Once a company decides it needs a CRM, the next question arrives immediately: buy one ready-made or have one built? Either can be right. The mistake is deciding on what the first month costs.
Count three years, not one month
Ready-made CRMs are usually paid monthly, per user. A custom system costs more at the start, and after that you pay for hosting and maintenance. The only fair comparison is over a few years.
A worked example: 10 users at €20 each per month comes to €7,200 over three years, before any setup, integration or upgrade to a bigger plan. Do the same sum with your own headcount and the real price of the plan you'd need.
The figures above are a worked example, not the price of any particular product.
Subscription or your own system
A subscription gets you started fast and updates are included. The catch is that the bill grows with every person you hire and every feature that lives in a higher plan.
Your own system costs more up front. In return you don't pay per user, and you can change whatever you like.
The local integrations decide a lot
This is where many Moldovan projects are won or lost. International products connect easily to Gmail or Facebook and much less often to 1C, e-Factura, or local banks and payment services. Make a list of what your CRM has to talk to, and for each one find out whether the connection already exists, can be configured, or would have to be written.
Who holds the data
With a cloud CRM your data lives on the provider's servers. Before you sign, ask which country those servers are in, whether you can export every client and the full history in a standard format, and what happens to your data if you stop paying. With your own system, the data sits wherever you decide.
The middle road
For most companies here, the best answer is neither a standard subscription nor building from scratch. It's an existing CRM, configured around how the company actually works and connected to the local systems. It's faster than full development and fits better than a product used as it comes. It's also the option we recommend most often.
Before you decide
- How many users do you have now, and how many in three years?
- Which systems does the CRM need to connect to?
- How far is your process from a standard sales pipeline?
- Who will look after the system once it's running?
- What happens to the data if you switch provider?
If you'd like to go through these together, get in touch from our CRM systems page.