I had an interview appointment with Salesboom.com CEO Troy Muise within a few days, so I was interested in the series of comments on a recent news posting about Salesboom.com, an up-and-coming entry in the SaaS wars, currently led by salesforce.com.
Not all of the comments were friendly—even though all SaaS suppliers could benefit by studying the piece they were commenting on, one that Muise wrote after an analysis of the actual behavior habits of Salesboom users.
What really ticked off the readers seems to be this closing note by Muise:
Salesboom.com is a leading vendor of on demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business software services to over 30,000 subscribers and 3500 customers in over 159 countries. Customers include LexisNexis, Transcontinental and PointRoll. Salesboom SaaS business solutions help SMBs improve Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service and manage Inventory, Accounting, and Human Resources processes, on demand.
Take a free 30 day CRM Software Trial today
One commenter called the study “bluff” and seemed surprised that a software CEO would try to sneak in a “commercial message” into an Internet submission.
As a matter of fact, Muise said none of those cited were found in his computer file of customers, mentioning that competitors were not above making negative comments in cases like these.
Muise did not hesitate a minute when I asked who he perceived his main competitor is. “Salesforce.com,” was his immediate reply.
Evidently, salesforce.com is winning, with 20,000 customers versus 3,500 for Salesboom. But they have different business models, according to Muise. Salesboom makes modifications and ERP add-ons for a fee. Some are recycled to all users during one of the four-times-per-year software upgrades. Salesforce asks customers to do it themselves, using the salesforce “open” platform. And Salesforce has a headstart of two years.
But Salesboom is not afraid of competition. In fact, they gladly publish comparisons with more than 35 CRM packages, as shown below:
Compare Salesboom to: Maximizer, Entellium, Oncontact, Aplicor, Soffront, ADAPT Software, Avidian, Epicor, Goldmine, InsideSales.com, Kana, Microsoft, NetSuite, Onyx, Oracle, Parature, Pivotal, RightNow, Sage, Salesforce.com, SalesLogix, SAP, Saratoga Systems, Siebel, SugarCRM, Surado, ACCPAC, ACT!, amdocs, Appshore, Aprimo, Ardexus, Astea, Aurum, Chordiant, Commence CRM, CSG Systems, Dendrite, eGain, Enterprise Wizard, Everest, Infor, JD Edwards, LeGrand, NetOffice, Peoplesoft, SalesJunction.com, Salesnet, Visitar, Infusion Software, Dataforce CRM, BrainSell, Zoho, LeadMaster, VanillaSoft, Model Metrics, PipelineDeals, Tour de Force, Balgord Software Solutions, Landslide, C2CRM, CRMG, PhaseWare, CNP, 24SevenOffice, Exact Software, Revelation, Majestic
In fact, he welcomes the competition, who have worked hard validating the SaaS technology model, saying that the old security questions of the 1990s have disappeared (but is our customer data safe??) and have been replaced by questions about price and functionality.
Speaking of price, Salesboom is hard to beat. Their price list is quite simple:
| Solo | Team | Professional | Enterprise | |
| Minimum Users | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Maximum Users | 1 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Price Per User | $249/year | $200/year | $40/month | $75/month |
Some additional facts. Salesboom serves 3,500 customers and about 35,000 users. Revenues are in the $66.5 million area, with a profit of $6.5 million. There are no venture capitalists on hand—the company has been funded by the principles: Troy Muise, CEO, and President Rami Hamodah,
But two or thee of the commentators cited specific customer care problems—so I decided to talk to some of Salesboom’s customers.
Muise had one of his lieutenants sent me a handful of email addresses.
The first one politely told me she was dissatisfied and has asked for her money back. She claimed that a Salesboom salesman had not been honest with her. (Bad news, Troy.)
The next customer was deliriously happy with Salesboom, giving them a 10 in answer to Loyalty Guru Fred Reichhheld’s “Ultimate Question”: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Salesboom to a colleague or friend?” (Good news, Troy)
And the third customer responded with an 8 to the same question. He said his contract called for a warning of a price rise, but he got no warning because according to his salesman, he purchased at a special reduced rate, and therefore this phrase was no longer valid. Thus the positive but passive promoter urged me to lock in any special low prices.
My sample was small and hardly representative, but I would like to see the answers to the Ultimate Question by all of Salesboom customers.
Finally, Salesboom features a first.
It is the only web-based CRM system with official affiliates. Yes, if you promote Salesboom and it results in sale, you get a 10% commission on revenue generated.!
Full disclosure: I am considering joining up.
Hello – I am trying to gather as much info on Salesboom.com as possible – they are bad news and as a former customer, I am about to file a fraudulent complaint against them in a court of law.
I am curious if you have kept tabs in this company? Have you sampled more customers?
Thank you for your time –
Regards,
Jocelyne
I agree with Jocelyne. Would you reply and forward my info to Jocelyne?
I would appreciate information about how to file a fraudulent complaint as Jocelyne suggests.
My experience is that customer service is slow and the status of support tickets is not trackably by the consumer, technical is overwhelmed and according to one employee being done by subcontractors in Russia, Czech Republic and elsewhere. Each week one is promised that program improvements should be made soon. Perhaps this company may be a front for obtaining customer data and selling it to others?
For program capabilities, it cannot find and remove or prevent duplicate entries, no quick (several months at present) turnaround to assist with program set up, and data import is not as compete or simple as they make it sound. Do not purchase fast track – you will not be pleased.
Thank you for your assistance.
Sadly,
Lynn
Hi Jocelyne & Lynne,
It seems you are not alone. We have had several people posting complaints about Salesboom on our website. We have brought this to the attention of their CEO Troy Muise on several occasions, but, as yet, have not had any response from the company.
http://www.smallbizcrm.com/salesboom-customer.html
We hope to hear from their spokesperson soon.
Perry
SmallBizCRM.com
I give them -10 rating. Same problems as mentioned above. No technical suppoort. Tickets do not get resolved. Salesperson was an outright liar and the management admitted it when asked. They try to bill you for second year of contract even if you have cancelled.
If you only need their generic product and you are very small company they might work. Save yourself some major headaches and stay away from them. I tested them for almost a year and it was a total failure. A few of their people try and are nice but most are trapped in it and cannot help you.
AVOID unless you are testing your own sanity.
Matt
We have had similar problems with Salesboom as of late. The software didn’t perform as promised and after wanting out of the contract because they didn’t deliver what was promised they threatened a law suit against us. Salesboom is HORRIBLE. If anyone is thinking of using them don’t do it. Their customer service is pitiful and the software doesn’t work.
If you agree or have had a similar experience please respond.
Sincerely,
John
Our firm recently received its first collection notice from a firm hired by Salesboom claiming that we owed money on a broken contract. A contract broken by Salesboom for non-delivery of services advertised.
BUYER BEWARE!! We should have done more research.
http://www.bbb.org/maritime-provinces/business-reviews/advertising-marketing-agencies/salesboom-in-halifax-ns-19761
We paid for 6 months of service that never met the standard that they advertised. According to this webpage http://www.salesboom.com/support/crm_service_level_agreement.html they state “Salesboom has a system uptime guarantee of 99.8%.”
This is not true and we have logs to prove it. We lost dozens of hours worth of data entry time due to their service constantly going down. They promised over and over that scheduled maintenance would remedy the issues. The problems were never resolved.
Here is the main issue specifically… you can take the 30 days free and see for yourself. While you are on a call, you will be entering very important notes. When you go to save, you will be kicked out to the log in screen and all of your data will be lost. Then you will not be able to log back in for “who knows how long”, sometimes seconds but sometimes not for hours. So now your sales staff sits around wasting company money waiting for Salesboom to come back to life. I can not adequately express my anger and frustration with this service.
DO NOT GIVE THEM A CREDIT CARD NUMBER OR ANY POST DATED CHECKS. If they believed in their own service and knew that customers would be satisfied they would not engage in such practices.
I am curious if you ever had contact with Troy Muise the con-artist?
please add another dissatisfied customer to this list. we spent over $40k US with them. what fools we were. all of the above came true. we are suing. does anyone have experience with actually getting paid once you get a judgement?
lying sales person. terrible service. work not done timely. work not delivered. basic functions of the product not working properly. Service Level Agreement not honored with down time.the list goes on and on. do not do business with this Company.