I would like to implement some sort of contact database management system within a small company.
At this point I have roughly 200 contacts but I see a prospecting database could grow over 500 but probably not more than 1000.
I would like contacts to be organized in some containing database. Within the container database there are organizational groups. A contact may belong to more than one group.
I would like contacts to be searched and sorted by things such as name, company, organizational group, etc.
I would like the ability to do mail merge, both email and snail mail.
When sending emails, I would only like each recipient to see only his or her own email address, even if the email was sent to a distribution list with many emails on it.
Is this possible?
Although it may be overkill to start, SugarCRM is probably a good fit for you: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/
It has an open source version, you can run yourself, or you can have someone else host it for you. It can certainly grow up to do a lot for you, keeping up with sales leads, contact management, etc. Its big thing I think is customization if you ever get into that.
They have a demo that you should try to see if it is something that could work for you.