By James Virgo
18th April 2024
Why build a custom CRM with Dittofi?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not just technology. It is a strategy to learn more about your customers needs and behaviors so that you can build better relationships with them. As such it is more of a business philosophy than a technical solution. Nevertheless, CRM does rely on the use of technology – so picking a good technology is very important.
In our article on different types of CRM (customer relationship management) systems, we explain that good CRM is fluid. CRM needs to adapt with your business. As your clients needs change, as you learn more about their different pain points and possible solutions, your business strategy evolves and your CRM needs to adapt to mirror these changes.
There are four main ways that you can build a CRM:
- Use an off the shelf CRM
- Outsource custom CRM app development
- Build a custom CRM using in house tech teams
- Use Dittofi no-code solution
When choosing between these four options, you want to select a technology that is a combination of quick and low cost to get started, quick and easy to adapt, has no limitations and fits your business model.
With custom CRM app development, you can build a completely tailor made solution for your business model. Tailor made means that it will fit perfectly, but this generally comes at a high financial cost and can take a long time to develop. It can also be time consuming and expensive to adapt your tailor made CRM as your business evolves and you learn more about your clients needs.
For a lower cost starting point, you can use an off the shelf CRM. However, off the shelf CRM systems come very bloated with functionality that you will not ever use. They will also not ever be a perfect fit for your business. Furthermore, off the shelf CRMs are impossible to adapt beyond a certain point and are priced per user, per feature. This pricing means that the costs incurred quickly ramp up as you grow. Migrating away from an off the shelf CRM to a custom CRM can represent its own technical challenge in time.
Dittofi provides an alternative, where you can build a custom CRM quickly, at a low cost and then easily adapt your CRM with or without a developer in time. Dittofi allows you to build your CRM visually, and with no feature limitations you can create a solution that is entirely custom made for your business. Furthermore, unlike other visual app builder, Dittofi generates real computer code that you can export and own at all times. This is really important since owning your CRM apps code gives you freedom to make your own decisions on the future of your CRM tech roadmap.
| Time to build version 1 | Cost for version 1 | Easy to adapt | Level of customization | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
1 – 4 weeks | $50 per month | Yes | 100% |
| Off the shelf CRM | 1 – 4 weeks | $50 – $150 per month,
per user |
Easy up to a point | 50% – 70% |
| Outsource CRM dev | 12 – 16 weeks | >$50,000 | No | 100% |
| Internal CRM dev | 12 – 16 weeks | >$50,000 | No | 100% |
How to build a custom CRM with Dittofi?
Dittofi gives you two starting points to developing a custom CRM: (1) choose a fully developed CRM app template or (2) start developing from scratch.
1. Start with a template
First, we have developed a number of fully featured CRM app templates that will give you all of the core functionality that you will need for a basic CRM immediately off the shelf. An example of one of these app templates – SalesFly – is shown in the video below.
The SalesFly CRM app template comes with essential CRM features such as:
- Sign up, login and password reset functionality
- Account management e.g. manage account name, passwords and user roles
- Ability to manage Leads
- Ability to convert Leads to Deals
- Management of data in list and kanban views
- Customizable pipeline (add stages to your deal management)
- Store contacts, organised into People and Organisations
- Detail views for Contacts, Deals, Leads, People and Organisations
- Customizable roles, deal status, pipeline and pipeline status.
You can then take this CRM app template (and others), clone it, into Dittofi’s rapid, visual app development studio and immediately launch your CRM into Dittofi hosting, giving you a CRM that you can use for as low as $29 per month.
You can then customize your chosen CRM app template with 100% flexibility from within the Dittofi Design Studio – without having to write any code. This includes the options to add features e.g. sync with Gmail, email tracking, change logos, color pallets, frontend designs and workflows, add to the CRM backend and integrate into ANY third party system such as Mail Chimp, Google Drive, billing and invoicing systems and so on. You can edit the CRM app template with the same flexibility as hiring an expensive third party development team.
Dittofi also allows you to export and own the source code for all of the app templates, giving you complete control over the future development of your CRM.
Using a CRM app template allows you to save months of development time. You can start your CRM app development with a working, well architected foundation of essential features and then build upon it. There is literally no point spending time and money building the features above, such as login, sign up, password reset, manage account settings, etc. when Dittofi gives you them for free.
2. Start developing from scratch
Dittofi also gives you the option to start developing your CRM from scratch. Using the Dittofi rapid visual app builder, users are able to build feature rich and 100% custom CRM apps in just 4 weeks.
Through a combination of visual programming, auto code generation and automatic hosting, you’re able to build a custom CRM 6x faster than writing code by hand. Furthermore, as your business evolves, it is quick and easy to make updates to your CRM with or without a developer.
Conculsion
Using Dittofi you can build a custom CRM 6x faster than coding by hand. The solution allows for the perfect trade off between quick, easy and low cost to get started and maintain and 100% flexible, giving you a tailor made CRM solution without any limitations.
Dittofi also allows you to export and own your CRM apps source code at all times, scale without limits and is 100% flexible. These three features are not found in any other no-code / visual app builders.