Stop Paying $50/Month for CRM: The Free Tier Stack That Does It All

Let me guess: you're paying $14/month for Pipedrive. Or $20/month for HubSpot's "Starter" tier. Or maybe you're on Close at $29/month per user.

That's $168 to $348 per year—before you've closed a single deal. For a solo founder or small team, that's money bleeding out while you're still validating your idea.

Here's the thing: you can run a complete CRM with pipeline management, lead capture, email notifications, and activity tracking for $0/month. Not a stripped-down free tier. The whole thing.

The CRM Tax Nobody Talks About

CRM companies have perfected the art of extracting money from founders who haven't made any yet:

Per-user pricing — Add a co-founder? Double your bill. Hire a VA? Triple it.
Feature gates — Want email sequences? That's the $50/month tier. Custom fields? Premium only.
Annual lock-ins — "Save 20%" by paying upfront for a tool you might abandon in 3 months.
Contact limits — HubSpot's free tier caps you, then charges per 1,000 contacts.

A 3-person startup using Pipedrive pays $504/year minimum. That's before you add integrations, automation, or anything useful.

The Free Tier Stack

Here's what a $0/month CRM actually looks like:

Hosting: Vercel (Free)

100GB bandwidth/month
Serverless functions included
Automatic HTTPS
Global CDN

Database: Supabase (Free)

500MB database storage
Unlimited API requests
50,000 monthly active users
Built-in auth

Email: Resend (Free)

3,000 emails/month
100 emails/day
Transactional + marketing

Payments: Stripe (No Monthly Fee)

$0/month—just 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction
You only pay when you make money

Total monthly cost: $0

This isn't a toy setup. This stack handles thousands of leads, hundreds of deals, and real business operations.

What You Get for $0/Month

LaunchKit's built-in CRM includes everything you'd pay Pipedrive or HubSpot for:

Lead Capture

Embedded forms on any page
Automatic lead creation from form submissions
Source tracking (which page, which campaign)
Spam filtering

Pipeline Management

Customizable stages (New → Contacted → Qualified → Won/Lost)
Drag-and-drop stage updates
Stage change history
Deal value tracking

Contact Management

Full contact profiles
Email, phone, company info
Custom tags
Notes and activity log

Activity Tracking

Automatic logging of all changes
Manual activity entries
Task management with due dates
Follow-up reminders

Admin Dashboard

Search across all fields
Filter by stage, source, date
Bulk actions
CSV export for reporting

Notifications

Email alerts on new leads
Slack/Discord webhooks (optional)
Daily digest summaries

Cost Comparison: LaunchKit vs Paid CRMs

Here's what you'd pay elsewhere for the same features:

CRM Tool          | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost | Per User?
------------------|--------------|-------------|----------
LaunchKit         | $0           | $0          | No
HubSpot Starter   | $20          | $240        | Yes
Pipedrive         | $14          | $168        | Yes
Close             | $29          | $348        | Yes
Salesforce        | $25          | $300        | Yes
Freshsales        | $15          | $180        | Yes
Zoho CRM          | $14          | $168        | Yes

For a 3-person team:
--------------------------------------------------
LaunchKit         | $0/month     | $0/year
HubSpot Starter   | $60/month    | $720/year
Pipedrive         | $42/month    | $504/year
Close             | $87/month    | $1,044/year

Over 3 years, a small team saves $1,500 to $3,000 by not paying CRM subscriptions.

When Free Tiers Are Enough

"But surely there's a catch?" Here's when you'll hit limits:

Supabase Free Tier

500MB database = roughly 50,000-100,000 leads
50,000 MAU = more than most startups ever reach
Pauses after 1 week of inactivity (just ping it)

Resend Free Tier

3,000 emails/month = ~100 leads/day getting notifications
Most early-stage startups send 500-1,000 emails/month

Vercel Free Tier

100GB bandwidth handles ~50,000+ page views/month
Serverless function limits rarely hit for CRM usage

Reality check: Most startups operate within these limits for 12-18 months. By the time you exceed them, you're making money and a $25/month upgrade is trivial.

When to Upgrade (And What It Costs)

Eventually, you might outgrow free tiers. Here's what paid looks like:

Growth Stage       | Supabase | Resend  | Vercel | Total
-------------------|----------|---------|--------|-------
Just starting      | $0       | $0      | $0     | $0/mo
~500 leads/month   | $0       | $0      | $0     | $0/mo
~1,000 leads/month | $25      | $20     | $0     | $45/mo
~5,000 leads/month | $25      | $50     | $20    | $95/mo

Even at scale, you're paying $95/month total—less than two Pipedrive seats. And you own the whole thing.

The Ownership Advantage

Beyond cost savings, owning your CRM gives you something no SaaS can: complete control.

No Vendor Lock-in

When Salesforce raises prices 20% (they do this regularly), you shrug. Your data lives in your Supabase database. Export it anytime. Migrate anywhere.

Customize Everything

Need a custom pipeline stage? Add it. Want a specific report? Build it. Need an unusual integration? Write it. No begging support for features.

Your Data, Your Rules

Customer data stays in your database. No third-party access. No "we anonymize and aggregate your data for insights" clauses. Full GDPR compliance on your terms.

No Feature Downgrades

CRM companies love to move features into higher tiers. "Reporting is now Premium only." When you own the code, features don't disappear.

But I'm Not Technical...

Fair concern. Here's the honest answer:

LaunchKit requires about 2 hours of setup if you can follow instructions. You'll copy environment variables, run a database seed script, and deploy to Vercel. If you've ever set up a WordPress site, you can do this.

After setup, the CRM works like any other—click, drag, type. No coding required for daily use.

Customization does require code. But the base CRM handles 90% of what small teams need out of the box.

What You're Really Paying For

When you pay $50/month for CRM software, here's where your money goes:

~40% — Sales and marketing (those ads targeting you)
~25% — Executive salaries and investors
~20% — Support (mostly for confused enterprise users)
~15% — Actually running the software

That 15% is what it actually costs to host a CRM. The rest is business overhead you're subsidizing.

With LaunchKit, you pay the 15% directly to infrastructure providers (eventually)—and keep the other 85%.

The Math: 3-Year Cost of Ownership

Let's compare total cost over 3 years for a 2-person team:

                    | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total
--------------------|--------|--------|--------|--------
Pipedrive (2 users) | $336   | $336   | $336   | $1,008
HubSpot Starter     | $480   | $480   | $480   | $1,440
Close (2 users)     | $696   | $696   | $696   | $2,088

LaunchKit:
- Template purchase | $249   | $0     | $0     |
- Free tier hosting | $0     | $0     | $0     |
- Total             | $249   | $0     | $0     | $249

Savings vs Pipedrive: $759
Savings vs HubSpot:   $1,191
Savings vs Close:     $1,839

Even if you upgrade to paid tiers in Year 2 ($45/month = $540/year), you're still ahead:

LaunchKit (realistic):
- Year 1: $249 + $0 hosting   = $249
- Year 2: $0 + $540 hosting   = $540
- Year 3: $0 + $540 hosting   = $540
- Total: $1,329

Still cheaper than Close by $759.

Who This Is For

The $0 CRM stack works best for:

Solo founders — Stop bleeding $20-50/month before you have revenue
Small teams (2-5 people) — Avoid per-user pricing that scales poorly
Bootstrappers — Every dollar matters when you're self-funded
Technical founders — You can customize and extend as needed
Privacy-conscious businesses — Keep customer data in your own infrastructure

Who Should Use Traditional CRM

Enterprise teams needing complex workflows and approval chains
Companies requiring phone integration and call recording
Teams that need dedicated account management and SLAs
Non-technical founders who want phone support

Getting Started

Ready to stop paying the CRM tax? Here's the setup:

Get LaunchKit — One-time purchase, lifetime access
Create free accounts — Supabase, Vercel, Resend (10 minutes)
Deploy — Push to GitHub, import to Vercel (5 minutes)
Configure — Add environment variables, run database seed (15 minutes)
Start using — Your CRM is live at /dashboard

Total time: about 30 minutes to a fully functional CRM.

Total ongoing cost: $0/month.

The Bottom Line

CRM software is a solved problem. The features you need—lead capture, pipeline management, contact tracking—aren't revolutionary. They're table stakes.

What is revolutionary is not paying $50/month for them.

Stop renting your CRM. Own it.

Ready to ship faster?

LaunchKit gives you auth, payments, CRM, and everything you need to launch your SaaS in days, not months.

Get LaunchKit