r/WhichCRM

Hi everyone,

I'm a founder based in Canada doing customer discovery with trade businesses (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, etc.).

I've recently been helping a few businesses implement AI voice receptionists that answer customer calls, schedule appointments, and update their CRM. What surprised me is that answering the phone is only one small part of the operational challenges they deal with every day.

I'm now researching whether there's an opportunity to build a broader AI-powered platform that helps automate more of the business—not just customer calls, but things like:

• Scheduling & dispatch
• Customer communication
• CRM updates
• Estimates & invoicing
• Job tracking
• Follow-ups
• Other repetitive admin work

I'm not here to sell anything. Before building further, I want to understand what actually frustrates business owners.

A few questions:

1. What's the biggest operational bottleneck in your business today?
2. Which tasks consume the most time but add the least value?
3. Which software do you currently use, and what do you wish it did better?
4. If you could automate one part of your business tomorrow, what would it be?

If anyone is open to a 15-minute conversation, I'd really appreciate it. Happy to buy you a coffee if you're in the GTA, or jump on a quick call if you're elsewhere in Canada.

Thanks in advance!

I am thinking of making the CRM for small businesses as i feel that most of the good CRMs are quite expensive and complicated.

Anyone up for that with me ?
And roast my idea if possible !!

Hello Everyone, We are a small team of 6 looking for a CRM that works for both commercial real estate leasing and sales. I have many clients who own multiple properties and most CRMS aren't built for that. I need to be able to Bulk upload as I have over 30k contacts. Also third party integration is important as I have conversational dialers that calls our CRM and live transfer.

We currently use Pipedrive and I like it but its not for commercial real estate and I feel like we need something more. Please give me your reccomendations other than ascendix or buildout. I am considering Ascendix but looking for more reccomendations before I commit to the one year upfront payment. Thank You!

Hey all, I am the owner of a business for staffing and recruiting. I have heard about Zoho Recruit. I'm wondering what are the other options I have? I came across HubSpot, which I honestly think is a little expensive, then LeadSquared pipe-drive. There are just too many options. Which one do you use for a simple day-to-day activity of lead management and activity tracking?

Anyone need a roofing/exterior contractor CRM? or a Home renovation sales tool?

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I work for a facilities management company where we provide scheduled maintenance services rather than one-off jobs. We’ve reached the point where we’ve outgrown the mishmosh of systems we’re currently using and are looking for a solution that can manage everything in one place.

Ideally, we’d like a system that can handle quality assurance checks, client reports, team scheduling across client sites, forms, and mobile access for our field teams.

Our current platform does a good job of allowing clients to view information relating to their own sites, so when our team updates something, the client can see it immediately. However, it falls short when it comes to managing forms, team documents, reporting, and providing a practical mobile app for our staff.

Can anyone recommend a system or app that brings all of this together? As we’re a small but growing business, we’re also mindful of cost. Many of the platforms I’ve looked at seem to offer far more than we need, with price tags to match. We’d love to find something that’s scalable, practical, and good value.

I realise we could be looking for a unicorn.

I'm promoting a few personal projects (mainly a YouTube channel) by manually messaging Facebook friends/followers (around 7k atm) over time. I don't want to automate sending messages—I just need a good way to keep track of who I've contacted.

Right now I exported my Facebook contacts into Excel with their names and profile links. After I message someone, I manually update the spreadsheet with tags like "Sent", "Replied", "Interested", notes, etc.

The problem is that with thousands of contacts, Excel is becoming slow and cumbersome.

Ideally I'd like something that lets me:

• Track 7k–10k contacts.
• Add tags, notes, and follow-up dates.
• Search and filter contacts quickly.
• Store Facebook/Messenger profile links.
• Maybe even open the profile directly from the CRM.

Is there a free tool that would work well for this (Airtable, Notion, something else), or would you recommend building a simple custom CRM for this use case?

I'd love to hear how others manage large amounts of manual outreach.

Hello,

I have used mainly Salesforce, Hubspot and Pipedrive in my career. I wanted to switch to Attio to get a faster and more slick UX, as I am launching a new company and need something as lean as possible. I need help with these few very simple usecases:

- I just had a phone call with a customer, unrecorded. I want to create a "call", with the outcome "connected", and notes from the call. All I found is "new meeting" or "new note" which are a UX disaster to just log a simple call. I don't want to have to fill a title, description, etc. I just want to add quickly an interaction. As there is no Linkedin integration it's the same for linkedin messages. How can I just add an interaction in two clicks? I don't understand, this is the most basic thing a CRM should do - logging activities.

- have an activity view with everything emails, calls, linkedin dms, and see the content without having to click on it

- task engine where it goes to the next task and every time opens the right record to add notes

- etc. etc. etc. Just basic CRM functions... Is there anything I am missing? Are people actually using Attio as an everyday CRM for Sales people?

I've been building a lead automation system for real estate agencies that automatically collects new property listings, extracts property details, downloads images, captures agent contact information, and exports everything into Google Sheets (or your CRM), eliminating hours of manual copy-paste work every day.

The workflow currently extracts property title, price, location, beds, baths, area, description, amenities, listing URL, images, agent details, phone numbers (even when they require an extra click), and email addresses when available. It continuously organizes everything into a structured spreadsheet, ready for sales or marketing teams.

I'm looking for 2–3 real estate agencies willing to test the system at an early adopter price in exchange for feedback. If your team spends hours manually collecting property listings or lead information, I'd love to show you a demo and see if I can automate that process for you.

Feel free to comment or send me a DM if you're interested.

Messaging.

Tried keeping everything in one place but syncing texts became a constant headache. Finally left the actual texting in Signal House and only push what really matters. Should’ve done it sooner. CRM feels usable again.

What have you moved out of your CRM because it wasn’t worth the hassle?

We get lists of companies, name, address, sometimes website. That's it.

Need to find the actual decision maker (founder, owner, CEO) and a way to reach them, email ideally, phone is a bonus.

Mostly US companies but would love something that works globally too.

What are you using? Free tools preferred but open to paid if it's actually worth it.

Hey everyone,

Just wrapped up (almost) a full custom software project for a client and wanted to share what went into it + get some thoughts on fair market pricing.

What I built:

Windows Desktop App (Inventory Management)

Dashboard with full stock overview

Stock In / Stock Out with QR code scanning or manual entry

Bulk QR code generator — products get QR labels on arrival, then scanned in/out

Barcode generator for BPL-style products with existing barcodes

Stock Checker — instantly verify if an item exists in inventory

History log + Export to Excel

Inventory Mobile App (Android/iOS)

QR/Barcode scanning for stock in and out on the go

Real-time sync with the Windows app

Push notifications

Quotation Software – Machines (Windows)

Full quotation builder for machines

Optional discounted price column

Editable Terms & Conditions per quote

Add new products with images

PDF export ready

Quotation Software – Spares (Mobile App)

Generate spares quotations from the phone

Reflects live in the Windows app

Quotations auto-save to Excel

Notifications when a new quote is created on mobile

Everything talks to each other in real-time. Whatever happens on mobile shows up instantly on the desktop and vice versa.

My question: What would you quote for a project like this in the Indian market? And internationally?