Show HN: Simple CRM and Sales Automation | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simple CRM and Sales Automation

wobaka.com

56 pointsdrikerf35 comments

Looks great. Would you recommend this (or another CRM) for a solo-entrepeneur running a boutique software consulting company? To tailor my needs (and satiate the inner geek in me), I ended up building my own little personal CRM after trying several that didn't quite fit my needs. Really, I want a CRM that combines the amazing aspects of both a personal CRM (like Monica) with more traditional, enterprise features like SugarCRM or Hubspot or Salesforce.

I'm a solo-entrepreneur and use it myself every day!

Give it a try if you have time, and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions etc :)!

It looks great! But I’m having a hard time to understand your business model. A single, flat price may be cheap or expensive depending on customer’s revenue. I, for instance, run a very small publication and would love giving Wobaka a shot, but it’s steep price for my use case (one user, a dozen advertisers/customers per year). You said in a comment here you’re not chasing enterprise market, but flat prices also spooks very small business.

Basecamp solved this by offering a limited version for free — which I use to managed the editorial part of my publication.

Thanks! What do you think would be a fair price for a CRM with email automations etc? I do think Wobaka is competitive in pricing, even for a solo businesses :).

I like Basecamps offering and they've been an inspiration for choosing flat pricing!

  > ...with email automations etc

Actually, your current $50/m is probably fair.

But many users won't need these things, and for them $50/m is too expensive. That's why lots of software packages have tiers.

I'd personally be very interested in a "personal plan" version that included CardDav sync so that I could use it with the contacts on my phone. But I'm currently using NextCloud for that, so you'd have to compete with free. If the CRM is decent (NextCloud is not a CRM) then I'd pay maybe a buck per month - not something you'll make money on and probably a support sink for many non-technical users.

Not every product fits everyone.

It's ok if a certain product doesn't fit someones needs or budgets.

Speaking for myself, email automations isn't a needed feature. As I said, I deal with a dozen or so clients per year, so it's perfectly doable manually, even considering all other things going on.

I got instantly interested in Wobaka because of it's simplicity (take that as a compliment) and the direct to the point approach. I tested several CRMs last year, and the closest to my needs was Capsule CRM[1] — yet it's too much for my taste. So, for now, I'm running my relationships with customers with a mix of my calendar and a few txts. Surprisingly, it's been working quite fine, although slight weird.

Maybe I'm asking too much, but I like Basecamp's idea: a free, barebones, and no-support plan for really small business. If the said business grow, the next, ultimate step is right there for a fair, flat price. I'd try Wobaka in a heart beat if it had a less featured free tier.

Btw, Capsule CRM offers a free tier. It has basic features for up to 2 users and 250 contacts.

[1] https://capsulecrm.com/

I was researching CRMs recently and could not find a single one that offered imap or pop3 integration. Which means you have to bcc every outgoing email and forward every incoming one just to achieve a conversation history within the context of CRM data. On the flipside I couldn’t find either an email client that offered minimal CRM features to be able to do this well either.

I just want to open a contact and see entire history plus any notes, tags, data Ive added…

That doesn't strike me as being entirely true, unless I misunderstand your needs? Hubspot does this - my sales guys send emails via Google, I see everything in Hubspot. Prior to Hubspot we used Close.io - same thing. Every email sent (and every reply) showed up in Close.io in the context of the contact(s).

As for IMAP tags etc. - yes I've never seen that. Although you can probably use Streak for that (streak.com)

Interesting!

I like bcc because it has minimal footprint and you can setup most popular clients to automatically bcc an address if you want all emails to go there. I've just added my bcc mailbox as a contact since I don't want all my email in my CRM :).

There are a few CRMs that do what you describe. Streak (I'm the founder) connects to Gmail's APIs to automatically index the conversation history of contacts you've added. We go one step further and also show you the conversation history between your contacts and anyone on your team, not just you.

Yeah, unfortunately Gmail…

I noticed the same thing. Due to shaky imap/pop3 integration with a lot of CRMs, I ended up writing my own Greasemonkey script that would push both outbound and inbound e-mails to my own personal crm.

One of the most popular, Zoho CRM has had that from the beginning. Pipedrive has it as well. Often CRMs call the IMAP feature "email sync" so the CIO at the customer doesn't go nuts about working around Outlook.

Just curious, when doing email sync, is spam/noize a problem? (I don't want to spend more time cleaning up mail)

That is really a feature of your email provider. I've used gmail and an old style shared server email, and in both cases, spam was filtered by the email provider.

Hey! Love your API docs, with what did you make it with?

Yourself or some framework? If so, can you share please?

Thanks! I've made a framework in ClojureScript that generates the docs from Clojure maps/JSON. Will try to open source it soon :)!

I love products like Basecamp and this, with one-price, and an opinionated workflow. It's like having a consultant built in with the tool: here's the right way to do it! We know better than you because this is what we do all day.

Thanks :)!

Very clean looking. Of course, the part that caught my eye is probably the least relevant. I've integrated robohash in a few places, so seeing it here was a treat. Is that just for the screenshots or is it part of the application?

Thanks! Yes, I use Gravatar with Robohash fallback :)

I like this approach and will have a closer look.

Interesting pricing model, I personally use less annoying crm as a technical, non-too-salesy guy who wants something simple.

Hey so quick question is there such a thing as a "modular" CRM. I am thinking of using Retool for it.

What do you mean by that?

Can you elaborate on this?

We’re building Attio (https://attio.com) for exactly this use case!

We have a really modular data structure and a flexible API that feels a lot like Airtable or Notion with all the CRM features you’d expect.

I’d love to learn more about your use case as I really believe the idea of a “modular, developer focused” CRM is long overdue!

Disclaimer: I am the CTO :)

Does Attio support CardDAv, so that one could sync it with a phone's contacts? That's the one feature that so many CRMs are missing.

this is really slick Fredrik. the site and purity of message is awesome.

Thanks :)!

How does this differ from the other CRMs?

Keeping it simple by not focusing on enterprise market and still offering powerful features like email automations and kanban pipelines. Also no per-user fees :)!

looks kinda like notion

schysst!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com