Free Highrise CRM Alternative

Using Bitrix24 as Free Highrise CRM Alternative

Highrise CRM is a customer relationship management solution created by 37signals, more known for their project management product Basecamp. It started out pretty strong but soon fell victim to mergers and shakeups, which led to the company’s announcement that Highrise CRM would no longer be developed. Since August 2018, Highrise CRM does not accept new signups and only supports existing customers. This prompted a lot of people to start looking for solutions that could replace their beloved Highrise CRM. Here in this article that can also pass as a Highrise CRM review, we are going to talk about one of Bitrix24, which combines features of Highrise, Basecamp, and Campfire, is a great free Highrise CRM alternative.

Bitrix24 is a free CRM system with over 35 online tools and no hidden costs. All paid plans are ‘flat’ with no per user pricing. It’s a simple CRM that is flexible and powerful enough to automate sales funnels, generate leads and improve customer service. Packed with client management, customer support, and marketing automation features, Bitrix24 CRM is more than “just CRM”. With over 12 million customers, Bitrix24 is currently ranked #1 free CRM by the total number of users worldwide.

People behind CRM Highrise, as the legend says (confirmed in the book “Rework”), say they were looking for a CRM and they couldn't find the one they wanted to use so they just created their own and made sure it was a really simple and easy to use CRM. This constitutes the main strength of Highrise CRM. It's not loaded with tons of features and advanced marketing capabilities - it has got just got what most small businesses need: leads, deals, and contacts. Throw in some additional task management functionality and you get a bare minimum CRM system. In Highrise CRM, you can import contacts from Outlook, Gmail, and Excel and tag them so that they can be organized, filtered, and searched. You can also add notes and comments to your client profiles and use custom data fields for people and companies.

Obviously, the biggest downside to this rather nice CRM system is that it is no longer developed (as of August 2018) and no new accounts can be created. If you are an existing user of Highrise CRM, you can still get customer support and generally use the system without much trouble but it’s still a sinking ship that will soon be inevitably abandoned.

Here is a table with a side-by-side comparison of Highrise CRM and Bitrix24 CRM features to give you the full picture.