Looking for an AsterCRM Alternative for Your Export Business?
If you are comparing CRM options for an export business, here is a straightforward account of what ExportCRM does — the export-specific workflow, documentation and incentive tracking — so you can judge the fit yourself.
People arrive at this page from a search for an AsterCRM alternative, usually while shortlisting CRM options for an export business. Rather than tell you what any other product does or does not do, this page sets out precisely what ExportCRM covers, so you can hold it against your own requirements and against whatever else you are considering.
We take that approach deliberately. Competitor feature claims age badly, and a comparison written by one vendor about another is not a reliable basis for a purchase decision. What follows is factual about ExportCRM only. For anything about another product, ask that vendor directly and get it in writing.
ExportCRM is an export CRM and ERP built by EasyWork Solutions for export houses, manufacturers and trading companies. It covers the full path from lead to order to production to documentation to dispatch to government claim, which is a wider span than a CRM alone normally attempts.
The problem
What exporters usually find missing when they shortlist a general CRM
The order stops at the sale
A CRM records that you won the order. The production, documentation and dispatch that follow live somewhere else entirely.
No export document generation
Commercial invoices, packing lists and declarations end up in separate templates, retyped per shipment.
Single-currency assumptions
Export invoicing needs multiple currencies and published exchange rates, not a single home currency.
No concept of a scheme claim
RODTEP, ROSCTL and Duty Drawback have no natural home, so claims are tracked in a side spreadsheet or missed.
The solution
What ExportCRM actually includes
Lead and buyer management
Enquiries through qualification to conversion, with follow-up reminders and proforma invoices.
Configurable production pipeline
Stages you rename, reorder or remove so the pipeline matches your process rather than a fixed template.
Export document generation
Nine document types generated from order data as PDFs, including invoices, packing list and declarations.
Multi-currency invoicing
Invoice across 22 currencies with DGFT exchange rates refreshed automatically.
Incentive tracking
RODTEP, ROSCTL and Duty Drawback tracked per order against government receivables.
OCR document search
Attachments are OCR-extracted and indexed, so any document is findable from one search bar.
How it works
How an evaluation usually goes
Bring a real order
Ask to enter one of your genuine orders end to end rather than watching a prepared demo dataset.
Generate the documents
Produce the document set from that order and check it against what you actually send buyers.
Follow it to the claim
Track the order through dispatch to the incentive claim, which is where export-specific tools differ most.
Why we will not publish a feature-by-feature comparison
It would be easy to fill this page with a two-column table showing ExportCRM winning every row. Vendors do it constantly, and buyers have learned to discount it entirely — which makes the exercise worse than useless, because it also signals that the rest of the page may be similarly constructed.
There is a more practical objection too. Software changes. A comparison table written today describes a competitor's product as it was on the day someone looked at it, and it will not be revised when that changes. Publishing it as current fact would be misleading even if every row were accurate at the time of writing.
So this page states what ExportCRM does and stops there. If you want a comparison, the reliable method is to run the same real order through each shortlisted system and see which one handles it without workarounds. That takes an afternoon and tells you more than any vendor's table.
What makes export different from general CRM territory
General CRM systems are built around a sales process that ends at the won deal. That model fits many businesses well. It fits export badly, because in export the won deal is roughly the midpoint — everything expensive and error-prone happens afterwards, and it stays tied to the buyer the whole way.
Which certificates a consignment needs is dictated by where the buyer is. When the order finally closes financially is dictated by the terms that buyer agreed. Which costs the operations team ends up absorbing was settled by a delivery term negotiated long before production began. None of this hands off cleanly to a separate system, because each fact originates on the customer side and takes effect on the production side.
This is the structural reason export businesses running a general CRM alongside a general accounting or production system so often describe it as double entry. The same order exists twice under different identifiers, and the fields each system treats as central are frequently the ones the other lacks entirely.
An export-specific platform resolves that by treating the order as one object throughout its life — from the enquiry that produced it to the scheme claim that finally closes it.
Questions worth asking any export software vendor
Whatever you end up choosing, a short set of specific questions will tell you more than a feature walkthrough. Ask to see one of your own orders entered end to end, not a prepared demo record — demo data is always shaped to flatter the software.
Ask where the Incoterm and destination-specific requirements live, and whether they are first-class fields or free-text notes. Ask to see the complete document set generated from that order, and check whether the documents are produced from the order data or typed into templates that happen to sit inside the system.
Ask what per-order profit looks like after freight, overheads and incentive credits, and whether that figure is computed or assembled by you in a report. Ask to see incentive claim status for an order that has already shipped.
Finally, ask what happens when a buyer changes quantity mid-production. Every export order changes after confirmation, and how a system absorbs that change — whether it propagates to documents, costing and the pipeline, or has to be re-entered in several places — is the single most revealing thing you can learn in a demo.
Who ExportCRM suits, and who it does not
ExportCRM suits export houses, manufacturers and trading companies that are shipping regularly enough that orders no longer fit in one person's head, and whose difficulty is spread across the whole cycle rather than concentrated in one function.
It suits businesses with real documentation load — multiple destination markets, varying certificate requirements, or scheme claims worth tracking. It suits businesses where per-order margin is uncertain because costs arrive at different times from different places.
It is less useful for a very small exporter shipping to a handful of long-standing buyers where the owner personally knows every order. That is a documentation and continuity risk rather than a software problem, and a platform bought to solve it usually ends up being one more thing that one person maintains.
It is also not an accounting package, and does not attempt to be. Exporters running formal books will continue to do so; ExportCRM covers the operational and export-specific layer that accounting software is not designed to hold.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good AsterCRM alternative for an export business?
That depends on what your business actually needs, which is why this page describes ExportCRM's own coverage rather than making claims about other products. ExportCRM is an export CRM and ERP covering leads and buyers, a configurable production pipeline, generation of nine export document types, multi-currency invoicing across 22 currencies with DGFT rates, and RODTEP, ROSCTL and Duty Drawback tracking per order. Compare that against your requirements and against any other product you are considering.
Why does this page not compare features side by side?
Because a comparison table written by one vendor about another is not a reliable basis for a decision, and because software changes — a table published today would describe a competitor's product as it was when someone looked at it, and would not be revised afterwards. We would rather state what ExportCRM does accurately than publish claims about a product we do not build. Run the same real order through each shortlisted system instead; it is a far better test.
Is ExportCRM a CRM or an ERP?
It spans both, because an export order does not divide cleanly between them. The order is simultaneously a customer commitment and a production instruction for its entire life — the buyer's destination drives documentation, their terms decide when the cycle closes, and the Incoterm agreed during the sales conversation determines which costs land in operations. ExportCRM covers leads and buyers through to production, documentation, invoicing and government claims.
What should I test when evaluating export software?
Enter one of your own real orders end to end rather than watching a prepared demo. Generate the full document set from it and check it against what you actually send buyers. Follow the order through dispatch to the incentive claim. And ask what happens when a buyer changes quantity mid-production — every export order changes after confirmation, and how the system absorbs that reveals more than any feature list.
Which types of export business is ExportCRM built for?
Export houses, manufacturers and trading companies shipping regularly enough that orders no longer fit in one person's head, particularly those with genuine documentation load across multiple destination markets and scheme claims worth tracking. It is less suited to very small exporters serving a handful of long-standing buyers where the owner knows every order personally, and it is not an accounting package.
Judge it against your own order
Book a free demo and run one of your real export orders through ExportCRM end to end — enquiry, production, documents, dispatch and claim.