Greg,

I want to thank you for all your valuable input. I purchased a siteground year subscription and have spent the last couple of weeks trying to make that work. Interestingly some of our computers work with siteground and others do not. We get javascript errors when trying to edit contact and other information. Siteground's tech support is worthless as they stated that their computers work Ok and see you later. I have attempted to work with vtiger's tech support however when they learned that my vtiger was on siteground they stopped responding! I don't know if the issue(s) are siteground or vtiger related. When I post at vtigers tech support I get similar Javascript errors so I wonder about that.

awareim.com looks powerful however it is fee based which I don't want.

After the siteground fiasco I am convinced that I need to host the CRM at my site so the CRM manufacturer will provide me with proper tech support. I have not given up on vtiger and I see that vtiger CRM 5.0.3 is now released. Would you recommend giving that a try? Any word on this releases stability factor?

We do need a CRM that has e-mail integration and the ability to print e-mails and docs. I don't want a fee based CRM. Since I am convinced that I need to host this myself, I desire a CRM solution that is Microsoft ASP.NET / SQL based. This leads me to rethink Active and to evaluate splendidcrm.

Thanks,

Tony

Tony-

Sorry to hear that siteground didn't work for you but am glad you posted as I was getting ready to give it a try. Although I think that many of your problems may have been associated with Vtiger 5.2 it had some problems which is why I have been waiting for 5.3. Vtiger spent something like 8 months between the releases to fix any and all bugs. So far the forums there have been very favorable with regards to 5.3 being bug free - as long as you follow which versions of php, etc. 5.3 is designed to work with.

With regards to an asp.net solution I am not aware of a open source solution. I would prefer to use an asp.net solution myself but I really like the Word template integration that Vtiger has for printed documents, email templates, etc. The Outlook/Thunderbird integration is nice too.

I'm hoping that when Xmod 5 comes out and a data manager is available to connect to regular sql databases I can use that to build my own contact mgmt solution inside of DNN (no outside servers, frameworks, etc.). I have found that if you use either the Cute rich text editor or Telerik's R.A.D. rich text editor you can use the templates function in those products to do the printed docs and email templates.

For the short term one option I might check if I were you is to get siteground to update to Vtiger 5.3 and see if that solves your problems. I'm surprised that Vtiger was reluctant to help you if they knew you were using siteground as siteground is a sponsor of Vtiger and the only hosting company I can find that offers Vtiger free installs.

Hope this helps

Greg

Glad to hear 5.3 works for you. Please keep us informed on how 5.3 works on siteground as well as siteground's performance and support. I'll probably be doing the siteground thing later this week.

I agree with your wish list. I want to build a tool within DNN for sales people. Right now you have tons of CRM solutions which in my opinion focus more on customer service and cross selling than selling to brand new customers. Then you have SFA (Sales Force Automation) tools that focus more on sales management and sales forecasting. Sales forcasting is like trying to figure out how many fish you're going to catch before you go fishing. Which as a salesperson is a total waste of my time but the bean counters think it's great. I want to build a sales PERSON automation tool within DNN that uses computers, the internet, and a collaboration tool (DNN) to save me time so that I can spend more of it in front of customers and making sales rather doing stupid data entry (reports and sales forecasts) tasks. Some of the things that will be in my solution:

1) Integrated Neighborhood Marketing System
2) Integrated Food Chain Marketing System
3) Real Time Company/Account News (no button clicking-it shows up in real time on that account's record
4) Integrated networking (leads club) System
5) Integrated Sales Leads (custom or INFOUSA, D&B, etc.)
6) Integrated Change Event System (system monitors customizeable list of news, trade group, industry sites to look for opportunities) ** If you want one now take a look at Website Watcher - the best stand alone system I've found so far.  Errr... that's the best AFFORDABLE change event system so far. The best one would be Broadlook's Profiler.
7) When I want to send something to a prospect I want to click a couple of button's and move on to the next sales call. I don't want to worry about ink cartridge's, paper jams, etc. So in my system once I click a button or two a clerical person or an outside fulfillment house will handle the rest.
8) Email tracking / click through tracking
9) An opportunities tracking system that will allow the bean counters to spend hours and hours forecasting 57 different ways while I make more sales ( read - more commission ).

There's many more but you get the idea.

Greg