What is the best CRM for a two-sided marketplace business?
Spoke with a Zapier customer today who was trying to manage her two-sided marketplace business using SmartSheets. She needs a CRM, though. But most CRM's are one-sided.
She really needs one that has two major faces that could then have a connection point.
Anyway, I'd figure I'd ask here to see if anyone has a good solution. Google didn't really help 🤷‍♂️
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Most SaaS and off-the-shelf stuff will have some pretty severe limitations. The best thing is to roll your own or get in good with a relational database developer to build a bespoke solution. Yes, it might be a little pricier up front, but it will be exactly what your customer needs and no bells & whistles that she doesn't.
CRMs are not hard to build. Which is why there is a saturated market full of SaaS versions of them.
Gotcha okay yeah that makes sense. I suppose I'm still surprised I couldn't find an existing CRM for two-sided marketplaces but I guess since every business is so different it'd be tough to build one that makes sense for everyone.
I'd second this. Build your own.
@BryceV curious, did your client decide which route is best to go? I'm in a similar boat, also with a two-sided marketplace. Though a singled sided CRM would do in the early going, since I'll be focusing just on one end of the marketplace at first, but was curious what others were looking at.
I don’t actually know. I was actually working with the client on Zapier related items so it was really just the mention of her need that got me thinking. I’m not in regular conversation with them (we are pretty low touch at Zapier - 100s of thousands of customers).
I’m still curious, too. Would love it if you let me know if you find anything as well 👍🏻
HI @BryceV, I ended up reading through several articles. There were some intriguing choices, but Hubspot offered a simple and free CRM which suits my needs for now. I also think it can provide the marketing muscle power should we scale down the line. I really like it so far. The up sell elements are there in the drop downs, but never pushed on you, which I like.
They also offer a free chat widget that can be embedded into a site or app, which I had no idea about, and has me rethinking my $50 per/mo subscription to Intercom.
So far so good. Better than excel or google sheets.
Thanks for letting me know. It’s hard to beat something like HubSpot. I hear they are even venturing into the website building world a bit, too.
Im curious, how do you handle the 2 sides in your marketplace via HubSpot?
Hi @BryceV I'm only focusing on one right now -- the supply side. Trying to reach out to sellers who will populate the marketplace with stuff people want.
Some of those sellers will be buyers too, as there's a b2b component to it too, but upon further thought I'm not as concerned about the buyer as I think once the supply is there the outbound marketing will be much easier. At least that's my hope.
@marktuff are you still running this two sided business. Are you still using Hubspot if so? I'm in the middle of setting up HubSpot for my marketplace and would love any insight you have for how I should do it for mistakes to avoid.
Hi @brad_thinks, not anymore. Pivoted some time ago, and when I was using Hubspot, it was only on the supply side. I still use Hubspot but only for scheduling meeting, and not for CRM. So unfortunately, I don't have any major insights for you as we never got so far to where I solved the CRM piece for the 2-sides.