RapidStart CRM FAQ

RapidStart CRM is a simple-to-use CRM application. Within RapidStart CRM, you can track potential customers (Prospects) and manage your current customers (Contacts and Accounts).

In addition, you can create and track Sales Opportunities and Service Cases for your Contacts and Accounts.

Addons, ours and others, can quickly and easily add more capabilities to RapidStart CRM.

There is no catch. We have been offering our  RapidStart CRM apps since 2015 at a very low cost, and at this stage, we have recovered all of our development costs.

We decided that as many people as possible should be able to use them for success with Microsoft Business Applications, and eliminating the cost will open our apps up to people who had to struggle to get approvals and other things for what was a very inexpensive app in the first place.

Many people start with our apps and then seek to expand their capabilities. While they can utilize any competent partner or do it themselves if they are comfortable, enough people decide to engage our services, as the original developers of RapidStart CRM, to assist.

In addition, we have developed some paid Addons to add valuable capabilities quickly.

Sure, imagine that the “Platform” is a $5 hamburger. Any of Microsoft’s first-party apps, for example, Dynamics 365 Sales, adds a thick slab of cheese to that hamburger for an additional $90.

Alternatively, RapidStart CRM adds a very thin slice of cheese to that hamburger for no additional cost. If you ever outgrow RapidStart CRM, you can opt to have our free slice replaced with their $90 slab on the same hamburger. The hamburger itself would not have to be replaced.

Dynamics 365 Sales Professional and Dynamics 365 Service Professional are Microsoft’s first-party applications targeting Small and Mid-Sized businesses. These were not built for SMB from scratch but are instead feature-limited versions of Microsoft’s existing Enterprise applications.

RapidStart CRM is not a handicapped version of a larger product; instead, it was purpose-built specifically, from the ground up, to be a simple-to-use CRM Application.

The customizability and extensibility of RapidStart CRM and Microsoft’s applications are identical as they are all built on Microsoft’s Dataverse platform.

In addition to being much easier to use, RapidStart CRM is also significantly less expensive since it runs on Power Apps licensing as low as $5/PUPM, versus Dynamics 365 Professional, which costs $65/PUPM (retail).

We wrote an expanded post about this comparison here.

RapidStart CRM is a Model-Driven Power App built on Microsoft’s Dataverse (formerly called Common Data Service (CDS)) platform.

Dataverse is the same platform that Microsoft’s first-party apps, like Dynamics 365 Enterprise Sales or Service, are also built on.

Every business is different. That’s why all of our RapidStart CRM apps, including the purpose-built industry ones, are fully extendable/customizable.

Depending on how technical you are, you can customize them yourself. But we know that many customers will not have the time or interest to learn how to customize themselves, so we offer paid services from our parent company, Forceworks Global.

We created an Installation Steps page here

Yes, they can! After adding them as Guest users to your Azure Active Directory account, they can be given access to RapidStart CRM. Note: you will still need a $5 Power Apps Per App license for each of them.

Yes, however, as of today, moving from RapidStart CRM to Microsoft’s first-party applications is a migration project. But our observation is that once customers start using RapidStart CRM and customize and extend it to meet 100% of their organization’s needs, moving to the first-party apps is not really an option they even consider.

We have over 100,000 users of RapidStart CRM… and are unaware of a single organization that has moved from RapidStart CRM to Microsoft’s first-party applications.

RapidStart CRM was purposefully designed to run on the low-cost Power Apps Per App plan @$5 USD/pupm from Microsoft. 

RapidStart CRM can also run on the Power Apps Per User and Dynamics 365 licenses. 

You can buy the licenses from your Microsoft Partner or directly from Microsoft… there is no difference in cost.

You are probably hearing about costs for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Apps.

While everybody else would prefer you buy those more expensive licenses since they generate more revenue, RapidStart CRM was designed to run on the Power Apps Per App “platform” license for only $5.

Microsoft recently separated its first-party apps (Sales, Service, etc.) from the platform they run on and made that same platform available for ISVs like us to build on. It’s one of those Win-Win situations.

You do, but the Power Apps capabilities included with Microsoft 365 are limited.

RapidStart CRM apps require a Dataverse environment to run, so you will need the low-cost Power Apps Per App Plan. See minimum licensing above.

No problem. RapidStart CRM apps can be installed on any Dynamics 365 Customer engagement licenses, in addition to the much lower cost Power App Per App plan. They will work the same.

RapidStart CRM is a free app. We have created a free support forum here, but from our team, there is no free support. For our low-cost Support Options click here.