A CRM is an important tool of any successful eCommerce business. Shopify, while being one of the most user-friendly and easy to maintain eCommerce storefront solutions on the market, can be difficult to get working with a CRM. In this blog, we outline some of your options, and where you should look for a few popular CRMs.
Apps on the Shopify Store
The first option for integrating some kind of CRM solution with Shopify is to look for something on the app store. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good options available, and most of the plugins in the CRM section only give you a couple of select functions that are typically present in a CRM. Below, we’ve picked four of what we believe are the closest/best options available to server as a partial or full CRM in Shopify.
Re:amaze Live Chat & Helpdesk
This app gives you some of the tools you may need from a CRM, and depending on your situation may be all you need. It includes Chat Automation tools, customer service portals that can manage multiple stores, conversion boosting features, anti-shopping cart abandonment and some customer data tools.
Gorgias ‑ Support & Live chat
This app, like many of the ‘CRM’ apps for Shopify, is nowhere near a fully featured tool. Rather, it can fill a key piece of your total solution, this one focusing on customer support. It has a lot of the standard support features, and also supports multiple stores.
Revamp CRM
Revamp is probably the closest thing to a full CRM experience of the apps listed on the Shopify Store for US stores. It does email marketing, customer analytics and reporting, ad campaign analytics, marketing automation, and more. This is probably your best option if you don’t want any external CRM solution but still want most of the features of a CRM.
retailCRM
This is another app option that tries to replace a full CRM, but please be aware this is meant for the Euro market and is not intended for US businesses. It shares many of the same features with Revamp CRM, it’s a good option if you are looking for a similar app and your storefront is in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, or the UK.
Options for more common CRMs
The third party apps in the Shopify store are limited feature wise, or just focus on a small part of what’s in a typical CRM. Below, we’ll go over some of the more common CRM solutions and their compatibility with Shopify, or the options to integrate them.
Salesforce
There are a lot of solutions to integrate Salesforces, including custom integration or existing apps. For salesforce, the best place to start looking is the Salesforce Appexchange website.
Hubspot
Hubspot is already designed to integrate with Shopify. The process is relatively simple, and the full official guide can be found here.
Zoho CRM
The Zoho team has made an official extension to integrate Zoho with Shopify. Extending beyond the minimal functionality the extension provides may require custom development work.
sticky.io (Formerly Limelight CRM) and Konnektive, Subscription Orders
The best solution for integrating either of these CRMs is our own plugin called “Unify Checkout”. Unify is a eCommerce custom checkout app designed to allow sticky.io CRM (Formerly Limelight CRM) and Konnektive CRM to integrate with a supported e-commerce platform. Unify doesn’t just support Shopify, it also supports ClickFunnels and WooCommerce for WordPress as well. It supports shipment tracking, RMA and returns, and includes a basic support ticket system. Our plugin allows you to process transactions through your CRM from Shopify or other eCommerce stores.
Unify comes with support for subscriptions, and is an essential piece of running direct response campaign through Shopify. One of the most important aspects of subscription based campaigns is having a way to handle the increased need for customer support.
To provide support for subscription orders, Unify Pro includes a customer portal and support system. Using just their email and order number, customers can log into the portal and track their orders, pause or modify their subscription, cancel an order, request a return or refund, or cancel their subscription.
