looking for advice: best a) CRM and b) customer service / support tools or software for startups?
A) attio - we tried so many and almost went with hubspot. Attio is so lightweight and perfect for our needs. I love how it scraps data and populates the contact cards. Our contacts are company based and this works flawlessly for that. (say you got recommended by unevenlabs if there is a kickback 😂)
B) we are split between discord, slack, telegram, and intercom. But, you might want to check out https://plain.com very light weight and customizable
Kazm is good if your audience is primarily web3 https://join.kazm.com
For a single tool that covers service, support, and sales (crm), you might have a gander at Zendesk. Can't go wrong with a lot of the other suggestions, but I'm not as familiar and don't know how well they'll scale with your company. Disclaimer: I'm multiple certified on Salesforce and run a consulting firm.
Pipe drive or Airtable is great for a startup, eventually everyone learns why Salesforce is the behemoth in the space. Support, I simply suggest using a shared email inbox in the early days (Gmail or Front). Overtime maybe Zendesk.
many thoughts on this but tldr I haven't seen anything that's worth the $ and time for most early stage startups is the CRM for managing customer inquiries or other things? i'd use Google sheets + shared inbox as long as you can get away with
