From my POV, the next step for SaaS is not a better dashboard. It is the possibility to operate from chat (and then with voice in the near future)

For twenty years, every CRM product has had the same shape: log in, click through menus, fill forms. Then AI arrived, and most big players were eager to add AI features and ended up with internal chatbots, summarisers, and some deal warmth calculations.

Now some big CRMs figured out users got used to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok chats, and just don't want to come inside their interface anymore.

I've already posted about our completely free (no paid plans) CRM previously, and now we've made the next step: transformed it into an AI-native platform. You have both classic UI and the ability to run it through plain text via LLM chat (even with a local one, so you don't need to pay for tokens)

How it works:

1. The CRM ships a native MCP server. MCP is the open protocol Claude, ChatGPT and Grok use to call tools in outside systems. Ours exposes 91 tools and 5 ready-made prompts, all scoped to your workspace, all writing to the same database the web app uses. No middleware, no Zapier, no second source of truth.
2. You add crm2crm as a connector. In Claude or ChatGPT that is one URL and an OAuth sign-in. In Grok it is a short form.
3. Then you talk to your pipeline in plain test. "Show me every deal stuck in negotiation for two weeks, add a follow-up task to each, and write a one line reason." The model reads the deals, creates the tasks and writes the notes. It does the work in the CRM instead of handing you a paragraph to copy somewhere.
4. You can add AI agents to perform different tasks, integrate it with outreach tools, like one of our users did with a network of 5 agents inside the CRM.

Search, people, deals, stage moves, notes, custom fields, inbox triage, lead scoring, web research, analytics. Every verb the CRM has, from a chat window.

What it costs: nothing. The built-in AI (lead scoring, account overviews, research agent) runs on your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Groq key, so there is no per-seat AI fee and your records never leave your contract with your model provider. Or run it with your chat, so within your regular subscription. If you need LinkedIn in it, the Ln2CRM extension saves any profile and log messages into it in one click.

One early appreciation signal: Google's AI Overview already cites crm2crm when people search for a 'free AI-native CRM' and about 80 registrations with ~20 active organizations.

P.S. When users came in, they found out a couple of dozen bugs or logic flaws. So now we are proud of its consistency and stability

Try it without an account: https://crm.ln2crm.com/.

P.S. There is a demo workspace. Can't demo chat capabilities w/o Oauth

Don't do it if any of these are not in place:

- Customers who are really ready to give you the money and have signed a contract;

- Have less than 5 years of experience working with different CRMs

- If you wanna create a domain-specific CRM, talk to that business, because you can 'solve' the problem that doesn't exist

- You have no idea about SDLC and security

- You don't have an enormous marketing budget.

Just don't. You will not make money from Reddit posts about your CRM.

The time of 'Build and users will follow' is past. You can't compete with HS, SF, PD, Zoho, Monday, and other big players. Most of them have literally free or 9$ seats.

A serious company will not consider giving data to a no-name CRM, so you will have to target SMB, which is expensive and hard. Your customers DON'T sit here in this subreddit

To make an MVP you will need at least 160h to make it run. And hundreds of hours of bug fixing and polishing. And you didn't even touch marketing. SEO?- impossible in this niche. Paid ads? - one of the most expensive. GEO? - same as SEO.

In a delusional fever, I made mine, learned my lessons, and made it free for everybody. Even with the rich free package, only 50 people registered, and like 20 are using it regularly.

All the AI, security standards matching ISO2700, UI copied from Pipedrive, customization possibilities. Still, every CRM is a glorified Excel sheet under the hood.

You can check out mine w/o registration just to touch it. There is a demo page.

https://ln2crm.com/crm.html

At first, I wanted to move our company to our own CRM; after that, I had a naive idea to sell it. On my way, I understood it was unrealistic. After all, I decided just to make it free for everybody. Literally, no paid plan. + DEMO page for those who want to look around

I'm 7-years exp CRM professional, so it is well designed, structured, and secured.

Here is what's under the hood

The CRM part:

• UX and backend structure similar to Pipedrive
• Multiple pipelines + stages, drag-and-drop Kanban board, and a configurable table view
• Contacts, companies, deals with a unified activity timeline; multi-email/phone with labels; custom fields on any entity
• Tasks/calls/emails, notes you can pin and expand, labels, global search, quick-add from anywhere
• Analytics: pipeline summary, conversion funnels, velocity, avg deal size, rotting deals, win-over-time, source attribution
• Outlook thread sync, smart BCC, file attachments, CSV import/export, (No Google-native sync because they want 1500$ for that, maybe someday)

The AI part (all on your own key and all can be turned off and hidden if you like old school):

• AI Overview — one click summarizes any record's situation + recommended next step, with sources, cached so it's instant next time
• AI Research agent — runs a live web search on a person/company and writes a cited research note straight onto the record
• Capture — paste an email, call transcript, chat or doc → AI pulls out the action items → tick them into tasks
• Lead scoring — editable weighted rubric + ICP keywords; the score is deterministic (same inputs = same number), the LLM only explains why
• Smart Filter — type "German SaaS deals over 10k closing this quarter" and it builds the actual filters
• Deal warmth tracked over time (see a deal heating up or cooling off, not just its stage), plus a Workspace Health audit
• You can edit the actual system prompts behind Overview and Research per workspace

Getting leads into it:

• Inbox triage — inbound emails ranked by urgency with stalled-thread detection
• Lead capture — a public web form + an email-to-lead address that both create new contacts from unknown senders
• Contact enrichment — bring your own FullEnrich key and hit "Find email / phone" on a contact

For the tinkerers:

• MCP server — point Claude (or any MCP client) at it and let the AI operate your CRM directly (~28 tools: search, update deals, move stages, create notes, score leads…)
• Outbound webhooks, scoped API keys, and a Pipedrive migration with a field-mapping wizard (resumable)
• White-label it: your own name, logo, even the browser-tab favicon. Accent colors + dark mode.

Security:

• Encryption everywhere- AES-256-GCM at rest for all keys and credentials, TLS/HTTPS in transit. - Passwords hashed with Argon2id (OWASP-recommended) — never recoverable.
• Strict multi-tenant isolation - one customer can never access another's data; role-based access (owner/admin/member).
• Session security -JWT with server-side revocation on logout plus brute-force rate limiting on login.
• API keys stored only as hashes (never plaintext), scoped, revocable, with per-workspace limits.
• All webhooks HMAC-signed and SSRF-protected.
• OWASP-aligned application security -SQL-injection-safe (parametrized ORM), schema-validated input, CSRF-safe (Bearer tokens, not cookies).
• EU data residency (GDPR-aligned) plus bring-your-own AI keys - your data and AI keys are never routed through us.

What's the catch?

The free is 5,000 contacts + 5,000 companies + 5,000 deals, unlimited team seats, 100 Mb storage per seat. So storage is the hamper.

But if you don't need to attach large files to deals, it doesn't matter.

It's also honestly a funnel for another product I make, so keeping this one free and good is the point. And if some company wants their own CRM, I can customise it and release the source code as you need (for $$$)

crm2crm - there is a DEMO w/o registration for those who want to look but don't want to register

P.S.

Would be great to get feedback about the Lead capture form from real businesses.

I spend a lot of time moving LinkedIn data into CRMs while building a tool that logs LinkedIn people and companies into these CRMs and takes info from CRM to deliver it into the Chrome sidebar for convenience of outreach, so I finally compared how the four big ones take information in and give it back out. Corrections welcome

One small thing first that still surprises me: HubSpot is the only one of the four that ships a native LinkedIn field out of the box, and even then only the LinkedIn Company Page on company records. Pipedrive, Zoho and Salesforce all expect you to create a custom field before you can store a profile URL at all. In 2026, with how much prospecting starts on LinkedIn, it is a little strange that storing the one link everyone works from is still a manual setup step in most CRMs.

How each one takes information in

1. HubSpot: properties have readable internal names and the API is friendly. Native dedupe is strong: contacts on email, companies on domain. LinkedIn URL is not a dedupe key unless you build it.
2. Salesforce: the most powerful ingest story. SOQL and SOSL for lookups, Bulk API for volume, and configurable Matching Rules plus Duplicate Rules. Great control, steeper setup.
3. Zoho CRM: API v2 and up, searchable by field API name with equals, starts with and contains operators. You can define your own duplicate check fields and upsert against them, which is handy.
4. Pipedrive: clean REST API, but custom fields are addressed by a 40 character hashed key rather than a readable name, which trips people up. Dedupe is lighter and leans on manual merge.

How each one gives information back out

1. Salesforce: richest read and event model. REST, streaming and platform events.
2. HubSpot: solid API, webhooks, and an associations model that makes contact to company to deal links easy to read.
3. Zoho: full read API, and outbound webhooks driven through workflow rules and functions.
4. Pipedrive: straightforward REST reads and webhooks. Easiest to get started, least opinionated. Need to mention, it's the only among 4 provides both API and OAuth connectors. So an individual user can connect tools independently (if allowed by org), while others have strict superadmin permission only to connect 3rd party software

Connections and ecosystem

1. Salesforce: AppExchange is the largest. Sales Navigator has an official widget, though the rivalry means it feels bolted on.
2. HubSpot: big marketplace, native LinkedIn Ads, and a Sales Navigator integration on some tiers.
3. Zoho: Zoho Marketplace plus everything inside Zoho One.
4. Pipedrive: Marketplace, LeadBooster, and heavy reliance on Zapier or Make for glue.

Full disclosure, I'm associated with Ln2crm.com (extension to run your CRM inside Li page), so I have stared at these APIs more than is healthy.