Nutshell Reviews

Pros

The list of functionality is impressive and very easy to learn, customize and implement. Customize list, merge contacts or companies, and the reporting features were all great ones for software at this price

Cons

Some of the reporting is limited, but it is still better than most we have tried, Also, the interface is not the sexiest around, but it does the job.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365, Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

The price versus quality was much better with Nushell. And the B2B sales features that allowed us to serve individual customers were also solid.

Pros

I love the ease of use. Intuitive UI. They launch new features and improve existing ones.

Cons

It has been really difficult to manage duplicates. Lots of dups are created instead of updated. Dups are also suggested when they are no where close to being the same.

Pros

Nutshell offers a unique ability to tag people in activities and run reports on calling activities for my sales reps.

Cons

Every lead typically has a company or contact. But if you don't save the activity in the lead, and instead under the company or individual contact, you can't see it when your client calls in regarding the sale they want service for, so your customer service is hindered and your sales people look like they don't know the history of the account. It's embarrassing to use this software because Nutshell says they are only helping to land the sale, not support it, but this mindset about how they build their software results in a horrible disconnect with regards to how we are forced to serve our customers, and thus we are using a CRM that doesn't support the full life cycle of a sale. We keep hoping Nutshell will fix this and improve because their customer service is great, and their people mean well, but after several years of patiently waiting, we are concerned that we may never see this problem fixed. The mobile app also has so many glitches with the UX that it can't even compare the experience to how you can use leads in a web browser. Further, when we have a customer call in to ask about their account, the recent leads puts the oldest first in the list, which means we have to scroll through several hundred orders just to open the last order we did for that client. If you are trying to sell to a major corporate account with multiple facilities / departments, forget it with Nutshell; linking subcompanies / vendors / partners / other locations is a nightmare in Nutshell.

Pros

Nutshell is a cost-effective product. Most other similar products are a lot more expensive. One of the unique things about Nutshell is its custom email templates which engage placeholder settings. This means you can customise an email template but include elements or placeholders that need to be customised on a per-email basis so the software will not let you send the email unless the placeholder is attended to.

Cons

Sadly Nutshell is very buggy and the CS and developer teams seem completely uninterested in resolving my complaints about the software. These are basic features mainly within the templating software which I have told Nutshell about countless times, yet they seem uninterested in resolving them. Sadly the bugs can make for a frustrating experience on some occasions. What is even more annoying is that they continue to turn out useless features that are half-baked rather than spending some time fixing the issues at the centre of their core product.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Essentials

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Nutshell felt a lot easier to setup and use and the sales team were a lot more attentive and helpful!

Pros

I like how the platform is laid out. The tools used to help are incredible and the agents that work for Nutshell are easily available to chat with 24/7. They have prompt response time and can almost always solve the issue!

Cons

The base platform doesn't have as many perks as Nutshell Pro, but it has to work for your company. Being in home care industry the Nutshell pro made sense for us!

Pros

User-Friendly Interface: Even for our team members who aren't tech-savvy, navigating through Nutshell is intuitive and easy.Customization Options: Allows us to tailor the system to our specific needs, ensuring we aren't stuck with a one-size-fits-all solution.Streamlined Outreach: Efficiently tracks donor relations, making it easier for us to engage with our community.Enhanced Communication: With Nutshell's tools, we've fostered deeper, more meaningful connections with our supporters.Growth-Oriented: The system is adaptable, allowing us to evolve our strategies without needing to switch platforms.

Cons

Would be nice if it integrated natively with more systems so we could skip using Zapier

Pros

Affordability for what we need as a company, Nutshell offers a lot of tools that you need without having to shell out a ton of money like with competitors.

Cons

Some functionalities while operable can use some work. Engagement tracking is huge for me and at times it can be difficult to find out who did what without going into their profile to find that information.

Pros

easy to use mostly. Alot of reports that can be made to individual specifications.

Cons

Some areas it is too comber sum. The end time doesn't always change when start time is made on scheduling. When you save a document, you can't save it in Nutshell, you have to upload it into it.

Pros

Feature-rich option for small companies.

Cons

So flexible and customizable that it can get unruly .

Pros

So much because the CRM file is ususeful.

Cons

I liked it and it is simple to use day-by- day.

Pros

I love the filtering ability with our companies and people lists. It allows us to really drill down and get the exact metrics we want. We are better able to see a lot of information at a glance in a dynamic way.

Cons

I would love more options when emailing groups of people in the system. Currently, I need to only use templates when emailing groups and I would like to be able to type out the email in one shot instead.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive, Nimble, monday.com, Copper, Really Simple Systems CRM and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

We realized we did not need a ticketing software but something more like a CRM, in looking over a lot of options this was the best price point and the best fit for what we needed.

Switched From

Freshdesk

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

A lot of the other systems seemed overly complicated to use, we had a relatively short onboarding period to get our people trained quickly. The price point for the number of features was the best and most sustainable for our company. And we feel like we can grow with Nutshell.

Pros

We explored a number of CRM solutions and initially selected Insightly after trying to get Tiger CRM working. Insightly functionality was too limiting and consequently was not being used. Our second round of trials lead us to Nutshell, which we have been using for about two years.

We found Nutshell to be reasonably robust and easy to use. We have been using it for about two years now. We have about 30,000 contacts and 11,000 companies.

Cons

We are now running into some functional issues which we have to address with addons, including Mailjet for email campaigns and Zapier for data transfer. The lack of a quoting interface, manual address entry into Quickbooks, lack of phone integration, and incomplete email integration. With the exception of QB integration, the other functions can be addressed with more addons. By the time we get done adding on the functional holes, the price becomes quite high.

The reliance on addons also means that the system becomes unwieldy; a different system, management interface, and subscription for each function.

At this time, I don't think there is a good solution for QB integration at all. This may not be significant since QB for Manufacturing is below our needs anyway. Our next step may be to use PostBooks, Xtuple, or some other MRP system that includes CRM. But, those also carry their own management burdens and costs.

Nutshell does have a reasonable email interface to send correspondence through our IMAP server, but the markup tags are cumbersome, are error prone, has no CC or BCC field, and the reply emails don't populate under the Nutshell customer(s). Consequently, only half of the conversation is visible. Of all of the above, this is the most significant limitation at this point.

Pros

The desktop reporting functions are very fast and help us to generate ad-hoc insight into our sales. Competing products tend to take several minutes to generate reports.

Cons

The mobile Sales Analytics generates reports on a 30-day window as opposed to a month-to-date view. This means that we have to use the desktop reporting to get accurate numbers.

Pros

Tasks per stage is something most CRM’s missed, but Nutshell did well at.

Cons

Somehow they missed a very important aspects of customized fields that exists, the ability to create a field that searches the people in database.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho CRM, Pipefy and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Nutshell

Tasks per stage

Switched From

Pipedrive

Pros

It's designed for super easy customization for what I do, and I lean hard on this feature! I also love how the Dashboard feature is set up, allowing me to see at a glance which activities should be tackled each day, and when I've scheduled future to-dos. Nutshell's approach feels like 'the little guy' was thoughtfully considered--and that's me!

Cons

I have a tough time with my leads fields frequently reverting back to the default setting that shows all fields, not just the 4 custom ones I've created. This is more of a tech issue, not really a dislike of Nutshell in general.

Pros

visually organized and logical data entry screen. Functionality is there to build as robust or simple as the company needs/wants.

Cons

It is very easy to self-build an inefficient architecture. Data uploads can be catastrophic if not done correctly. I think more training on set up, warnings issued at set up and common pitfalls at set up would avoid harmful bulk uploads making irreversible upload mistakes.

Pros

I've used Nutshell for three separate businesses that I've run or owned. Each one considered a small to medium-sized business. Nutshell is perfectly suited to us because it's lightweight and easy to learn. It doesn't require an in-house expert on the app (like SalesForce). It's basic feature-set is all I've ever needed, and the support is terrific. Real people at the end of the phone, with fast responses. And, it's made in Michigan! It has a lot of simple customizations that I use; workflow, custom fields, leads, etc.

Cons

Integrations are somewhat limited, but still, plenty to work with. I'd like an integration to RingCentral's app. Also, it doesn't' handle subsidiary company relationships well. I've had to create a workaround with tags to help connect them.

Pros

Ease of use, backed up by powerful tools. Tracks your calls and even can be set to remind you to contact customers that you haven't talked to in a while. Favorite part is the Keep in touch. It plans my day and my call backs flawlessly.

Cons

I would like to see a visual overlay of all my customers on a map. That way when I am planning a trip I don't miss any customers that are off the main roads. Will give me a visual to help plan. Or some way to plan a road trip and Nutshell will show me all the customers I should contact on the way and plan route. Which can be transferred over to gps software like enroute.

Pros

Lead tracking and value of leads. Notification of wins. The reporting oand tracking of activities. I like to set activities up as different campaign. It is great for tracking the success of different sales campaign.

Cons

The App!!! Can't move a lead along the stages using Android. And you need to schedule an activity instead of logging an activity. The idea of logging is an activity is log what you just did. It is great on the desk top version. But on the App, the user finishes a cold call ..hops into their car and needs to schedule the activity the log it! I have complained about this for years. Nutshell team does not seem to understand how on road sales reps work. Very frustrating!

Pros

The main "pro" is the price. Not only it is cheaper compared to 20+ other CRMs I compared before deciding, it is also flexible to go either for Monthly or Annual payment. I can easily add and delete users without any paperwork.

Cons

Forecast tool (not flexible for setting up team, currencies, product, week/month split). This has made me totally avoid the forecast and budget (KPIs) feature, which is a shame as the new Sales Report is a step in the right direction. Hopefully the Forecast settings can be more flexible as well, then Nutshell will become a 5 star CRM Software.

Pros

Setting up and importing our current customer information was easy. Once you wrap your head around the Nutshell way of doing things, you can easily manage a large database of customers.

Cons

Nutshell does not integrate easily with WooCommerce which leads to using third-party plugins that are limited due to NutShell API.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Nutshell

Ease of use

Pros

Nutshell has a reasonably simple interface to use. There has been enough ability to customise the platform to get it to show some of the data/reporting information I needed.

Cons

The new reporting format is a really poor user experience, putting irrelevant information front and center and making it harder to access the custom set-ups I need to make Nutshell work for me. I had high hopes that Nutshell would continue to improve from its base, however, I haven't seen any signs of a good update to the platform in the last 6-12 months. We are now in the process of evaluating other platforms to move away from Nutshell. Missing major functionality to make it useful.

Pros

Our company lives in Nutshell daily. We do majority of our reporting from this platform and it is very simple to use and onboard new employees. These are the most common tools that we are using it for. Pipeline management, activity reporting, bookings/sales tracking, trip planning/mapping, scheduling follow-ups, and email campaigns. Once we realized all the capabilities it had to offer, it became the staple of our business.

Cons

I wish that we could incorporate it with some of the other tools that we use. We recently started using a platform called "Sales OS" and it allows you to connect your CRM to it but Nutshell isn't a compatible option.

Pros

Interface is fairly clean. Price is reasonable. Kind staff. Good Midwestern folk are a nice break from Silicon Valley types. Attempt to be progressive is appreciated.

Cons

Missing obvious reports like a weighted pipeline. Customization with reports is limited.
Integration with Google and Mailchimp in particular feels lighter than what would be ideal. Built-in mail campaigns lack quality formatting options and attachments. Support is very slow to respond. I've watched the service get worse over time.

Pros

Nutshell allows you to centralize and organize your customer and prospect data, making it easy to access important information about your contacts, such as their communication history, interactions, and preferences.

Cons

Data input - the at one time you were able to automatically input Realtor addresses after initial input of their office address.