Finance, CRM & Operations

HubSpot CRM starts free and becomes expensive as your team grows into its features. Salesforce is expensive from day one. QuickBooks and Xero charge per user for accounting. FreshBooks charges per client. Project management tools like Jira, Asana, and Monday charge per seat. When you add up the per-seat costs across the tools your business actually runs on, not just productivity tools but the operational layer. The total is often surprising.

For businesses that have reached 20 to 50 people, the operational tool stack commonly costs $1,500 to $3,000 per month in licensing. These tools hold your customer data, your financial history, your project records, and your sales pipeline. Migrating away from them is perceived as difficult, which is how the pricing continues to be accepted.

For CRM and sales pipeline management, we deploy the right tool for your team's scale and process. Twenty CRM is our recommendation for teams that want a clean, modern interface with custom objects and a data model they can shape to their workflow. SuiteCRM is better suited to teams migrating from Salesforce that need the full breadth of enterprise CRM features. Monica CRM works well for smaller teams that prioritise relationship management over pipeline mechanics.

For teams that need CRM integrated with their other operational tools (invoicing, project management, support), we deploy Odoo or ERPNext, which cover the full operational surface in a single integrated platform. The integration benefit is significant: a new client in the CRM automatically creates a project, generates an invoice template, and appears in the support inbox without manual duplication across systems.

For invoicing, we deploy Invoice Ninja, a self-hosted invoicing platform that handles quotes, invoices, recurring billing, payment links, and client portals. It replaces FreshBooks, Wave, or the invoicing features of QuickBooks for most businesses. Client-facing documents look professional. The interface is straightforward enough for non-accountants to use.

For accounting, we deploy Manager.io, a self-hosted double-entry accounting system that covers the full accounting workflow: chart of accounts, journal entries, bank reconciliation, financial statements, and multi-currency support. It replaces QuickBooks or Xero for businesses that want proper accounting software without cloud subscription costs. For businesses that need an integrated ERP with accounting built in, Odoo covers both CRM and accounting in a single deployment.

For project and task management, we deploy OpenProject, a self-hosted project management platform that covers work packages, sprints, Gantt charts, time tracking, and project wikis. It replaces Jira, Asana, or Monday for teams that need structured project management without per-seat costs that grow with every person added to a project.

For teams that primarily need a flexible task and docs workspace rather than structured project management, we deploy Plane for tasks and Outline for documentation, a combination that covers most of what Notion and Linear are used for at growing companies.