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To 'free' or not to 'free': what's cheap vs. what works

By Alex Jefferies

29 May 2009

The proliferation of customer relationship solutions presents an interesting challenge for small-business owners. How does a small organisation looking to control spending decide between common productivity tools, such as Microsoft Outlook or Excel, or a more robust solution? This decision is made more difficult by the emergence of free customer relationship management (CRM) and contact management (CM) solutions.

Both CRM and CM tools are productivity tools that allow businesses to organise contact, opportunity and account information in a centralised repository. In the case of CRM, organisations are also able to integrate disparate customer data that exists with marketing and customer service and support channels. The documented business benefits of both CRM and CM tools have some small and medium-sized businesses evaluating free solutions to alleviate their specific business challenges.

Free solutions can take the form of a "freemium" solution or other existing productivity tools, such as spreadsheets or email. Freemium solutions, for instance, provide basic functionality on a trial, controlled usage, or ad-supported basis. The freemium model was conceived with the eventual goal of selling a premium solution that would expand on the basic functionality of the freeware. Naturally, small businesses are enticed by a free solution and its "try before you buy" model. However, companies must be sure to balance their immediate needs with the growth of the business by evaluating full-featured CRM or CM tools in conjunction with free offerings.

Read the full article here.