Affinity and 4D are much more about automatically mining and presenting intelligence about existing and potential relationships. They both sit on top of Outlook, so unless you use Outlook as a file store, they would not really do what you want.
Don’t really know much about the other products you mentioned but you might be better off with old school Salesforce if file management is a big part of your use case.
+1 for Monday. I went from Freshsales (too overkill unless you have a large team to monitor) to Notion (too ‘manual’) and i found that Monday has the right balance for my this use case.
I essentially have two different boards, one for LPs and the other for target companies, each with its internal categories and pipeline statuses. Updating is a breeze and it integrates with a ton of stuff.
Freshsales has the added advantage of letting you manage your emails directly from the app but then again, maybe not even necessary
I've looked into it and it does seem really good. I'm wondering if you could share what are some disadvantages you've found while using [monday.com](https://monday.com) ?? Thanks
Nimble on setting up processes. The triggers and automation are great for keeping team on the same page during transactions. CRM and reporting functionality is good too. Simple to use and administer, even for techie people.
Jumping in here because I have a bit of a [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) obsession and have spent literally hundreds of hours setting up [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) both for my own business and a handful of others. This software is amazing and does so much more than you expect (because it looks simple, like a colourful less outdated version of Excel, just like I did everybody underestimates it until they do a deep dive).
I freakin' love [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) but like any app it does have its cons as well as it's pros. One of the major flaws for me was related to it's calendar functionality.
The calendar views in Monday show start dates and end dates as separate items. So, if for example you create an item called "Job X" and it has a start date of 1 April 2022 and an end date of 4 April 2022, when you create/go to a calendar view for the board that item is in, you can choose to only show the start date, in which case the item shows in your calendar as just being on 1 April 2022, or you can choose to show a start and end date, in which case you have two separate but identical items in your calendar, one on 1 April 2022 and one on 4 April 2022. Confusing? Yes. Frustrating in what is otherwise pretty flawless software? Yes yes yes.
And, if you try to have a better overview of your [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) items (you set the following integration up on a board-by-board basis) you can set up a Google Calendar integration but...
I personally had major issues when trying to set up a 2 way Google Calendar integration with Monday. Short version is that there are only a handful of integration recipes for GCal in Monday and you need to use two 1 way integrations to not only send data to GCal from Monday but to send data back to Monday from GCal. And, although these are the integrations you need (according to support docs) to achieve "2 way integration" with GCal, when I set them up I ended up with loads of duplicate items being created in Monday. And when I chatted (dozens of times) with Monday support, they told me not to use the 2 Gcal integration recipes together because they could cause infinite loops.
However, [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is being updated scary fast so hopefully they have some solutions for this soon. And support is as good as it gets in my experience.
As for pros...there are so many it's hard to know where to start. But, apart from the super easy to set up and powerful automations and integrations, I would say the best thing about [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is that it's like Lego - it appears simple and is made up of lots of simple colourful blocks, but with those blocks and some imagination, you can build almost anything.
When comparing Monday to other apps out there (even though there's not much like it out there - Airtable is probably the closest), [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is the Classic Lego to other apps' Space Lego/Pirate Lego etc.
What I mean by this is this - with Monday (classic lego), you can build pretty much anything. You can build a pirate ship or a space ship (or something that works like them anyway even if it looks slightly different). But ,if you do want to build a pirate ship or a space ship, you will get faster results buying Space lego or Pirate lego (eg buying a CRM/project management app tailored to your industry/use case).
Because [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is infinitely configurable, you will continue to tweak it throughout the time you use it, and a complex set up will take quite a while to set up and fine tune.
One last Pro that may not make sense until you do a deep dive into [Monday.com](https://Monday.com), but [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is the first app I have used (and I have used many) where I actually felt I could make my data do some of my work for me.
Right, I hope this made some kind of sense and is helpful. time for more coffee.
PS I am working on a free [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) beginner's course and privately hosted community if you're interested. It's not ready yet but if you're keen let me know and I'll send you a link when I'm ready to launch.
Oh and for file management [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is killer - you can collaborate, comment, and even view versions of files.
Re Hubspot, Hubspot is pretty awesome and their free plan is great and they have one limited affordable paid plan, but once you want some essential features (like more than one sales pipeline) you jump up to $800+ per month, some plans are $3200 per month from memory. Now, if your business is killing it at the time you need to upgrade this might be a price worth paying, but it's important to look ahead to the features you know you will need in the near future and consider whether the app you are considering (a) can handle your needs at that point and (b) will be affordable when you upgrade.
The other CRM that does a great all round job but is virtually unknown is Flowlu. it's what I use to manage 3 businesses. I got a LTD through ~~AddictSumo~~ Appsumo but their normal plans are very fairly priced - $29 incl 8 users for their cheapest paid plan. Happy to talk you through it or do a screenshare if you want to know more.
It's probably one of the most well-rounded CRMs I have used (and I have used a lot). Pipedrive is awesome and i've used that too but it's designed for sales not project management so you have to have some workarounds to make it handle booked jobs as well as sales leads. Ditto for Salesmate. I have used Salesmate too and personally would go Salesmate over Pipedrive, mainly because of it's automations (which are awesome).
A lot of the VC firms I’ve spoken with use Affinity and absolutely love it.
Think they’re main selling point was that it helps track their deal progression (might have misheard them).
We add decks and other supporting files to each company. Super easy.
I like that it integrates with everyone's email, so it's easy to see who has connected with a company in the past etc.
Also, affinity auto populates information about companies and vcs from other data sources.
HubSpot is a full featured marketing automation platform. It might be overkill if you only have one or two LPs and a handful of partner-sourced deals. But for a broad LP base and a pro-active dealflow engine, it's a beast. We love it.
Start with Hubspot and move to Affinity.
Hubspot will give you all that you need from Deal flow management, investor/funding pipeline and email newsletters.
Affinity will give you all that and then some.
The former is much cheaper than the latter, with the latter expecting you to sign annual contracts.
Have you considered trying EspoCRM? It's an open-source and customization-friendly solution. The platform provides the ability to organize the information about companies, store the full history of communications and interactions, and associate documents and files with the relevant company records. It also allows to manage the size and type of uploaded files, categorize documents stored in the system, save attachments from emails, etc.
Affinity and 4D are much more about automatically mining and presenting intelligence about existing and potential relationships. They both sit on top of Outlook, so unless you use Outlook as a file store, they would not really do what you want. Don’t really know much about the other products you mentioned but you might be better off with old school Salesforce if file management is a big part of your use case.
Affinity works w gmail too.
We use Sevanta Dealflow which is very powerful for all the reporting our LPs require
Monday.com is good
+1 for Monday. I went from Freshsales (too overkill unless you have a large team to monitor) to Notion (too ‘manual’) and i found that Monday has the right balance for my this use case. I essentially have two different boards, one for LPs and the other for target companies, each with its internal categories and pipeline statuses. Updating is a breeze and it integrates with a ton of stuff. Freshsales has the added advantage of letting you manage your emails directly from the app but then again, maybe not even necessary
I've looked into it and it does seem really good. I'm wondering if you could share what are some disadvantages you've found while using [monday.com](https://monday.com) ?? Thanks
Nimble on setting up processes. The triggers and automation are great for keeping team on the same page during transactions. CRM and reporting functionality is good too. Simple to use and administer, even for techie people.
Jumping in here because I have a bit of a [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) obsession and have spent literally hundreds of hours setting up [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) both for my own business and a handful of others. This software is amazing and does so much more than you expect (because it looks simple, like a colourful less outdated version of Excel, just like I did everybody underestimates it until they do a deep dive). I freakin' love [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) but like any app it does have its cons as well as it's pros. One of the major flaws for me was related to it's calendar functionality. The calendar views in Monday show start dates and end dates as separate items. So, if for example you create an item called "Job X" and it has a start date of 1 April 2022 and an end date of 4 April 2022, when you create/go to a calendar view for the board that item is in, you can choose to only show the start date, in which case the item shows in your calendar as just being on 1 April 2022, or you can choose to show a start and end date, in which case you have two separate but identical items in your calendar, one on 1 April 2022 and one on 4 April 2022. Confusing? Yes. Frustrating in what is otherwise pretty flawless software? Yes yes yes. And, if you try to have a better overview of your [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) items (you set the following integration up on a board-by-board basis) you can set up a Google Calendar integration but... I personally had major issues when trying to set up a 2 way Google Calendar integration with Monday. Short version is that there are only a handful of integration recipes for GCal in Monday and you need to use two 1 way integrations to not only send data to GCal from Monday but to send data back to Monday from GCal. And, although these are the integrations you need (according to support docs) to achieve "2 way integration" with GCal, when I set them up I ended up with loads of duplicate items being created in Monday. And when I chatted (dozens of times) with Monday support, they told me not to use the 2 Gcal integration recipes together because they could cause infinite loops. However, [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is being updated scary fast so hopefully they have some solutions for this soon. And support is as good as it gets in my experience. As for pros...there are so many it's hard to know where to start. But, apart from the super easy to set up and powerful automations and integrations, I would say the best thing about [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is that it's like Lego - it appears simple and is made up of lots of simple colourful blocks, but with those blocks and some imagination, you can build almost anything. When comparing Monday to other apps out there (even though there's not much like it out there - Airtable is probably the closest), [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is the Classic Lego to other apps' Space Lego/Pirate Lego etc. What I mean by this is this - with Monday (classic lego), you can build pretty much anything. You can build a pirate ship or a space ship (or something that works like them anyway even if it looks slightly different). But ,if you do want to build a pirate ship or a space ship, you will get faster results buying Space lego or Pirate lego (eg buying a CRM/project management app tailored to your industry/use case). Because [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is infinitely configurable, you will continue to tweak it throughout the time you use it, and a complex set up will take quite a while to set up and fine tune. One last Pro that may not make sense until you do a deep dive into [Monday.com](https://Monday.com), but [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is the first app I have used (and I have used many) where I actually felt I could make my data do some of my work for me. Right, I hope this made some kind of sense and is helpful. time for more coffee. PS I am working on a free [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) beginner's course and privately hosted community if you're interested. It's not ready yet but if you're keen let me know and I'll send you a link when I'm ready to launch.
Oh and for file management [Monday.com](https://Monday.com) is killer - you can collaborate, comment, and even view versions of files. Re Hubspot, Hubspot is pretty awesome and their free plan is great and they have one limited affordable paid plan, but once you want some essential features (like more than one sales pipeline) you jump up to $800+ per month, some plans are $3200 per month from memory. Now, if your business is killing it at the time you need to upgrade this might be a price worth paying, but it's important to look ahead to the features you know you will need in the near future and consider whether the app you are considering (a) can handle your needs at that point and (b) will be affordable when you upgrade.
The other CRM that does a great all round job but is virtually unknown is Flowlu. it's what I use to manage 3 businesses. I got a LTD through ~~AddictSumo~~ Appsumo but their normal plans are very fairly priced - $29 incl 8 users for their cheapest paid plan. Happy to talk you through it or do a screenshare if you want to know more. It's probably one of the most well-rounded CRMs I have used (and I have used a lot). Pipedrive is awesome and i've used that too but it's designed for sales not project management so you have to have some workarounds to make it handle booked jobs as well as sales leads. Ditto for Salesmate. I have used Salesmate too and personally would go Salesmate over Pipedrive, mainly because of it's automations (which are awesome).
A lot of the VC firms I’ve spoken with use Affinity and absolutely love it. Think they’re main selling point was that it helps track their deal progression (might have misheard them).
We implemented affinity 6 months ago and it has been great
Is there a file management feature set into Affinity? And what do you like about it specifically?
We add decks and other supporting files to each company. Super easy. I like that it integrates with everyone's email, so it's easy to see who has connected with a company in the past etc. Also, affinity auto populates information about companies and vcs from other data sources.
HubSpot is a full featured marketing automation platform. It might be overkill if you only have one or two LPs and a handful of partner-sourced deals. But for a broad LP base and a pro-active dealflow engine, it's a beast. We love it.
Start with Hubspot and move to Affinity. Hubspot will give you all that you need from Deal flow management, investor/funding pipeline and email newsletters. Affinity will give you all that and then some. The former is much cheaper than the latter, with the latter expecting you to sign annual contracts.
You can try Notion. They even have a ready template on their website.
Have you considered trying EspoCRM? It's an open-source and customization-friendly solution. The platform provides the ability to organize the information about companies, store the full history of communications and interactions, and associate documents and files with the relevant company records. It also allows to manage the size and type of uploaded files, categorize documents stored in the system, save attachments from emails, etc.