All posts by Dan Moran

Business Streamlining, Maximum Marketing

CRM Showdown: Dubsado vs HoneyBook vs 17Hats Vs Releventful Vs DJEP

Dubsado, HoneyBook, 17Hats, Releventful

In searching for a new CRM I heavily valued two things: Automation and Support. Dubsado brings these in spades.

CRM Quick Compare

Features vs CRMDubsado17HatsHoneyBookReleventful
Lead Intake FormYesYesYesYes
Bulk Import LeadsYesYesYesYes
ContractsYesYesYesYes
Visual Lead BoardOkMehBestMeh
Automated WorkflowsBestOkMehOk
Song List ManagerNoNoNoYes
Support/CommunityBestOkOk?
QuickBooks LinkYesYesYesNo
Price/Year$350$295$400$240
My Ranking1234

My Favorite: Dubsado FTW

Support & Community

Their chat support responded nearly in real time, under a minute! And look at the interactivity in their Facebook group? Questions pop up all the time because there’s so much under the hood, and if you can’t figure it out someone else has likely engineered a workaround and will gladly help.

Automation & Workflows

I have a tech background and experience coding and with automation. You can’t code in Dubsado, but you can implement conditional logic for workflows to do things for you under various criteria. Look at how specific you can get:

Smart Fields As Integrated Variables

Dubsado also uses Smart Fields which are essentially variables that allow you to use the same data across forms, emails, contracts, etc. Proposals and Contracts can build themselves as clients select their own packages and options, then automatically create an invoice and pay on the spot.

Weakness One: No Song Selection For Clients

If you’re a DJ who incorporates a song selection system for clients to pick out tracks, you won’t find that with Dubsado. It’s not targeted to DJs so you’ll have to incorporate another service such as Vibo.io That being said I’ve heard great things about Vibo, though it’s also expensive going at more than $30 per month.

Weakness Two: Lead Board

The other thing I’m not in love with is the lead board. You have to click into each category to get a sense of what’s going on. I really love the one on HoneyBook pictured in the second image below. You can customize your categories in Dubsado, I just wish they utilized a more condensed drag & drop system like HoneyBook.

Dubsado’s Lead Board
My favorite lead board, similar to HoneyBook

Conclusion

Dubsado’s not the cheapest but it’s still in the same price range as other options. They’ll even transfer all contacts from your old CRM for free! With the level of customized automation Dubsado offers paired with the Support Community and speed of updates, I’ll be happy with Dubsado for quite a while. Even better, you can get 20% off your first year by using anyone’s referral promo code!

In fact here’s mine 🙂

Disclaimer: I get a free month if you use it. I wasn’t however biased in any way in writing this review or deciding which service to use.

On that note, happy automating!

PS: A Note On DJ Event Planner (DJEP)

DJ Event Planner is used by many many DJs to manage their business. For years it looked like Windows 95 had a baby with GeoCities, and they got away with it because they were really the only game in town for us. A big plus they had going for them is client song selection.

But after a visual refresh it still looks dated and feels clunky. Workflow automation is severely lacking and their comparative service plan still comes in at $240 per year, a similar price range as our modern alternatives above. For that reason I didn’t include DJEP in my showdown, automation is KEY these days. DJ Event Planner also doesn’t integrate with QuickBooks. Should I go on?

Some will disagree with me, that’s fine. I’ll be automating my business so I can focus on what we enjoy most: playing music and making money!

Bedroom Bootstrapper, Maximum Marketing

Easy Discount On Gigmasters In Five Minutes

I got 15% off Gigmasters just for asking.

Here’s my conversation almost word for word, I’m sure you could use any reason for why you want a reduced rate. One 5 minute phone call = $40. I’m sure you can follow this exact script for ANY subscription service you pay for.

Hi [name of rep]. I have an existing Gigmasters account and have an annual renewal coming up in a few days that I had a question on.

“Ok, what’s your Member ID or account email?

XXXX

“Ok great am I speaking to Daniel?”

Yes

“Ok how can I help?”

Well I see the renewal coming up is $269 and I wanted to know if there was any flexibility in that, my marketing budget this year is pretty tight.

“Ok hold one moment, let me see if there’s anything I can do”

….

“I checked with my team and we don’t have any promotions currently running but I can offer a 15% discount on your renewal, does that work?”

Notes:

Sound like you’re in a good mood by smiling, be polite, and generally pleasurable to chat with. Use their first name. People like hearing their name. Make them want to help you!

Companies really don’t want to lose business. Taking time to call about retaining their services shows you’re interested and it won’t take much to keep a happy paying customer!

Bedroom Bootstrapper, Business Streamlining

Service Review: Docusign Digital Contracts

For the first few years of my business I had been printing out contract and sending them out snail mail.

I’d be lucky if the entire process took a week, not to mention having to get to the post office to send out my licked envelopes and still send them a scanned copy once I got it back.

Then I discovered Docusign and swore off physical contracts forever.

What is Docusign?

For $120 per year you can send 5 digital envelopes (read, contracts) per month.

But are digital signatures binding? Here you go.

You can upload either a Word Doc or PDF, then add input fields, initial blocks, signature fields, and auto-populated dates.

  • Signature+Initial blocks, auto-populated dates
  • Input fields

For the amount of business I was doing at the time this was a godsend.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • Relatively cheap ($120/yr)
  • Stores contacts for use between recipient fields
  • Can send a copy of your contract to as many emails you need
  • Has a solid app to access contracts at any time
  • Clients don’t need an account
  • You get notified when clients are viewing your contract

Cons:

  • Limited to 5 contracts per month
  • Unable to edit errors within input fields (which wastes envelopes)
  • Unable to bulk download contracts (must be done individually)
  • Setting up templates suck; fields don’t line up sometimes
  • No consistent dashboard showing # of used contracts that month

Verdict

It works, it’s cheap, but it can be very annoying when you have a busy month and have to wait to send out a contract to nail down that client.

There are CRM’s that include digital contracts in their cost with no monthly limitations (Ex. 17hats) so my advice is to shop around and find a more holistic solution. If you just need a few contracts a month right now in your business it will work, but realize you’re going to have to migrate to another service after you grow which can be a pain.