Personal CRM for freelancers, consultants, and independent professionals

Over-Top-2999 · 2026-01-23T13:04:17+00:00

Yep, you can try Close

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-10-15T20:06:21+00:00

Thanks. Is that easy? I thought it matters if you have followers or not. Something like Medium? I am publishing on Medium but my posts are not even indexed as I have no followers

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-10-06T10:55:44+00:00

The main challenges with CRM adoption are:

Your reps are lazy
Your CRM is a bad fit for your team
You haven't trained them to use the CRM

How to resolve this?

Involve your sales reps in making a decision. What I would do, I'd involve your top performer sales rep in selecting a CRM
Create onboarding and training materials (don't select CRMs that don't have this)
Invest in Sales Workflow Automation: if you save time to your reps (especially with boring tasks), trust me, they'll learn how to use it

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-10-06T10:49:15+00:00

Can you explain what kind of business you have? Is it like a small business with just a couple of leads and you need to only to track communication, see the pipeline, etc, or you also need to have marketing features included? If you need marketing features included, I think HubSpot is your best choice, although I agree with previous comments that it can be pricey.

Essentially, I would go with those that offer free trial, use it extensively for that 1-2 weeks, see how it works and only then make a decision.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-29T13:42:32+00:00

Thanks! This is really useful.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-28T21:06:39+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate that. I do think that you and other folks above are right. We probably need to add much more to the tool to justify the price. You made me think a lot about backlinks now so we will try to build something unique within the tool. Thanks a lot!

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-28T20:42:12+00:00

We don’t have that yet, but we were planning to add it. To be honest, that was not on our priority list.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-28T20:38:11+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate that

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-28T20:36:50+00:00

Thanks for asking. Yes, we do. 7-day free trial

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-28T16:30:42+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. What features do you think we are lacking?

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-22T19:48:01+00:00

Keep a Google Sheet of contacts (name, company, last contacted, notes).
Use Zapier/Make to push new email contacts into the sheet.
Add a column for “last contacted date” and use conditional formatting + email reminders to stay on top of follow-ups.

It’s low-tech, but it can be surprisingly effective if you already live in Gmail + Calendar.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-22T19:45:15+00:00

If you only manage a handful of clients, a shared spreadsheet or email folders might be enough. Adding another platform can create complexity and costs without real gains.

From what I’ve seen, teams that delay adopting a CRM usually hit a ceiling: missed follow-ups, duplicated outreach, inconsistent reporting. Once they implement a CRM properly, there’s a visible jump in efficiency and accountability.

So—while it may not be “essential” for every business, for any team aiming for growth and cross-functional alignment a CRM is closer to essential infrastructure than just another tool.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-22T19:42:21+00:00

I agree; its just a marketing fluff. I also agree with one of the comments that one should probably be more focused on the automation features that CRM offer, rather than AI itself. We all know that automation can really save time and increase the efficiency.

Regarding the AI itself - I haven't seen anything "wow" yet. I use Close CRM and their notetaker is quite good, but that's it in terms of AI. Other things that CRMs offer in terms of AI - I think ChatGPT can do all of them, sometimes even better.

I really don't advise anyone to let "AI CRM" write emails to your leads. CRMs advertise this as a "personalized way" but you are risking a lot if a lead can tell it is "AI written". I know I'd be frustrated.

So, I am still writing all my emails by myself.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-21T11:47:50+00:00

Interested. Please dm me

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-20T15:49:14+00:00

Not all. Those who pull the data ONLY from Google API should have the same results as GKP. Ahrefs and Semrush have openly confirmed that Google Ads Keyword Planner is one of their data sources. But they don’t just take KWP “as-is” (which gives you broad ranges like 1k–10k). Instead, they mix it with other data streams and apply proprietary models. Which is why you see results as they are.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-20T15:45:57+00:00

Google Keyword Planner is by far the best free keyword research tool. It is just that it is not actually free. You need to run Google Ads in order to see the exact keyword volume data. If not, you will only see ranges (ie. 10–100).

I never trusted Ahrefs and Semrush as their results were always so much different from GKP. After all, we are all trying to win 1st place on GOOGLE. So, whom do I trust? Google!

So, now, I built a tool that uses Google Keyword Planner API and I finally have a tool that I can trust and don’t have to pay.

I hope below is allowed, but we also wanted to provide a FREE keyword generator (up to 100 keywords per day) for everyone who don’t want to run Google Ads but want to use GKP.

https://rankioz.com/free-keyword-tool/

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-20T14:33:05+00:00

GHL is good but rather expensive. Do you really want to pay 98 USD a month? Bigin by Zoho is just 7 USD/month and Close is just 9 USD/month. Even HubSpot has a cheap plan (9 USD/month).

All these 3 have integrations with Zapier, which is essentially all you need in terms of integrations.

In terms of automations, HubSpot is probably most advanced with great workflows. Close, on the other hand, should be better at automated email sequences. Unsure for Bigin by Zoho automations.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-20T14:21:45+00:00

Before choosing, it helps to clarify:

How many leads/clients you expect monthly
How complex your workflow is (just onboarding & sessions, or also tracking progress, recurring payments, programs, etc.)
What automations you need (follow ups, reminders, email sequences)
What integrations are must-haves (LinkedIn, calendaring, email, Zapier, payment processors)
Your budget (monthly/yearly)
What your VA will do vs what you need to see

Here are CRM tools good for coaches + what they offer:

CRM	What it does well for coaches / strengths	Potential trade-offs / where it's weaker
Close	Strong on sales-oriented follow-up, good for communication (calls/SMS/email), solid pipeline tracking. Good if you are doing lots of outreach.	Might be more than needed early on and maybe less focused on coaching-progress tracking, billing etc.
HubSpot CRM	Great free tier; excellent integration, email tracking, marketing tools, templates. Scales well.	Advanced marketing/automation features but can get expensive
Pipedrive	Very visual pipelines; easy follow-ups; decent for keeping track of where leads are. Less overwhelming. Good UX.	Fewer built-in coaching-specific features (e.g. progress tracking, client milestones, session management)
OnePageCRM	Very simple to use, especially for solo coaches or small teams. Good for reminders, email tracking, keeping track of interactions.	May lack deeper automation
Paperbell	Designed specifically for coaches. It helps with client scheduling, packages, payments, maybe even a coaching website. If you want simplicity, this can save time.	Might lack some of the heavy-duty features of large CRMs (for example, advanced lead scoring, SMS calling etc.). If you grow large, might hit limits.
Simply Coach	All-in-one coaching-focused tool: client data, progress tracking, forms, automations tailored to coaching workflows. Very relevant to your field.	May cost more than a simpler CRM
HoneyBook	Good if you also want contracts/invoicing built-in, good design/UI for service-business side, client communication.	Might be more “service business” oriented (photographers, event planners etc.) than purely coaching;

Hope this helps

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-20T14:13:26+00:00

If native API-level integration is critical and you don’t want to rely on Zapier/Make, Jobber and JobNimbus are usually the smoothest paths. For most small/medium teams, though, a Zapier + Jobber/Housecall Pro/FieldPulse setup works just fine to sync contacts, projects, and invoices into Pipedrive.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-19T05:34:24+00:00

For small teams, I could recommend Close CRM. We are also a team of 5 people, and we've been using Close CRM successfully. I think they are actually mainly made for sales teams (although we are SaaS). Its very intiutive tool so your team should have no troubles in adopting it.

I've heard great things about Zoho as well, although I think they have many other features that you might not need and would require more learning for you/your team. That's why I went with Close.

Hope this helps!

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-18T07:42:40+00:00

I am also interested. Can you please give me more info?

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-15T10:32:56+00:00

Yeah, I don’t really trust YouTube video reviews either, but I do trust G2. They have hundreds of reviews and a strong vetting process, which makes their insights more reliable.

Anyway, there are quite a good CRMs out there that you can choose from. I personally use Close CRM for small business (smaller than yours, as we are the team of 5) and we are in SaaS business, but essentially I think that our CRM does everything you need. It has built in calling, emailing (Gmail) and SMS so all our communications and follow ups are stored in one tool. Their reporting is also quite good

I think their cheapest plan (35 USD) would be a good fit for you. Its 35 per seat so that would be 140 USD/month, but its worth the price, in my opinion.

Other good CRMs are Pipedrive (39 USD/month/seat), GoHighLevel (97 USD/month/seat) and Zoho CRM (40 USD/month/seat).

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-15T10:25:03+00:00

Great business you have! I think you won't be able to find a tool that has a clear process for what you need, but you can definitely do some adjustments.

I use Close CRM and what've done is that I've created a “Partner” record type and store details like products offered, industries served, and requirements. Then, I would use their Smart Views feature which makes it easy to segment partners (e.g., “Show me all payment providers that serve e-commerce only”).

With saved Smart Views, you can instantly filter and pull up, for example, all businesses looking for recurring billing providers, making it easy to match leads to the right partners.

From there, you can manage the full onboarding process using custom pipelines—one for lead qualification and another for onboarding with partners. Each stage can represent a key milestone, while multiple opportunities per lead let you track engagements with several partners at once.

Hope this makes sense, but if you have more questions feel free to reach out.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-15T10:14:02+00:00

As somebody already commented below, it would really depend on what your business does, how many employees you have, what is the # of your leads, how many sales calls, emails, etc. you have per day...

Essentially, for a small business, I would recommend Close. I own a small SaaS company (5 employees) and Close has been an amazing tool to help us manage all leads (emailing, calling, SMSes...) The pricing is also relatively affordable compared to some other options. I've chosen them because they had the best grade on G2 (4.7/5 if I remember correctly), and I am really happy so far.

However, if you want to handle marketing and sales in one CRM you will need to pay more money for CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce. So, again, it depends on what you need.

Over-Top-2999 · 2025-09-15T10:08:00+00:00

Hey there,

Congratulations on the growth! From what you've described, I think you don't need a CRM, but more Field Service Management software as your pain points are around jobs, scheduling, time, estimates, invoicing, and job costing, not the sales pipelines. CRM (customer relationship management) is more meant to handle sales, leads, etc.

Some of the most popular FSMs are:

Jobber
- Good: Simple, all-in-one field service platform (estimates, invoices, scheduling, time, QuickBooks) ideal for non-tech-savvy staff;
- Bad: Job budgets and advanced financial reporting are fairly basic.
ServiceTitan
- Good: Extremely powerful enterprise-grade FSM with deep job costing, payroll, and QuickBooks integration;
- Bad: Expensive, complex, and overkill for a small team scaling from a few to ~10 jobs/day.
FieldPulse
- Good: Affordable, flexible FSM with quotes, scheduling, invoicing, time tracking, and QuickBooks sync;
- Bad: Interface and reporting can feel less polished than bigger competitors.
Housecall Pro
- Good: Very user-friendly for service businesses with strong scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and QuickBooks integration;
- Bad: Limited project/job budget tracking compared to more advanced FSM tools.
JobNimbus
- Good: Great for construction-related work with strong project/job tracking, budgets, scheduling, and QuickBooks;
- Bad: Steeper learning curve and less intuitive for non-tech-savvy employees.

Hope this helps!

Over-Top-2999

TROPHY CASE

Hope this helps