Last year I reviewed Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, and being somehow disappointed on some lacking features of BCM 2003, I decided to take a look at what Business Contact Manager 2007 has to offer. First of all, Business Contact Manager doesn’t come as a separate product, it is an add-on for Outlook 2007 so you cannot purchase it separately.

iContact and Constant Contact are web-based email marketing solutions, that allow you to create and track HTML emails sent to a list of (manged) contacts. While both offer a core of the same CRM features, they also have different approaches when it comes to specific offerings. For instance, pricing is different, monthly email volume is different, design is different and so on.

If you have clients or prospects you have to followup with them via email. You don't have several choices, either you use your own email client to send them emails now and then, or you use an online email marketing software. The disadvantage of using your own email client is that you have a limit on how many emails you can send at once (Microsoft Outlook should have a limit of about 50 email sent at a time) and you have to do a mail merge, plus you cannot set up automatic email follow-ups. So if you have quite a few clients to contact, the solution is using an online email marketing software. The advantage of an online service is that you can send emails in bulk, you can set automatic follow-ups, and the delivery rate is usually as high as 99%. The disadvantage though is the price, as you have to pay a monthly fee, unlike owning a license for a program where you pay only once and own it. If you want to work professionally and avoid hassles with your email client, use an online email marketing service. There are quite a few email marketing companies, and given that once you sign-up with them you will continue using them for a while, it's important to choose right and pick the best email marketing software. Some of the most popular in this branch are: iContact, Aweber, ConstantContact, Vertical Response, Get Response, Bronto and Mailchimp. I've already covered an article about iContact vs ConstantContact, so this time I wanted to compare iContact vs Aweber. I decided this time to take another approach in comparing iContact and Aweber.

SugarCRM Inc., announced last week (August 27, 2008) the release of SugarCRM 5.1, a new major version of the well-known commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, which has an improved reporting and analytics engine, as well as additional wireless capabilities (like the support of SugarCRM for the popular BlackBerry® and iPhone™ smartphones).

According to their press release, this new version comes after a thorough beta testing process, during which SugarCRM 5.1 was installed more than 10,000 times by over 25,000 users. Quite impressive development in the four years that have passed since Sugar Community Edition received founding, period during which this edition and additional components were downloaded over 5 million times and reached over 80,000 registered community members (including 14,000 developers that created 500 extensions and the translation of SugarCRM in over 75 languages - more infor at www.sugarforge.org). The entire SugarCRM's user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations. 

It is our believe that no-one should be excluded from having access to the best CRM tools. That is why, we are allowing our applications to be used for free with no time limit (Free Edition: 100MB storage/user for 2 user per company). When your need of storage grows, you can easily upgrade it to Standard Paid Edition.

vtiger CRM is an Open Source CRM software for small and medium businesses. vtiger CRM uses open source technologies such as Apache, MySQL, PHP (and other open source projects) to provide a powerful multi-platform CRM solution (works on Linux and Windows).

vtiger CRM provides the CRM features that other commercial programs sell for thousands of dollars, such as: sales force automation, customer support & service, marketing automation (with support for e-mail campaigns), inventory management (with product customization module), security management, and of course contact management and task scheduling.