17 years helping South African businesses
choose better software
About Insightly
Insightly is the modern, affordable CRM that teams love.
Insightly is very user-friendly. With perfect minimalistic design, it still has everything you probably need for contact management.
Hard to think of many drawbacks with this CRM.
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A reliable and completely user-friendly tool with immense productivity.
Comments: Insightly CRM offers a wide range of services for our business to improve our customer services and have provided us with benefits to enhance our marketplace. It has allowed us to successfully engage our working relationships with the clients in a more reliable way. I have also been performing project management tasks with this tool.
Pros:
Insightly CRM is itself a very reliable tool which allows the user to gain the most of the advantage with its easy to use features and efficient tools. We can also easily integrate it with other tools to improve the overall productivity. It's super responsive when dealing with the customers. We can easily maintain our sales cycles and ongoing customer service to provide extra care for the clients. The user-interface is also quite easy and manageable than other such tools.
Cons:
Chrome extensions are bit of a clunky addition which further complicated the working procedure so mostly avoid it. The other tools integration is right on point but the social media integration misses few of the parts and continues to be a wastage of time for us. In the end, it proves to be much effected on our overall work and improves the efficiency of our work routine.
Insightly Response
5 years ago
Hi Susan, Thank you for the feedback. The Chrome Extension you're talking about is actually sunset. Try the new Add-On. :)
Insightly is a great CRM Tool
Comments: Overall, the CRM product has been a great business tool for everyday use. I would certainly recommend it to a business if they can afford the price point.
Pros:
Insightly offers many products and features to be a one-stop-shop in the administrative world. It allows a company to keep all of their client information in one location and access quickly and easily. It allows emailing clients directly in the software as well as filing previously sent emails to a client.
Cons:
The way that some of the fields are set up, they are not made for quick editing, copying, etc. The phone number fields do not have an automated template, the number can be input anyway. The address fields, specifically state, do not have preset options and either can be an abbreviation or spelled out. It would be nice if these were preset so that it is uniform when printing reports, etc. Lastly, once you create a lead, even after converting to a contact, the lead still shows up when that specific client is searched for. It can be confusing when you need to click quickly.
Insightly highs and lows
Pros:
It is relatively intuitive easy to customise, easy to align to specific business needs.
Cons:
Effective linkage of the databases that sit behind the product. If i log an activity for a against a contact that is part of an organisation, that activity will not be visible under the organisation. This is a big miss. There needs to be total linkage between all databases that sit within the system. There should be a hierarchy from Organisation to Contact to Project to Opportunity etc etc. This causes significant issues when trying to track client experience. Reporting No reports are drillable - they are simply static reports limiting their use. I constantly find myself needing to export a report to Excel so I can build a pivot table to effectively use it. User interface The user interface is very old fashioned and clunky. This is not just a statement about look and feel. When i create a report i get a list of objects with certain data that changes on a regular basis. So I need to select the item from within the report and change the value. But I cant do this quickly from within the report. I need to click on the item which then loads a separate page for the record. Then I need to click into that record which show all of the fields for the entire record. Then I need to click on the field in question, change it and then save it. I then need to close that page down and go back to the report page and refresh the page before this change is visible. This is a terrible UI and UX for a modern product today that is now significantly behind the the currently expected standard.
Alternatives Considered:
Customizing Insightly
Comments: I think it is a great, affordable product. I'm disappointed in the Customer Care response (or lack thereof). The Customer Support team is great. They can troubleshoot and fix items. Customer Care is required if you are trying to better/best use the product. I think that group needs some work. Anyone customizing the product should be confident that Insightly knows how it will be used for user's business and that may mean more questions upfront, better understanding of a client's business.
Pros:
That we could customize. We were able to make this software work for our needs, which were a bit different than how the typical sales team might. We can track our orders and do great reporting. Dashboards are very nice feature. Ability to customize pipelines very helpful and visuals are great. Customer support team is helpful and responsive.
Cons:
Integration with our needs was a bit difficult. Our sales person seemed to understand what we needed to accomplish but I don't think the customer care person is as savvy. Customization is great, but if it impacts how you can report items or get most accurate data, user needs to understand that. We got creative in how we used items and where possible, didn't customize, just repurposed so we got the benefit of the connections Insightly makes. In our haste to be up and using, I don't think enough time was spent on that and rework was involved.
Alternatives Considered:
Effective and Affordable
Comments: Overall for small or medium size sales organizations, this is a great vehicle to ensure all opportunities are documented and tracked. Scheduling follow up ensures that communication errors are mitigated and the email templates support marketing initiatives.
Pros:
The software offers many free features that others charge. It is excellent for a small business on an operational budget but can easily enhance when necessary. Automated marketing email templates are effective and easy to use. The system also integrates well with other marketing products. The dashboard gives a snapshot of your sales opportunities and the user can customize.
Cons:
Documenting phone call attempts and connects take too many steps. The Task portion is a bit complicated and again requires too many steps.
Insightly Response
5 years ago
Hi Nezar, Thank you for the feedback!!!
Alternatives Considered:
intuitive and easy to use
Pros:
easy to customise pipeline, good online information support
Cons:
unable to customise reports to the extent we need
Insightly is a reasonable CRM with decent functions
Comments: I selected this as our CRM. We switched over from Zoho which was universally hated by our sales guys.
Pros:
Insightly does a pretty reasonable job as a CRM. It's quite easy to use and pretty. It has some integrations out of the box and is easy to customize.
Cons:
No significant draw backs to it. I would say it's a middle of the road CRM system that is neither great nor terrible.
Alternatives Considered:
Scalable CRM platform for businesses of all sizes
Comments: Insightly has been a beneficial addition to our sales and marketing efforts allowing us to easily store our contacts, leads, and projects in one platform.
Pros:
I really like how Insightly can be customized and scaled to fit the needs of the business. We are a mid size company and other CRMs were too robust and complicated. Insightly is just right.
Cons:
I think it is kind of expensive per user. I would like to see a lower monthly cost per user.
Long time user verging toward long-suffering user
Comments: This is a product I wanted to like so much. We have been using Insightly for many years. We were attracted to it because it combined CRM and Project Management. Over the years they have improved the CRM aspect, but have left PM virtually untouched. Their support is haphazard and they often introduce new *features* which cause problems - like the day Google Contact Sync stopped working, or the day Google Contact Sync started duplicating contacts in Google etc. Because we signed up so long ago, we have an excellent pricing model. If we were paying more I would be really dissatisfied. Oh and they are just appalling at sharing their product roadmap. It's like driving a manual shift car as the mechanic is fitting new gears as you speed up.
Pros:
Great CRM and Pipeline Management out the box! Contact Syncing for Google is great - despite minor issues. Good simple project lists. Links nicely to Mailchimp and Xero.
Cons:
Very very poor project management. You will need to use other packages for almost anything. No resource management. No Gantt charts. No visibility. Email integration is rudimentary. Task integration is non-existent. No Office 365 contact synchronisation.
Insightly Response
8 years ago
Thanks for the feedback. I'll pass this on to our product team because all feedback helps us improve. With regards to exposing our product road map -- it's common that privately held companies do not make their product road map public. If you have specific questions on features please send an email to [email protected] and we can let you know if they are on the roadmap. Thanks.
Great CRM system for the small business
Pros:
I have already recommended this product to several people who are just getting started into the CRM world. Many small businesses need a CRM system that helps them organize and track leads, referrals, and potential clients through the sales pipeline. This system is the answer.
Cons:
The free version doesn't offer some reporting mechanisms that seem obvious...but then again, I'm using the free version, so I really can't complain! The other issue I have is that it functions a bit slowly sometimes. Other websites work very smoothly and behave like they're running on my desktop, but the Insightly website can be a bit chunky. Also, the web app is weak. It doesn't have near the functionality of the website. Not sure if that is because I'm using the free version or not.
Alternatives Considered:
Allows us to grow into our needs
Comments: Great! It suits our needs perfectly.
Pros:
It can be used in simple form or allows us to enable more features as our needs grow.
Cons:
There are certain limitations with customizability, but Insightly often addresses these and rolls out features updates.
Insightly is sales incite.
Comments: Very positive and strongly recommend to other users.
Pros:
The self-served ability to customize our pipeline by service offering.
Cons:
Service after the sale to help us understand the other suite of services that we are not using well or at all.
A necessary tool to run my business. No more searching for client information.
Comments: Ease of Marketing and Sales process. Total contact management software that include picture of person. What a plus. Great training videos to guide all level of users. Wonderful opportunity to scale the software as the company grows from startup to height unknown. Pricing is fair and Insightly is not living on past accomplishments it is improving product continuously.
Pros:
They offer a free version to evaluate. Since it is without a time limit I used it and gradually became totally dependent on it. During a planning meeting with staff it was determined we could increase our efficiency by adding the professional version that includes email marketing tools and an easy interface with MailChimp. Now they have my paid business. It is with confidence that I agree to pay them for a monthly service that will be used by all members of my company. The program can accommodate the growth curve in a company such as mine. We started out simply needing contact management software. Later as our sales and marketing needs became more our focus adding these features was an easy decision. There are many videos to quickly bring a new user up to speed. The experienced user can use the videos to explore the many functions that may yet be used by a company as needs and goals change. The reporting function has recently become important as we need to know the results of our marketing and sales efforts. The tool is there and ready for us to implement. I think the more our company commits to using Insightly the more our communication between owners and employees improves. We openly share information on Insightly and our feedback has been positive. In the past before Insightly, communication was dispersed informally and sometimes led to bad feelings due to the inefficiency of word of mouth. Insightly is constantly making changes and updates to its software.
Cons:
Its not visually pretty. I know that is silly but staff has to look at it all day and they like pretty. When a new user/employee first looks at program they make the mistake of thinking it is an old program. While I am able to bring them along and show them it isn't true, their first impression is a temporary detriment to their learning curve and acceptance of the program. In order for Insightly to be the awesome tool it is, requires employee and leader acceptance. Everyone on the team has input and others depend on that input to do their job. Sloppy work seems to come from lack of acceptance. Part of this is my responsibility as a leader to insist everyone use the tools as intended but again, if the program had a new interface and pretty colors it might make a difference. Personally I always choose function first and then presentation but input from staff is a factor I have to consider. One other area I would mention is the difference between leads and contacts. They are not intuitive to some people and I think a better explanation and reinforcement in training videos would make it easier for the new user. This confusion has lead to some mistakes by my users that require a bit of corrective action by more experienced users. There is very little for me to find wrong with Insightly that isn't based on personal style and preferences.
Insightly: The Sports Car of CRM's
Pros:
Having worked with clients using a variety of CRM’s we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I often times refer to insightly as the sports car of CRM’s because it allows companies to manage sales, contacts, projects, opportunities and client fulfillment in a very clean, efficient and user-friendly way. Some of the features I love best are their pipelines and activity sets. For companies that are managing lots of clients at different stages of fulfillment, Insightly’s pipeline feature helps all the players involved know exactly what they need to do and when. The client profile makes it easy for me to link contacts to organizations or note other important relationships. The ability to save my email communication and related tasks to a contact has become an essential part of how we use Insightly and it’s intuitive ability to save any attached files I send is another feature I love. Other favorite features are their mass emailing tool within the CRM. I can send a personalized email to a group of clients without having to write individual emails. A task management feature that allows me to see on one screen what I’m working on for each of my clients and in all areas of my business. With one click I can see what each of my employees is working on, what’s been done. You can create custom tagging systems to easily sort and find clients in your database. In one place see all of the projects you’re currently working on and where they are in the process of completion. Insightly’s Gmail gadget makes it easy to assign tasks, create projects, save emails, add or update contact email easily from within your email. No more switching back and forth from program to program. Insightly University provides a good training source for new users in addition to their highly responsive customer service team. I also have to mention all the strategic partnerships that makes using Insightly with other programs really seamless. For example, Mailchimp, evernote, DropBox and Google Apps for Business to name a few. Sure, there are lots bigger more robust CRM’s out there, but I don’t want to drive a Mack truck every day. I like my sports car. :)
Cons:
Insightly's calendar doesn't work for me, but I use google calendar and haven't missed it. I wish you could customize what you want to see on the home page. Right now it's just a running list of the activity on your accounts, but not super helpful in my opinion. Right now you have to manually advance pipelines. It would be nice to set them to advance to the next stage once all the activity sets are complete.
Alternatives Considered:
Insightly review
Comments: Overall experience is not good as compared to Netsuite by Oracle or Salesforce.
Pros:
The software looks good, and easy to use.
Cons:
The software stuck a lot when multiple users use at same time.Software stuck when we edit 2 things fastly and jumping to another option.When we upload leads most of the time leads upload twice which makes duplicate leads.There is no option of task reminder.There is no option of timing when the notes added at that particular date.
Insightly>Not just a CRM Tool but a Partnership
Comments: The Insightly team are some of my favorite people. They are always willing to help and assist with the company objectives we are working on. In my opinion, customer service and support are key in any partnership and Insightly makes us feel valued and like we are partners. My experience with the tool and Insightly is absolutely a positive one!
Pros:
First, the simplicity of Insightly has been key in internal adoption of the tool for the company. Insightly is my go to tool for keeping my day planned with tasks. Secondly, the customization Insightly allows with the custom objects has really allowed a level of visibility within the company that we simply did not have prior to partnering with them. This tool is quickly becoming a key focus for the organization as it allows for the operational team to automate key operational processes which in turn increases quality, decreases risk, and decreases labor costs.
Cons:
Expanding the automated workflow options would be of great value to organizations. Additionally, the limitation on page layout rules can be challenging. Making this unlimited would be a preference for the organization.
Awful Customer Service Responses
Comments: I'm going to start this out by saying that I am the CMO for a SaaS company; one that builds a retail CRM. I am imminently qualified to speak on this particular subject. I did not subscribe to Insightly in the interest of that company (another I own), but I am more acutely aware of the challenges that these companies face, than most. Because of that, I'm also more likely to be more forgiving, in the event of a bug. That said, this may be one of the worst customer experiences that I've had in years. We faced a problem with spam coming in through Insightly's web form (as implemented on our Word Press website). Now, spam is not Insightly's problem, yet they build a tool designed for the collection of customer data, so it's a problem they're bound to have some experiences with. Per the company documentation instructions, we set up Google's reCaptcha (as is part of our best practices for building any new site) for controlling the problem. It didn't seem to be working, though. After further investigation by both our internal front an back end developers, we discovered that Insightly was not sending our token to Google for approval. When confronted with this information, multiple Insightly staff parroted back to me that it essentially wasn't their problem. When we pointed our customer service rep, Dan, to the insight.ly article which said at the bottom that you can add reCAPTCHA to a page to stop spam submissions, and he looked at that and said, "Well... We never PROMISED it would work." Seriously? When I asked to have their engineers speak to my developers to attempt to figure out what was going on here, we more or less got more of the same, from several different customer service reps. When sent proof of the mistake, we were again told that it was not Insightly's problem. We weren't asking for much. Developers make mistakes. It's okay. It happens. It was the absolute refusal to deal with a verified issue with their system that really left a bad taste in our mouths. As of today, we are still waiting for a response. Am giving it 24 more hours and we'll be taking our business elsewhere.
Pros:
Easy enough to use for small business owners, if you can see your way out of getting tons of unsolicited spam.
Cons:
Responsive customer service that doesn't seem well informed to deal with anything beyond the most basic of questions.
Frustrating to get started
Comments: Overall, I don't think Insightly is the right tool for me due to it's complex setup which I think can improve if there a bit more videos in their help-section. The walkthrus for basic setup are good, but I'd love to see more videos or improvements in workflow automation. I only trialed the software so I can't speak on it as if I were an expert, but I think Insightly has some benefits but just not the right tool for me.
Pros:
I was looking for a G-Suite CRM and stumbled upon Insightly. I decided to give it a go and try out the free trial upon reading a few reviews. The main area I was interested in and found to be good was Insightlys e-mail tracking. I sent a test e-mail to both Gmail and Yahoo e-mails and found the tracking to be accurate. I can see how Insightly would be a value add for monitoring sent e-mails, and then creating an automation workflow to auto-add any leads who reply to a pipeline, but I wasn't able to figure out a workflow for it. I do believe it's possible however to not only add to a pipeline but even export the contacts who replied and save to perhaps something like Mailchimp for another customer-journey.
Cons:
My first thought was that it looked really in terms of the feature set but I was a bit overwhelmed with the setup and it took me about 2 times to connect to GSuite although, it could have been a bug on my end rather than theirs. After connecting my GSuite account, I started to play around right away, setting up the leads section as I plan to use Insightly for Sales Tracking and lead scoring. I found the UX/UI a bit sluggish, and creating pipelines with custom attributes a bit cumbersome. I was hoping for a rich data-enrichment where all Company/People info would be filled out, but that aspect wasn't there.
Insightly has awesome customer support and works well for a with 3 remote locations
Comments: Overall a good product. I would recommend starting with a list of what you need from software, then what you would like then a nice to have list. See how many ticks this software gets. Compare it to at least two pieces of other software of the same nature before making your final decision. This is what I recommend for any piece of software. Also, check out their own forums of customer support, and social media sites to see what other customers have had to say about the software.
Pros:
It is easy to have three branches of a business integrated into insightly in a relatively seamless way. It takes the CRM and the Project management aspects of running a business into the cloud along with scheduling and solves a lot of problems for the business I set up who are still using it today. They have used customer support extensively and appreciate their dedication to the product.
Cons:
Looking forward to better social media integration - this is currently not a real feature and something that our heavily social dependent business would really benefit from
Insightly is the perfect CRM
Comments: We are a small business that is growing and Insightly has been there with us from almost the start. I have used a lot of CRMs in my career and honestly Insightly does everything the competition does (and more) with a much more reasonable price point. Insightly is very flexible and can really be built to manage the needs of a many different businesses across many different industries. We don't have any reason to look elsewhere and are very pleased with Insightly.
Pros:
First of al, Insightly's price point is excellent. The value we receive in comparison to what we pay is awesome. I really like that I can change things on the fly as needed. There have been a few things I needed specifically that no CRM really had. The team at Insightly was able to find a solution that filled the gaps I had. Their on-boarding and customer success team has been great to work with and very helpful. We are growing and I have no reason to look elsewhere.
Cons:
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with all of the items available to change. If I need to make a change, it can seem cumbersome and I may forget where to go. The only other thing I have to say is I wish more could have been setup during my implementation calls. I don't fault my Implementation Specialist for this and I know the purpose of those call were to make sure I could do it all myself.
Almost Perfect - But not quite!
Comments: After using many CRM systems from Salesforce, Zoho, Apptivo, Pipeline Deals, Pipedrive, Base CRM and more, Insightly is a 'breath of fresh air' (even though that is getting a bit stale lately - more on that shorty). Frankly, after looking at many of these systems, I was tempted to design and create my own system (I have been a software engineer for 30 years and own a software development firm as one of my companies). Yet I decided to give Insightly the last shot. It works great - almost the way I would have designed. There are some weaknesses as well, most of all the lack of the support teams response to multiple request of the same kind and promising future fixes that 'are just not coming'. That all said, Insightly is well rounded, has lots of integration options and works very well for most CRM needs, especially around customer service, contacting, tracking and task planing. Even light weight project management is included in 2 different forms - pipelines or more traditional but more complicated to use project management optionsl
Pros:
Here are just a few pros: * Easy to use and learn * Integrated Light Weight Project Management * Fast Response * Great note taking * Easy task tracking * Great for sales cycles and customer service alike * Useful Integrations * Better User Interface than most (every tried Salesforce and couldn't find anything?)
Cons:
A couple of Cons: * Service - The guys and gals at Insightly need to learn to listen and pass information 'up the management chain' * Task and Event Handling need improvement as reported by many clients * Need fully functional 2-way sync with Google Calendar * Need real workflow functionality instead of clunky Project Management (to their defense, lots of systems 'miss this one')
Excellent CRM
Comments: Our team’s experience with Insightly has been stellar
Pros:
Insightly is an exceptional CRM platform that allows sales, customer success teams to be efficient and collaborative. Reports and insights are easy to generate. It is perfect for small businesses
Cons:
Some features and functionalities with customizable fields are limited when compared to other CRMs
Decent CRM software
Comments: My overall experience with Insightly has been good, however, there are other really good CRM softwares that can do the same job or even a better job.
Pros:
Insightly offers a wide range of features to manage sales and marketing activities. It is user-friendly and easy to navigate. The software makes it really easy to navigate and track customer information.
Cons:
The software is a bit pricey compared to other similar services. In addition, it has some limitations for advanced customizations. Moreover, reports and analytics could be more advanced.
Good product
Comments: Sometimes finding the right space to put notes becomes a little onerous and can be clunky when trying to find a contact within a organization
Pros:
Pretty easy to use, task and follow up easy to set up in a sign
Insightly — Helpful and Informative
Comments: Insightly is a great tool for organizations to manage large amounts of data and clearly visualize their progress via reports. It requires a certain level of competency to use effectively (the number of folders and tabs can get overwhelming for the unitiated), but the program itself works great.
Pros:
I appreciate how Insightly easily allows us to organize large amounts of data, create clearly-readable reports, and allow each department to clearly see the progress of each individual project — synthesizing our results to maximize effectiveness.
Cons:
My only main issue with Insightly is the occasional lag that crops up from time to time. When updating a contact or re-organizing a report with additional contacts, it sometimes takes a while for the results to appear. Additionally, sometimes I'm randomly logged out, which momentarily breaks my focus.