Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I never write these reviews, but I feel that I must based on the information that is available under the reviews as they are polarized and only vaguely helpful.
Second, my rating would be 4.5 stars, but Amazon doesn't allow that. I would rate this product five stars except for the support issue which is a problem. I actually think it is not as big an issue as many of the other reviewers.
Third, I'm a huge Goldmine fan (GM) - I purchased mine on Amazon at the end of Aug 2004 - and I am completely hooked. I recommend this program to anyone that needs any type of customer relationship management (CRM) software for any business because it will do everything that you can imagine. Yes, GM does has warts, but so does salesforce.com, or Act (which I have used in the past) or anything else. GM is VERY cheap and an INCREDIBLY powerful product for what it can do.
I consider myself to be very computer savvy and to get GM working the way that you want it too, this is helpful. Any other database (including ACT!) requires some user savvy to work too. I wish I had been aware of the following before I purchased GM from Amazon:
1. (Acutally I did this.) Free 30-day trial from www.frontrange.com - so try it before you buy it (but buy it here - Amazon has the cheapest prices).
2. There is no support (hence less than 5 stars) from Frontrange. However there are a enormous amount of people out there who can (and will) help you. The support is primarily through a newsgroup identified on frontrange's website.
3. GM, like any other sophisticated CRM relies on you to make it work for you. If you don't have a lot of contacts then Outlook is probably all you need. However, it really helps if you are technologically inclined before you purchase this product because, although you can use it straight out of the box, to make GM really work you will need to modify this program to your needs (same as ACT!). If you're not technologically inclined there are many GM consultants who will charge you a fee to assist you. Don't call me, I'm not a GM consultant.
4. You can read the manual for this product at www.frontrange.com, and you can also dowload two 450+ page manuals written by Frontrange that will help you understand what GM can and cannot do. (Does this sound like a lot of work for a $165 product? - sure, but this product is worth the effort. If you are inveting in a database do you want to trust your data to chance? The cost of bad data, and a poorly designed and not particularly powerful product is a lot more than $165!!)
5. This product will do ANYTHING that you need if you're looking for a database. Yes, ANYTHING. Hence to get value (this product does work straight out of the box) but it really excels when you customize it. Any database is only as good as your ideas for making it work.
6. Since August I have entered more than 100,000 contacts into GM - I'm in a contact intensive field - and this program is invaluable for keeping in contact with people. Excellent reminders for everything - one nice feature: you can set the alarm so that GM sends you a text message to your phone telling you that you have an appointment and the text includes the other person's tel number. This feature has reminded me of potentially missed meetings and calls on a number of occassions - worth $165 right there.
7. This is a FULL working database - and it is EXTREMELY fast and compact - for example I had 25,000 contacts in Outlook and the search function was incredibly slow was Molasses trying to get around it. The act file was close to 600MB in size. GM WHIZZES - the same DB is a trim 150MB, with much faster look ups. However, like any other database it requires a lot of effort on behalf of the user to ensure that the product is changed so that it works the way you want it too.
8. If more than one person is going to access the database, GM makes it easy for multiple users to access the database. This product is exceptionally scaleable. You can have 1 person or 100s of people working the same database.
9. The best support is through what I would loosely term the "GM community." Through the frontrange website you can access a newsgroup (look under the support) where people post questions which are answered by people who subscribe to the community. There is a wealth of information there. However, if you're the sort of person that gets scared at the idea that you might have to understand what the computer is doing, then stick with Outlook. There are a large number of GM consultants who do charge money for their services - in many ways this is no different than microsoft or many of the other large companies. Many of these consultants publish answers to questions on the newsgroup for no charge. Let's face it, if it's a business threatening emergency wouldn't you want a specialist to be able to get to work right away? With so many consultants available there is nearlys always one on hand.
10. The mail merge feature alone is INVALUABLE and easy to use, (although it is not a full HTML email product). You can, however, (through purchase of an add-on product) still use Outlook as your e-mail client, with the advantage that your Goldmine address book can be hidden from the Outlook directory. Outlook is FULLY integrated. So when you get an email in Outlook, GM automatically appends a reference to that message to a contact in it's database, so that you have all of that person's messages in the one place. In addition, all email attachments are linked to that contact.
11. Any file can be linked to a contact and the link is "hot." The link is a shortcut to the file so with one click you can retrieve all of your letters or documents associated with a contact.
12. Importing data into GM is easy.
13. It is incredibly easy to keep on top of a long list of tasks. I regularly make upward of 100 phonecalls a day, with follow on calls required many times because I don't get people. I NEED a product where I can find all of our interaction with one client, and all in one place. Under each contact in GM you can store all of the emails, telephone calls, actions that you have taken, appointments, etc.
14. The lookup feature is a little quirky and not what I was expecting. It took me a little getting used to (a few hours) but once you get the hang of it, it is really fast and efficient.
Overall:
strengths - alsolutely robust, an intelligent, well put together product with an exceptional value for the price - the best $165 I've spent in years. Obviously, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this product.
Weaknesses - lack of support from Frontrange, requires the user to read up on the product and want to work with it.
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