Outlook Customer Manager is to retire, what replaces it?

Lots of people on here who sound like you know what your talking about.  Anybody have the patience to dumb it down for an old man with limited computer knowledge.  This morning I opened my laptop and I couldn't send or receive emails with my outlook program.  In bouncing around trying to find out what was going on a screen popped up for a couple of seconds saying something about Microsoft retired Outlook.  I've been using this Outlook program since I learned to use computers in 2007.  I can get my emails elsewhere.  Not a problem.  The rest of the Outlook program still seems to be working.  All my documents, address book, saved emails and files, calendar, the Microsoft Office program. 

Is any of that stuff in danger of disappearing?

Is there another program anyone would recommend similar to Outlook that you can buy?  (I think I bought this Outlook program when I bought my first computer.  There's been no monthly charge which is important cause I'm retired.)  Thanks for any help you can give.

Hi,

I used to use OCM at work. We have grown from a small startup into a medium enterprise. We had to look for OCM replacement. Fortunately, there are plenty of CRM systems that you can test for free.

Unfortunately all the free CRM systems provide only some functions or modules. You actually cannot try all the version and see the way it wors in real life. Therefore we hade to look for a CRM embedded in Outlook that provides all the functions in a free trial already. One of our colleagues who used to have his own small company before he joined us used to wrok with eWay-CRM. It is a perfect tool for SME, embedded in Outlook and has its mobile app. We are very happy. And we tried it for free for first month. Compared to other CRMs the subscription is really affordale.

https://www.eway-crm.com/crm-integrated-with-outlook/

Best,

Camilla

I agree 100% with JoieH comment. Please advise....

OCM will not be replaced but Microsoft will recommend customers to use Nimble, https://www.nimble.com/ocm-migration/.  

I've just spent two full weeks evaluating Nimble, HubSpot, Apptivo, and ACT! None of them is very good, all are going to require extensive time to bring up to speed, and all cost quite a bit of money on a monthly basis. And, frankly, none of them are as good as Outlook 2010, with the Activities Tab and linked Contact field on tasks. They have been dumbing down Outlook since 2010 and it's maddening.

Nimble will not import active or legacy deals. Unless you are starting only with new deals from scratch, you will bang your head against the wall repeatedly over this point. HubSpot will import everything, but it will take multiple rounds of importing, after cleaning up in Excel, and you may still be unhappy with the results. I spent the most time on HubSpot but realized it doesn't let you do the ONE thing I really want out of any CRM, which is send an email to every prospect considering a project AT ONCE. At least, not without upgrading to a much higher service level that makes no sense for a company my size.

But the reason I wanted to respond to this thread is that at one point I actually got someone from Microsoft on the phone and he shared an interesting piece of information: He said they were dumbing down Outlook because they realized features like Activities and linking had value to customers and they wanted to move those customers to Microsoft's CRM. And he didn't with "Why are you so stupid?" tone of voice.

So, there you go. The reason they removed the Activities tab and other elements from Outlook so that they could sell you those features in Dynamics CRM.