Highrise CRM

Pros

Before we began using Highrise, we thought that we were going to have to hire someone to create a database for us, then hire someone to maintain it. When we discovered Highrise, this solved our issues. We are an executive search firm, and Highrise allows us to keep track of every job candidate who sends us a resume. We have their contact information at our fingertips, and we can attach their resumes and any other pertinent info to their Highrise entry. We have also found it extremely useful to use the tags. In this way, we can differentiate our candidates by the type of work that they do, and also by what positions they have applied for in the past. If we are trying to reach out to someone with a financial background, we do a Highrise search using our financial tag, and everyone who has financial experience will come up in the search. We can even narrow it down to region, city, state or zip code. We like using the notes so that any of our team members who look at a Highrise entry can see if there's anything about a particular candidate another team member found notable during a phone conversation, for example. We also really like how integrated Highrise is with LinkedIn, because we use LinkedIn quite a bit.
There are a lot of features of Highrise that are automatic that help us a lot. For instance, as long as a person's profile in Highrise has their email address, we can forward emails to a dedicated Dropbox email and Highrise will automatically pick it up and add it to that person's Highrise profile.

Cons

It's not very hard to overwrite an entry and you have to be careful when you are importing contacts from other software programs. It's time consuming when setting up the database to enter all of the data, however, Highrise has made it as easy as possible.

Pros

I have been running two companies for the last ten years out of Highrise CRM. PROS: Only useful features included. I use ALL the features in highrise and feel that nothing is lacking. I can do sales, customer service out of the same database for two companies. The tags structure allows me to segment my contacts like no other system I have ever tried. The ability to now send mass emails to segments of or my entire database is extremely useful. The ability to create custom fields and then be able to search by them as well is simply amazing. Task management is very simple in Highrise, perhaps, the most intuitive I have ever seen. Deals and the search capabilities are the icing on the cake, but what truly sets this CRM apart from all its competition is how simple it is to use. You can start using it immediately. No videos to watch or learn. The system is that intuitive. I highly recommend this CRM to anyone running a small to mid size business.

Cons

From my perspective there are only two "cons" regarding Highrise. The first is the absence of a calendar, and second the inability to establish "relationships" between different objects in the database.

Pros

I love Highrise. It offers great tagging with the ability to filter companies by tag and include employees of those companies (so you don't have to tag all employees). You can use it for broadcast email, although the bounce and spam rates are pretty tight to know you off the system. It will auto record all emails sent to clients using a BCC to highrise feature so you can store all interactions and make them available across all employees. You can add custom fields as well for mail merge. The desktop UX is great. The mobile UX is OK. The mobile apps are getting better. That's the main thing I like, they announce new features and functions routinely and it's getting better all the time.

Cons

I noticed that the broadcast email bounce signals were too tight the first time I used it. I sent something out to all my clients, but I work with restaurants and some email addresses were dead and they shut me down temporarily. Real email tools won't be so stringent. Could have improved since that effort as that was when it first came out.

Pros

Aesthetically, I find the website to be pleasing and easy to use. It's second nature to us now as we've been using Highrise for almost 7 years. All our accounts that used to live in my head are now neatly organized and accessible by my team and our clients. Amazing to be able to offer that transparency. We use the deals function and send out samples and orders. Highrise links with some other sites we use - mailchimp and easy insights to name a few. I love how you can set permissions and tailor each users view. When we were searching for a CRM we researched many options before settling on highrise. It's been critical to our growing business.

Cons

I haven't tried the app in awhile but it used to be abysmal. Creating a new user and assigning permissions is a huge chore for us. Creating a deal is very manual and there are lots of opportunity for human error.

Pros

Highrise makes building your business contact list easy, with plenty of options for organizing them. Best of all is the way of filtering through tags. Sure, every site has tags, but if you really care about them as a way of creating lists and sublists and sub-sub-lists, you typically can't. Highrise's gives you a great way to view to filter through your contacts by adding/subtracting tags or word search. When I've run into problems or questions about certain features, the Highrise team is great at replying with real help. I'm not used to getting an answer so quickly from a website team without being put through the grinder of being put on hold or a beauracracy of emails, but Highrise has been stellar on that front.

Cons

Inputting your contacts is easy, with two available tabs for "person" or "company." However, you have to know which one you want to do before you start, because switching tabs/modes will erase any info you've already typed in. Would love Highrise yet more if they found a way to switch between tabs while retaining that info.