CRM software is an important tool for any business looking to maintain and manage key information about customers and potential clients. Bitrix24 is a well-known CRM (customer relationship management) software package, joining the market about a decade ago. It helps companies struggling with lead management by automating many features of tracking leads and customers. However, other CRM software packages are significantly easier to use than Bitrix24 for those who are new to using this type of software.
Bitrix24 Compared to the Best CRM Software
Although it has a wide range of features and some strengths when deployed in the right situation, Bitrix24 did not make our in-depth list of the best CRM software packages. Its steep learning curve leaves it lagging just behind the others on our list.
Nextiva allows customers to combine VoIP services with their CRM. The Nextiva CRM is fully customizable, so your team can enhance the software’s most relevant features, making the most of the time you spend using it. Request a product tour today.
Monday.com is our pick for the best CRM software for most businesses, as it streamlines your workflows, leaving you more time to spend on serving your customers. You can sign up today for a 14-day free trial of the Monday CRM.
With Salesforce, fast-growing companies receive a highly popular software package that is adjustable to meet their changing needs. Sign up for a free trial offer for new users at Salesforce.
For smaller companies that have an interest in trying CRM software for free, HubSpot is the best option. It also offers pay tiers as your company’s customer relationship management needs grow. Start using HubSpot for free today!
Bitrix24: The Good and the Bad
Bitrix24 offers a wide range of features that help companies fulfill several requirements for managing customer relationships and other aspects of their businesses. However, we downgrade its usefulness a bit because novices struggle to make the most of this software’s features. Its interface can be tough to navigate.
What Bitrix24 Is Good At
With Bitrix24, companies receive a good value in terms of the number of features they receive for the price.
Goes beyond lead generation: If you need a CRM software package that provides features that extend beyond lead generation, Bitrix24 is a good choice. It can help a small or medium-sized business with several aspects of managing employees, potential clients, and customers.
Bitrix24 delivers tools that help you with customer support, internal communications, and project management. This makes sense, as most companies looking to manage their base of clients and customers also need these types of features. You even can receive help with building your website or online store, optimizing it for customers who visit.
Strong communication features: Even though it delivers features in many different areas, Bitrix24 places an emphasis on its communication features. Your company can manage its communications from one place. These communications management features are part of every pricing tier, including the Free tier.
You can make use of instant messaging, group chat, email, voice calling, and activity tracking, all from the Bitrix24 interface. You can select to “follow” a certain client record, so whenever someone comments on or changes the record, you receive a notification.
Additionally, you can communicate with customers easier when using Bitrix24. It allows integration with your email and social media channels when reaching out to clients and customers.
High-level filtering and sorting: When you are studying your customer records inside the Bitrix24 interface, you can apply a number of filters to them. This simplifies the process of finding the exact record you need to access.
Sort records by the date someone created them, by the person who created them, or by the current status of the customer. You can create a customized sorting process as well if desired.
Customized lead management: Companies can sort and manage the current status of their leads in a few different ways through Bitrix24. You can start by deciding whether you want to have Bitrix24 automatically change the status of leads into customers as they move through the pipeline. Another option is to have salespeople manually change the status of leads.
Bitrix24 supports a few different views for leads as well. You can select a Kanban view, which is a visual representation of how leads move through the pipeline. You also could choose a traditional list view, which simply provides the data without graphical representation.
Useful mobile apps: Considering the unnecessary complexity in its desktop interface, it’s a bit of a surprise to see the functional design in Bitrix24’s mobile apps. It offers apps for both iOS and Android devices.
The app interface simply contains less complexity than the desktop interface, all without sacrificing any of the primary features. It seems backward, but novices may find it easier to use the mobile app than the desktop version of the interface when starting out with the software.
Extensive training options: We mentioned earlier that Bitrix24 has an interface that novices may struggle to master quickly.
However, we do like that Bitrix24 provides a large number of training videos, tutorials, and help screens to give you a chance to solve problems as they arise. Your team can use these training resources at your convenience to figure out how to make the most of the Bitrix24 feature set.
What Bitrix24 Is Lacking
We appreciate that Bitrix24 offers a wide range of features. However, actually making use of all these features can be quite challenging, especially when you are just starting with the software.
Needlessly complex interface: Bitrix24’s extensive feature set is great for busy companies that know how to use the features. However, for smaller companies that are just learning to use CRM software, the wide-ranging features and constant bombardment of information can become frustrating to try to manage.
For example, the left navigation pane has more than two dozen choices available. A slightly better organizational structure would help to cut down on the steep learning curve.
It would be helpful if Bitrix24 allowed users to hide certain features they aren’t using, which would declutter the interface. However, this is not an option currently. Other CRM packages are far easier to sit down and begin using quickly. If you are going to select Bitrix24, you need to be ready to commit to the learning curve.
Limited third-party integrations. Bitrix24 offers integrations with many popular third-party tools that can enhance the work your team members are doing. However, Bitrix24 lags a bit behind some of the best CRM software tools in terms of the number of integrations it offers.
You can integrate with tools like Basecamp, Zoho, Gmail, and others with Bitrix24. However, it is missing some key integrations that we would like to see, such as Skype, Twitter, and Instagram.
Poor customer service responsiveness: Although Bitrix24 has a few different features that streamline the process of responding to customers’ requests for help, it lags behind competitors in this area.
It is difficult to route customer requests to particular members of your team or to particular departments, based on the type of request. Bitrix24 also doesn’t provide the ability to set up a chatbot that may help your customers fix simple problems on their own without having to speak to a team member.
Overwhelming number of notifications: Because of the challenges in navigating the Bitrix24 interface, you may find yourself missing important notifications and messages. When the interface gives you so many messages that aren’t important to you, it’s easy to become complacent about reading every message. Unfortunately, this could cause you to skip over a message that you really need.
Bitrix24 Options and Pricing
Bitrix24 provides both a cloud subscription option and an on-premises subscription option. The company recently updated all its pricing tiers and plans, so if you haven’t checked out Bitrix24’s prices in a couple of years, it may be worth a fresh look. We will focus on the cloud subscription plan in discussing the features and prices available.
Bitrix24 Customer Relationship Management
As CRM software, it’s clear that Bitrix24 needs to provide strong features in this area above all else. It provides features aimed at successful customer and client management, acquisition, and retention.
- Lead acquisition: When your company receives incoming contacts that you can attempt to convert to leads, Bitrix24 can automate the data entry. Bitrix24 takes leads that come through channels like your website, social media accounts, telephone calls, and other areas and adds them to the CRM database for you.
- Lead management: Bitrix24 has a scoring tool it uses to rank the leads as they enter your database and as your sales team interacts with them. Through the scoring tool, sales team members can determine which leads need the most immediate attention.
- Sales and marketing automation: With Bitrix24, the software generates analytics about your company’s marketing efforts. It also generates notifications to keep your sales team up to date about the tasks they need to complete.
The Bitrix24 pricing plans include the CRM features found in the software, as well as the other features we will discuss later.
- Free: This is a free forever tier that has very limited CRM features.
- Basic: The Basic tier offers unlimited invoices, contacts, and deals for your CRM database. It costs $49 per month for a team of up to five users for an annual contract. (The annual contract offers a 20% savings versus paying month to month.)
- Standard: The Standard tier includes all the CRM features in the Basic tier, as well as an unlimited number of leads and quotes. This tier costs $99 per month for the annual contract for a team of up to 50 users.
- Professional: The Professional tier includes everything in the Standard tier, while also allowing you to hide certain data fields in the CRM from users without the correct permission levels. This tier costs $199 per month for the annual contract for up to 100 users.
Bitrix24 Project and Task Management
As part of the wide range of features that Bitrix24 offers, it includes task management and project management capabilities. For a sales team that wants to handle traditional CRM tasks along with project tracking in the same software package, Bitrix24 provides this capability.
- Project management: Use Bitrix24 to track all project activity and to determine which team members have the capability to take on additional tasks. Bitrix24 can generate reports about the progress of various projects, too.
- Task automation: If you have reports that you need to see on a daily or weekly basis, you can have Bitrix24 run these reports automatically at the appropriate time.
- Project visualization: You can select multiple visualization options to see the progress of your tasks and projects within Bitrix24. You can make use of Kanban boards or Gantt charts, for example.
The Free tier has very limited project and task management features. The Professional tier offers all task-related features, while the Standard tier allows all features, other than creating custom fields. In the Basic tier, you cannot set up recurring tasks.
Bitrix24 Automation Features
If you need to be able to track work hours through your CRM software, Bitrix24 gives you this capability. You can manage employee attendance as well.
Bitrix24 allows you to automate your business workflows and processes to give the human resources team the information it needs for expense reimbursement. You can use this data to track vacation time, pay invoices, and automate the hiring process.
You can generate multiple reports and see analytics related to the performance of individual team members and salespeople, if desired.
These automation features are only available in the Professional tier.
Bitrix24 Website Building
Should you need help building a website, online store, or landing page, Bitrix24 provides this capability.
Certainly, making use of this CRM software package to perform website building is not going to give you the highest level of features versus a product that focuses on websites. (We believe the best website builder for most small businesses is Wix.) However, if you want to work in one software interface, Bitrix24 can deliver the basic level of performance you are seeking in site building.
Bitrix24 offers templates specific to various industries as a starting point for building websites. The entire building process is visual, so you do not need to use coding to build a site.
You can even create an online store with Bitrix24. The package helps you monitor the products you have in stock, track your sales, and accept payments from customers.
If you choose to use this feature, you will need to host your website using bitrix24.site as the top-level domain, or TLD. (The TLD is the part of the domain name after the dot.)
Using bitrix24.site as the TLD may cause some of your site’s visitors to question the legitimacy of your site. Visitors may prefer a more traditional .com or .org TLD on your domain name. You can choose from a variety of TLDs when you stick with a dedicated website-building company.
You can build a website in any of Bitrix24’s pricing tiers, including the Free tier. The Basic, Standard, and Professional tiers all provide the same basic level of features in terms of website building, including offering an unlimited number of web pages. However, you receive the greatest amount of website storage in the upper pricing tier.
Bitrix24 in Summary
When your company needs CRM software that has a large number of features for running your business, Bitrix24 is a strong choice. It can handle a wide range of needs for managing your customer list and for finding new customers.
However, because of its complexity and long learning curve, we decided not to include Bitrix24 among our selections of the best CRM software packages. We like Nextiva as the best CRM package for most companies, and note Monday.com, Salesforce and HubSpot as strong choices as well.
