Sage is a provider of a multitude of business cloud solutions, including a customer relationship management tool. Sage CRM specifically caters to small and midsize businesses, offering four main solutions within the tool: service, sales, marketing and integrations. The tool can help businesses organize their customer service, accelerate sales productivity and target high value leads and gain a complete view of their customer activity across the business.

Sage CRM offers both a cloud and on-premises solution and supports a range of business types, specifically in the construction industry. There are still other options to consider that offer similar or more advanced sales and marketing features, including providers with more upfront pricing to help gauge the right solution for your business.

Pricing

Sage doesn’t disclose its pricing information upfront. This is sometimes the case with CRM providers. This does make it difficult to review the software and compare its solution to the pricing tiers to better understand its value and worth.

PREMIUM: Choosing the right CRM for your organization.

Instead of viewing pricing tiers, pricing models or available free trials, Sage CRM gives users the option to directly contact them via phone or submit a form with basic information such as email, name and organization to receive a callback from their sales team.

Key features of Sage CRM

Group segmentation

Users of Sage CRM can create groups of leads or ongoing projects (Figure A). Group details can include the name, description, group and entity type, and what other users are able to access the group. This feature allows organizations to filter through and segment projects based on territories, opportunity types and more.

An additional unique feature within this offering is: while viewing a group’s details, users can assign new tasks to the group or even send out a mass email to each lead in the group. For example, if a business creates a group of customers who purchased a specific product, they could send a mass email to those clients announcing an update being deployed to that product from one dashboard.

Quote and order management

Users can easily pull product catalogs and create new quotes for customers from preset templates (Figure B). Sage CRM users can not only make and send quotes quickly, but the platform also offers the added feature of being able to totally customize details of the quote, such as where it pulls prices from, such as wholesale or retail catalogs. And if the customer is requesting a quote for a customized product, users can enter new text into the quote summary, making it fit their exact needs.

Native integrations

Sage offers an entire business cloud of finance, payroll, real estate, human resources and business management products. This vast catalog of products also includes a special native accounting tool called Sage 50 Accounting (Figure C). It’s an additional desktop accounting software with cloud connectivity, giving users a 360 degree view of their finances and inventory. This unique native tool and the others can all be purchased and integrated into the CRM software.

Calendar

Sage CRM offers an internal calendar tool for users to map out client meetings and activity, as well as task planning (Figure D). The Sage CRM software offers two unique calendar views: My CRM mode, which allows users to work with tasks and appointments assigned to them and their peers and Team CRM mode, which allows them to work with tasks and appointments assigned to entire teams or departments.

Sage CRM pros and cons

Alternatives to Sage CRM

Sage CRM specifically calls out how it can support small and mid-market businesses, but falls short in its scalability to support enterprise-level organizations. Because of this, it makes the most sense to compare it to CRM software that offers the same core features but also provides that additional scalability.

So popular providers like HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce are worth taking a look at when considering a smaller provider like Sage CRM.

*Price when billed annually. 

HubSpot

HubSpot is an industry leading CRM tool with a mix bag of both free and premium sales and marketing features. Both HubSpot and Sage offer an entire suite of separate solutions and software that users can purchase to create a personalized combo of tools. Compared to Sage CRM, HubSpot is a top free CRM tool that also offers even more customization with open-source software integrations, making it a great choice for startups and small businesses.

SEE: Head over to our HubSpot review for more information.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a more sales-centric and low cost software offering robust pipeline management. Both Sage CRM and Pipedrive provide resources on how it can be implemented in particular industries, specifically construction and real estate. Compared to Sage CRM, Pipedrive offers a more intuitive user interface with highly visual pipelines for users to track project and sales progress.

SEE: For more about this provider, read our Pipedrive review.

Salesforce

Salesforce is an AI-powered sales CRM tool with advanced reporting and tech features. Both CRM software can support international clients with currency and language settings. Compared to Sage CRM, Salesforce allows for more general scalability and can cater to the unique needs of a larger, enterprise level organization.

SEE: For more about this CRM solution, including features and pricing, check out our Salesforce review.

Review methodology

I used an inhouse rubric to score and review Sage CRM. The rubric consists of defined criteria for the most important factors when evaluating or considering a CRM provider. I relied on and referenced Sage’s own online resources in addition to real user feedback, scores and reviews.

Below are the weighted criteria used to score Sage CRM:

• Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Core features: Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Customizations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Integrations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Ease of use: Weighted 10% of the total score.
• Customer support: Weighted 10% of the total score.