Alternatives to Pipedrive

When I started at StackShare, I needed an easy way to create a pipeline of the different partners we were engaged with, and track the status of those conversations. Having just begun to explore partnerships in earnest, our needs at StackShare don't necessitate something as robust as Salesforce Sales Cloud, Close.io or similar offerings that exist.

Nevertheless, I didn't want one more Google Doc to track things either, and I heard about Streak, so I figured I'd give the free version a try. So far, it has accommodated everything I need, and it integrates simply with Gmail which meant I had it running in a few minutes. You can create a pipeline entry directly from an email thread, which I find useful compared to logging into a separate platform, and there is basic functionality for scheduling follow-ups and tasks. The pipeline stages are fully customizable as are the fields you can add - (I added a note field to explain why someone may be in the "Backburner" stage, for example).

As we scale our Business Development initiatives and grow our team, we'll likely need to look at upgrading Streak or incorporating other tools like Yesware. But, for a quick and easy way to organize a sales pipeline and track the respective conversations, the Streak free version nicely accommodates what I need and has been very helpful in managing discussions with a variety of partners thus far.

#StackDecisionsLaunch

So I am a huge fan of JIRA like #massive I used it for many many years, and really loved it, used it personally and at work. I would suggest every new workplace that I worked at to switch to JIRA instead of what I was using.

When I started at #StackShare we were using a Trello #Kanban board and I was so shocked at how easy the workflow was to follow, create new tasks and get tasks QA'd and deployed. What was so great about this was it didn't come with all the complexity of JIRA. Like setting up a project, user rules etc. You are able to hit the ground running with Trello and get tasks started right away without being overwhelmed with the complexity of options in JIRA

With a few TrelloPowerUps we were easily able to add GitHub integration and storyPoints to our cards and thats all we needed to get a really nice agile workflow going.

I'm not saying that JIRA is not useful, I can see larger companies being able to use the JIRA features and have the time to go through all the complex setup to get a really good workflow going. But for smaller #Startups that want to hit the ground running Trello for me is the way to go.

In saying that what I would love Trello to implement is to allow me to create custom fields. Right now we just have a Description field. So I am adding User Stories & How To Test in the Markdown of the Description if I could have these as custom fields then my #Agile workflow would be complete.

#StackDecisionsLaunch

This time I want to share something different. For those that have read my stack decisions, it's normal to expect some advice on infrastructure or React Native. Lately my mind has been focusing more on product as a experience than what's it made of (anatomy). As a tech leader, I have to worry about things like: are we taking enough time for reviews? Are we improving over time? Are we faster now? Is our code of higher quality?

For all these questions you can add many great recommendations on your pipeline. We use Trello for bug-tracking and project management. We use https://danger.systems/js/ to add checks for linting, type-enforcing and other quality dimensions in our PRs and a great feature from Vercel that let's you previsualize deployments directly in a PR. However it's not easy to measure this improvements over time. For customer matters we have Amplitude or Firebase analytics, but for our internal process? That's a little bit more complicated.

I collaborated recently with some folks in a small startup as an early adopter to create a metrics dashboard for engineers. I tried to add the tool to stackshare.io but still it doesn't appear as one of the options, please take a look on it over product hunt and let us know https://www.producthunt.com/posts/scope-6

Looking for the best CRM choice for an early-stage tech company selling through product-led growth to medium and big companies. Don't know if Salesforce or HubSpot are too rigid for PGL and expensive. I also had an experience of companies outgrowing Pipedrive pretty fast

Comparing HubSpot and Freshsales, not sure which to choose. Company and contact information is shareable among tech and sales teams allowing both parties to upkeep customers' contact details. Capturing leads from social media and system assigning to sales or having the option to manual assign. Sales follow up with sales activities. Once deal, technical involve to follow up regular customer visits, support ticketing, training, remind customers to renew licenses, work on projects and etc. Require a single platform to share a calendar to understand internal team activities and customer activities.

We are considering whether to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud or integrate ActiveCampaign into the Salesforce Sales and Service module.

We use G Suite because it allows us to store all of our documents and emails all in one place, with setup and sync far easier than Zoho Suite. Not only does it make it easier for us to collaborate but it allows us to have a separate place for all of our business related projects.