Hey — founder here.

We run FotoOwl (photo delivery for studios). Over the last year the same complaint kept coming up from wedding/event photographers:

Their “CRM” is basically WhatsApp + Instagram DMs + phone calls. They try a normal CRM, hate typing everything in after every chat, skip updates during peak season, then the CRM is empty and useless.

So we built FotoOwl CRM around that reality instead of fighting it.

What it does differently:

• Agents pull context from WhatsApp / Instagram / calls and update the lead record (name, date, budget, venue, etc.)
• Optional follow-ups so a quote that gets “seen” and then ghosts doesn’t just die in chat
• Still studio-controlled — not a bot spam machine

We’re opening early access for photography studios (esp. wedding/event) who want to try it before a wider launch.

No link in this post on purpose. If you’re a studio owner / ops person and this sounds useful, DM me and I’ll share details.

Happy to answer questions in the comments too — including “how is this different from X” without trash-talking anyone.

Hi crm users! I'm a recent grad, full-stack developer and I am building a saas crm as my first project, though this started as a portfolio project, I wanted to make it better as industry level. I just want to ask what are the expectations you have in using crm? I want to specifically ask users because I have no experience using such. If you want to take a look at my work search unithreadcrm with "Connects witb people" and click Test Demo to try. This is far from finish so dont expect highly optimize crm and try to open it in desktop mode for better experience. Thank you so much!

Mods have okayed this post, and I have kept links out as they asked.

Over years we’ve tried various CRMs and always had the same result. Data entry became a chore, records were getting old and hard to use. We don’t have traditional database with thousands of leads pulled from Apollo or whatever.

Most of our sales activity focuses around networking and nurturing connections. What we need to remember wasn’t a deal stage but context, thoughts, notes and a lot of unstructured information.

Annoyed with available tools we built something for ourselves. A system that lives inside AI chat as MCP server. Not an application with chat slapped to it but one designed only for text/voice interaction.

For example, after a meeting I can dictate or type a couple of sentences about what happened. Something like “had a call with Daniel this morning, he is keen on the bigger package, wants a decision by the end of the quarter, I said I would send the proposal Thursday. It works out who I mean, updates the contact, writes the note, and creates the follow up.”

The system picks it all, tells me what it recorded so I can correct it if it picked the wrong Daniel.

Going the other way, I ask in plain language “what do I know about this person, who do I know at this company, when did I last speak to them, what is overdue”.

All data entry and retrieval is through AI. And because it sits inside AI I can do cool stuff with it. I can ask to draft emails, have scheduled agent that gets list of tasks every day and acts on it. It also gives AI view into records to find synergies. Things like “who is the best lead to focus on” and more.

So after a few months of using it ourselves we decided to turn it into a product and names it Know How CRM. It has three tiers
- free - full features but limited number of entries
- pro - all limits removed
- team - shared data across multiple users

Now I’m looking for about ten people who track relationships rather than deals to be first pilot group. If you see a value and want to stay you will have Pro account free forever.

You will need an AI tool that supports MCP servers.

DM me and I will send you the details.

Hi there. Does anyone have advice re best CRM platform to build and host a private consultancy (up to 100 members) with group calls (+ replays), manage subscriptions, posting-storing resource, creating virtual rooms (adding people to different rooms), chat function pls?

This is a weekly post for you to let out about something which happened this week for you in CRM that mattered: features, client requests that were either great or awful this week, and just generally chat CRM / CRM consulting chatter.

No self promo, just a place to share tales from the front-line of CRM!

We're reviewing the CRM because the platform has become more than a place to gather leads and deals. The sales team utilizes the platform for pipeline management purposes, while the operations team seeks information about onboarding as well as the implementation of renewals and any additional requests after the deal is done.

Handoffs between sales and operations are currently conducted through e-mails and spreadsheets. As soon as the deal has been completed, a salesperson can mark the deal as closed and then operations will be informed of this fact by means of the creation of some tasks.

In the case there is any change during the implementation phase, such information rarely gets back to the CRM system. For teams that have moved beyond a sales-only CRM, what are you using? Did you extend your CRM into operations or keep those workflows in separate systems?

I'm planning Q4 and have room for one cleanup project before the new year. Picking just one forced me to decide what actually has to come first, so here's where I landed.

Most teams start with duplicates because the count is easy to watch go down. But deciding which record wins a merge depends on your owner and stage rules. If you dedup first, you end up with tidier bad data.

The order I'd use, based on how much each one breaks downstream:

1. Stage definitions. If "qualified" means something different to marketing, sales and your CEO, then the forecast, the routing and every report are reading the same broken field. Next year's targets get set off that forecast, and you're the one defending the number in January.
2. Ownership. Records owned by reps who left, or by nobody. This is common after a merger. Those leads sit there and nobody gets alerted.
3. One source of truth per field. If two systems both write to lifecycle stage, they'll keep overwriting each other no matter how often you clean.
4. Duplicates. By now you have rules for which record wins.

A quick way to find your starting point: if your VP of Sales keeps a spreadsheet next to the CRM, look for the column that doesn't exist in the CRM. That's usually #1 or #3.

The team I take on will probably be one that merged or migrated in the last year or two, since all four break at once there. If that's you, comment what happened and what the side spreadsheet tracks, and I'll tell you which one I'd fix first. Same offer for anyone else reading.

Quick question for the GTM folks. For context I do outbound for mid market SaaS, spend half my day trying to guess who the real technical buyer is at each account and the rest cleaning up crm notes.

We just got access to a revenue intelligence tool that scores accounts and flags buyer intent signals inside the crm. Supposed to tell us which accounts to hit first and which contacts are worth a deep dive eg github, product docs, community etc. If you have used AI driven sales intelligence for prospect research, did it shift who you target day to day or does it kinda fade into the background after the first month? Would love any tips

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’ve been thinking about how we use our CRM and I’m interested to see what works for other teams. For us the hardest part is turning all that data into something useful for coaching instead of just tracking activity.

I’d rather use the CRM to spot patterns in deals, like missed follow-ups weak discovery notes stalled opportunities or where reps keep losing momentum. I’m also curious how often managers actually review CRM data with reps. Is it part of a weekly coaching session or only when numbers start slipping?

Would love to hear what your process looks like and what’s made the biggest difference for your team.

I am not promoting anything, I am building one for the past 3 months and wanted to know what people really want ? I know and built normal basic CRM stuff but what is one thing that will make you say " oh yeah this is the one " even if it's crazy

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

wondering how to make best use of them

hey, i built a CRM/ERP called TrustFlow, mainly good for stuff that runs on pipelines with subtasks, think sales, real estate, audits, that kind of thing.

instead of a generic to-do list your work moves through stages you actually set up, each stage can need subtasks/approvals before it moves to the next one. also has automations, calendar + reminders, a file hub, portfolio tracking, reporting on what's actually stuck vs moving.

basically built it if you're sick of running jira + odoo + a shared drive just to track one pipeline.

If you're interested Please be sure to dm me or comment below.

We're currently in the early stage, so you can join for free.

Looking for a CRM solution for a salon business.

I was able to narrow down what I find to be must-haves:

1. Client Self-Check-In
2. Integrated Intake Form
3. Appointments
4. Advanced Esthetic Documentation: Visit-specific records for consultation, treatment notes, protocols, contraindications, homecare recommendations, signed consents, and before/after photo storage.
6. Packages & Memberships: Automated tracking, recurring billing.
7. POS: I am open to change provider, but ideally a Clover integration would be best.
8. Retail & Inventory
9. Staff & Customer Analytics Reporting
10. Automated Client Retention: Automated messages for reminders, follow-ups, review requests, lapsed-client win-backs, and birthday offers.
11. Scalability & Med-Spa Readiness: Multi-location support and HIPAA-compliant features (BAAs, charting, role-based permissions).

It has been a challenge to find the right platforms and I would like to avoid going thru 10 different demos.

I built an agentic tool that integrates with followupboss. The idea is really straightforward. You connect your followupboss account and it will automatically track the conversations that you have with leads. and populate the FUB CRM with key details like appointments, reminders, followups, price range, etc.

One key detail is that this is not a tool where the AI messages for you. You are still in full control of the conversation. The tool just "peaks" at the conversations that you specifically want to prospect and then captures the relevant info and populates your CRM.

I'm still testing the features, would love to have some realtors on the ground give it a try. I'm offering it for free for now so give me a PM if you're interested. A quick caveat, you have to be on a mac and iphone for this to work. Sorry windows users!

I canceled Pipedrive and developed my own CRM using Notion as database, GitHub as Repository, Netlify as host, and Claude Code as a brain, my knowledge for features. Im paying less than $50 per month and I update as when I need to. ohhh also hooked up Peach AI as communication tool.

Edit: "If you make money by charging businesses CRM subscription, this post would be offensive to you"

Hi,

I’m a developer working on a ready-to-deploy CRM SaaS platform called Aura CRM.

I’d like to know whether it would be allowed to make a post offering the project for acquisition or commercial licensing, particularly for agencies or developers who may want to use it as a foundation for their own CRM/SaaS product.

I don’t want to violate the subreddit’s rules or post promotional content where it isn’t permitted, so I wanted to ask the moderators first.

If this type of post isn’t allowed, could you please let me know whether there is an appropriate way to share it in the community?

Thank you.

Disclaimer: This post is not self advertising i mainly want feed back and to find out what people look for in a crm.

About a year ago me and my friends got tired of how bad all the corporate crms and dialers are.

When we stopped working corporate and hit the open market we saw that there are a lot of good crms but all of them are ridiculously overpriced or just pure AI slop.

That's how we came up with Vestrum.

It started off as just a fun project to boost our GitHub but soon it went from just a list import and a manual dialer to (Auto, progressive, predictive) dialer and a full CRM that has shift management, appointment scheduling, and now a full inbox and emailing system built in and future automation on the way.

If you are someone who has a done a lot of dialing or managed with a crm and dialer be it good or bad please give me feed back based on these features and the full list on vestrumllc .com.

Thank you for your time.

Nowadays, almost all CRM tools being evaluated come with AI claims, yet it has been hard to identify which capabilities are useful and which simply look fine on demonstration. For example, drafting emails or producing meeting summaries is excellent but not convincing enough for us to switch tools.

I would like to know whether AI could decrease real administrative tasks, such as keeping records up to date, spotting missed opportunities, creating action items from meetings, prioritizing leads, or checking if deals are sticking to forecasts. My worry is that poorly kept data will just result in bad recommendations that are faster.

To those of you who have used AI-powered CRM in your day-to-day work – which features have changed the way you work? Are your sales reps reducing their time spent on CRM upkeep, or is it just a layer of convenience?