CRM Bills Keep Growing, Features Keep Piling Up
Small business owners are frustrated by overly complex, expensive, and inflexible CRM software. They desire simple, customizable, and affordable solutions that fit their specific needs and avoid feature bloat, often leading them to seek alternatives or even build their own tools. The core issue is a mismatch between enterprise-grade CRM functionality and the basic requirements of smaller teams.
SOURCES (60)
“I’d solve the workflow before paying to build custom CRM software. Give each coach a connected calendar, use one intake form to route clients by availability, and require sessions to be booked through it so you can see capacity. A PA can handle exceptions, but…”
Frappe CRM. Genuinely good and free. We shifted from Odoo last year.
“Hey everyone! I wanted to build something for people who have outgrown spreadsheets, but still feel like jumping into a big CRM platform is way too much. Especially freelancers, small agencies and small businesses that already use Notion and want to keep everything in one place. So I started building a CRM in Notion. It started as a simple setup for managing companies, contacts, and deals, but I kept improving it over time based on what I felt was missing and what could make the workflow easier.”
“My business partner and I are scaling our 2-person HVAC company. We don't currently use Jobber, Housecall Pro, or QuickBooks... or anything for that matter haha. We're both young but motivated to do this right. He's the technician and I'm basically taking care of everything else (or trying) including sales. There's a lot of hats to wear and it's pretty stressful... still, in a good way! The admin work (scheduling, client texts, drafting estimates, following up on voicemai”
“I peeked, but I don’t see a custom setting. It looks like the lowest you can go is 10?”
“Yeah, it’s actually relational. Companies, Contacts, and Deals are connected through Notion relations, so the records stay linked instead of being separate databases, appreciate that you like it🤍”
Nice is it actually relational? Or just a db ? And thanks for sharing!
“Yeah you are right But i kinda tried to save it by having lose/win and active views So you can just have to check the active view and the moment you finish with it just edit the deal to win or lose and its gonna automatically move all the relations related to that deal”
“Key Features: Active Dashboard: Keep track of your companies, contacts, active deals, and follow-ups from one place. Inbox View: Quickly capture new leads and keep them organized before adding them to your main workflow. Deal Pipeline: Manage deals through customizable stages and keep track of expected dates, next steps, and follow-ups. Health Check Formula: Automatically highlights deals based on their expected dates, so you can quickly see what’s on track, closing soon, or late. Weighted Value”
“It depends pretty heavily on what you're actually using the CRM for. If it's mostly customer profiles, order history, segmentation, basic follow-ups and ecommerce lifecycle stuff, you can probably get surprisingly far without a separate CRM. If you're using it for sales pipelines, lead management, multiple contacts per company, detailed automation or a lot of non-store interactions, that's where I'd be more cautious about replacing it. I'd map out the actual workflows you”
“We tried 3 CRMs in 2 years and nobody used any of them past a month lol. Went back to a spreadsheet, every morning I ask it "what needs follow up today" and it gives me the list. Only system that stuck.”
“drive for docs, another place for customer handoff, plus the crm holding everything together somehow. Leadership wants to cut tools but i am wondering how far consolidation can go before one platform tries to do too much. Has anyone managed to replace a few of these with one tool without making things worse? submitted by /u/MutedSpare6217 [link] [comments]”
“Maybe you are talking about odoo ? That matches your description of self hostable CRM Need any help in hosting it ?”
“fair enough at 2-3 clients, the tasks fit in your head fine. the logins are what don't. even a couple of clients means wp admin, hosting, their socials, analytics, and half those passwords rotate every few months. that part broke me way before client count ever did.”
“You can find CRMs that are pretty barebones and do just what you’re looking for. What do you mean by constantly updating? Add notes while on call, do any quick updates as part of the follow up process, done. If they need to be moved into a different nurture campaign, add a tag (relevant campaign should spot the new tag to pull them into the flow automatically). My CRM plugs into my Tasks so I know who’s on the follow up list for the day, too.”
“I've been considering the possibility of developing a small and self-hosted CRM solution mainly out of a desire to have some sort of tool which I could self-host myself, rather than sending all my customers' information somewhere else in the form of a third-party SaaS. At the moment, I am at a very early learning stage and, thus, mostly care about the technical aspects and self-hosting itself. Some aspects I'm considering: - Docker / Docker Compose for deployment - PostgreSQL or some”
“Don’t validate the whole CRM. Find three distributors and test one painful workflow, probably collections or repeat orders. If they use it weekly without being reminded, you have a product.”
“I know this is far from a new question in this sub. However, I've got a bit more to say on this matter. By golly, there are so many appointment schedulers out there. The main ones you hear about are Calendly on the subscription / commercial side, and then 'Cal.com' as the alternative to Calendly. However, the self-hosted version of 'Cal.com' explicitly states in the README, "Use at your own risk. 'Cal.diy' is the open source community edition of Cal.com and it is”
“I’m a business owner running an A4 copier paper distribution business in India, and I’m not a professional software developer. I couldn’t find a software that matched the way we actually operate, so I started building my own system using AI-assisted development, mainly Claude. I’ve been using it in the real business and it has evolved into a fairly comprehensive distribution CRM covering: • Route-wise field sales and customer visits • Customer and shop history • Follow-ups • Order booking with b”
“Solid list, we did a similar audit last quarter. For the CRM slot you might want to look into meetergo too, its German and covers scheduling, CRM, e-signatures and invoicing in one place so we dropped like 4 separate tools. Folk is nice but we kept needing other stuff bolted on. Hetzner is such a good call btw, pricing is wild compared to AWS”
“dont : easyvista or freshdesk servicenow is good, but is pricey. Managed Engine is okish. sharepoint is also a okish basic itsm.”
“We used Pipedrive, then migrated to HubSpot, then to GHL because of a third party marketing company we were using for a short time, then back to HubSpot. The fact that all automations and even some customizations are locked behind higher pay tiers is so ridiculous. I have seen SuiteCRM recommended. Doing some looking at screenshots in Google Images, I'm not in love with the UI (feels a tad outdated looking), but its a CRM and function is far superior to appearance. For fully featured CRMs, w”
“Several automations : - every person is associated with one or several actions (meeting, phone call attempt, phone call…). Every time i add an action this calls a Claude webhook that will update a summary block on the top of the contact page - the second automation is called every day at midnight : based on the summary of each contact Claude that knows my context will give the top 3 priorities and the top 3 things I’m waiting for.”
“Take a look at Cin7 Core. You can go month to month and its reporting is solid. The built in WMS is nice for warehouse management as well.”
do you use any automations with it or is it mostly manual?
“Appreciate that response. After giving it a lot more thought I think the real issue comes down to processes and operations and having a good workflow that doesn’t seem segmented and disconnected. I started playing around, vibecoding something that I think will really help us be more efficient and gain more insight into our clients and order data. It’s definitely going to take time and testing but it will be built to our exact needs with an easy workflow, and I can still use Hub for CRM. I think”
“For a home-scale CRM you really only need two databases, so it stays light. People, and Interactions. Relate them, and let every call, email or coffee live as its own row in Interactions pointing at the person. The bit that makes it feel like a real CRM is a rollup on People that grabs the newest date from the related Interactions. Then a formula off that rollup, something like dateBetween(now(), last touch, "days"), and you can sort by who's gone cold. Keep status as a select, not”
“Yip did it it even enriches leads. Notion is customizable so you will be able to do it. Just plan your pages ahead and which speaks to which.”
“I’d be careful about switching just because HubSpot is getting expensive. For a merch business, I’d first separate the CRM problem from the operations problem . If the main issue is that contacts, quotes, orders, invoices, and customer communication are all becoming harder to manage, then moving to another CRM only helps if it actually reduces the number of places your team has to update. Otherwise you can end up paying less for the CRM but creating more manual work around it. I’d probably map o”
“Hey everyone, I am new here and new to this world. I own a plumbing company and could not find a good affordable referral tracking software that could be automated and not just a spreadsheet. I used Claude to develop one that integrated with my software and so far seems to be working. Any advice for possibly making this something that could benefit other service businesses that are looking to get referrals and reward successful ones? submitted by /u/Stinky_Goose89 [link] [comme”
“I've been building CRM systems for businesses, and something I've noticed over and over again is that getting leads usually isn't the biggest problem. Businesses are already getting enquiries from WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, websites, ads, etc. The problem is what happens after the enquiry comes in. Someone replies. The customer says, "I'll think about it." Nobody follows up. A trial gets booked. Nobody confirms it. A membership is about to expire. Nobody contacts th”
“Totally agree. LLMs are incredible at processing unstructured data with topical analysis. Will check out DeepDots as I had not heard of them before. Seems more mid market as you mentioned and not CPG.”
“If the internal tool already works well, I'd avoid rewriting the whole thing just to make it look like a desktop app. A thin desktop wrapper around the existing API can get you surprisingly far, while keeping the business logic in the backend where you can maintain it properly. I'd also separate the UI from account credentials, sync jobs and marketplace integrations early, because that stuff gets messy fast once multiple machines are involved. If you're only using it internally, I”
“IME custom solutions for small things like this are better than 3rd party tools. Because the focus is so narrow.”
“Very thoughtful insight …if I don’t want to be nickel and dimed for every incremental feature, then yea…I’ve grown out of my current subscription and capabilities”
“I'm evaluating CRM platforms against a fixed set of capabilities, and I've hit something I can't settle from Salesforce's own documentation. I'd rather be corrected by people who use this daily than publish something wrong. The question: in base Sales Cloud, no paid add-ons, can you produce a stage-to-stage conversion ratereport? Doesn't have to be fancy, it's just not a count or value of opportunities sitting in each stage - I'm looking for an actual percentage o”
“Yes. Real, custom desktop software is usually good for abstractions in business pipelines. There is no point in doing rote work at scale. The key here is spinning up various sessions in parallel and keeping tabs on only what matters at each operational step. Then a good dashboard to view this sort of data would be paramount. We have something like this in one of our client projects. It is quite a valuable piece of software, but we hold the radical opinion that software should not be rented, but”
“:bullseye: What is your goal? Hi everyone, I’m exploring ways to automate lead and customer management using Saleoid CRM and connect it with other business tools. The goal is to automatically capture new leads, update c…”
“Mostly agree, the one add-on worth it for us was роstsсriрt since built-in sms tools on most platforms are pretty weak.”
“UI is okay and needs improvement. But I stopped testing the moment I tried to create a lead record, it broke. The validation seems more like it broke instead of a data validation. Can't continue with testing if it does not guide me through the process with its clear validation messages or prompts on next steps. https://preview.redd.it/zj8iz8dvf2lh1.png?width=1260&format=png&auto=webp&s=406a2511967c6ff11581842aa744ad8c7979de20”
“looks interesting but what exactly does it do beyond what a crm already does? 60 days is generous though”
“Came across an insta add for it. I run a merch company that’s growing pretty quickly and I feel like we’re growing out of HubSpot pretty quickly as well. We need something that will simplify processes and it seems like any additional capability is behind a Hubspot paywall. I don’t feel like spending a fortune Anyone have experience with Hoops or can recommend a good alternative? Appreciate yall submitted by /u/RuGinzo13 [link] [comments]”
“Get a crm, it will save a lot of time with response templates and order linking. Zendesk is a classic but i hear things about zoho. If you cant handle it definitely hire someone for entry level support.”
“For a small agency, I'd probably shortlist metricool, vista social, and socialpilot. Metricool is particular useful if you are care about reporting and performance data, while socialpilot has a strong agency workflow with multi account management and approval. Vista social is interesting if you want publishing, engagement and analytics together rather than building the workflow around a scheduler alone”
“It would be helpful for you to share industry, project type, number of users, and budget. There are tons of options available, but they all have different trade offs depending on the use case. I would recommend an Excel spreadsheet based on what you have provided, but I am sure there are other options you could also use.”
“I have an automation that consolidates the notes and do a Twitter like response to Salesforce just to keep the CRM God's happy 😄 . Notion AI Meeting summary is genius.”
“We tried Attio partly because of that, it pulls in people and company stuff from your emails and calendar so you're not starting from zero every time. didn't fix everything but it did mean less random logging after calls.”
“This is gold! Thank you. You're 100% right about missed timing > lack of CRM. I'm adding right now: next follow-up date, source channel, last message summary, and a "Stale Leads (7+ days)" view. Will record a 30-sec walkthrough too. Mind if I tag you when v2 is ready for feedback?”
“"I was also missing some stuff like integrations with other services and groups mapping from oidc" What specific integration are you looking for in BookOrbit? Just to clarify, BookOrbit already supports group mappings for OIDC and allows you to run multiple OIDC providers concurrently, so you can use options like PocketID, Authentik, and others simultaneously.”
“i work for agentui, replacing messy spreadsheets and whatsapp tracking with a simple internal CRM is probably our most common use case. you can just drop in your existing excel sheet or describe the workflow, and the AI builds the views for your team to track notes and follow-ups. we also have dedicated human support backing you up so you don't get stuck troubleshooting fragile tools.”
“I manage a small team and we're currently keeping a lot of customer information and follow -ups across spreadsheets, email and WhatsApp. It's starting to get messy as the number of customers grows . I don't need anything as big as Salesforce. I mainly want one place where the team can see customer details, add notes , keep track of follow-ups and see the current status. Probably around 8-10 people would need across. I've been hearing about AI app builders like emergent or replit”
Slateo.io Work management + CRM tool for small businesses