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QuickBase: The final frontier!
June 24, 2014

QuickBase: The final frontier!

Cody Sheets | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

N/A

Modules Used

  • Apps
  • Formula Changes
  • Content Storage
  • Custom HTML/CSS pages

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBase

QuickBase gives us up to the minute details on our agent's calls, for a department working with financial services. We use it in our financial services contract, and track call details, agent's notes, and store vital information that allows us to succeed. We get call driver analytics, sales tracking, customer life management, and a variety of bonus features that allow us to get more functionality based on what we can think up at any given moment. The best part about it really, is that we are able to get people who have no idea how to use a database to use QuickBase because of the user friendly UI. While things have not always been perfect with QuickBase, it has saved us many many hours of work, and has drastically increased the data we are able to use to improve our business from day to day, and month to month.
  • Customizable user forms: Allows us to build forms that are relevant to us, with data that actually helps us build cases for creating new and innovative solutions. This is the big data tool for businesses that want to make it for themselves, instead of paying someone way too much money to design a custom solution.
  • Customizable Fields: Create fields that get the information you want. We don't have to go to school for years, hire an advanced developer, or waste valuable time trying to train employees on how to code. QuickBase has fields already made, and formula fields if you want to do something completely different.
  • Rules: Rules are great. They allow you to customize your forms by person, by role, or a variety of other factors. Get your form to do what you want when you want it, and without the need to know advanced If/AND code related programming. It makes things simple, and complete.
  • File Storage: You can get files up to 80mb uploaded to the form, so you can attach that sales form, that invoice, or receipt. It can be used for a variety of different ways, and its versatile enough to allow for version tracking, to see when and who changed the upload.
  • Customizable home pages: Change the view each role sees from the moment you log in. You can include reports, web pages, or custom HTML/CSS pages and their functionality into QuickBase, and this allows for a versatile program that can meet needs that most people didnt even know they have.
  • Reports: You don't have to export reports to Excel to build the reports you need. You can get detail, summary, graph reports, calendars, and a variety of other solutions that meet your data reporting needs, without ever touching Excel. But even if QuickBase can't do the one advanced thing you need, it has an export feature so you can get that done in Excel too.
  • Price: QuickBase is low cost when compared with other solutions that exist in the industry. It can allow a small business to create the kind of reporting/process that an Enterprise level business pays someone to customize for them, and at little to no extra cash.
  • Branding: You get to change the branding, and can even access the API for QuickBase in order to build your own logon pages. It really is versatile enough to create solutions that make it truly YOURS.
  • Rules: While they are strengths, they just don't add enough functionality to make them truly the solution we all need. They are too rigid--forget making more than one rule using the same field. QuickBase demands we use the field only once in our rules, or only the last rule that uses the field will actually apply. This creates a problem when you want to do multiple things based on the selections a user makes in one drop down.
  • PHP/JavaScript/Jquery: We get to customize html, and we get to customize the css on html pages in our QuickBase, but we still don't get PHP, JQuery, JS, or a variety of other coding options within it, and this creates limitations in the functionality we can dream up. Intuit has come so close to giving us the solution we need, but they have left us so far from the holy grail we imagined.
  • Form Limitations with roles: If you have more than one form, and you want a single role to be able to use multiple forms from the same table, its next to impossible. You can get it done, but the steps to do so are convoluted, and the final end result is a Frankenstein of a report that you have to filter to death in order to get any real functionality.
  • Roles: You get to customize access, and even change the pages that users access, but the process to set up those roles is so work intensive when new tables are added, or you want to remove access to a table altogether. The process becomes manual and slow, and creates a workload to do a simple change. QuickBase sets us up for a beautiful interface, but then lets us down with sub-par functionality.
  • Metrics reporting that has created faster conversations, better restructuring to processes, and rapidly changed the way that we identify issues in our solutions.
  • Increase in handle time as forms can be time intensive.
  • Decrease in the unknown that every company faces by being able to customize the areas that you want to show illumination on in your industry.
  • A somewhat archaic storage space has limited our ability to keep historical data. There should be an option to connect to Drop Box, or at least to increase the Database storage size. As it stands now we are forced to export to excel, save the backups, then clear the database in order to continue the functionality we are used to. Far too much work for what we get.
  • QuickBase has brought order to our agents in terms of process. We can now streamline the way they interact with customers, and with each other. It has also be instrumental in tracking the sales we have/leads process, and has allowed interconnectivity between quickbase apps and tables.
  • Zoho CRM,Basecamp,Wrike,Clarizen
I think it is the most cost effective/user friendly combo on the market. When you compare pricing to features, QuickBase seems to take the competition down with ease. Not once have we seen ourselves regretting the move to this Database software, and I think that trend will continue far into the future--especially with Intuit increasing and changing features on a regular basis. In the two years of using QuickBase, I have seen far more updates, and functionality added to QuickBase than have been added to any of the other products mentioned. And on top of this, the support you get from QuickBase is phenomenal, even as its in the form of tickets.
To be honest, we will continue to use QuickBase because it works. And it doesn't just work once or twice, it always works. The only time I have found that there is an error with the way it works is when I have made a mistake; albeit the rules setup has made that an easy thing to do. QuickBase has earned its place in the project management/process management field, and I think that it will meet the needs we have for years to come. I especially like the way they take feedback, and the ability to let them know the ideas we have to make it a better product.
If you are tight on budget, need custom solutions without hiring a designer/programmer, or want something that can be a versatile option for your tracking/reporting needs, then QuickBase is for you. If you have a large number of users though, it can start to become pricier, as you will more than likely need to move into the Unlimited Users option, or begin looking into a custom solution that no longer costs you extra on a month to month basis.

Using QuickBase

150 - Sales: Allows us to track the leads process from beginning to end for both our agents and our sales team

Tier 1 Callbacks: Allows us to monitor the call backs that need to be scheduled with customers, allowing us to sidestep the limitations of our CRM.

Tier 2 Escalations: Allows us to track the calls that needed extra support to get resolutions!
1 - About 1 day of personal experimentation with the software. Someone who can learn processes efficiently, and has good time management skills. It's easy to be sucked into the QuickBase support site, but you want someone who can absorb process, and not require it except as a reference in really tough spots.