When trying to find the best customer relationship management application (CRM), it is absolutely imperative that owners spend some time comparing the numerous products available on the market. After all, CRM is incredibly important to business owners and their ability to form healthy and long-lasting relationships with their clients.

Update: ClickHook now is focusing strictly on lead management. 

Today, we will be taking a look at three CRM applications available on the market—Salesforce, PipeDrive and Clickhook. If you are familiar with the former, then you probably already know that Salesforce is incredibly popular among small businesses. This is not surprising: Fast, light and efficient, this cloud-based CRM does the trick wonderfully well. What’s more, Salesforce leaves users plenty of room for customization, allowing them to compete with bigger, more established companies in the process. For people looking to centralize their data while receiving customizable reporting, Salesforce is indeed a powerful tool.

PipeDrive is another big name in the CRM world. While some people might consider it too simple (especially when they are competing against bigger companies) PipeDrive’s main strength lies in its ability to simplify the process of customer relationship management. The program enables users to manage their pipelines in multiple stages. From defining a deal (the first stage) to Idea, Contact Made, Needs Discovered, etc., PipeDrive is ideal for people who want a non-fuss, simple CRM software.

What differentiates Clickhook from Salesforce and PipeDrive—and this is why we recommend the app to every small business owners—is its ability to completely change the meaning of flexibility. Its unique approach makes Clickhook an enticing and refreshing take on CRM. By giving people the opportunity to control the app by email, Clickhook completely revolutionizes the way people deal with customer relationships. We encourage you to take a look at the video below to understand Clickhook better:

Editors note: ClickHook has recently updated their website and their lead management tool.  They are now doing a “hands-on” approach whereby they provide BOTH lead generation and lead management services.  If you are interested in just the lead management software then you need to contact them on their website.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCMR6Nfdm4

As you will see, Clickhook incorporates emails into two different ways:

1. It allows users to cc’ or bbc’ their unique Clickhook email ID to instantly log in important emails. This ensures that users are staying on top of their emails. What’s more, Clickhook is smart enough to add the contact if the latter is not already entered in the user’s contact list;

2. And it gives people the opportunity to create hashtag (#) commands using their unique Clickhook email ID. From adding a contact to adding a task, Clickhook is able to perform those tasks and users are able to go on with their day without having to login into the app. This feature is completely unique to Clickhook.

Update November 24, 2014: ClickHook now allows for full, seamless integration with gmail (or Google apps for business email).  This means that you don’t even need to change your behavior when emailing leads… just go about your business and ClickHook will sync any emails that are part of a conversation with a lead into the app.  That way you always have a record of what has been communicated with that lead!

To go back to the original question, the answer depends on what you expect from a CRM software. Certainly, Salesforce and PipeDrive do the trick well. But Clickhook does it better—and it does it in a new and exciting way. Thanks to its email integration, Clickhook is able to completely change the way businesses handle tasks and sales management. Forget about clunky and outdated CRM tools that only end up confusing you even more. You can control Clickhook without having to ever login into the app! As the video above explains, Clickhook even allows you to create custom sales-flows and automate different actions along the way. Unlike PipeDrive, Clickhook gives users the opportunity to customize the sales-flows in a way that has never been seen before.

Clickhook truly took it one step further. And you know what the good news is? You can get the registration link early. If you are interested, come experiment with the app—you won’t regret it.

(Oh and the other good news is that Clickhook is still making everything better. Imagine what it’s going to be like in a few months! Stick with them for a while and we doubt you’ll ever need another CRM program.)