Highlights Of Mashable’s 2009 Review of Relenta

Quick Pitch: Relenta is an email-based contact and task management platform.

Genius Idea: More often than not our to-dos and notes are associated with the email we send and receive, so wouldn’t it make sense if we could get a thread-like view of tasks, notes, documents, and contacts associated with our email contacts? We think so, and Relenta’s service does just that by wisely focusing on email relationships to automatically link together communication, tasks, notes, and files in a people-centric activity stream.

Highlights of ReadWriteWeb’s Relenta Review:

Dmitry probably has a hard time getting attention for Relenta. What could be more boring than yet another webmail system? He got my attention, though, by claiming that Relenta would reclaim one hour of my day by making my routine work more productive. From my first look at Relenta, this looks possible (but far from certain — these are still very early days).

The short of it is that Relenta has email at its core, but it is a lot more than email. Actually, any corporate type who has “lived in” Outlook for years already has something like this. Outlook/Exchange is a lot more than email, too, except it is tied to the PC.

SaaS tools have done well by being simple. But integration eventually becomes the pain point. And integration does not simply mean a bit of middleware that integrates data. Nor does it mean a suite with basic levels of integration. There has to be some UI magic that makes it all look simple.

The deciding factor for me was my need for a basic CRM. Would a simple low-cost product like Zoho or SugarCRM do the trick? Or perhaps something hacked together from Gmail and related tools? The reality was that email would remain the core of my daily work, so adding CRM capability would mean having the following:

1. Contact manager: contact groups, contact-specific filters, follow-up management.
2. Task manager: to-do lists, follow-ups, prioritizing, all around getting-things-done capability.
3. Calendar: which is essential to task management.
4. Really simple email marketing automation: auto-responders, lists, canned responses.
5. File management: quick and easy document attachments.

Relenta claims that “it takes just one click from any screen within Relenta to respond to emails, update contact information, add calendar events, or create to-do lists.”

From a few days of use, it looks like Relenta does this fairly well. It’s not perfect yet, but switching to a new system is like moving into a new home: it has to at least be good enough at first, and you have to be confident that you can rip out the ugly linoleum without destroying the house or your budget.

The developers that came up with Relenta have found a niche that wasn’t quite filled by other current software of its type. Many of the other programs available are much too powerful and needlessly complex for small businesses to use. Even with a smaller number of employees, a small business often still needs something to help facilitate common knowledge of important information. For those that need a helping hand in communication for their small business, Relenta could be just the solution. More information about Relenta can be found at this site.

Anna & Mark from Productivity501.com

Experience Relenta CRM for yourself!

Yes You Can… Cut Your Workload in Half

Relenta did   Relenta’s founder, Dmitri Eroshenko, started Relenta as a side project at Clicklab,  its sister company. The idea was to take several different types of software that our team used regularly and distill them into one single program. We thought an all-in-one email/CRM/group calendar/mailing list management/task management app might help reduce busywork.

As it turned out, by interlinking all communication activity (including email messages, call notes, reminders, follow ups, tasks, voice mails, meeting transcripts) between our team and each customer, and making the whole set of information available to all employees who interact with any given account, we found ourselves getting twice as much done in half the time.

Get things done

Speaking of getting things done, we’re big fans of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) principle. Here’s how we can help implement it in your business: With Relenta, you can get pending tasks, important facts and other bits and pieces of information out of your head by pouring it all into a self-organizing system.

Relenta automatically aggregates all data associated with any relationship into a chronological activity stream, giving you at-a-glance knowledge of where you stand. This way, your mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that you need to do, and can focus on actually doing those things.

Less is more

Do you hate copy and pasting the same data between multiple software programs? Relenta puts an end to repetitive data entry. In fact, when someone sends you an email inquiry or fills out a form on your website, Relenta can automatically add them to your contact database. You won’t have to lift a finger!

Join the One Click Revolution!

Relenta is designed so that once you log into the system, it takes no more than one click to perform any of your routine daily tasks (such as read/write/search for emails, schedule calendar events, assign tasks to co-workers, create/edit to-do lists, etc). This is possible because Relenta isn’t an email client with CRM icing on the cake, or a task manager that’s integrated with email. It simply IS all of the above.

Here are some highlights from Techcrunch’s review of Relenta CRM:

Relenta is an all-in-one email/customer relationship management/group calendar/mailing list management/task management application that displays activity in a chronological stream for users. Relenta’s CRM doesn’t seem to be offering different services than other big name CRMs, such as Salesforce, Zoho or SugarCRM, but Relenta’s all-in-one package offers several different types of software in one application. Small businesses who are trying to cut costs (though in this economy, all businesses are being mindful of software expenses) could find this product particularly useful. Relenta’s monthly rate is $25 per user with an allowance of 2500 contacts per user. Users can also add contacts for an additional fee.

It appears that customers are satisfied with Relenta’s product from its customer feedback site. And like we predicted, most of Relenta’s customer base draws from small businesses. Relenta’s price seems right nd customers (many of who used Salesforce previously) feel that Relenta’s customer service rivals those of the bigger CRM providers.