Imposes Design Limitations and Unnecessary Functionality

  • Dan Knauss

    (@dpknauss)


    10 years, 1 month ago

    I tested PauPress (including the Pro version) for use on a basic inbound marketing site and ended up using an alternative CRM plugin suite. PauPress is better suited for membership sites or simple storefronts where CRM features are needed, but it will not support traditional lead/demand generation where visitors get a link or download in exchange for a form they submit.

    Leads tracked through PauPress forms become WordPress users whose profiles can be customized and accessed by customers/members on the front end. This is great if you need it but totally unnecessary if you don’t want to use PauPress for a store or membership site.

    The strongest and most unique feature in PauPress (compared to the alternatives) are the complex custom logical search filters you can build to drill down on your users/leads.

    The worst thing about PauPress is that all forms must be displayed in a panel rolled out from the top or bottom of the page. The developer states (in early 2014) that normal form embedding in the page content will be possible soon, but until it is you cannot create a standard landing page.

    The rollout panel is not a common interface design patterns for forms for a good reason: it is confusing, repetitive, and eventually annoying. You can end up having your visitors spending a lot of time pulling down the panel and interacting with it while it covers up your core content. The panels will also cause problems with themes using design elements like sticky menus.

    Additionally, the PauPress styles for forms are non-standard and not very well designed; they will override your theme styles, and there is no support built into the backend for shutting them down in favor of alternative styling. I didn’t see documentation on this either.

    The backend interface for PauPress takes over the normal WordPress user manager and adds several menu items with several pages of tabs. The organization is not terribly intuitive, but it’s passable.

    In sum, I would say this is the second best CRM option in the plugin repository now, but it is built toward a niche use-case: sites that need a good, basic CRM tool with ecommerce capabilities. It will be substantially improved once the mandatory dropdown panel is retired or made optional.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author havahula

    (@havahula)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    hi Dan,

    First, thank you for taking the time to review PauPress, this kind of feedback is what makes WordPress thrive.

    The objective of PauPress was to create a super flexible, super extensible CRM that allows you to know your users. It’s anything but niche: you can use this information for lead generation, membership, help desk management – nearly anything where you have users and interactions with them.

    Some site owners will expose profiles to users, and some won’t; some people need e-commerce, e-mail and events and others don’t. There are so many ways that people track their users – PauPress is designed to handle them all.

    Our query-based search allows sophisticated data-mining as well as practical automation like what to do when a certain user performs a certain action on the site. This is an area of growth for us and I don’t think there is anything else quite like it in the WordPress world.

    Regarding forms, I hear what you’re saying. Some people like the freedom that totally theme-independent panels provide, but for rest of the world, we are currently beta-testing embedded forms as part of a major Forms & Profile overhaul.

    Thanks again for the comments. I hope you’ll check out the new builds coming later this spring.

    Thread Starter Dan Knauss

    (@dpknauss)

    10 years, 1 month ago

    I see you rolled out an update with the embeddable forms today. That’s great; really makes PauPress more usable.

    Have you thought about adding support for the leading custom form plugins? A CRM really just needs to track user interaction, not create custom forms or handle sales. If PauPress worked with Gravity Forms and WooCommerce for example, you’d probably make a lot of sales on the strength of their brands and large customer bases. (Without resorting to hosted services, there is no off the shelf CRM solution for WP except one dubious item in Code Canyon.) Same thing for Genesis theme compatibility, or simply a design agnostic interface. Stick with the WP backend interface elements and let the active theme be responsible for the form styling.

    IMO simplicity is best. Simple would be CRM plugin does CRM, ecommerce does ecommerce, custom forms does forms, theme does front end design, and core user manager handles users.

    artisanden

    (@artisanden)

    10 years ago

    I agree that some functions are not really that useful, while Paupress lacks features that are really needed. However, it’s a very promising plugin and I purchased the Pro one for a trial run after contacting the developers- but I think it’s absolutely worth it to keep it.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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