When building a CRM for small agencies and consultants, I wanted each deal to have its own information without losing the connection to the customer.

So I kept Deals, Contacts, and Companies as separate databases, but connected them through relations.

This means one contact can have multiple deals, while each deal can still have its own:

→ Stage

→ Value

→ Follow-up

→ Expected date

→ Status

I found this makes the pipeline much easier to manage without putting everything into one giant database.

I also made the Deal Database available separately for free for anyone who wants to try this part of the workflow on its own.

How do you prefer CRMs to structure this separate databases or everything in one place?

We took over a CRM where nearly every inactive contact had been dumped into the same list.

Some had never received a proper follow-up. Others had already taken a demo and gone quiet. A few had clearly said no. There were also people who had changed jobs and leads still assigned to sales reps who no longer worked there.

Our first thought was to put everyone into one follow-up sequence.

That would have been a mess.

We cleaned the records first, removed bad contacts, and separated the people we had spoken with from the ones who had simply been ignored. We also marked the clear no’s instead of continuing to chase them.

Only after that did automation become useful. Basic reminders could stay inside the CRM, while the stronger leads got more research before anyone contacted them again. Some needed a personal message. Others just needed to be closed and left alone.

The CRM wasn’t really the problem. We didn’t have a clear picture of what had already happened with each person.

How do you separate old opportunities from leads that were never properly worked?

okay i need to vent to people who actually get it because if i have to explain this to leadership one more time im going to lose my absolute sanity. basically our execs are completely obsessed with turning our CRM into this hyper-automated tracking machine. like they want instant dashboards, zero-click pipeline tracking, and automated everything... but they are completely blind to the fact that our data is actual garbage?? like cool love the vision bro, but you cannot automate a process that the Enterprise AEs are actively fighting every single day.

The main thing driving me insane is this myth of frictionless data capture. Mr. leadership thinks if we just automate all email and calendar logging, we'll magically know everything about the pipeline. except lmao nope...our activity timelines are completely drowned in automated out-of-office replies and useless internal calendar invites, so the data is just pure noise. the Enterprise AEs are literally bypassing the broken sync anyway by keeping their actual good notes on their local desktops. it’s so ironic because i spend six hours fixing broken sync integrations and storage limits just to look at automated dashboards that are entirely fabricated. automated telemetry cannot fix broken sales habits, full stop...

And don't even get me started on the workflow bloat... to try and "force" clean data, they made me build these crazy validation loops where every minor pipeline stage requires them to manually type into that mandatory 'Next Steps' text box. now the page layouts look like a literal NASA control tower. and shocker... it totally backfired. the team is annoyed so they just dump placeholder text like "asdasd" into the text box or straight up manipulate close dates to stop the automated Slack alerts from yelling at them. marketing is out here launching sequences using totally stale data, lead routing is breaking because of missing territory tags, and everyone is confused. at this point a clean Google Sheet beats a choked CRM any day of the week.

Is anyone else genuinely losing it trying to build advanced automated workflows for people who still can't update a deal status correctly?? how are y'all pushing back on leadership's crazy expectations without sounding like a hater??

All CRMs have their limitations. I think one way to mitigate these limitations is to develop your own modules or apps that interact with the CRM that cover the gaps.

The interaction can happen using REST APIs either on the CRM side or your own app.

For example, if a user enters a new contact in the CRM, I want something to happen that is specific to my company. For this to happen, the CRM calls an endpoint in my app sending the contact's info in the request.
The CRM therefore needs to have the ability to define a url that is used to make the request to it every time a contact is saved.

Also, this should work in the opposite direction. I want to call an endpoint in the CRM to save a new contact. For example, I entered a contact in Excel and Excel can send this contact information to the CRM to be entered automatically by calling an endpoint in the CRM.

I was wondering if there's an open source CRM that supports these scenarios. A CRM that has a lot of API endpoints.

The goal is not to modify the CRM'ss code to add new features but to have it interact with my own app which has the extra features. This way I am in total control of the new features.

Loved the product and mindset.

Referred many friends to subscribe.

Their integrations got me banned from LinkedIn.

They didn’t take ownership or help resolve it.

The risk and cost of getting banned is too high.

Stay away.

We recently have been trying to link our Hubspot to our Connectwise and PowerBi through the native integration and we are having major issues with deal amounts not coming through?

If you have been experiencing this issue or perhaps know of a solution, please drop it in the comments below.

Over the last few years, I've built websites for businesses across different industries—clinics, agencies, real estate, education, retail, and local service businesses.

One thing became obvious.

Most clients initially ask for "a website."

But after launch, they come back asking for things like:

• CRM to manage leads
• WhatsApp integration
• Appointment booking
• AI chatbot
• Invoice & billing
• Lead tracking
• Email automation
• Analytics dashboard
• Staff management
• Inventory
• Customer follow-ups

At that point, the website becomes only 10–20% of what they actually need.

That's why I'm experimenting with a different approach.

Instead of treating the website as the final product, I'm building it as the front door to a modular business platform where businesses can enable only the features they need.

For example:

• 🦷 Dental clinic → Appointments + Patient CRM + WhatsApp reminders
• 🏡 Real estate → Property CRM + Lead automation + AI follow-ups
• 🏋️ Gym → Membership management + Payments + Attendance
• 🎓 Academy → Student portal + Course management + Notifications

The website stays the same, but the business modules are different.

I'm curious how other developers handle this.

Do you usually stop at the website, or do your clients eventually ask for internal tools and automations too?

I'd love to hear your experience.

We got about 4 stores all luxury retail with expensive than usual products. Got around 400-500 clients who spend monster amount. Then around 10000 who shops once (registered for membership) or sometimes a few.

Whats the best CRM tips you can give me?

If you're unhappy with your CRM and have special requirements, why don't you switch to an open source one and have AI customize it for you? I see people say their CRM doesn't do this or that and they're still spending too much time doing manual work in it.
In this case, customize an open source CRM to address these issues.

Fork the code and maintain it your way.

I know one of the pushbacks is that they don't want to host it themselves or maintain it.
In this case, why don't you hire someone to customize it for you? Let them use AI for that. It will make it a lot cheaper for you and you get the new CRM a lot faster. You test it heavily and if it works to your satisfaction, you tell them to host it somewhere, and you pay them. This is a one time thing.
Then you pay a small hosting monthly or yearly fee to the host. There won't be any per user fees or storage or per X fees. You get all the features for a simple hosting fee and with no limitations.
The hosting company will backup the database for you. Your technical concerns can all be addressed by the hosting type and features. Redundancy, scaling, backups... whatever.

People keep saying you have to maintain it. Once it's running, you don't have to maintain anything.
If an unexpected problem rises, tell the person who did the work to look at it.
If you have a technical person at your company, they can probably fix it.
The person who handed off the new CRM can train you or your technical person.

Every company has its own needs from a CRM, some of which are very specific, and therefore there's no CRM that can do everything you want. Then you will have to create your own CRM or customize an open-source one.