Workbooks review

Our Verdict

Workbooks can serve a broad range of CRM use-cases at a fraction of the toll of the competition. Customers bask a custom-tailored experience and continuous support from the company.

For

Involved and supportive onboarding
Low price for the number of features
Free consulting days available

Against

Free version limited to two users
No large third-party app market place

TechRadar Verdict

Workbooks can serve a broad range of CRM use-cases at a fraction of the cost of the contest. Customers enjoy a custom-tailored experience and continuous back up from the company.

Pros

+
Involved and supportive onboarding
+
Low price for the number of features
+
Free consulting days available

Cons

-
Free version limited to 2 users
-
No large third-party app market

Workbooks is innovative CRM software with a stiff focus on business outcomes. Focused on the mid-marketplace, it enables clients to automate processes, grow revenue, and reach central performance metrics across all departments. Read our Workbooks review to learn why Workbooks might be the best CRM software solution for your business.

Workbooks review: Snapshot

Workbooks is an excellent CRM product for midsize enterprises, offer software solutions for customer service, sales, marketing, and operations teams. Its primary differentiating gene lies in the Shared Success programme, which provides customers with gratis consulting hours and annual workshops to ensure that Workbooks continues to align with every client's business concern goals for years afterwards the initial implementation.

Workbooks lacks a various tertiary-party app market and programmer community, which is a weakness relative to competitors like Salesforce and HubSpot. Users that require a large amount of third party customization might not be satisfied with its offering. In addition, its free version is limited to merely ii users and has fewer features, which could make it less appealing to very small businesses.

Overall, we consider Workbooks to exist a fantastic platform when used for its intended purpose—providing CRM software solutions to midsize organizations.

Score: v/five

Read on for our full and detailed review.

Workbooks' competitors

How does Workbooks compare to its main competitors?
	Workbooks	Salesforce	HubSpot
Score	v/5	5/5	iv.five/5
Pros	Involved and supportive onboarding, Free consulting days, Four CRM feature sets for the toll of one	Broad range of features, Extremely customizable, Large community with active peer support	Free version available, Over 300 custom apps in marketplace
Cons	Complimentary version is limited to two users, Large enterprises may desire more features	No complimentary version, Prohibitively expensive for nearly small to midsize businesses	Slow and complex to set up upwardly, Costless plan has no telephone support
Verdict	Workbooks works closely with its clients, providing ongoing support to ensure its production continue to fit perfectly with their CRM needs.	Salesforce is the largest and about established player in the CRM market. With over 14 products and 3000+ apps, it is perfect for large enterprise users.	HubSpot is established CRM software that is easily scalable, perfect for pocket-size to midsize business organisation users.
View deals	Visit site	Visit site (US link)	Visit site

Workbooks' fundamental features

Workbooks' features are broken down into iv categories: Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Social club Management.

While some of these features are notable in their ain right, virtually are not unique to Workbooks. What truly differentiates Workbooks from other CRMs is its collaborative approach to customer support: Shared Success.

Customer Service

Workbooks provides a versatile ticket management platform for customer service teams. Customer inquiries from multiple channels, such every bit electronic mail and online conversation, are aggregated into a centralized ticket database for agents to handle.

The system's versatility besides ways that it tin can exist used by Human being Resources and Information technology to handle internal employee tickets.

Sales

Sales teams tin can benefit from an effective database organization for their leads. The Workbooks database is based on flexible entries, with two types of record: organizations and individuals connected to these organizations. So for example, one record can be listed every bit an employee at one company, a contractor for another, and a supplier for withal another. The database will also automatically trawl the web, suggesting updates to employment data and relationships between records based on the data it constitute online. This ensures that salespeople take current information at their fingertips at all times.

Workbooks: Key features and highlights

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Workbooks review — A versatile ticket management platform that can be used for customer service, IT, or HR. (Prototype credit: Workbooks)

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Marketing

Marketing features include campaign direction and lead qualification. Marketing teams can run campaigns from within Workbooks and receive feedback from the organisation on their success. The system as well uses a proprietary scoring arrangement to rank the quality of leads. When a potential lead clicks on the visitor website, it adds a little to their score. If that private then lingers there, clicks on a few links, and reads some information, their score volition increase, and eventually, the system volition escalate this potentially interested client lead to a marketing representative. In this style, Workbooks automatically qualifies leads for the benefit of the marketing team.

Order Management

Order management is a premium characteristic, available to only Business level license holders. It facilitates back-stop interactions with suppliers and assists when invoicing or quoting customers. Customized invoices and quote management are notable features as few CRM programs provide them.

Shared Success

The Workbooks team conducts an introductory workshop with every client. They then come up up with a CRM solution that is tailored to that particular client'south business goals. Afterwards, the client receives a set of free consulting days in their showtime twelvemonth, equal to one day per £one thousand of almanac license value—or $1328. So a client with a £10,000 annual license value will receive 10 free consulting days with the Workbooks team in the starting time year. This mode, the Workbooks team can ensure that everything runs smoothly and that their CRM continues to help the client hit their primal operation indicators.

Workbooks - What'southward new?

Workbooks made two major changes in recent releases. The first has to practise with Workbooks' Function 365 integration—Office 365 users can open Workbooks in a sidebar within any Role application. This feature was recently expanded to include Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint.

Workbooks likewise implemented a tool for its Social club Direction side, called Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ). CPQ proactively finds component parts relating to a specific customer quote. For case, if a customer requests a quote for a roofing project, the sales rep would normally have to locate the pricing of all the relevant components and man-hours before being able to compile a quote. In practise, this means that the customer is unlikely to receive a quote the same day, which decreases the likelihood of closing the sale.

With CPQ, reps can pre-configure quotes within the software earlier heading out, and the CPQ organization will automatically fill in pricing details for components and man-hours and then that representatives can provide an immediate quote to clients during the coming together.

Workbooks - Pricing

Workbooks' pricing structure is simple. There are two plans: Standard and Business. With the standard plan, users get admission to all of the customer-facing CRM features of Workbooks—sales, customer service, and marketing management solutions. The premium plan, Business, unlocks all of the order direction features, like invoicing and supplier contract management. Billing on all Workbooks plans is annual.

Compared to other CRM providers, Workbooks' pricing is highly competitive. For instance, to unlock sales, marketing, and customer service features with Salesforce, a user would take to subscribe to Sales Deject, Service Cloud, and Marketing Deject, potentially a multi-g dollar subscription. Workbooks offers similar features for $34/user/month.

Workbooks' pricing plans
Program type/characteristic	Complimentary*	Standard**	Concern**	HubSpot Sales Hub**	Salesforce Sales Deject**
Cost per calendar month	Free	$34	$71	$45	$25
Cost per twelvemonth	Complimentary	$408	$852	$540	$300
Sales direction	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Marketing management	✓	✓	✓	X	X
Customer service management	✓	✓	✓	X	X
Order direction	Ten	X	✓	Ten	With third-party paid plugins

*Express to two users.

**Pricing is per user per calendar month.

Testing Workbooks

Workbooks' key differentiating factor lies in consulting support. They abet that the process starts right from the beginning, with a consulting phone call to book a co-funded workshop. We wanted to test just how easy it was to get started with Workbooks.

How easy is it to book an initial consultation with Workbooks?

Screenshot of call booking screen, Workbooks. — Testing the Workbooks call booking function. (Image credit: Workbooks)

The simply fashion to go started with Workbooks is to book a telephone call for an initial consultation. You cannot otherwise admission the software, even in its free form. We decided to test this booking process for ourselves, every bit this initial step could set the tone for the entire client experience.

Workbooks' website has the button Let's talk in the pinnacle correct corner, equally well equally on almost every webpage. We clicked information technology, and information technology took us to a booking calendar for a 30-minute appointment.

Nosotros found that the booking process was like shooting fish in a barrel and in that location was plenty of availability—we booked on a Thursday and were able to get a call as early as the next Monday morning time. At that point, information technology was a uncomplicated matter of picking a engagement and an available fourth dimension slot, and then striking confirm.

One upshot Northward American customers should be aware of is that booking times are simply bachelor during British concern hours, which means that when we tried to book from the West Coast our available call times ranged from 2:30 am to 7:30 am—then maybe take hold of a java if you are calling from the U.s. or Canada.

Alternatives to Workbooks

Workbooks is most comparable to HubSpot equally they are both CRM providers geared towards midsize enterprises. Unlike Workbooks, HubSpot has a large established 3rd-party app marketplace. If you are an advanced CRM user, comfortable setting everything up on your own, HubSpot could give you a piddling more than customization than Workbooks.

Nonetheless, Workbooks is significantly easier to use for users without enormous technical expertise. The Workbooks team volition work with the customer to fix up the program, provide gratis consulting in the beginning year, and touch base annually later that to ensure that the client is still satisfied with their CRM. This type of ongoing, personalized support, with complimentary consulting hours, is unique to Workbooks, and difficult to beat out unless you demand absolutely no aid in setting up and maintaining your CRM.

Small businesses and solopreneurs might detect Workbooks less beneficial, as the free version is limited in scope, and the free consulting is not bachelor since information technology is based on your total almanac subscription fee. On the other hand, HubSpot's gratis version has unlimited users and like features to Workbooks' free version.

Salesforce is another competitor of Workbooks, being the largest and most established thespian in the CRM infinite. Still, it'south primarily geared towards large Enterprise users. Features similar VoIP calling, which allows for full-scale call middle integration, as well every bit over 3000 third-party Apps, make Salesforce a more appealing choice for a large organization.

For this reason, compared to its alternatives, Workbooks is best suited for midsize enterprises where information technology is a superior choice in terms of pricing, features, and consulting back up.

Workbooks' features compared to the competition
	Workbooks	Salesforce	HubSpot
Free Consulting	Yep	No	No
Large App Marketplace	No	Yes	Aye
Support	Chat and phone during business hours, costless consulting hours in first yr, annual workshops. Boosted consulting available for a fee.	Support tickets through email. Additional support by phone, and dedicated back up rep bachelor for an additional charge.	Support tickets through email and chat on the gratuitous version and Starter tier. Telephone support available to Professional tier users and above.
Basic programme	$34/month	$25/month	$45/month

Workbooks: Concluding verdict

Workbooks is a full-featured CRM at a very affordable cost signal. It is unique on the market for its blend of almanac workshops and complimentary consulting hours. The company volition work with you on an ongoing basis to make certain that your CRM platform continues to help y'all achieve your unique concern goals. Workbooks can support customer service, sales, and marketing teams, and assist users manage client orders.

Workbooks falls a trivial short in its offering to very small and very large businesses. For the latter, it lacks the latitude of features and range of third-party apps that some may require. That existence said, for a client that is okay with a fairly standard offer, Workbooks can provide a level of one-on-i support that few other providers offer. For modest businesses, Workbooks is more expensive than some alternatives. Its complimentary version is limited and but accepts two users, while some competitors offer unlimited users on their complimentary plan.

For this reason, Workbooks outshines its competition primarily as a midsize business organisation CRM, with its primal differentiating features being consulting and low toll.

Next steps

For more than information on CRM software, have a wait at our guide What is CRM software? You may also want to read our take on the best CRM for small business, the all-time CRM for existent estate, and the best free CRM software to help you select the best CRM software for your needs.

Serguei holds degrees in finance and marketing from York University, and brings more five years of professional experience at their intersection to his writing. His previous roles every bit a finance advisor involved breaking downward and explaining complex concepts in everyday terms, a talent he now brings to his work equally a freelance writer.