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Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

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Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#21

Post by Loic »

keithwarren wrote: post #17

You are doing it wrong. I don't mean to be contrarian but if you want to be successful as a independent developer (I have been for almost 15 years now) and you are looking for a CRM you are off the rails. CRM systems are for the most part, for companies or sales individuals who need help managing the number of contacts they have at any given time and ensuring they follow a structured interaction pattern. I know about…

For my experience (7 years now), this is effectively so, you do not need a CRM at all. Your inbox with a folder for each customer/contact/project is your best CRM feature.

The only thing I have at a "large number" level is a very stupid web application storing just 2 things: an email address and a corresponding full address like you print on the envelope. Then every year, I can send 125+ new year cards. I take the time to include a nice design for the card, people enjoy them and this is a nice way to keep in contact with a large number of people.

Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#22

Post by joshcrowder »

We are building a tool that really scratches our own itch. We needed a tool that:

1. Manages projects - Like Jira but simpler

2. Allows us to create documents and share them with clients - Like email but with commets

3. Track time - Like the notepad that lives on my desk

4. Keep everyone on the project informed

Its called http://matterhorn.io and its coming along we've been using it for months. We are a small agency (6 of us) and its designed mainly for teams from 1 - 20 who work directly with clients.

If you're interested drop me a line I'd love to get your thoughts on it. josh[at]seriousfox.co.uk

Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#25

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

I think using a CRM is massive overkill for being an independent developer. My own company is going through a CRM migration, and given how much of a pain that's been, you're being needlessly complex. Of course, this being HN, people want to show off their own companies/personal projects, but that's needlessly complicated. Keep it simple.

Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#26

Post by brudgers »

keithwarren wrote: post #17

You are doing it wrong. I don't mean to be contrarian but if you want to be successful as a independent developer (I have been for almost 15 years now) and you are looking for a CRM you are off the rails. CRM systems are for the most part, for companies or sales individuals who need help managing the number of contacts they have at any given time and ensuring they follow a structured interaction pattern. I know about…

I'll go further and say that researching CRM's only feels like work. It isn't. Cold calling and chasing contracts and closing them and completing the contracted work is all that counts as actually working. Choosing and installing and learning a CRM is easier. That's why it doesn't count.

Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#27

Post by zeroDivisible »

At one time in my life, when I was still in love with Emacs, I was using org-mode to do that kind of things as it wasn't breaking my workflow.

The thing is that you're a single developer, so don't you waste time managing customers and choose the simplest tool which gets the job done.

I know that others are saying Asana or Trello - and those are good tools, but with a bit of customisation and 20$ you might get yourself Jira + Confluence - those will work like a charm and you will be able to not only manage customers, but also projects and all that crap, everything in one place. One often overlooked fact is that customers like to ignore all those sexy markdown files with requirements and they don't care about code versioning - you will be receiving PowerPoint presentations and Word documents and Excel spreadsheets - all of which can be easily managed / kept in Confluence.

Remember - CRMs are for business people and whatever you choose, the time spent using it should be as minimal as possible as it is not directly bringing you any revenue.

Re: Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014?

#30

Post by girvo »

Okay, so this is going to be a bit of a random one, but hear me out.

I personally use Pancake[0]. It's a self-hosted, one-time-payment (but comes with updates) web application that will handle invoicing, CRM, time-tracking, and do it all with a really nice interface.

Also, if you know PHP at all, it's quite fun to hack on, but of course a lot of people dislike PHP. Even if you don't do that, it's a brilliant web app that was a life-saver[1] for myself when I was freelancing. Give the demo a try, see what you think.

---

[0] https://pancakeapp.com/

[1] I just took a full-time job, so I won't be freelancing anymore, but I am going to continue to use it for my time-tracking and project management for personal stuff :)

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