
• Capturing leads from external resources isn’t possible
• No sales funnel, though you can tag different Contacts as Leads and then keep updating as they move in the sales process
• When you issue a support ticket to the CleverTim Support Team, it simply vanishes and you can’t track it
• Do not accept payments via accept Google checkout, checks, purchase orders or even PayPal

The final verdict

All in all, we really enjoyed the intuitiveness and simplicity of CleverTim. Though it lacks a few vital features of a CRM, it brings to the table some exclusive and very handy options that make it an ideal choice if you’re looking for a highly customizable solution to manage your contacts, to-dos and files. To see whether it will satisfy your business needs or not, you can try out all the features for a full thirty days.