Insightly

Released in 2009 by Insightly, Inc., Insightly is a cloud-based CRM and project management platform aimed at small to midsize businesses. Initially designed to integrate with Google Apps products, Insightly relocated to San Francisco in 2012 and began developing its CRM tools for other platforms.

Since then, Insightly has released apps for iOS, launched integration with Microsoft Office, Outlook, Dropbox and Quickbooks Online, partnered with Xero and added Microsoft Power BI integration. In April 2016, Insightly announced it had raised $25 million in Series C financing. According to Insightly, they now service over 1 million customers in over 200 countries.

Insightly Pricing and Services

Intended Customers
Freelancers, Small to Midsize Businesses, Enterprises

Free Trial
14-day use of Professional Plan

Free Version
Yes; up to 2 users

Features

Available Integration: with Google Apps, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Outlook 2013, Office 365, Quickbooks Online, Xero

Additional Features

Contacts Management

• Import Contacts From Gmail, MailChimp, Outlook, Act! 9, an Excel or CSV File
• Lead & Task Assignment
• Automated Follow-Up Emails
• Contact & Activity Reports

All Available Plans & Services

All paid plans receive a discount when billed annually rather than monthly. Also, all paid plans offer MailChimp Integration, Google Contact and Calendar Sync, Microsoft Exchange Calendar Sync and Custom Branding.

• Free, $0/2 users, 10 Advanced Reports, 5 Email Templates, Mass Email (10/day), 10 Custom Fields (2/type), 2,500 Records, Up to 200MB storage, 500 Rows File Import Limit

• Basic, $15 or $12/user/month, Unlimited Advanced Reports, Scheduled Reports and Smart Alerts (max 5), Mobile App Business Card Scanner (5/user/month), 50 Email Templates, Mass Email (500/day), 50 Custom Fields (10/type), 25k Records, 1GB Storage, 5,000 Rows File Import Limit, Email Support, Onboarding Sessions

• Plus, $35 or $29/user/month, MailChimp Auto-Importer, Unlimited Advanced Reports, Scheduled Reports and Smart Alerts (max 25), Mobile App Business Card Scanner (15/user/month), 100 Email Templates, Mass Email (2,500/day), 250 Custom Fields (50/type), 100k records, 10GB Storage, 25,000 Rows File Import Limit, Email Support, Onboarding Sessions

• Professional, $59 or $49/user/month, Advanced Permissions, MailChimp Auto-Importer, Lead Assignment Rules, Unlimited Advanced Reports, Scheduled Reports and Smart Alerts (max 100), Mobile App Business Card Scanner (25/user/month), Unlimited Email Templates, Email Scheduling, Mass Email (5,000/day), 500 Custom Field (100/type), 250k Records, 100GB Storage, 50,000 Rows File Import Limit, Priority Email Support, Onboarding Sessions

• Enterprise, $129 or $99/user/month, Advanced Permissions, MailChimp Auto-Importer, Lead Assignment Rules, Unlimited Advanced Reports, Scheduled Reports and Smart Alerts (max 250), Mobile App Business Card Scanner (50/user/month), Unlimited Email Templates, Email Scheduling, Mass Email (10,000/day), 500 Custom Field (200/type), 500k Records, 250GB Storage, 50,000 Rows File Import Limit, Priority Email Support, Onboarding Sessions

Help & Support Options

Insightly offers an online knowledge base and community Q&As. All paid plans offer email support and dedicated onboarding. The Professional and Enterprise plans offer priority email support.

Editor’s Bottom Line of Insightly

Insightly offers something for everyone. Their Free plan offers bareboned CRM features for tiny businesses – think solo freelancers or a home-based team. Insightly doesn’t natively offer custom reports as some CRM software does, but the very small businesses using this plan (or perhaps upgrading to the paid Basic plan) might not have complex reporting needs.

However, Insightly doesn’t lack features for larger companies using its fuller-featured Professional or Enterprise plans. Insightly has official integrations with several widely-used applications and suites, like Google Apps and Office 365 Business Edition for cloud productivity tools, Quickbooks Online and Xero for accounting, SupportBee for customer support, several applications for data migration and document management (the latter including DropBox, Drive, OneDrive and Box), multiple applications for sales (including Quotient, Hangouts and Facebook Lead Ads) and Microsoft BI for more complex reporting. Additionally, the Insightly API can export CRM data into an external reporting service allowing for customized reports.

Note that every entry created in Insightly – contacts, projects, tasks, opportunities, leads – constitutes a record; even very small businesses using the CRM under the Free plan can find their 2,500 allotted records running out shortly. Of course, the storage capacity expands with larger plans.

Insightly also offers effective user, contact and lead management tools with permission levels that any company hierarchy would find useful. In the Basic and Plus plans, managers can coordinate lead assignments among sales teams through drop down menus; the Professional and Enterprise plans enable automation through fairly simple rule configuration.

Insightly also has a mobile app available for iOS and Android users, which allows use of their business card scanning feature. The email capabilities of the mobile app is lacking, but recent updates have improved functionality relative to the desktop app; the Pipeline and Activity Set features have been added, which allows for effective workflow management on the go.

Finally, being SOC2 compliant – like virtually all major CRM providers – means Insightly implements security measures that meet the industry standard for protection of customer data in the cloud. This includes monitoring the system for unusual activity, unauthorized configuration changes and user access levels.

Ultimately, Insightly provides robust CRM functionality for companies of most sizes, and it’s far easier to use out of the box than rival CRMs like Salesforce and Zoho. Insightly is also generally cheaper as well. While it lacks certain customizations and backend features of its rivals, it’s simple for users and administrators alike; as any CRM requires a competent administrator, this allows a business using Insightly to get their CRM up and running in short order. Therefore, for a company of up to, say, 20 employees, Insightly should definitely make your shortlist. Larger than that, you probably have the budget to consider the more expensive options with greater automation, customization and integration features – as well as the administrator and staff training to use them.