Juggling sales, projects, and customer service?
If you’re researching Insightly, it’s because manual processes are making your day-to-day messy and disconnected—and you need a better way.
From what I’ve seen, the lack of unified customer data wastes hours every week, killing your productivity and leaving your team frustrated.
Insightly aims to fix this by offering CRM, project management, marketing automation, and customer service together—so you finally get one clear, connected view of your business. Its integrated platform means you don’t have to struggle with data silos or jump between tools, and that’s a big advantage I’ll break down in detail.
In this review, I’ll show you how Insightly brings everything into a single place so you can reclaim time and work smarter.
You’ll see a full Insightly review—unpacking features, pricing, real limitations, and top alternatives—so you can decide with total clarity.
Read on for real insight into the features you need to take control of your customer processes.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary
- Insightly is a cloud-based CRM platform that helps your company manage sales, projects, and customer service in one unified system.
- Best for small to mid-sized businesses needing a single tool for sales tracking and project management.
- You’ll appreciate its integrated project management features that smoothly link sales opportunities to delivery workflows.
- Insightly offers a free plan for two users and paid tiers from $29 per user per month with optional all-in-one bundles and trial options.
Insightly Overview
Insightly has been helping businesses grow since 2009. Originally from Australia, they’re now based in San Francisco, focusing on helping you build lasting customer relationships.
Their sweet spot is providing a unified platform for small to mid-sized businesses that need more than just a basic CRM. They aim to centralize your sales, marketing, and project management.
The recent 2024 merger with Unbounce signals a major strategic shift we’ll explore through this Insightly review, adding powerful new marketing capabilities to their stack.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: While we’re discussing strategic shifts and new capabilities, you might find my guide on best interior design tools helpful for project delivery.
Unlike many CRMs that stop at the sale, Insightly’s real power comes from its integrated project management capabilities. This prevents the awkward handoff from your sales to delivery teams.
You’ll find them working with all sorts of organizations, especially those with longer sales cycles or complex post-sale delivery and implementation projects that need careful tracking.
Their strategy seems focused on creating a single source of truth for your entire customer journey. This aligns well with the market’s move away from disjointed, single-purpose apps.
Let’s dive into their feature set.
Insightly Features
Struggling with disconnected customer data?
Insightly features actually offer an integrated platform to manage your entire customer journey. Here are the five main Insightly features that help businesses build lasting relationships and grow faster.
1. Insightly CRM (Sales Management)
Still dealing with scattered customer info?
Fragmented data makes it hard to get a complete view of your customers. This can lead to missed opportunities and inefficient sales processes.
Insightly CRM brings all your contact, organization, and interaction data into one place, giving you a clear overview. What I love about this feature is how you can customize sales pipelines to match your unique process, which means you can track deals with precision.
This means you can streamline your sales efforts, gain deeper insights into your pipeline, and close more deals effectively.
2. Project Management
Tired of information gaps between sales and projects?
Transitioning from a won deal to project execution can often result in lost details. This creates headaches and delays for your delivery team.
Insightly’s Project Management seamlessly converts opportunities into projects, automatically carrying over critical details. From my testing, this integrated approach ensures nothing falls through the cracks, enabling smooth handoffs and consistent project delivery.
So you can ensure a consistent flow from sales to service, improving project efficiency and client satisfaction.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of investment management software helpful.
3. Marketing Automation
Struggling to nurture leads effectively?
Manual email outreach and a lack of targeted communication can limit your lead nurturing efforts. This makes it tough to move prospects through the sales funnel.
Insightly Marketing helps you create engaging customer journeys with integrated email marketing tools. This feature allows you to send targeted communications and track engagement seamlessly, ensuring your messages resonate with prospects.
This means you can automate your lead nurturing, grow your pipeline, and drive revenue growth more efficiently.
4. Customer Service
Overwhelmed by customer inquiries and support tickets?
Managing customer support across multiple channels can be chaotic, leading to delayed responses and dissatisfied clients. This often impacts your brand reputation.
Insightly Service centralizes ticket management, from inquiry to resolution, with multi-channel ticketing and automation. This is where Insightly shines, as agents get comprehensive customer profiles for personalized support, ensuring quick and effective issue resolution.
This means you can elevate your customer support, exceed expectations, and build stronger, more loyal customer relationships.
5. AppConnect (Integrations & Workflow Automation)
Bogged down by manual data entry between systems?
Using disparate tools without proper integration creates data silos and repetitive manual tasks. This wastes valuable time and introduces errors.
Insightly’s AppConnect allows code-free integration with hundreds of other applications, automating workflows. What you get instead is seamless data synchronization across your tech stack, which eliminates manual updates and boosts efficiency.
This means you can connect Insightly to your existing tools, automate multi-step processes, and ensure your data flows effortlessly across your business.
Pros & Cons
- ✅ User-friendly interface simplifies navigation and team adoption.
- ✅ Robust project management capabilities are integrated within the CRM.
- ✅ High customization options for pipelines, fields, and automation.
- ⚠️ Performance slowdowns occasionally occur with very large datasets.
- ⚠️ Basic AI features compared to more advanced competitors.
- ⚠️ Customer support response times can sometimes vary.
These Insightly features work together to create a unified platform for managing customer relationships, streamlining operations, and fostering business growth.
Insightly Pricing
Struggling to find transparent software costs?
Insightly pricing is structured in clear tiers, making it straightforward to understand and budget for your CRM and business management needs.
Plan | Price & Features |
---|---|
Free Plan | $0 (Limited to 2 users) • Up to 2,500 contacts • Restricted features • Basic CRM functions |
Plus Tier | $29/user/month (billed annually) • Core CRM & project management • Advanced reports & dashboards • 10GB storage, 100K records • 2,500 daily email sends |
Professional Tier | $49/user/month (billed annually) • Lead assignment & routing • Unlimited role-based permissions • AppConnect integration, webhooks • 100GB storage, 250K records • 5,000 daily email sends |
Enterprise Tier | $99/user/month (billed annually) • Product & pricebook management • Quote creation & audit logging • Field-based permissions, SAML SSO • Unlimited records & storage • 10,000 daily email sends |
All-In-One Plan | Starts at $349/user/month (billed annually) • Integrates CRM, marketing automation • Includes customer service tools • Unified data platform for 360-view |
1. Value Assessment
Great value for your investment.
From my cost analysis, Insightly’s tiered approach means you only pay for the features you truly need, scaling as your business grows. The inclusion of project management stands out as a unique value, offering a comprehensive solution for managing both sales and post-sales activities in one platform.
This means your budget goes further, consolidating multiple tools into one integrated system for your business.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: While we’re discussing different business solutions, understanding club management software is equally important for membership organizations.
2. Trial/Demo Options
Evaluate with confidence.
Insightly doesn’t explicitly mention a free trial for its paid plans, but its free tier provides an excellent starting point to understand its core CRM capabilities. What I found regarding pricing is that the free plan offers hands-on experience for up to two users, giving you a taste of its interface and basic functions.
This helps you evaluate its user-friendliness before committing to a paid subscription, easing your decision-making.
3. Plan Comparison
Choosing the right fit.
The Plus tier is a strong starting point for growing businesses, offering essential CRM and project management tools. However, for serious growth, the Professional tier provides advanced automation and integrations, where your sales and marketing teams gain significant power. The Enterprise tier is built for larger organizations needing extensive control, security, and unlimited scalability.
This helps you match pricing to actual usage requirements, ensuring your investment aligns with your operational complexity.
My Take: Insightly’s pricing strategy is competitive and offers clear value through integrated CRM, project, and marketing features, targeting small to mid-sized businesses effectively.
The overall Insightly pricing reflects transparent, scalable value for your business operations.
Insightly Reviews
What do real customers actually think?
I’ve analyzed numerous Insightly reviews to give you a clear picture of what users genuinely think, helping you understand the real-world experience.
1. Overall User Satisfaction
Users find it mostly positive.
From my review analysis, Insightly generally receives positive feedback, often praised for its intuitive interface. What I found in user feedback is how most users appreciate its simplicity and ease of use, especially for managing contacts and projects effectively.
This indicates you can expect a generally smooth and satisfying user experience.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: If you’re also looking into managing business processes, my article on queue management software covers how to boost efficiency.
2. Common Praise Points
The interface consistently earns high marks.
Users frequently praise Insightly’s intuitive design and user-friendly project management tools. From the reviews I analyzed, the customization options are a significant advantage, allowing businesses to tailor the system to their specific needs seamlessly.
This means you can adapt Insightly to fit your unique business workflows easily.
3. Frequent Complaints
Performance issues surface occasionally.
Common complaints often revolve around occasional slowdowns with large datasets and basic AI capabilities. Review-wise, what stands out is how some users note limitations in advanced customization, especially when compared to more robust, high-end platforms.
These issues are typically minor for small to mid-sized businesses, not deal-breakers.
What Customers Say
- Positive: “Insightly is intuitive and is much easier to set up, integrate, and adopt across teams.” (User Review)
- Constructive: “The auto-fill function in Opportunities often does not pull information from the linked Contact…” (User Review)
- Bottom Line: “Insightly has greatly improved my companies performance. It has allowed all departments to integrate our information together…” (User Review)
Overall, Insightly reviews reveal a pattern of satisfied users, despite minor performance and feature limitations.
Best Insightly Alternatives
Considering other CRM platforms for your business?
The best Insightly alternatives include several strong options, each better suited for different business situations, team sizes, and specific feature priorities.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: If you’re also streamlining other business operations, my guide on best order management software covers comprehensive solutions.
1. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Managing a large enterprise with complex needs?
Salesforce is your go-to if you’re a large enterprise requiring extensive customization and a vast ecosystem of integrations. From my competitive analysis, Salesforce offers superior scalability for complex business processes, though it comes with a significantly higher price tag and implementation effort.
Choose Salesforce when you have extensive budgets and complex sales processes requiring deep, specialized customization.
2. HubSpot CRM
Prioritizing all-in-one sales and marketing?
HubSpot excels when you need an integrated platform spanning sales, marketing automation, and customer service, especially if lead generation is key. What I found comparing options is that HubSpot offers a more robust free plan with strong inbound marketing tools compared to Insightly’s offering.
Consider this alternative if you need comprehensive lead generation, email marketing, and landing page creation features.
3. Zoho CRM
Looking for budget-friendly customization options?
Zoho CRM is a strong alternative for small to mid-sized businesses seeking a versatile CRM with extensive customization capabilities and social media integration. Alternative-wise, Zoho CRM is more budget-friendly for small businesses while still providing powerful sales and marketing automation tools.
Choose Zoho CRM if you’re a small to mid-sized business prioritizing customization and cost-effectiveness.
4. Pipedrive
Focusing purely on visual sales pipeline management?
Pipedrive is an excellent option for sales-focused teams that prioritize visual pipeline management, intuitive lead tracking, and activity-based selling. From my analysis, Pipedrive excels in clear, visual sales pipeline organization, making it ideal if your main focus is strictly on deals and sales progress.
Consider this alternative when visual sales pipeline management and sales automation are your team’s top priorities.
Quick Decision Guide
- Choose Insightly: Integrated CRM with strong project management capabilities
- Choose Salesforce Sales Cloud: Large enterprises needing extensive customization and integrations
- Choose HubSpot CRM: All-in-one platform for robust sales, marketing, and service
- Choose Zoho CRM: Budget-friendly option with strong customization for SMBs
- Choose Pipedrive: Sales-focused teams needing visual pipeline management
The best Insightly alternatives depend on your specific business requirements and budget priorities, not just feature lists.
Insightly Setup
Considering Insightly implementation for your business?
This Insightly review section breaks down what to expect during deployment, helping you understand the time, resources, and potential challenges for a successful Insightly setup.
1. Setup Complexity & Timeline
Is Insightly easy to deploy?
Insightly aims for a straightforward setup with customizable fields, allowing you to tailor the system to your workflows without coding. From my implementation analysis, basic setup is relatively fast, though leveraging advanced features like automation will extend the process.
You’ll need to plan for initial configuration and data migration, with customization influencing your overall timeline.
2. Technical Requirements & Integration
What about your existing tech stack?
As a cloud-based platform, Insightly primarily requires internet access and offers native mobile apps. What I found about deployment is that AppConnect simplifies integration with hundreds of apps, reducing the need for complex custom development for most businesses.
Your IT readiness should focus on ensuring stable internet connectivity and reviewing specific integration needs for legacy systems.
3. Training & Change Management
How will your team adapt to Insightly?
While Insightly is intuitive, some training is necessary to fully leverage advanced features like workflow automation and custom reporting. From my analysis, user-friendly design reduces the overall learning curve, but dedicated training improves adoption and efficiency.
Invest in training and champion key users to ensure smooth adoption and maximize the platform’s capabilities across your team.
4. Support & Success Factors
What support can you expect?
Insightly offers 24/7 email support across all plans, with phone support for higher tiers during business hours. What I found about deployment is that staff are generally supportive with customer service, though response times can vary based on your plan.
Plan for accessible support and proactive engagement with the help center to address any issues quickly and maintain momentum during implementation.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: While we’re discussing optimizing business processes, understanding venture capital management software is equally important for investors.
Implementation Checklist
- Timeline: Weeks to months depending on customization
- Team Size: Project lead, department heads, IT support
- Budget: Software cost, potential professional services for complex integrations
- Technical: Stable internet, mobile device support, AppConnect integrations
- Success Factor: Clear workflow customization and comprehensive user training
Overall, Insightly setup is generally straightforward, and its user-friendly design aids adoption, but proper planning for customization and training is key.
Bottom Line
Is Insightly the right CRM for your business?
This Insightly review synthesizes my comprehensive analysis, providing a clear final recommendation and helping you understand who will benefit most from this versatile platform.
1. Who This Works Best For
Growing small to mid-sized businesses.
Insightly is ideal for businesses that need a unified CRM platform integrating sales, marketing, and project management. What I found about target users is that teams needing to streamline lead-to-project workflows will find immense value in its capabilities.
- 🎯 Bonus Resource: While this review focuses on general business solutions, specialized industries might find my guide on dairy management software helpful for unique needs.
You’ll succeed if your business seeks a user-friendly solution to centralize customer data and manage complex projects effectively.
2. Overall Strengths
Integrated CRM and project management are exceptional.
The software shines with its intuitive interface and robust project management features that seamlessly integrate with sales processes, providing a holistic view. From my comprehensive analysis, Insightly’s AppConnect enhances utility with diverse integrations, extending its reach across your business applications.
These strengths mean your team can manage leads, opportunities, and post-sale projects within a single, efficient platform.
3. Key Limitations
Pricing structure can be a considerable factor.
While powerful, Insightly’s pricing can lean higher for advanced tiers, and its free plan offers more limited user and contact allowances. Based on this review, some users reported inconsistencies in customer support response times and overall effectiveness, which could be a concern.
I’d say these limitations are manageable trade-offs for the comprehensive functionality, but consider them if your budget is extremely tight.
4. Final Recommendation
Insightly earns a strong recommendation.
You should choose this software if your growing small to mid-sized business needs a unified, user-friendly platform for CRM, marketing, and integrated project management. From my analysis, this solution is particularly compelling for growth-oriented organizations prioritizing streamlined workflows from lead generation to project completion.
My confidence level is high for businesses seeking a comprehensive yet accessible platform for building lasting customer relationships.
Bottom Line
- Verdict: Recommended
- Best For: Small to mid-sized businesses needing integrated CRM and project management
- Business Size: Growth-oriented companies across nearly every industry
- Biggest Strength: Unified platform with strong CRM, marketing, and project management features
- Main Concern: Higher pricing for advanced tiers and occasional customer support inconsistencies
- Next Step: Request a demo to see Insightly’s features in action
This Insightly review shows strong value for growing businesses, particularly those focused on integrating sales and project management workflows for improved efficiency and customer insights.