Looking to Your Web Host for Tools to Grow Your Business

Your Web host is good for only a few things - hosting your Web site, creating your Web site (maybe) and helping you register a domain name. Or so you think. Of course all Web sites help you do e-commerce, get you a shopping cart and things like that, but some do more.

For example GoDaddy recently announced the launch of an aggressively priced CRM tool. It's a lot cheaper than other tools on the market, such as the from Salesforce.com, but also is not as feature rich.

However for the needs of a just starting out small business it probably does the trick just fine.

Features include:

• Add contacts on the Web or by importing from a current contacts’ list
• Store customers’ important files and past histories all in one place
• Easily sort best customers according to sales volume
• Create custom groups, mailing lists and filters to segment customers
• Attach files to notes and store important customer related details together

Whether you use a tool from GoDaddy or someone else, having a CRM tool is a must.

Contact management is one thing, it enables you to store contact information about your customers. ACT! and Outlook do this well. But being able to see who are your most profitable customers. To know what they bought in the past and predict what they might buy in the future, at a certain time, is a bit different. Starting at $4 a month on up, GoDaddy.com's Customer Manager is quite affordable.

Other CRM applications for smaller businesses include:

SalesLogix and other Sage CRM solutions
Maximizer CRM
GoldMine Software
Avidian's Prophet
SugarCRM

Have some of your own? Add them via the comments section.