Copper Software Stack

Stack Overview

Copper was using Zendesk for a while before introducing Intercom into the mix. They even doubled down on Zendesk for their community, before they decided to move away from it for their community.

After switching community software to Insided, there was very little keeping them on Zendesk alone. In the decision to simplify things, they opted to retire Zendesk and double-down on Intercom.

Believe it or not, their team even considered the switch from Copper to Salesforce internally as they began moving up-market, noting "our target customer is not necessarily ourselves" (a super astute point).

It was on further reflection that they decided to ultimately commit to using their own tool for the job. Evolving and integrating it more deeply with their existing stack to make it work for how they need it.

They also got to a point of somewhat outgrowing QuickBooks Online at the time of this consideration, with SaaS companies, sales tax, and reseller partner programs, the accounting side of things gets quite complex.

For that reason, they switched to NetSuite—although we believe they could have made QuickBooks Online work 😉

Tech Stack

Copper has gotten incredibly close with the team at Outfunnel, to the point of essentially white labeling their app integration and marketing email automation solution when you upgrade to the Copper Business tier.

We still believe it's better to go directly to Outfunnel than upgrading to the business tier of Copper solely for Outfunnel's capabilities. If you do choose to go this path, be sure to write to Outfunnel and tell them that we sent you, for which they will re-enable the email marketing automation solution for your team (it's hidden by default currently).

Copper has also partnered up with three60.io to build a somewhat native integration with both MailChimp and Square. If you enable those integrations in the integration area of Copper, that is who manages the native integrations (and there are further upgraded paid tiers to unlock more features with this integration).

Also note that Outfunnel has a powerful MailChimp integration that is quite a bit more customizable and goes a bit deeper than what you get with three60.io's solution, so if you are already using Outfunnel (or on Copper's business tier), we recommend using them instead of the "native integration".