Relenta CRM
October 16, 2006 in 3 out of 5 stars, CRM, Email newsletter management, Hosted softwareRelenta CRM: A new CRM tool (customer relationship management). Includes email, contact manager, shared calendar, email newsletter marketing/autoresponders. Relenta They claim, and employ a (now familiar) "Less is more" approach. They call it the "90/10 rule" "Designed for usability and efficiency, Relenta CRM achieves 90 percent of the functionality commonly required by small business users with only ten percent of the application weight." They integrate email, contact management, calendar, and email newsletter marketing software into one application. The free plan offers quite a bit for the starting-out entrepreneur trying to determine if this software is right for them. They've obviously put a great deal of effort into this offering. The interface is attractive and fairly well conceived and it includes many of the features you'd expect from a CRM. It will be interesting to see how it evolves (it needs some maturing still) and how it stands up to the imminent Sunrise (CRM product) from 37signals. A detailed user guide/help/knowledge base is really needed (they are working on it). The support is decent in the meantime (although the support form is cumbersome to fill out). They do have a PDF "user's manual" you'll find in your Relenta inbox after you create an account, which is helpful. They need spell check. HTML email templates would be nice (right now offers only plain-text email) They require 3 credentials for login, not just the normal 2 (i.e. username/password). The initial starting experience still needs some polish. I had that bewildering "what do I do now" moment when I started. The free account allows only one user, but you are offered the form to create another user. Only after you attempt it does the application tell you can't add one ("user limit exceeded"). Then the statistics on my dashboard reported 2 out of 1 user, but I still only had the one. The application response feels a bit sluggish (and no AJAX in sight, which could alleviate some of that feeling). It feels like they may have rushed to launch it. It's certainly usable as it is and (I have reports from a very happy user), and it's an impressive application, but we've come to expect more from web applications in the last couple years, and this one isn't quite there yet. From FREE to $50 per user per month Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Why is it the killerest?
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Great read, Carson! Relenta's application definitely looks promising. I especially liked how they constructed the app's interface. Looks really sweet, and so much friendlier than the business apps we're all so familliar with.
Posted by: Andrew Trinh | Oct 18, 2006 3:07:06 AM
Too bad it is a blatant rip-off of Joyent's Connector application. http://joyent.com/connector/collaboration-suite even down to the icons. That is pretty sad!
Posted by: Scott | Mar 19, 2007 10:32:46 AM
Yes, their interface is spectacular. I love how they did a combination rip-off of 37 Signals and Joyent applications. It's very creative and the pricing is just phenomenal. These guys will go far!
Posted by: Fred Savage | Mar 19, 2007 10:34:10 AM
Relenta is indeed a killer app. A web-based CRM centered around email and email contacts is exactly the kind of tool we've been dreaming for years. Tried 'em all from Sugar to Salesforce to Zoho to Joyent. Relenta is by far the most usable and functional.
Posted by: Persivale | Apr 21, 2007 3:53:12 AM
This review is outdated. Well yeah it's almost 2 years old. The new pricing is $25 per user per month. They don't call Relenta a "CRM" anymore.
Posted by: Roberto | Jul 17, 2008 4:54:19 AM