What is the best free or cheap online CRM for a startup online travel agency?

CRM's generally all work the same. Unless you are paying for a specialized one for your industry. It's just a matter of learning how to use it and sticking with it. I have heard good things about Zoho, a few of my clients use it. They have a free plan to start. I've also heard good things about Podio. Hope that helps, - JR

Zurmo is an open source, gamified CRM system that is installed on your own PHP server. It may take a little fiddling to get it installed if that's not what you normally do, but for the price, I don't know that you can beat it. http://zurmo.org/download

If you purchased http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/home/solutions/travel_agency/ then they have some sort of CRM-esque module available. I believe Amadeus will have something similar. These services are well established in the industry and come with A LOT of features but they are geared toward larger agencies that can afford them. :P I am currently working on a tour operator/travel agent software (http://www.wehearttours.com) geared toward small businesses and we're looking for partners to join our Beta Program. Here's a sneak peek at the demo of a Customer Profile that's part of our CRM module: http://wehearttours.com/demo/customerprofile. Let me know if you're interested in checking it out.

You can try Revamp CRM. It is FREE, offers unlimited contacts, powerful contact management features, plus visual sales pipeline management. Check it here: http://revampcrm.com You can upgrade to a paid plan, to enjoy sales automation and a wider integration offering. (Disclaimer: I work for Revamp, the company that makes the CRM software referenced here.)

Give http://ClinchPad.com a shot. Here's why:- Built for small businesses Affordable- Free for first 100 leads, our paid plans range from $9 to $99 per month Over 500+ businesses use ClinchPad. Many of our customers are travel companies including Uniglobe. You can track existing projects in a separate pipeline in ClinchPad You can integrate your email and link them to your leads via Gmail integration or maildrop address. It's quite simple to set up and requires minimal effort. Integration with a variety of third party applications such as MailChimp, Zapier, Wufoo etc. You can integrate ClinchPad with your existing invoicing softwarevia Zapier Integrates with Google Apps Attach tags/labels to your leads Robust analytics & reports of your leads & pipeline We have a native iOS app that can be downloaded from here:- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clinchpad/id757790905 Also have a mobile-optimized site accessible from any mobile OS ClinchPad has a visual sales pipeline view through which you can track your leads in one view. To move lead across a stage is quite easy, all you have to do is drag & drop the lead card across the different stage. Have a look at the dashboard to get an idea of how simple it is to use:- Its FREE for your first 100 leads, so give it a shot by signing up here-https://www.clinchpad.com/users/sign_up Full list of features here - https://www.clinchpad.com/features

An ingenious cloud based http://www.kapturecrm.com/sales-crm/, developed by a panel of technology experts and highly experienced professionals from different industries, KAPTURE is your one-stop solution to automate all your business processes.What sets KAPTURE apart is that it’s a http://www.kapturecrm.com/fully-mobile/, http://www.kapturecrm.com/fully-mobile/ with an amazingly user-friendly interface, reducing hardware costs by 80%. When all your data is secured on the cloud, you know you can access it anytime, anywhere effortlessly which invariably increases productivity by 75%. Apart from that, it’s fully-customizable to adapt to different business processes and models pertaining to different organizational working styles. Today, we are India’s leading comprehensive technology-driven CRM solution providers for top brands in the http://www.kapturecrm.com/hotels-crm/, http://www.kapturecrm.com/real-estate-crm/, http://www.kapturecrm.com/fmcg-crm/, http://www.kapturecrm.com/banking-crm/ industries etc.From managing all your leads all on a single platform to generating 300+ http://www.kapturecrm.com/business-analytics/ for Automating and http://www.kapturecrm.com/sales-tracking/ and marketing activities,

I suggest to try out http://www.casengo.com/ (of course). We just released our new website and a new pricing plan.  You can now offer email, live chat and social media support (with 3 agents) for 9 euro per month (if paid annually). Why Casengo, you might ask? - Straightforward and user-friendly - Easy to set up - Designed for startups and SMEs - Email, live chat and social media support all in 1 application Casengo doesn't require any knowledge of CRM (like Salesforce  does) and is easy to set up. We currently offer plugins/extensions for WordPress, Magento and Drupal. Do check out our other features: - Hybrid Chat. In the Casengo application, any static email message can easily be  turned into a dynamic live chat conversation (and vice versa). Both the  company and the (potential) customer can make this magic happen. Hybrid  chat allows you to flexibly manage your online customer service whenever  you like. - Customization. Casengo is one of the few  applications that allows you to change each text that your online  visitors see, like the live chat button and the chat form. - Macros (canned responses). You can  create your own canned responses within the Casengo application. Use  them to boost your productivity and reduce response times. - Team Collaboration. Customer  cases can easily be shared between colleagues (and even people outside  your company!) to come up with the best answer possible. - Knowledge base. All you have to do is enter the frequently  asked questions - and answers - and connect the knowledge base to your  website. The great thing is that the KB is linked to the chat button. The moment a visitor starts a chat, the system will suggest articles (from your KB) based on the question you received. So the better your knowledge base, the better your self service you can provide! For more information about our software, check out: http://www.casengo.com/#panel-coverflow

Since I first chimed in back in 2014, I’ve become much more familiar with the options available which are geared specifically toward travel agents. I must admit, I feel like I have been on a wild goose chase and still have nothing.Let me back up, there are many more options available today than there was a few years ago but as far as travel industry specific solutions, all other industries are ahead of us by leaps and bounds. I must admit, it’s pretty disappointing, especially considering the fact that travel was light years ahead of other industries back when the GDS was first invented.In my opinion, the one thing every travel industry specific CRM is missing, and it’s a crucial element in my opinion, is the ability to connect or integrate to other software. For some reason, even the most robust travel CRM available and the one used by more agents than all the others - is very antiquated, old, outdated, behind the times, expensive and isn’t even really cloud based. At some point, they are going to have to stop patching and start from scratch.Most businesses today use various software for various areas of their business. For example, a business may be setup like this:Xero - Manage the Books / AccountingMail Chimp - Mailing List ManagementLead Pages - WYSIWYG Offer Page BuilderGoogle Apps - Email, Domain, Website, Office ProductivityTrello - TasksSlack - Team CommunicationEvernote - ProjectsWufoo - Online FormsTwilio - SMS MarketingEmail Parser - Scrape Data from Supplier Confirmation EmailsAxus - Itinerary BuilderTrip Wing - Trip Proposal BuilderTravefy - Group Trip PlannerSurvey Monkey - SurveysIntercom - Virtual Business Phone / Communication SystemKnack - Online Database / Data CollectionI could seriously go on and on - there’s an endless number of cloud based apps available that all do very unique things. The idea in this new age of apps is that each app developer can concentrate on what they are really good at. Xero is great at developing accounting software, for example. Why should Xero get into the CRM development business? They shouldn’t, should they?Yes, all of these things are software but why would the same software guys be good at all software? That be pretty boring. If there was only one company that made all the apps and all the software - we wouldn’t have very much innovation, things would be boring and that’s exactly where the travel industry technology providers are still stuck.I’ll list the travel industry specific CRMs that I have personally tried below and I can go ahead and tell you that I have personally reached out to each and every one them to ask if they had any plans to release an API, or begged them to just setup a single integration with Zapier - once that’s done, we could do the rest ourselves. By the way, Zapier allows you to setup an account with them and basically log in to every account and app you can think of. Once you do that, you can do really cool things between the different accounts. So, Zapier is sort of like the middleware that connects everyone else.For example, Zapier has a mail parser and what that does is read the data in emails and if it detects certain types of email, it knows to extract the data from the email and depending on you have it setup, you can do all sorts of stuff. An airline sends a confirmation to an agency email address. Zapier scrapes the client data off the email, automatically, and creates a new itinerary in your itinerary software, pushes the info to your mobile app, send your client a text message, adds the information to your account system and updates your clients record in your CRM - all in an instant.Other businesses and industries are automating everything - making their lives easier - because all the mainstream CRMS connect with all these other apps. Unfortunately, for right now, we in the travel industry, appear to be stuck in time.I know these things are possible in the travel industry today, however - they are too far out of reach for a small agency or independent agency. Anyone who integrates travel data or CRM, portals, pricing, rates, etc is going to charge you about $3,000 per integration and that’s on the cheap side.Wow, sorry for writing such a long post, obviously - this is a soap box for me - big time! Now, on with what I originally set out to answer:Travel Industry Specific CRMs https://www.vacationcrm.com/ http://profileclient.com/ https://www.budgetyourtrip.com/agentregister.php http://blog.tripflock.com/for-travel-agencies/ https://xcelerator.triseptsolutions.com/register (same folks responsible for Vax Vacation Access) http://www.opentravelcrm.com/SignUp.aspx http://www.travelcrm.org.ua/en http://www.trams.com/home/products_services/products/clientbase/ http://www.clientease.com/ http://www.itravelsoftware.com/en/Solutions/solution-for-online-travel-agency.aspx

There are many ways to get totally free access to some travel industry specific CRM solutions such as Trams Clientbase, Clientease, CruisePak and many others. I recommend checking out http://travelagentsupport.com. Under the "tools" section, you'll find articles and how-tos  for all sorts of stuff, including agency specific CRM solutions. By the way, many of the tools already mentioned are great. I come from a 10 year background working with Salesforce on an implementation and adoption team but travel is really it's own animal. With all the extra fields required for travel, documentation, itinerary segments, etc.