The top three questions people ask Your Nerdy Best Friend:

1. “How do you pronounce Ziesenis?” (click here)
2. “How many cats do you actually have?” (I’m embarrassed to answer)
3. “Where in the world do you find all these tools?” (keep reading)

It’s my job to keep up with all the latest tech tools because, well, you have a life. And a real job. And no desire at all to spend hours a day playing with apps.

But sometimes you need to do your own research, and that’s where sites like Capterra come in (or G2, TrustRadius and more).

Capterra Software Reviews

Capterra is a directory of thousands of tech tools for businesses and nonprofits, each with real reviews from real users who have tested and compared other tools to find the best ones. I find myself on Capterra at least once a month, pouring over its scores of categories to find new and proven tools to share. 

Quick Find

This is a long post with a bunch of info! Here’s a quick reference guide to help you find the info you want both in this post and in the YouTube Video Overview. The YouTube Video also has chapters in the description.

Capterra Pros

No Registration Required

I’ve been using Capterra for free and without registering for years. For this post I decided to register and go through their consultant process to find a Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM). Click here (or above) for the actual call with the consultant and all that I learned (a whole lot).

Lots of Information on Each Tool

Most of the tools in Capterra include summaries, video. screenshots, pricing, features, alternatives, comparisons and reviews.

Real Reviews by Real Users

One of the best features of Capterra is that professionals just like you often do very thorough reviews of each tool. They’ll tell you the pros and cons, compare them to other tools, tell you why they chose it and how they use it.

Easy Comparison Shopping

When you find a tool that interests you, Capterra will show you other tools in that category to compare side by side. You can see the pricing, the features, the reviews and more on the same page.

Lists of Top Tools

For major categories, Capterra has 128 Shortlists that help you see the top tools based on reviews, features and more criteria. Here’s a sample Shortlist for CRM Software, one of their top categories (and one I discussed with the Capterra Consultant). They analyzed 1290 products to find the best.

Industry-Specific Tools

Because Capterra focuses on the needs of small businesses, they have resources for very specific industries, such as Parks and Rec Software, Music School Software, Home Builder Software, Funeral Home Software, Church Management Software, Brewery Software and much, much more.

Personalized Recommendations

You can sort through the tools yourself, or with a click, you can ask a consultant to call you to help you find the best solutions. I tried this service out for this post, and you can watch the video here (look in the description for specific chapters). If you’re looking for a CRM solution or other company-wide technology, this is a great option. If you’re just exploring, check out why I thought it was kinda icky in the Capterra Cons below.

Hundreds of Tested Tech Tools

Dozens of categories let you discover and compare all kinds of technology — most of them for work. And most of them have dozens if not hundreds of real reviews, categorized by the size of business, primary uses and more.

Here are some of my favorite categories. As you can see, I kinda go crazy with Capterra resources.

Capterra Cons

If the Product Is Free…

If the product is free… YOU are the product. Capterra makes money from tech tool vendors that pay to be a part of their platform. As the consultant put it:

…it’s unbiased and biased at the same time. It’s biased by I’m only able to
recommend vendors that we partner with, but it’s unbiased as far as which ones I recommend because they all pay us the same.

Their partner relationship manifests itself via sponsored posts that get tools listed first (you can sort by most reviews or highest rated, etc.). Plus if you use their consultant services where you talk to someone, they’ll narrow down the list to recommendations. Then you’ll get a report with the top tools — and Capterra will tell their partners to call you.

Again, this can be very helpful if you’re looking to make a major purchase that will shape the tech infrastructure of your business. But for me, I’d rather eat pickle-flavored cupcakes than get calls from salespeople.