Groundhogg vs NXT Cloud Chat – CRM, Inbox & OTP Login

Groundhogg is the best WordPress CRM & Marketing Automation plugin. Create flows, email campaigns, and have a CRM all within your WordPress site. Groundhogg 4.0 is here! Groundhogg 4.0 introduces the Flow Editor which makes Groundhogg the most powerful marketing automation tool currently available for WordPress. Seriously, no other WordPress CRM comes close, we checked. Create beautiful flows that convert leads into customers! Your customers will thank you. Do your business a favor and switch to Groundhogg. Epic WordPress CRM, Email & Marketing Automation Businesses that switch to Groundhogg save on average $240/m on CRM fees. 👉 Official Site | 📃 Documentation | 🎓 Training 🌎 Facebook Group | 📺 YouTube Channel | Ⅹ (Twitter) 🚀 14-day demo! Try before you buy. 🏆 2020 Gold Stevie Award Winner Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation for WordPress can help you dramatically improve how you acquire leads and make more sales! Our award winning WordPress CRM is the very best alternative to Keap, ActiveCampaign, HighLevel, HubSpot, MailChimp and other SaaS platforms. You don’t have to sacrifice CRM features when you switch to our self-hosted solution. In fact you can save $1,000s per year and have the added benefit of owning all your information. If you are an agency, WaaS, WordPress developer, LMS/Course Creator, WordPress freelancer, or CRM implementation service provider then the Groundhogg CRM and Marketing Automation suite is for you. 🪓 Ax the “Success Tax” Other SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM platforms will charge you more as your list grows. But not us! When using the Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation suite free or with any of our paid plans, we’ll never charge you more! 🚫 There are no limits on: Number of contacts Number of flows (automations) Number of emails sent When using Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation you will never be limited on the amount of anything! Unlike other SaaS platforms. Businesses save $1,000s a year after switching to Groundhogg. 💽 You own your data! The reality of SaaS CRMs is that you pay, and pay, and pay, and you invest all this money into a system to help your business thrive, but it can be taken away at a moments notice. Putting your data in a SaaS CRM is like renting an apartment, but with less protection and stingier landlords. You can get evicted at any time, for any reason. There is no recourse. This leaves your business exposed. What would happen to your business if your CRM was turned off? With Groundhogg you actually own your data! No one expect you can make impactful changes. 🔎 At A Glance Everything your business needs to thrive! Best in class CRM & Marketing Automation suite. Organize and segment your contacts to send more relevant communications. Automate your communications to save you time and increase your productivity. Collect data and mine your list so you can stop bleeding money. “The money is in the list!” Own your data so you’ll never be at the mercy of a SaaS company again. Control your expenses! There are NO LIMITS on how many contacts and users you can have! Groundhogg grows with you! Your costs do NOT increase when your lists grows. We don’t tax you for scaling up! Translate & configure into any language. 🌎 We care! Join our Community! Groundhoggers are very generous with their business intelligence. Just as the Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation team is deeply committed to helping! So we create lots of tools to help you succeed. 🚀 Free 1-Hour Quickstart Course! 🌎 Community care & support in the open Facebook group! 📺 Over 60 hours of easy Groundhogg Youtube tutorials! 📃 Use our Knowledge Centre to get the answers you need. 🎙️ Ask your burning questions in Office Hours on our live Facebook stream every Tuesday! 🤷‍♂️ Who can benefit from Groundhogg CRM and Marketing Automation? The Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation suite is being used by a wide variety of 3,000+ businesses in over 35+ countries. The diversity of use cases is huge! If you’re business is using WordPress, you can use Groundhogg. Here are some of the more common use cases: Digital Marketing Agencies WordPress Freelancers LifterLMS, LearnDash, or TutorLMS sites WooCommerce Sites WaaS Multisite Platforms Blogs and News Sites Coaches and Trainers Educators and Public Speakers Business Directories And many more! 💡 Made by people who know CRM & Marketing Automation! Our team is based in Niagara Falls, Canada! We’ve been helping small businesses implement CRM and Marketing Automation since 2014 working with tools like Keap, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot. After some time, it became apparent that there was a desperate need in the WordPress ecosystem for a capable CRM and Marketing Automation tool for WordPress site owners. One that could match SaaS platforms on features and reliability did not yet exist, so we built it! Starting in 2018, Adrian Tobey (founder) and his team took their combined 20+ years of experience in the CRM and Marketing Automation industry to create a better option for WordPress based businesses. We know flows, CRM, and marketing automation like the back of our hands! You can trust us to not only provide you with stellar software and support, but also provide you guidance on the kinds of flows and automation you should be building to get maximum value from our products. ❤️ Businesses Love Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation! 3,000+ businesses in 35+ countries are using Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation to launch their flows, grow their lists and scale their businesses. Here’s what a few of them had to say about our products and support! From 👨 Chris Badget, CEO of LifterLMS Great team, great product, and works with all the key WordPress tools I’m using. So nice to be able to do broadcast emails, tagging, and marketing automation all from inside my WordPress website. From 👨‍🦱 Francisco Opazo, Marketing Manager at BuddyBoss Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation is essential for many community builders, course creators, and membership site owners to achieve higher rates of engagement and retention. It simplifies many complex processes including onboarding, email marketing, flows, and enables you to scale your marketing efforts more efficiently. From 👨 Jonathan Denwood, Podcaster & Owner of WP-Tonic Agency Adrian and his team have really built a great WordPress based CRM that’s really competitive with the big guys like ActiveCampagin. I would highly recommend it to anybody who is running WordPress. There are over 110 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reviews for Groundhogg on WordPress.org and even more reviews on our Facebook Page! Kris Britton of the KAYBE marketing agency moved all of his clients from HubSpot to Groundhogg! Features Here are the tools you can use to launch your funnel, grow your list, and scale your business faster with Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation! 🕺 Straightforward CRM & Contact Management Advanced searching and filtering on any data Unlimited CRM custom fields Segmentation with tags Activity and email history Profile pictures Automatic location discovery CRM Notes CSV importing & exporting Sync contacts in the CRM with WordPress users View congregated information other WordPress plugins in the contact record. Quickly and easily segment your list with Groundhogg’s unrivaled search filter system! Groundhogg’s search filters give you more control than any other CRM to segment your list to find exactly the leads you’re looking for. Our integrations with WooCommerce, AffiliateWP, LearnDash, and more add additional search filters you can use to create powerful segments so you can send hyper targeted messages. ⚙️ Flows & Marketing Automation Features Create highly effective customer journeys with our easy to learn funnel builder. Over 30+ integrations available to connect the CRM with your favorite WordPress plugins. Create simple flows or complex ones! Measure the effectiveness of your flows with easy to read metrics. Start flows from forms, payments, new users, and more! Open API to add your own triggers & actions. 📧 Simple Email Marketing & SMTP Use images, headers, paragraph and more. Simple preview & testing. Perfect for sales emails, newsletters, transactional notifications and more. Send broadcast emails to your contact lists. Distinguish between transactional and marketing emails. 📈 Unmatched Analytics Reporting We track EVERYTHING in the CRM! Granular details of how your site is performing. See open rates, click through rates and conversions at a glance. Detailed results from your flows and broadcast emails. Integrate with Ecommerce to see revenue from your marketing. Learn more about your audience with demographic reporting. See which flows/emails are under-performing. Use campaigns to make comparing reporting results easier 🇪🇺 GDPR Ready Simple GDPR features to keep you compliant. Automatic preferences center, data download, and opt out. Track GDPR consent in your CRM Prevent marketing to those who withdraw consent. 🙌 Get more with premium features! Groundhogg CRM & Marketing Automation has 45+ extensions to help you expand and integrate Groundhogg to help you build your all in one solution. 👉 Bundle all of our incredible premium features into a flat rate plan. Yearly & monthly options available. You can also use our ⏱️ 14 day $1 demo to see a preview of these stellar features. Over 24+ extensions to help you handle more… Extend your CRM with Custom Fields Extend your CRM with Custom SMTP Extend your CRM with Advanced Email Preferences Extend your CRM with Superlinks Extend your CRM with Lead Scoring Extend your CRM with Booking Calendars Extend your CRM with Social Proof Popups Extend your CRM with Signed Contracts Extend your CRM with Company Management Extend your CRM with a Sales Pipeline Extend your CRM with Birthday Automation And many more… Over 30+ integrations to connect to your favorite WordPress plugins. Integrate with… Connect LifterLMS to your CRM | FREE COURSE Connect LearnDash to your CRM | FREE COURSE Connect BuddyBoss to your CRM | FREE COURSE Connect GiveWP to your CRM Connect Easy Digital Downloads to your CRM Connect WooCommerce to your CRM Connect HelpScout to your CRM Connect Elementor to your CRM Connect Amazon Web Services to your CRM Connect SendGrid to your CRM Connect AffiliateWP to your CRM Connect ThriveCart to your CRM Connect WPForms to your CRM And many more… ⏱️ Want to test out the premium Groundhogg CRM and Marketing Automation suite? If you’d like a trial of our premium plans, please check out our $1 sandbox demo. Milestones Serving 3,000+ businesses in 35+ countries. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rated software and support! 40+ Certified partners. 🏆 Gold Stevie Award 2020 for Tech Start up of the Year (American Business Awards). 🏆 Gold Stevie Award 2021 for Best In Class Customer Service (American Business Awards). 🏅 Best Software Innovation 2020 finalist (Canadian Search Awards). 🏅 Canadian Small Business Awards 2021 finalist (Canadian Search Awards). External services & APIs This plugin connects to several 3rd party services to provide crucial functionality. Each is listed below with what services are used and what information is shared, if any. Email and flow templates Email and flow templates are pulled periodically from a remote repository via API at https://library.groundhogg.io. No information about you or your site is shared or logged in this request. Dashboard notices and widgets Recent blog posts from https://groundhogg.io are shown in the dashboard and are fetched periodically. No data or information is logged or shared. Important notifications and dashboard notices are pulled from https://groundho.gg periodically. No data or information is logged or shared. Telemetry and usage You can opt-in and opt-out of site telemetry from Groundhogg » Settings » Misc » Danger Zone » Opt-in to anonymous usage tracking. When enabled, the following information will be periodically shared with https://groundhogg.io: Your admin email address; Whether your site has a valid and active license from groundhogg.io; The license if one exists; Whether Groundhogg is white labelled; System information such as WordPress version, PHP Version, the Groundhogg plugin version, the site time sone, and site language; Usage statistics such as the number of active flows, the number of new contacts, and the number of emails sent; The list of active Groundhogg add-ons on the site; No information is shared or collected when telemetry sharing is disabled. Google Recaptcha If you have the Google Recaptcha integration enabled, scripts will be loaded from https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js and requests will be made to https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverify sharing only essential information (such as your recaptcha site key) to facilitate the integration. Cloudflare Turnstile If you have the Cloudflare Turnstile integration enabled, scripts will be loaded from https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/api.js and requests will be made to https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify sharing only essential information (such as your turnstile site key) to facilitate the integration. Geolocation services Groundhogg will attempt (if licensed) to geolocate a contact (country, region, timezone, etc…) based on their IP address using our Geolocation service https://ipinfo.groundhogg.io. No data is stored remotely and no PII is used. We use a third party based in Romania to provide geolocation services.

NXT Cloud Chat connects WordPress directly to Meta’s official WhatsApp Cloud API. Manage customer conversations, CRM contacts, sales pipelines, team access, and OTP login from your WordPress admin while keeping CRM data in your own database. It is designed for stores, sales teams, support teams, membership sites, agencies, and developers that need a self-hosted WhatsApp CRM without a separate inbox SaaS. Everything runs from the familiar WordPress admin area, so your team can manage conversations, contacts, sales follow-ups, login verification, and customer records in one connected workspace. Free Plugin Shared inbox with conversation tickets, priorities, assignments, internal notes, saved views, and SLA indicators. Contacts, groups, tags, lifecycle stages, follow-up tasks, ownership, duplicate detection, and activity history. Sales pipelines, configurable stages, deals, line items, values, reasons, and stage history. Access Teams with module permissions and assigned, team, or all-record scopes. WhatsApp OTP login for WordPress and WooCommerce My Account. Message history, delivery status, incoming webhooks, connection health, and secure media access. Stable PHP wrappers, hooks, runtime capability discovery, and developer documentation for integrations. Pro Add-on NXT Cloud Chat Pro adds approved template sync and sending, bulk broadcasts, dynamic segments, WooCommerce order communication, abandoned cart recovery, visual workflows, automation logs, retries, analytics, and CSV exports. Setup and Privacy Connect your own Meta app, business account, phone number ID, and access token. NXT Cloud Chat communicates with Meta only for the messaging, webhook, template, media, and health operations you configure. Credentials are encrypted at rest when supported, and contacts, messages, deals, and CRM records remain in your WordPress database. Step-by-step setup guide Plugin website Upgrade to NXT Cloud Chat Pro External Services This plugin connects to the official WhatsApp Business Platform / WhatsApp Cloud API provided by Meta Platforms, Inc. Using this plugin means data will be transmitted from your WordPress site to Meta’s servers as described below. What It Is Used For 1-to-1 WhatsApp messaging – send and receive WhatsApp messages between your business number and your contacts from the WordPress Chat Window. WhatsApp OTP login – send one-time passwords to users’ WhatsApp numbers for passwordless WordPress or WooCommerce login. Template messaging – sync approved WhatsApp message templates from your Meta Business account and send them for notifications, authentication, broadcasts, and automation (Pro). Broadcast campaigns – send bulk WhatsApp campaigns to selected contacts using approved templates (Pro). Webhook event handling – receive inbound messages, delivery status updates, read receipts, and message events from the WhatsApp Cloud API. WooCommerce notifications – send order and customer communication messages via WhatsApp (Pro). COD verification workflows – use WhatsApp login or automated WhatsApp confirmation messages to help verify COD orders and reduce fake orders or failed deliveries (Pro). Abandoned cart recovery – send WhatsApp reminders for abandoned WooCommerce carts (Pro). Workflow-triggered messages – send WhatsApp messages based on user login, WooCommerce events, CRM events, deal changes, conversation events, or custom triggers (Pro). Connection diagnostics – verify your API credentials and send test template messages to confirm that your WhatsApp Cloud API setup is working correctly. What Data Is Sent and When During setup – your App ID, App Secret, Business Account ID, Phone Number ID, and Access Token are stored in your WordPress database and used server-side to authenticate API calls and verify incoming webhook signatures (X-Hub-Signature-256). These values are not printed into public pages or client-side JavaScript. When sending or receiving WhatsApp messages – the recipient phone number, message content, template name, template parameters, media attachments, and delivery metadata are sent to or received from the WhatsApp Cloud API. During WhatsApp OTP login – the user’s phone number and OTP message template data are sent to the WhatsApp Cloud API. During template sync – your Business Account ID and Phone Number ID are used to fetch and synchronise approved templates from your Meta account. During webhook delivery – Meta sends inbound messages, delivery receipts, read events, and status payloads to your WordPress webhook endpoint. These are validated server-side using your App Secret before being stored. Service Provider WhatsApp Business Platform / WhatsApp Cloud API by Meta Platforms, Inc. Meta Privacy Policy WhatsApp Privacy Policy Meta Terms for WhatsApp Business WhatsApp Business Solution Terms WhatsApp Business Terms of Service WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy WhatsApp Messaging Guidelines WhatsApp Cloud API Pricing You are responsible for ensuring that your use of this plugin and the WhatsApp Cloud API complies with applicable laws, your privacy policy, Meta’s platform rules, and WhatsApp Business policies. Features Dashboard View the health of your WhatsApp connection, CRM activity, and automation status from one central dashboard. Connection Health, Messaging Health, and Calling Health status cards. Live status indicators for WhatsApp Cloud API credentials and webhook configuration. Setup help links and support badge for guided onboarding. CRM, SLA, lifecycle, tag, deal, automation, broadcast, and abandoned cart reporting (Pro). Secure selected-range CSV exports with permission checks (Pro). Deals – Sales Pipelines and Deal Tracking Manage your WhatsApp leads and sales opportunities directly inside WordPress. Create pipelines with custom stages, colours, ordering, and required stage reasons. Manage deals with owners, priorities, values, expected close dates, and line items. Track stage-transition history and review deal activity in the contact timeline. Duplicate, archive, or delete deals using guarded confirmation flows. Use stable pipeline, deal, lifecycle, and line-item wrappers for integrations. Chat Window – WhatsApp Inbox A shared WhatsApp inbox for sales, support, and customer communication. Browse, filter, and reply to WhatsApp conversations from WordPress. Manage tickets with status, priority, category, followers, notes, and handoff notes. Assign tickets to users, teams, or queues with manual or automated routing. Use saved inbox views: All, Mine, Team Queue, Unassigned, Overdue, and Recently Resolved. Track SLA targets for first response and resolution. Store message history with timestamps, delivery status, reply context, reactions, and secure media access. Contacts – CRM Contact Management A WordPress-native CRM contacts system built around WhatsApp customer communication. Store phone number, country, name, custom fields, subscription status, and unsubscribe reasons. Track lifecycle stages such as new lead, active prospect, customer, or closed customer. Create follow-up tasks, assign owners, and use saved contact views. Detect and merge duplicate contacts with guarded confirmation flows. Review contact profiles and CRM activity timelines from Contacts or Chat Window. Use stable contact upsert wrappers for safe integrations. Groups Organise contacts into groups for better targeting and messaging. Create groups such as Leads, Members, VIP Customers, COD Customers, or Repeat Buyers. Assign contacts manually or in bulk. Use groups for broadcast targeting and workflow logic. Verified-group protections help prevent accidental modification of important groups. Tags Label and segment contacts using flexible CRM tags. Create colour-coded CRM tags with descriptions. Assign tags manually, in bulk, during import, or through compatible integrations. Filter contacts by any, all, or none of selected tags. Preserve tag names in exports and use stable tag wrappers for integrations. Templates (Pro) Manage approved WhatsApp message templates from WordPress. Create and manage templates directly from WordPress, and sync with Meta. Browse templates by category such as marketing, utility, and authentication. Use image headers, CTA buttons, quick replies, coupon codes, and dynamic placeholders. Send individual template messages from Chat Window or Contacts. Use templates in broadcasts, workflows, WooCommerce notifications, and abandoned cart recovery. Send Broadcasts (Pro) Send official WhatsApp bulk campaigns using approved message templates. Build campaigns for selected groups or Dynamic Segments. Use CTA buttons and approved template content. Personalise messages with placeholders and target subscribed contacts. Schedule campaigns or send immediately, then track delivery and read status. Abandoned Carts (Pro) Recover WooCommerce carts with WhatsApp reminders. Track stale WooCommerce carts in a dedicated Abandoned Carts screen. Review cart value, time abandoned, recovery status, and customer context. Send WhatsApp recovery messages through workflows. Configure stale-cart thresholds, retention periods, and cleanup schedules. COD Order Verification NXT Cloud Chat can help WooCommerce stores verify COD customers and reduce avoidable returns. Use WhatsApp OTP login so customers verify their WhatsApp number before account access or checkout flows. Sync verified WordPress users into CRM Contacts. Use tags, lifecycle stages, or groups to identify verified COD customers. Use Pro workflows to send COD confirmation templates after order placement. Add follow-up tasks for unconfirmed or high-risk COD orders. Help reduce fake orders, unreachable customers, failed delivery attempts, and return-to-origin losses. Segments (Pro) Build dynamic contact audiences for campaigns and automation. Create tenant-scoped Dynamic Segments with a live rule builder. Segment by subscription status, tags, groups, lifecycle stages, ownership, conversation state, tasks, and dates. Add WooCommerce filters such as order value, order count, products, categories, coupons, refunds, statuses, and abandoned carts. Preview audience size before sending. Workflows (Pro) Automate WhatsApp messaging and CRM actions without coding. Trigger workflows from incoming messages, user logins, WooCommerce orders, abandoned carts, conversation changes, deal changes, contact lifecycle changes, tasks, or compatible plugin events. Add conditions for tags, groups, lifecycle stages, ownership, segments, tasks, conversation state, SLA status, deal stage, order value, and cart context. Send approved WhatsApp template messages. Update contacts, tags, assignments, lifecycle stages, follow-up tasks, deals, line items, conversations, priorities, notes, and escalations. Workflow Runs (Pro) Monitor every automation execution. View workflow logs with trigger event, contact, status, and timestamps. Drill into individual runs to see step-by-step execution. Review or retry failed runs and track broadcast or abandoned cart automation status. History Keep a complete record of WhatsApp messages. Review inbound and outbound messages. Filter by contact, direction, date range, or status. View delivery status, read receipts, timestamps, template names, and contact details. Use history for reporting, debugging, compliance review, and customer context. Authentication – WhatsApp OTP Login Offer passwordless login using WhatsApp OTP. Shortcode: [nxtcc_login_whatsapp] Users choose their country, enter their phone number, receive an OTP via WhatsApp, and verify. Verified users are linked to their WhatsApp number for future login. Optional WhatsApp login buttons for the WordPress login page and WooCommerce My Account page. Optional force-migration page for moving existing users to WhatsApp login. Verified WordPress users can be synced into CRM Contacts. Admin controls for OTP length, cooldown, countries, button text, colours, corner style, and branding. Settings – WhatsApp Cloud API Configuration Configure WhatsApp Cloud API securely from WordPress. Save App ID, App Secret, Access Token, Phone Number ID, Business Account ID, and display phone number. Run connection diagnostics and test template sends. Generate Verify Token and copy Callback URL for Meta webhook setup. Verify webhook signatures with App Secret-based X-Hub-Signature-256 validation. Manage cleanup, retention, uninstall data removal, Team Access permissions, and record scopes. Team Access and Permissions Give users the right level of access for their role. Create tenant Access Teams for WordPress users. Set view-only or manage permission per module. Control access for Dashboard, Deals, Chat Window, Contacts, Groups, Tags, Templates, Broadcasts, Abandoned Carts, Segments, Workflows, History, Authentication, and Settings. Set record scopes such as assigned records, team queue, or all records. Apply CRM access-policy enforcement across inbox, contacts, imports, exports, media downloads, and forwarding. User-Friendly and Developer-Friendly NXT Cloud Chat is designed for everyday WordPress users, business teams, agencies, and developers. For users and teams: Clean WordPress admin screens. Guided setup links and support badge. Contact, group, tag, deal, inbox, CRM, sales pipeline, and OTP login tools in one place. Team access controls without custom coding. Useful for support, sales, ecommerce, COD order verification, and customer follow-up. For developers and agencies: Free plugin and Pro add-on are separate and extensible. Database schema, DAO helpers, filters, actions, runtime discovery, and stable wrappers for compatible integrations. Documented integration contracts for extension development. WhatsApp Webhook Setup Enable incoming messages in the Settings webhook section. Copy its Callback URL and Verify Token. In Meta WhatsApp → Configuration, add both values and subscribe to messages. Complete verification. Keep the matching App Secret saved for X-Hub-Signature-256 validation. WhatsApp Login Setup Configure OTP and country options under NXT Cloud Chat → Authentication. Publish a page containing [nxtcc_login_whatsapp]. Optionally enable login-page/My Account buttons and an existing-user migration URL.