| Functionality | 7 <p>Close is primarily a CRM. That being said it does offer fairly strong multi-channel (email, phone, SMS) outbound capabilities. It's native dialer and adjacent functionalities are particularly strong. Additionally, given its focus as a CRM, it excels in areas such as pipeline tracking and deal management.</p> | 7 <p>From a sequencing perspecting, Salesmate offers support for the core channels you'd expect including email, SMS and phone. Additionally, the platform also offers a native CRM. We would like to have seen a native prospecting database though.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Though Close is focused on power users, we were pleased by how intuitive the platform is to use. It's core sequencing interface is very well presented and familiar. Additionally, even more advanced features such as call transcript analysis are very well presented and not overwhelming. It would take an average SMB employee around 30 minutes to master its use.</p> | 7 <p>Salesmate is intuitive to use. Most of its core interfaces, such as its sequence building interface, is very familiar and easy to use. Additionally, it employs a excel-like, table interface for data such as contacts which is also a nice touch.</p> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p>When compared with most tools in the sales engagement space, Close presents itself as one of the best designed and easiest to use tools on the market. Though lacking in colour, we appreciated its modern aesthetic and fast page load times.</p> | 7 <p>Salesmate's design is modern and intuitive. Most screens are well presented and not overwhelming and are easy to use. We did find that the sidebar was slightly cluttered though, with some features located in unexpected areas.</p> |
| Customisability | 8 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close offers significant customization for fields, workflows, and pipeline stages. You can create custom data objects to track items beyond people and companies, such as partnerships. It also supports extremely granular custom filters to target contacts and leads when setting up sequences.</span></p> | 6 <p>Salesmate offers the usual channels for customizability such as custom fields for contacts and details within sequences. One area which is particularly extensible is the automations and workflows which you can configure very granularly across the product.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, fully setting up the platform and upskilling your reps can take up to a week, given Close's powerful and rich outbound functionality.</span></p> | 7 <p>Salesmate offers a simple, self-serve free trial. It's trivial to get set up with the product thanks to on click email connection for common providers such as Gmail. Additionally, sequences are also very easy to configure subsequently.</p> |
| Customer Support | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You can only contact Close's support team via email, however the team is often helpful and replies within 15 minutes. Close also offers a lot of helpful onboarding guidance and high quality self-help resources.</span></p> | 7 <p>Salesmate primarily offers customer support via a live chat widget inside its web app. When tested, we found it easy to get a hold of a real agent, often taking less than five minutes. Once contacted, we found them to be helpful and concise.</p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Close lacks native integrations with a lot of tools we'd like to have seen such as Apollo or other prospecting databases. That being said, we did appreciate the integration with Zapier through which you are able to connect to a much broader array of tooling.</p> | 5 <p>We would like to have seen a wider array of native integrations on offer, especially with popular CRMs such as Pipedrive. However, thankfully Salesmate offers a Zapier integration through which a much wider array of tooling can be connected.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close allows users to export key data via self-serve. Export of most other data is also available via API or on request.</span></p> | 6 <p>Salesmate offers self-serve export functionality within its web app like most other sales engagement tools.</p> |
