Highrise is a simple CRM, allowing the user to track leads and manage follow ups with zero learning curve. Highrise is only available and supported for existing customers. As of August 2018 Highrise is no longer available to new customers. Existing customers may still take advantage of Highrise.
We chose to work with the Basecamp product and along with it came Highrise. They're a great 37 signals package together. So we chose to work with Highrise because of Basecamp
Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
Easy batch upload of new contacts - if you gathered names and contact info for a bunch of people at an event or conference or what have you, put it in a spreadsheet and upload it for easy and efficient adding to the database.
Simple communication and outreach tracking - each user has an individualized dropbox email address; you can BCC:, CC:, or forward an email to or from a client or contact, and Highrise automatically associates and records that email with the contact in the database.
Task assignments - users can create and task assignments associated with specific contacts (ie - Send Suzy J. a gift box on Oct 1; Follow Marla K. and Billy Z. on Twitter & Facebook; Get an updated address from Nathan R.)
Tags - easily create lists of contacts who fit certain needs (I need a: food blogger, in TX, who has a Facebook page - we have "food blogger", "TX," and "Facebook" tags in our system) that is then exportable; also useful for knowing the important associations of a particular contact.
Im actually pretty happy with the system as it is. The best aspect of Highrise is that it is very easy to work with - no need to struggle with manuals and lengthy training.
Not really a problem I suppose but I pay for Highrise as part of a suite which includes other products - Basecamp, Backpack and Campfire. It would be nice to see more integration between these products.
Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
Highrise is simple to use and is run by the same folks who build Basecamp and 37Signals. We wanted something that would do the essentials without the cumbersome bells and whistles. Salesforce is almost too complicated if you don't have a whole sales operation and analytics division. One day we will probably outgrow Highrise, but not yet.
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
