We’re replacing a CRM that technically works, but nobody trusts the data inside it. Sales updates things late, marketing blames sales, reporting is always “close enough,” and management wants better forecasting without changing behavior.
I’ve been comparing platforms through SelectHub and it’s been a good way to separate actual fit from nice-looking sales pages.
Starting to think the best CRM is the one your team will actually keep updated without needing constant reminders.

I Built a Notion CRM template for freelancers, it's live on Notion's marketplace now. Would genuinely love honest feedback from people who've used similar tools.

It has Companies, Contacts, and Deals as main databases, plus a Reports database with its own dashboard page.

Features:

Deals automatically move between Active, Won, or Lost views just change one status and everything connected (companies, contacts, reports) moves with it automatically

Active is your main working view

Inbox view for quick additions you want to edit later without cluttering active work

Health check formula shows if a deal is on track, closing soon, late, or done based on expected date

Weighted value formula calculates expected revenue based on deal stage

Its mostly for small businesses

Everywhere I look I see references to GHL and HubSpot and SalesForce etc. Are you guys using all these features that are offered? It seems they have a feature for every edge case. I have a CRM targeted at tradespeople and small business owners currently and its discouraging to think I may have pigeonholed myself. I am not including a link on purpose to avoid sounding spammy but my CRM is deliberately lean and simple.

Leads, Deal, Contact, Notes, Calendar. It has the essentials like per-contact notes and such. Supports webhooks in to fill entries. Has a little AI agent to ask questions about the database. It doesn't require an instruction PDF or clicking through six menus to add a contact and it looks basic but deliberate and refined. It is not a CRM clone of the week. I am not going to add tons of features to try and compete but are there some non-negotiables that pretty much everyone needs these days?

For the techies I run a single binary written in a compiled language. No mult-tenant. One client per VM. One client per DB. Takes 150MB RAM to serve 60000 leads. No node/react/postgres/javascript etc. It loads instantly no matter what, the only thing that impacts the speed is the network connection of the client. Users are allowed to register via email whitelist and there are no special user privileges.

What are your thoughts on simple CRMs? I don't want to occupy a niche where people would rather use GHL or a spreadsheet than me. For those of you in defined sectors like real estate do you prefer "real estate CRMs" or do some of you use generic CRMs for specialized work? Is automation a requirement for most of you?

A lot of small businesses seem to have the same problem: clients contact them directly on WhatsApp, conversations happen there, groups are created, follow-ups are discussed, but none of that data really ends up anywhere useful.

Then after a few months, you have customer history, leads, names, group members, and conversations sitting inside WhatsApp, but nothing structured to analyze, back up, or move into a CRM.

I built a Chrome extension for WhatsApp Web to help export this kind of data into files, mostly for teams that use WhatsApp as a messy pre-CRM layer.

The idea is not to replace a CRM, but to make sure the data is not trapped inside chats forever.

Curious how others here deal with this. Do you manually copy WhatsApp leads into your CRM, use a shared inbox, export periodically, or just leave everything inside WhatsApp?

I’ll add the link in the comments in case anyone wants to try it.