I work for a law firm, and I originally became a notary simply to provide notary services for the firm. At some point, I had the idea of allowing walk-ins to come in for notary services. My thinking was simple: people would come into the office, see the firm, meet the staff, and become familiar with who we are. Essentially, the notary service became a form of free marketing.

I created a Google Maps listing for the notary service, and, lo and behold, people started showing up. A lot of people.

As the volume increased, keeping up with the required notary logbook and recordkeeping became difficult. Since I have a hard time doing anything halfway, and I also happen to be a software engineer, I decided to build my own solution.

The first version was very simple. I created an electronic sign-in system and placed a QR code in the office. Walk-in clients could scan the code, enter their information, and the data would automatically be uploaded and stored in Dropbox. That became my first digital notary logbook.

Then another idea hit me: why stop at a digital logbook? Why not build an entire CRM around it and use the information to improve client communication and marketing?

I personally hate spam, so I did not want to bombard people with constant promotional emails. Instead, I created a Birthday and Holiday Registry. Clients could receive a simple birthday greeting and occasional holiday message. The purpose was not aggressive advertising. It was simply a friendly reminder that we exist and that they had used our services before. I also added an OpenAI layer that sent each holiday and birthday email custom made. Based on their name and date. Example... The email would say something relating to history or notary on that day.

That worked surprisingly well.

As the business continued to grow, I started receiving more and more walk-ins. Other notaries also became interested in joining the platform and operating under my business name in something similar to a franchise or affiliated network.

That pushed me to expand the software even further.

I began adding more advanced functionality, including additional security layers, enhanced electronic recordkeeping, multilingual support, notary training and quizzes for multiple states, administrative tools, client management features, and more sophisticated compliance functions.

I also developed an advanced remote notary session tracking and request submission system, allowing remote notarization requests to be submitted, assigned, tracked, and managed through the same platform.

What originally started as a simple QR-code sign-in sheet for walk-in notary clients gradually evolved into a complete notary CRM's, recordkeeping, marketing, training, and remote session management platform.

I also built an iOS app that's linked to the CRM (was a nightmare to do). Had to figure out how PHP / Firebase bridge works. So now my iOS app is directly linked to the CRM.

I'm the founder of PitchWhip, so I have a commercial interest in this workflow. I'm trying to understand how teams handle agreed B2B follow-ups across these channels today.

Say a prospect agrees on a call that you'll send some information by WhatsApp or SMS, then replies there and changes the next step. The email sequence is still running and another rep opens the CRM later.

When that happens, how does your team pause any now-irrelevant email follow-up and record the next action and owner?

Do you handle that through a shared inbox, native CRM logging or manual notes? I'd be interested in a real example of whether connecting these channels has helped your team follow through on a deal, or whether a note and a reminder do the job just as well.

Not a marketing - only idea
TL;DR: A concept for a reporting tool that connects business data and delivers recurring, decision-ready briefs. Instead of showing only charts, it explains what changed, why it may have changed, what evidence supports the conclusion, and what action to take next. Users can ask follow-up questions, while uncertainty and alternative explanations remain visible. The idea still needs validation with SaaS teams, agencies, and e-commerce operators.

Businesses rarely lack data. A founder can open analytics, payments, advertising, and support tools and still not know what deserves attention first.

I have been thinking about a reporting tool built around that gap. It would connect to a company's existing sources and produce a report every day, week, or month. Instead of stopping at charts, it would explain what changed, suggest why, recommend concrete actions, and accept follow-up questions.

Every important conclusion would show its source, metric, comparison period, and confidence. The report would separate measured facts from interpretations, missing information, and alternative explanations. Recommendations would include their expected effect, cost, downside, and a safe way to test them.

The same engine could support different report structures for SaaS teams, agencies, and e-commerce operators. I would still begin with one group, probably small SaaS teams, rather than build a shallow tool for everyone.

For SaaS, that could mean connecting revenue, activation, product usage, and support. Agency reports might explain campaign performance and delivery risks. E-commerce reports could relate advertising, orders, inventory, fulfilment, returns, and repeat purchases.

AI could help connect patterns and answer questions, but it would remain an implementation detail. The promise is better decisions, not an “AI analyst.”

The system should recommend actions without executing consequential ones automatically. Its value would depend on whether people repeatedly discover something useful and make better decisions. Otherwise, it is only a prettier dashboard.

If you are a BI practitioner or run a SaaS company, agency, or e-commerce business, I would like to know: what decision did your dashboards fail to help you make recently?

I build PitchWhip and I’m trying to understand how sales teams handle this before calling someone at their new company.

Say you spoke to a buyer at Company A about a project and agreed to follow up. They then move to Company B. You want to keep the relationship history, but the old project, pricing discussion and callback might have nothing to do with their new job.

Updating the existing contact keeps everything together, but risks making the old company’s context look current. Creating another contact separates the jobs but splits the history.

What do you actually do in your CRM? And when you open the record before that first call at Company B, what should carry over and what should stay attached to Company A?

Hey everyone!

We’ve been building Cenvi.events, a CRM designed specifically with venues, restaurants, caterers, private chefs, and other event-based businesses in mind.
Before we really hit the ground running, I’d love to get the platform into the hands of some beta testers who can actually use it and give us honest feedback — what you like, what you don’t like, what’s missing, and what would make it more useful in your day-to-day workflow.
Cenvi currently helps businesses manage things like leads, customers, bookings, communication, contracts, and the overall sales/event process in one place.
But our bigger vision goes beyond just being a CRM. Down the road, Cenvi.events will also have a marketplace, giving businesses the opportunity to showcase and promote their venue, restaurant, catering company, services, etc. to people actively looking to book events.
We’re still early, so this is exactly when we want feedback. We’d rather build around what businesses actually need than assume we know everything.
If you own/manage a venue, restaurant, catering business, event company, or regularly work with a CRM and would be interested in testing it out, send me a DM!

I’m building PitchWhip and looking at how callback changes should appear in a CRM.

Say a prospect asks for a call on Tuesday, then messages before Tuesday to move it to Thursday. No call has happened in between.

My instinct is to keep one open task, update it to Thursday, and retain the original date and the change in its history. Leaving both tasks open gives the rep two reminders. Closing Tuesday’s task and creating another might keep the history clearer, but could also muddy completion reporting.

If a call actually happened on Tuesday and ended with ‘try me Thursday’, I’d record that attempt and create a separate follow-up.

Does that match how your team works? Are there cases where moving the existing task causes problems with reporting, reassignment or accountability? Interested in which CRM you use and what breaks in practice.

wibecoded CRM for schools where AI do all the work - chat with clients, make appointments, send reminders, move funnel, process payments, enroll clients, billing. Did this for my friends business as a pet project. Currently used by football academy and arts school. I'm now thinking to sell it as a product

Most CRM comparison threads here end up arguing about plan prices, and for a couple of these platforms the plan price is the smallest part of the bill. I got tired of guessing, so I read the pricing pages and help centers for GoHighLevel, HubSpot, ClickFunnels and Kajabi and wrote down what each one actually costs.

Plan prices, the easy part:

GoHighLevel - $97/mo Starter, $297/mo Unlimited, $497/mo Agency Pro.

HubSpot - Marketing Hub Starter $20/mo per seat, capped at 1,000 contacts. Professional is $800/mo for 3 seats, plus a mandatory one-time $3,000 onboarding fee that isn't shown next to the price.

ClickFunnels - $97/mo monthly, $81/mo if you commit annually.

Kajabi - $179/mo Basic, $249/mo Growth, $499/mo Pro.

The part that isn't on any pricing page: GHL meters phone numbers, SMS, calls and email on top of the plan, and those rates only live in the help center. One modest client (1 number, 2,000 texts, 500 call minutes, 10k emails) adds roughly $30/mo. A2P registration to text US numbers is about $23 one time plus a small monthly fee, which is why a first bill usually looks worse than every bill after it.

HubSpot doesn't meter usage that way, but it's seat-priced, and the Starter to Professional jump is the real wall. $800/mo plus $3k onboarding lands exactly when you outgrow one seat or 1,000 contacts.

Worth saying for this sub specifically: ClickFunnels and Kajabi aren't really CRMs. Neither does sub-accounts or proper contact management, so if that's what you're shopping for they're not in the same category, they just get named in the same breath a lot.

Where I landed: if you're managing separate client accounts it's a GHL vs HubSpot question, and it comes down to seat count versus how much SMS and calling you actually do. If you're a single business with a real contact database and no heavy texting, GHL's metering mostly doesn't apply to you and the comparison looks completely different.

If your real bill on any of these looks different from this, I'd rather hear it than keep quoting numbers off a pricing page.