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What to watch out for when evaluating ‘hosted CRM’ vendors, ‘CRM On Demand’ vendors and ’ CRM Software as a Service’ providers

	Team Edition The Small business CRM Software Solution for up to 30 users at $200.00/year!

	Professional Edition Your Small business CRM Software Solution for only $45.00/month!

	Enterprise Edition The on demand hosted Solution for all your CRM, SFA, and ERP needs. Only $75.00/user/month!

	*Microsoft Outlook CRM* Integration Introducing Salesboom's new MS Outlook CRM Software integration Solution. Try our small business CRM software** and Outlook CRM integration.

	CRM Appliance The Offline *small business CRM* edition for all your onsite needs.

Beware of imitators that claim they have a hosted CRM on demand or ‘software as a service’ without giving you a free trial on demand… it begs the question, what are they hiding? Do you need to be talked into buying the small business software solution? Not at salesboom.com. Salesboom puts its money where its mouth is by giving every small business a chance to kick the tires of our #1 Hosted CRM On Demand software solutions.

Beware of the distinction between ‘Hosted CRM’ vendors and ‘CRM On Demand’ vendors or ‘CRM Software as a Service’ providers. As with anything in life, the Devil’s in the Details when it comes to trying to figure out the difference between hosted software applications, On Demand software applications, and Software as a Service (Saas). Unfortunately the differences might seem subtle, but getting to the bottom of it quickly will save you a lot of time and headaches.

Hosted CRM

With most CRM software companies hosted CRM means the CRM customer must pay upfront for the software, then download it and install it on their own. On top of having to buy the firewalls, routers, server hardware, database, web server software, etc, you need a technical person to install everything, and then you are required to host the CRM software and make sure it is up and running 24/7/365. Another breed of ‘hosted CRM’ has the customer having to pay two bills – one for the CRM application itself, and one to a hosting provider to handle the hosting of the CRM applications.

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CRM On Demand

CRM On Demand is supposed to mean that the CRM software is available instantly, without any setup required at all like with Salesboom CRM On Demand. Unfortunately, many On Demand CRM vendors misuse this term and don’t actually provide you with the application on demand. A quick litmus test is to see if there is a free 30 day hosted CRM trial like with Salesboom, and also with salesboom our CRM software trial allows you instant access to the CRM application, without having to talk to a sales representative.

CRM Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS)

CRM Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) means the CRM application is Hosted by the vendor, is an On Demand CRM application, and the CRM application is priced as service. At least that’s what you get with Salesboom.com. When you sign up for salesboom.com you get access to the application immediately, and Salesboom provides the hosting, maintenance and upgrades of the CRM application for you. Also with salesboom hosted applications, upgrades are free during your lifetime with us.

Watch out for Business Software vendors that don’t put their software pricing and software licensing agreements within preferably one click of the main page of their website. Listen, these days software companies more than anyone else realize that your website is the first and most valuable source of information that your customers and prospective customers refer to find easy answers to software purchasing and software licensing. If the pricing is buried, it is either not by mistake, meaning the company doesn’t want you to know something, or the software companies themselves don’t understand the importance of being open with your customers. You will always find Salesboom pricing documentation directly linked from www.salesboom.com and it’s very easy to understand since Salesboom is priced based on a ‘Software as a Service’ (or SaaS) pricing structure.

Look at when in the lifetime of your company are you going to have to upgrade your hosted CRM application – it’s not always about needing extra functionality out of your CRM solution or getting that next critical upgrade of your CRM application. Most hosted CRM vendors or CRM On Demand vendors and CRM Software as a Service vendors (or hosted CRM service vendors) also force you to upgrade to a special version of their hosted CRM service based on the number of users or subscribers to the CRM service. The most egregious example is with the Salesforce.com hosted CRM offering. If your small business has more than five users, then Salesforce.com’s Team Edition is not for you. Salesforce.com limits the number of users of the Salesforce.com Team Edition to 5. So if your small business needs more than 5 hosted crm subscribers, then Salesforce.com forces you to upgrade to the Salesforce.com Professional Edition at a whopping 390% increase in price to the small business customer – regardless of whether your business needs the new features or not. With the salesboom hosted CRM service, there are no limits.

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