Customer Reviews

GOLDMINE 6.0 Business Contact Manager

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

We purchased multiple copies of goldmine to share databases, EVERY step of using goldmine is overly complicated and fraught with data loss.

This is a VERY feature-rich product, but apparently only lifelong goldmine users and the developers know how to use this product.

Simple things like merging data, importing records, resolving duplicate records each turn into nightmares.

Support from Front Range Solutions is non-existant -- that is unless you pay (a deal at 35$/call) EVEN INSTALLATION required a support call. Add at least 10 calls to your budget for this product.

I have managed numerous complex software developments and have rarely seen software this obtuse.

I moved to GoldMine five years ago as it was rated higher than ACT. Four years ago, whenever my computer crashed (remember those days?), I would loose all the data I had entered or changed. It took about a hundred calls to the help desk, over six months to get them to fix the problem. They would like to say it was my problem...but it ended up being theirs. It was a nightmare.
More recently, the 6.X version came out. There are still glitches...the search screen is 3x the size of my 21" screen and won't resize like it should. I am waiting, now over 5 months for this glitch to get fixed.
Yesterday I tried to print out my calendar from the year 2000 to review my appointments. Every option does not allow you to print out the calendar with completed appointments...it just prints out blank pages with the date and no information. After reviewing the website, scaning the news groups, and 3 emails to the help desk...still no answer. The help desk, by the way, doesn't seem to be able to read English. They respond with a generic message each time...as if they haven't even read my message. Each time they write back "Go to File, select Print Reports, and follow the options." They must be morons to think I didn't already try that.
Don't waste your money. Every client I know that works with GoldMine has nightmares.
I would like to move to ACT! but the export option to ACT! won't convert some of my fields properly...I have to figure out how to map the GoldMine fields to the appropriate ACT fields...maybe this program can work if you are a computer wiz...but if you aren't, beware.

I used ACT prior but I needed more flexibility with the data, rather than just a contact manager. I was talked into going to Goldmine. Yes, it offered me much more of data management that I needed in a contact manager. However, for such a great product the customer service and home office support is as bad as it gets. I have yet to get an answer to my questions and issues. Forget about using their home page. I just tried to upgrade to 6.0 from the email they sent me. Can't do it and can't find it on the home page. No surprise. If you get Goldmine, and it is a potentially great program, expect to find a local VAS for software assistance, you won't get it from the home office.

After spending 4 hours setting up goldmine I tried to send an email to a client only to find out that Goldmine doesn't support Microsoft exchange email servers. I called Frontrange technical support and they really could care less. What a joke, they got the goldmine and I got the SHAFT. DON'T PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT IT IS GARBAGE.

A friend told me that if you purchase Goldmine, make sure you buy training from a reseller. They were right... this product is not easy to use out of the box and requires a good amount of training needs before you can utilize its features. I have noticed several other products in the market that seem to be easier to use and cheaper!

After trying to use Goldmine for 6 months, I finally gave up and switched to Act. Sure, you can customize to your heart's content but it was too complicated and had too many "bells and whistles" to make it practical for me and my small business. I never did figure out how to print labels or use half the features, evern after hiring a private tutor to help me out. I had to type all my addresses into a separate file for labels, etc. before importing them. So why bother doing twice the work? I'm no techno-babe but this was just too much for me. I've had Act for a month now and use it all the time, much more user-friendly for me.

Stay away from this badly designed, badly written program. Yes, it does everything advertised but it is horrendously convoluted, non-intuitive, and frquently crashes the entire machine. I've never seen a piece of software that burns so much produciton time carrying out the simplistic funcitons that this program tries to provide. If you are looking for business software that will streamline the way you do things & help make you more productive, this is not it. If you buy it, you're wasting your money. If you use it already, you're wasting time, you can do much better than this garbage.

I have used many different contact management software systems in the past and Goldmine is definitely worth it's weight in gold! As an insurance agent, I have many customers who may have several different types of policies and I may send out many different types of marketing pieces based on my internal market research. Goldmine has allowed me to customize my database to gather specific information relevent to MY agency. It is not the easiest software in the world to learn but once I have invested the money in a good trainer, a world of options opened up. It's very easy to synch with Word or Excel and export client lists to labels or envelopes or form letters. It's great for running data-specific reports and has ultimately saved me thousands of man hours and money. More then worth it if you are willing to invest time and money into learning the system and all the customizable options.

This software is a nightmare. Do not buy this. Installation was a nightmare in itself, will not read BDE. Support is not a big help.

We've been using Goldmine after switching from Act! several years ago. Believe it or not, but back then, Goldmine was an elegantly written software, much more stable than Act!

But since then the featurelist grew, and so did the bugs! Goldmine has given our software department (and please note that we ARE a software company) nightmares. Especially moving from its internal database format to SQL server has been painfull to say the least. Although we do have a support contract, the local reseller refuses any serious help, because they just wants to sell us consultancy hours.

It's (16 bit aging Borland based) database interface cripples the performance of our SQL server from 9000 records/sec to about 20/sec. And despite modern server, network and client PC, performance is a laugh. The amount of crashes of the GM client make the situation barely workable.

If only we had an easy way to convert to another program, we would have abandonned this badly written and badly supported program years ago. Its a shame. Without the bugs it would remain our number one choice.