This plugin works well in what it can do, and seems like it should be really useful, especially considering there's no native WooCommerce alternative, nor any real competition. It's not broken and buggy. However, for my needs, it is lacking at least two critical basic features for getting info into and out of the database.
1. There is no way to capture leads into the system via a basic form. This was promised over a year ago but not delivered. You have to manually enter each person unless they have already made a purchase on your website. (CRMs are in large part a way to *get* customers, not just keep them.)
2. The export function doesn't actually export the CRM fields, just the WooCommerce billing info. As with the above issue of wanting more than just a management system for existing customers, it might be a work-able solution to use another CRM and set up an import/export workflow to keep this up to date...but without the basic export option, this isn't possible.
My inquiries about these critical features were responded to with promises that they'd soon both be available, but I'm giving up waiting and I'm moving on and will be looking at other solutions.
This plugin would be good if your business only operates inside WooCommerce. However most real businesses require other methods of adding potential or existing customers to your sales pipeline (as opposed to just people who buy from your online store) and for that scenario this CRM falls short.
Here is an excellent analysis of the challenges of buying plugins like this, found on another review site, but that perfectly sums up my experience waiting for over a year for this developer to deliver minimum viability features:
http://www.wpmayor.com/best-hotel-reservation-plugins-for-wordpress/#comment-14298
Author response
Hey Jason,
Let me be very clear on this; I feel your pain. I really do.
I want to explain how we work so you can believe we are not running an 'operation' here. We are two people; ones a developer and the other (myself) deals withs support.
Our developer likes his plugins to be perfect before he pushes them; he'd rather have it incomplete and working well than have it complete with ALL the features and bugs all over the place. When he first started, he used to be the opposite, he'd pack the plugins with features and when the bugs came - it would take forever to address them because he wouldn't know where to start to identify which 'feature' caused the bug. Lessons were learnt here and he made sure not to repeat them.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you any longer - I want to explain why we have taken so long to do this front entry feature. And if you don't believe what I am saying, go and do a Google search on what I am saying and you can understand.
We started our journey of front end entry a year ago - we wanted Gravity Form - it was a plugin we were familiar with but we were scratching our heads about the idea of having a feature that you had to pay money for another plugin to use. Even then, we thought let's get in touch with Gravity Form - no response. Till today!
So we looked at Ninja Forms. And we got a tip from someone that they were working on a new version soon. They said it would be a complete re-write and we should hold back from doing anything until it finishes. A month later, we got an invite to check the new version - it had its bugs. So we waited, and we wait till today. They have been working though so we can't fault them or blame them - but we want our users experience with Ninja Forms to be perfect - first time.
Our lead developer has ultimately decided to wait until Ninja 3.0 gets released and then he can comfortably and confidently work on the integration.
Onto the export; this ties hand in hand with this feature above. Our lead developer wants to have the export function working with Ninja Forms fields as well, as well as the Advanced Custom Fields. So he put these two tasks (along with another) together and set to start the second Ninja 3.0 gets released.
You might be thinking; why are you waiting for Ninja 3.0 - get it working on Ninja 2.x and then do it later? Well, going back to how there are only 2 people - in order for us to make this business both enjoyable and profitable, we need to be lean with our management and so we want to wait for bugs to patched and addressed before we commit or finite resources to it.
If you want even more reassurance, check the change log on our POS plugin, we do not stop there. We add and add, and sometimes fix (like recently with the latest WC 2.6.x update).
Honestly, we are not Romanian (albeit I hear its a great country). We are two guys from Manchester, UK and we just want to make awesome products and have fun in the process.
Sorry that it's not the Salesforce CRM plugin you had in mind and VERY sorry that its taken a year (and hopefully not longer) to get front end form entry - but believe me, its killing us too.
Kind regards,
