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About Nutshell

Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM and email marketing platform that helps B2B organizations work together to win more deals.

Learn more about Nutshell

Pros:

One of the cool functions is that it integrates with email, so when you have communications with customers, it automatically shows in the tool.

Cons:

I think more training on set up, warnings issued at set up and common pitfalls at set up would avoid harmful bulk uploads making irreversible upload mistakes.

Nutshell ratings

Average score

Ease of Use
4.3
Customer Service
4.3
Features
4.0
Value for Money
4.3

Likelihood to recommend

8.0/10

Nutshell has an overall rating of 4.3 out 5 stars based on 447 user reviews on Capterra.

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Filter reviews (447)

Marilyn
Marilyn
Global Sales Director in Canada
Verified LinkedIn User
Financial Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Bang for your Buck

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: Great! It helps the team stay on track whether it's sales or implementation.

Pros:

Reporting and filtering reports. Keeping a track record of our leads.

Cons:

Have to move over to pro to get more then one sales process. Pro is so expensive.

Paul
Senior Product Estimator in US
Building Materials, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Nutshell has been a gamechanger!

5.0 last month New

Pros:

We absolutely love being able to have an all in one place customer and production tracker. From the time a prospect writes in, through years after they have purchased and Installed their building we have everything at our fingertips.

Cons:

We just wish that emails still went into the customer's leads, and tasks could be auto assigned after it is "won" the project isn't done..

Prescott
Prescott
President in US
Mining & Metals, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

leads don't allow you to easily sell services, only products. After sale service is hindered.

2.0 7 years ago

Comments: We get a cost effective CRM that frees up cash flow for use elsewhere in our business.

Pros:

Nutshell offers a unique ability to tag people in activities and run reports on calling activities for my sales reps.

Cons:

Every lead typically has a company or contact. But if you don't save the activity in the lead, and instead under the company or individual contact, you can't see it when your client calls in regarding the sale they want service for, so your customer service is hindered and your sales people look like they don't know the history of the account. It's embarrassing to use this software because Nutshell says they are only helping to land the sale, not support it, but this mindset about how they build their software results in a horrible disconnect with regards to how we are forced to serve our customers, and thus we are using a CRM that doesn't support the full life cycle of a sale. We keep hoping Nutshell will fix this and improve because their customer service is great, and their people mean well, but after several years of patiently waiting, we are concerned that we may never see this problem fixed. The mobile app also has so many glitches with the UX that it can't even compare the experience to how you can use leads in a web browser. Further, when we have a customer call in to ask about their account, the recent leads puts the oldest first in the list, which means we have to scroll through several hundred orders just to open the last order we did for that client. If you are trying to sell to a major corporate account with multiple facilities / departments, forget it with Nutshell; linking subcompanies / vendors / partners / other locations is a nightmare in Nutshell.

Mark
Sales and Marketing in UK
Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

A value for money product but be warned it is very buggy!

4.0 3 months ago

Comments: Generally speaking, the software is easy to use and also easy to setup however it is frustrating that there are bugs in some of the basic software components

Pros:

Nutshell is a cost-effective product. Most other similar products are a lot more expensive. One of the unique things about Nutshell is its custom email templates which engage placeholder settings. This means you can customise an email template but include elements or placeholders that need to be customised on a per-email basis so the software will not let you send the email unless the placeholder is attended to.

Cons:

Sadly Nutshell is very buggy and the CS and developer teams seem completely uninterested in resolving my complaints about the software. These are basic features mainly within the templating software which I have told Nutshell about countless times, yet they seem uninterested in resolving them. Sadly the bugs can make for a frustrating experience on some occasions. What is even more annoying is that they continue to turn out useless features that are half-baked rather than spending some time fixing the issues at the centre of their core product.

Garry
Managing Director in UK
Financial Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Finding the impossible

4.0 2 months ago New

Comments: I searched and spent a lot of time looking for the best crm to suit what we needed. Realising along the way that no crm software would ever suit what your specific needs are. That said Nutshell fulfills 95%of what we need as we adapted our processes to suit. Having spent only 2 days learning and implementing g the crm it was fully usable and powerful meeting our needs.

Pros:

Easy to get to grips with and implement. Not over complicated and very flexible to adapt to your way of working.Customer support very responsive.Being able to design multiple pipelines is brilliant.

Cons:

Web analytics could be more detailed but need to explore more.

Thomas
Director in New Zealand
Apparel & Fashion, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Nutshell gives our business the power to grow in a controlled way.

5.0 2 months ago New

Pros:

Gmail integration. Easy to set up and easy to stay on top of.

Cons:

There is nothing I dislike. I did give feedback for improvements and these were listened to and implemented.

Jim
Industrial Sales Engineer in US
Automotive, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Nutshell in a Nutshell

5.0 2 months ago New

Comments: At first, I thought it was "clunky" but over time, and some super cool changes have actually helped me be MORE detailed. I would like to be able to run reports on customers, Not on sales necessarily...But on simple account activity.

Pros:

I can dump tons of data into the CRM, which I do for each customer. If I work on something that ends up going to anther salesperson, I can already have TDS and SDS information. Visit notes, I can make changes to contacts within a customer in seconds. The world changes quickly, and Nutshell lets me change with it.

Cons:

Leads is convoluted. Each sales person does things differently. For example. I sell Industrial. Many times my sales cycle can be two years long. I have trials and approvals to get from Engineers, Maintenance staff, and sometimes plant managers. Where a Fuel sales guy just quotes total gallons at a certain price, my job is highly detailed, constantly changes, So my leads don't fit into Nutshell very well at all. I struggle with the leads funnel. (It makes me look inefficient) I do not like the sales portion of Nutshell at all.

Sara
Director Of Sales in US
Computer Software, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

I used to sell CRM and Nutshell is a fantastic value with great features

5.0 2 months ago New

Comments: Our team is extremely happy with Nutshell. I sold CRM for 6 years before coming to this company and right before using Nutshell. I have been pleasantly surprised by the platform. I have used Sales Force and many other CRMS that can be overkill in features and size for a small team. We are 60 employee company with only a handful of users in Nutshell. For a small team, this tool has been perfect for us.

Pros:

I love the ease of use. Intuitive UI. They launch new features and improve existing ones.

Cons:

It has been really difficult to manage duplicates. Lots of dups are created instead of updated. Dups are also suggested when they are no where close to being the same.

Joel
Owner in US
Law Enforcement, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Nutshell Review from Silent 6

4.0 2 months ago New

Comments: Overall I really like everything except for the inability to track tasks by priority. I also think customer support is a bit lacking after hours and it would be nice if you had some extended hours to be able to live chat with someone in support.

Pros:

Intuitive and easy to learnTracking notes, emails etc is important to us

Cons:

Tasks can only be prioritized by date so I have begun using another solution to track our tasks and am looking for an all in one solution. Tracking tasks by date is important, but more important to us is the ability to task by priority: Urgent, High, Medium, Low. I need to quickly see every day what tasks are most important and start working on them and many do not need a date. I have recommended Nutshell to another business we partner with and they are also looking for another solution because this feature is lacking.

Joe
Joe
Owner in Canada
Verified LinkedIn User
Hospitality, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Happy with product

4.0 2 months ago New

Comments: Happy with overall experience. Would definitely recommend as it saves a lot of time and generates a positive ROI.

Pros:

Relatively easy to use and automated features are very useful. Got several large orders as a result of my email campaigns. Worth the money.

Cons:

Would like some new templates. Selection seems rather limted.

Andrew
Strategy & Business Development in US
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Best Value for the Money; Don't Have to Sacrifice Much; Perfect for small up to medium size co.

5.0 5 months ago

Comments: I've used Nutshell for 10+ years and I've also got three of my consulting clients to start using it. Everyone is very happy. The biggest challenge is not getting people to use Nutshell, it's getting people to use a CRM at all. It's getting them to stop their chaotic disorganized habits and come together to bring all our critical information into one place. We also just started using it for sales tracking and license renewals and it's turning out to be very functional and flexible for that too.

Pros:

Easy and simple to set up and maintain. Very powerful and effective in turning our chaotic spreadsheets and inconsistent behaviors into a well-oiled machine.

Cons:

Some of the UI details are not intuitive. We would like more robust forms for capturing leads and customer intent.

John
National Sales Director in US
Machinery, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Excellent CRM for our Niche Application - Best of Multiple Reviewed/Used

5.0 last year

Comments: Excellent! The customer service has been responsive and the system has been 100% reliable.

Pros:

Barrier to entry was low with minimal upfront cost needed to evaluate the software. Ease of use for a small company with minimal resources to devote to developing, executing, and maintaining the system.

Cons:

So far the only con that we have experienced has been in the reporting functions. This could be a by-product of our unique needs or our lack of resources available to investigate it further. It does seem limited compared to Salesforce.

Rashid
Partner in Australia
Management Consulting, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Nutshell product review

4.0 last year

Comments: I have used a number of different systems including Zoho, Hubspot, Pipedrive. I like Nutshell's flexibility and ease of use.

Pros:

Tags - are the most used feature - so I can easily segment lists. The ability to sort with multiple tags. Easy importing from a spreadsheet.

Cons:

Having to add a tag into the system BEFORE uploading a contact spreadsheet. If the tag doesn't already exist - the import fails. Which is an extra step and a waste of time.

Sebastian
National Account Manager in US
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Nutshell is overall a great CRM that incorporates good features and provides great customer service

4.0 7 years ago

Pros:

I appreciate the constant updates. Nutshell has some ways to come, so it is nice seeing changes be made. Customer service is always on spot and very friendly. Nutshell support page is great for new employees, referring them straight to there for advice. The adaptability & usability of the interface is very user friendly.

Cons:

I have been using this software since October of 2014. So far, I think what needs to be implemented on the "Admin/SetUp side" is making sure Products, Reasons why Leads Close, the Sales Process Competitors, and so much more need to be added from the start with Nutshell and the business buying the service. The reason being is because over the last two years, slowly things have been added/removed/changed. So now we have 2 years worth of jumbled data IMO. Going through a thousand leads that only a handful of them have tags on to find out why something was closed via notes or what product was sold is a little silly. I think the setup process should include this for the end user (being our company). Mind you, I was not the one to set up the account with Nutshell so I am unsure if this is something offered, but It helps a lot when running reports on products, etc.

Nutshell Response

7 years ago

Hey Sebastian! Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us. I hear you on the changes over the last couple of years. I will talk to our dev team about the requests you mention below on the Company. We appreciate you being a part of the Nutshell community. Amanda

Elisabeth
President in Canada
Cosmetics, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

A good tool for small businesses

4.0 4 months ago

Comments: Good overall experience

Pros:

1- friendly2- relatively fast training compared to other softwares

Cons:

1- some parameters are difficult to customize (e.g. linking the lead to an invoice, linking the lead to a ''priority'' criterion, etc.)2- Nutshell sees the enterprise admin as a user (who needs to pay) while it just adds new users and gives them proper access and data backup. It's not really fair.

Iqbal
CEO in US
Hospital & Health Care, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Great Value

5.0 4 months ago

Comments: Since we were using Pipedrive for Intake and sales. We used Nutshell for opreational managemennt which was also comparable tot he activities fo inside sales. It was fun, intuitive, easy to use.

Pros:

It is similar to Pipedrive but has more features specific and beneficial.

Cons:

We could not do task lists that were shared.

Rob
Product Manager in US
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Generally good, but with some really messy issues

4.0 7 years ago

Pros:

We love process management with Nutshell. It helps with our initial sales/setup process, and is very customizable. Nutshell is also fairly logical in its approach to content and is visually appealing.

Cons:

We find it is a little too oriented towards "pure" sales teams (we have mixed teams with product, customer service, sales, etc all done by the same groups of people). Mostly, though, we find there are really small but highly irritating bugs or issues. For example, If I start typing a reply to a message that shows up in Nutshell and then click to show more details on the original message, my reply disappears. Another example is that we also see some messiness in how to-dos are handled they show up in my list to-do list even though the step isn't active, or they persist after the lead is closed. Email notifications are spotty or not ideally timed. I provided feedback on this some time ago, but I don't think correcting that is particularly high on the improvements list. A third example is that we work with a number of businesses that have different regional units Nutshell has no support for this, so it is hard to keep our companies list clean. We have lots of duplicate companies.

Joshua
Business Developer in Israel
Legal Services, 201–500 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Look forward daily toward using nutshell, since I've been able to make it work for me successfully!

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: many successful placements!

Pros:

First and foremost, nutshell has a #1 Customer Service Team! This, in my opinion, is the sole driving force toward effective sales on the part of its users, regardless of the platform/system being used. Then I would add a few other benefits; 1. lead page shows important info all at one glance, 2. availability to search everything (albeit, excluding info logged in the activities section by each individual user), 3. fast input of info when saving info, and many other specific features you've built into the nutshell system.

Cons:

why not build an automatic clock, showing the time the caller is calling into lead location, maybe next to a number lead. additionally, you would raise the value of your product substantially if you were to build a functionality that allowed a search of the words in the activities (message) section of your lead page. this would allow users an ability to quickly zero in on valuable leads based on previous messages noted. just think when users leave or when their leads are reassigned to different users, how valuable a tool that would be to follow up on hot leads that need to be brought to a close.

Brian
Managing Partner in US
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Like the simplicity. Most improvements recently have added complexity but little benefit for us.

4.0 7 years ago

Pros:

Ease of use for a small business with a few people doing sales work. We didn't need all of the bells and whistles of Salesforce at the cost of complexity. As of a few years ago, you had plugged most of the holes that we cared about. Since then, new functionality or major new rewrites have either added complexity or relearning with little apparent benefit. I understand the need to do some of this but I hope you don't become Salesforce.

Cons:

The LinkedIn connection is really important for us. It was a big relief when that came back. Also, the loss of historical record of communication for a Contact when you delete an old email is problematic. We are forced to retain all of these old emails and this can create confusion.

Nutshell Response

7 years ago

Hey Brian, Thank you so much for your feedback. We have no intention of becoming Salesforce and take your feedback very seriously. Our goal is ease of use for SMB's. We hope you will be able to quickly benefit from our changes and improvements. Amanda

Anilkumar
CEO in India
Animation, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Simple and easy

5.0 3 months ago

Comments: For some one new to CRM, Nutshell can be a good place to start.

Pros:

CRM pipeline management, Contact management and lead form are my favourites. I used their lead forms in my website to easily collect the contact details. Email sequencing is my most used feature.

Cons:

I dont use their email marketing tool much.

Matthew
Marketing in Canada
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Nutshell has been a necessity for our business.

5.0 7 years ago

Comments: Organization across sales, support, and billing.

Pros:

The Dashboard is amazing for keeping up to date on the happenings in Sales. I also really appreciate the Wallboard(summary of sales that month) as we google cast it to your TV in our kitchen. The sales process functionality ensures all leads go through a standard sales process. Really good stuff. We're really glad to have supported Nutshell all these years.

Cons:

SaaS support. I'm still not able to find CRM software that is geared towards SaaS companies. Seeing as Nutshell is a SaaS company I'm surprised they haven't added support for this yet. Once a lead is marked as one, you can't have steps in the sales process (mail a welcome package, follow-up after 2 weeks, 1 month, ask for an online review ;P) You have to manually create these tasks. Instead we've had to utilize Zapier to add a task to Asana for this. I wish we could do it all in Nutshell.

Shayne
Business Development in Canada
Construction, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Good, but could use improvement

4.0 3 years ago

Comments: I'd say my experience overall is good. I like how simple it is to create things. They all link together smoothly. My experience with other CRM programs is that they over complicate things with too many layers. Nutshell just keeps it simple and give me what I need. It could use a few more ways of spitting out information, but as far as keeping all my information in one spot it's quite good at it. I would suggest the product for a company that needs a CRM for information tracking. I think when it comes to an organization that needs a deeper data dig, Nutshell will not be the solution for them.

Pros:

It's easy to use and task tracking is simple. It helps me understand at a glance what I need to accomplish in a day. Entering data is quick, and this part of the program is quite intuitive. Customer support is really good. You're speaking with a human instead of a robot.

Cons:

Reporting is quite lacking. Trying to understand data trends in some cases requires the creation of multiple reports instead of compiling it into one. It often times asks about duplicates. I'm not sure how it recognizes them, but they're often not similar at all. Understanding interactions between an account is quite tiresome. It tracks all of the data into one place and requires some digging to determine what is relevant to the lead, contact, or company. It's all in the same place instead of into multiple swim lanes. It some times feels like you're asking it for information regarding one thing and it dumps every single interaction that may or may not include that lead/account/contact.

Michelle
Administrative Coordinator in US
Construction, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

I set everything up, make any adjustments, and train our end users

5.0 7 years ago

Comments: Easy to track our contacts and sales leads. Great tool for management.

Pros:

I really like the ease of use. It's very simplistic but a lot can be done with it. The program is pretty user friendly. Each user is able to customize their own views. Also, the customer service has been great. Not only are they quick to respond, but it's nice to know they take their users' suggestions and implement them if they are an improvement to the product.

Cons:

Probably my one complaint would be that if you choose 'phone number' as one of your columns to display, it chooses the first number under that profile which could be a fax number or mobile number and then the display simply shows up as 'phone number'. It would be nice to be able to choose to show the different kinds of phone numbers.

Nutshell Response

7 years ago

Hi Michelle, Thank you for your comments. We do take our customers' feedback very seriously - as we are here to help you all! To address the phone number issue you mentioned; you are able to appoint which phone number is displayed in the list view. If there are multiple numbers associated with the contact, simply star the one you wish to be the default. If you have trouble with this, please contact our support team who will be happy to help you! Best, Asya

Mitch
US
Information Technology & Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Nutshell - More Good than Bad

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: Used Nutshell for 2 years .. .... ..... ... .managing daily sales processes and contacts.

Pros:

Keep track of daily follow ups - and record entire history with contacts. Basic CRM stuff it does well.

Cons:

1. Where did the Gmail Gadget go? This was the best feature and now it's gone. :( 2. The relationship between the Lead and the Customer can be confusing... 3. Reporting for specific items can be challenging as well.

Nutshell Response

7 years ago

Mitch, Thanks for the review! We've been working directly with Google to get the Gmail Gadget back online. Unfortunately, this was an issue on their end and completely out of our hands ¿ it affected a good number of other products, as well. As of today, the gadget is back online. You can read a few more details at: http://status.nutshell.com/incidents/3l9j5sdbjplx Thanks so much for using Nutshell. We've got some exciting improvements to reporting under development. Can't wait to show them off! Best, Andy Fowler

Roger
Owner in US
Wholesale, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 1+ year
Reviewer Source

Have used Contact Managers in my sales since Act for Dos. This works for me but I need to dig in

4.0 7 years ago

Comments: Helps me to keep pertinent info on my contacts. I know there are more that I can do with the software but so far I don't

Pros:

Mobile app so I have my contact info with me. I have only been using as a simple contact database manager and I know it can do so much more. I need to spend time making sure I understand and use it to the full potential within my needs!

Cons:

Had issue with dialing out that took quite a while to fix (when I hit dial on my mobile phone it would add a bunch of numbers which did not let it dial). I spoke to customer care about this and it took a little time and effort to get them to understand and then I would say it took a few months before someone fixes the bug. Another issue is that on the mobile device the contacts are alphabetized automatically but on the desktop version this does not happen? Have mentioned to customer care but no response. Cannot add more than 30 company types? I use this field to help categorize my contacts. Why just 30?