It has not escaped me that the things that run the internet tend, very often, to come in threes. CRM. DNS. CLI. SQL. FTP. SSH. API. PHP. PDF. URL. CSS. CSV. IDE. The letters arrive in small, confident groups — each one a tiny ambassador for some empire of software you are not, strictly speaking, allowed inside.
The CRM was one of these, and Boss One had one. Of course he did. It had hundreds of features. It could send a message at three in the morning to anyone whose birthday fell on a Tuesday. It could split a list of customers by browser, country, year of birth, and which side of the road they preferred to drive on. It could do almost anything, in almost any combination, on almost any timetable. Boss One used about four of these capabilities, and the bill had not noticed.
The bill, in fact, had a very particular logic. The CRM did not charge for sending email — sending was unlimited, go on, send as many as you like. What it charged for, with a great and patient enthusiasm, was users. The more customers Boss One had on his list, the more he paid each month. The very thing the software existed to store had become the meter on its side.
I want to be fair: this is not one CRM’s fault. It is how the whole genre works. The price climbs in step with your success. You are punished, gently, for being good at the thing the software was sold to help with. The friendlier interpretation is that it grows with you. The less friendly one is that it is a tax on going well.
We wrote our own. It does the four things Boss One actually does. It has no birthday cake. It has no list of countries. The bill, when it arrives, says nothing.
So farewell, dear CRM. You were impressive in your way. You were full of features we never opened — like a hotel with hundreds of rooms and one bed. You taught us, by counter-example, what software ought to do: the thing in front of you, and then the next thing. Nothing more.
And — three letters, for old times’ sake — RIP.