Quick Base - The quick and easy way to get everyone on the same page
Updated July 10, 2018

Quick Base - The quick and easy way to get everyone on the same page

Beth Hilleke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Quick Base

Quick Base is our primary (and only!) CRM solution. We use it across the organization to manage lead generation, to track the sales process, and to provide everyone with immediate access to our customers' - past and current - contact information, product license information, and past history of support issues.Additionally, we use it to track the features, release dates, and other pertinent information about our software.

Quick Base has solved the primary issue for which we implemented it. We were using three, or maybe even four, completely separate CRM systems for sales, support, and general info. Quick Base has allowed us to get everything into one system, and to clean up the widely-disparate styles of data entry.

Reports that used to take days to generate using SQL queries from the various databases, spreadsheets, and good old pencil and paper now really and truly are generated with about four clicks of the mouse. Choose the report, choose the filters, and go.
We love Quick Base.
  • Rapid development and implementation of the solution. No database experience is necessary (though it can be helpful). No coding experience is necessary. A completely new user can have something quite respectable to show for his/her work in under an hour. Of course, a more complicated database/app requires more work.
  • Quick Base is scalable. I personally know people who use Quick Base in organizations that are thousands of times larger than ours.
  • Quick Base support is amazing, as is the Quick Base customer community. I have yet to have a question that someone can't answer, and answer understandably - and often the answer already exists.
  • Quick Base allows (depending on permissions) each user to pull his/her own reports, style the data pages in ways that fit their needs, and push information to others in a meaningful and useful way. Admins have different needs from tech support, yet they can all use the same database, just view the information differently.
  • Some of the scaling on the screen doesn't always play well, particularly when printing a report.
  • The on-screen form view constrains fields oddly. But you can work around this by judicious placing of fields on forms.
  • The labels on checkbox fields are in an awkward place.
The building of our first app was, quite honestly, painful. BUT it was not the fault of Quick Base. Rather, it was the fault of three different systems, with different database structures and less-than-optimum standardization of data entry, all of which had to be collated into one Quick Base "app."

But once it was built and the data cleanly migrated/entered, WOW. Want a different view? Bingo, it's done. Need something completely different, like a way to track inbound phone leads? Snap your fingers and there it is.

My boss used to ask me for reports from our old system, and it would take me the better part of a day to get the info he needed. Now, he gets the information himself and formats it how he wants it. Yes, much faster, much easier - and much more fun.
  • act!, BridgeTrak, Sage Accounting and Microsoft CRM
None of the alternatives we investigated, or used, gave us the flexibility to structure the data to reflect how we view our customers and contacts. Either we were constrained by the pre-existing data table relationships, or by the lack of ability to do everything in one platform, or by the time it would take to implement and maintain the system.
Absolutely no help required from IT, unless of course, you are not allowed to upload or download information. (Uploading spreadsheets is a great way to get data entered in the first place.) It is all web-based, so really all you need is a browser on a computer. A desktop/laptop works better; I personally wouldn't want to try developing an app on a tablet or phone.

A basic knowledge of relational databases is useful, but it can also be picked up on the fly. And there are a multitude of how-to posts and videos available to walk you through just about anything you can't figure out.

A rather sophisticated application can be built in about five clicks if you download one of the many amazing pre-built apps in the Quick Base library. They can also be customized with great ease, renaming fields, removing fields, and adding relationships.
Maintaining an app is almost not a task - Quick Base does a fantastic job of updating the back end on a monthly basis. The only maintenance necessary would be of the internal "why do we even need this field" sort of thing.
  • Building and deploying business applications faster
  • Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
  • Improving collaboration across one or more teams
  • Solving a specific business challenge
  • Building and deploying an application (or multiple applications) that meets our exact needs
We have gone from the idea stage to the deployment stage of a fairly sophisticated app with just two people working on it for part of an afternoon. This is amazing. I mean, can you get your IT department to get something done - and deployed - this quickly?

The business insights are truly fantastic. Slice and dice the data however you want, and you can see trends and concentrations you didn't know even existed.

Since we are all on one platform, looking at one database, the "I didn't know" excuse is no longer valid. That took a while to sink in; old habits die hard and when you aren't used to having the information available, you don't even think to look for it.
Well, Quick Base doesn't develop applications. The user develops them on the Quick Base platform, but Quick Base has nothing to do with the development or the update process. Think of it like Legos. The Lego company provides the blocks, but what you build out of the blocks is up to you. Whether it works or not is up to you. How you change it, using the available blocks, is up to you. If your tower falls, it's not the fault of the Legos.

Having said all that, one thing that helps a lot - and that many people omit and later wish they hadn't omitted - is to carefully document the use of each field as the app is developed. For example, when two years down the road you go to change something, you don't inadvertently cause chaos by changing a field you sort of remembered as being non-essential. Quick Base provides all sorts of safeguards, from showing you exactly where in each app the field is used: how many times, in which formulae, what relationships use the field, what forms and reports use the field, and that sort of thing.

Just remember, what you do with Quick Base doesn't really have much to do with what Quick Base does. You control your app, your fields, your relationships, your tables, your reports, and your users.
Price-wise, unless you are a very rich small business, it doesn't make sense for anything much under 10 employees. I would love to use it for my church, but the price is prohibitive.
Amazingly well-suited for a company that wants one platform to solve multiple problems.
Quick Base is accessible from wherever you are via your phone or tablet or laptop/desktop. On the road? No problem. Working at home late at night? It's there.
A great time-saver is the dynamic search - a common thing, to be sure, but one that is very useful. Start typing in the search field and it filters as you type. I love it.

Evaluating Quick Base and Competitors

Yes - Kemma/Dell Bridgetrak - too many constraints, too complicated for new young people to use. (Or else they're just lazy)
ACT! - too many people had been using it without attention to following standards, so the data were miserably dirty.
And the people who had to use both were tearing their hair out!
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Quick Base gave us the ability to build our own solution without having to code it - to include the pieces of information we wanted structured in tables that make sense to us, and to design meaningful reports that weren't constrained by what someone else thought we needed to have.
I really don't think we would have changed anything. We did thorough research, we had trials of several products, we discussed what the ramifications of maintaining the status quo would be, and we are happy with our decision.

Using Quick Base

Quick Base has done everything we have asked it to do and then some. Our original goal was to have one system for CRM that encompassed both the sales process and the customer management. We have gone w-a-y beyond that with analytics, project management, system bug logging, and historical effort reporting.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
Lots to learn
  • Reports - sorting, filtering, and arranging the data are almost mindless.
  • Exporting data - get what you want (see above), click, and you have a totally editable and usable set of data in a file/spreadsheet
  • Jazzing it up visually - adding colored tabs, icons, and images to guide the user
  • Setting up table-to-table relationships - even if you understand this, learning another system's terminology is challenging
  • Seeing how your tables are connected - I really think there should be a better way to see what fields are available and how they are related.
  • Knowing where to go for help. There are almost too many options: standard help, user community, knowledge base, feedback, personal support rep. . .