Close CRM Competitors: Which Alternative Is Right For You?

Close (formerly Close.io) is a good CRM for teams that live on the phone. The built-in dialer is fast, the sequences work, and reps get going in an afternoon.

The trouble starts on the invoice.

Close charges per user, from $19 to $149 per user per month in 2026, and calling minutes and phone numbers are billed on top of that. Hire three reps and the line item moves three times.

Then there is reach. Close covers email, calls and SMS well, but there are no LinkedIn or WhatsApp steps inside a sequence, so anything beyond the phone and the inbox happens in a second tool you also pay for.

This guide compares the nine alternatives worth a real look, with pricing pulled from each vendor's live pricing page in September 2026, not from a 2024 screenshot.

TL;DR: the 9 best Close CRM alternatives#

What Close CRM gets right, and where it starts to hurt#

Close is a genuine sales CRM built around the phone, and for a small inside-sales team it is hard to beat on speed to first call.

The power dialer on the Growth plan and the predictive dialer on Scale are real tools, not checkbox features. Chloe, its AI assistant, now writes summaries and runs inside workflows. Setup takes hours, not weeks.

Here is where teams start shopping anyway.

• Per-user pricing on every tier. Solo is $19 per user per month, Essentials $49, Growth $109 and Scale $149, billed monthly. Annual billing brings those to $9, $35, $99 and $139. Every new rep repeats the charge.
• Calling is metered on top of the seat. Outbound calls run around $0.02 per minute and phone numbers start at $1 per month. The Call Assistant add-on is another $50 per month plus usage. A dialing team's real bill is the seat price plus a variable one.
• AI is a credit pool. Plans include 500 to 2,000 AI credits per user per month. Heavy users buy more.
• No LinkedIn or WhatsApp steps. Close covers email, calls and SMS. Social selling and WhatsApp follow-ups need a separate tool, and the reply data then lives in two places.
• Workflows sit on the expensive tiers. Automated workflows and the power dialer both start on Growth at $109 per user per month, so the entry plans are thinner than they look.

None of that makes Close a bad CRM. It means that if your reason for leaving is the per-user bill, the metered calling, or the missing channels, some alternatives fit better.

How we evaluated these Close CRM alternatives#

We priced and scored each tool the same way, using each vendor's live pricing page in September 2026.

1. True cost for a five-person team, with add-ons, extra users and metered usage included, not the headline entry tier.
2. Pricing unit, because per-user pricing is the single most common reason teams leave Close.
3. Calling, and whether a dialer is included, an add-on, or absent.
4. Channel coverage inside one sequence, specifically email, LinkedIn, calls and WhatsApp.
5. Automation and AI, including lead scoring, sequences and whether AI is metered as credits.
6. Integrations and CRM sync, native two-way versus Zapier-only.
7. Verified user reviews on G2 and Capterra, read for the recent one and two-star pattern rather than the average alone.
8. Migration effort, because a switch that takes a month costs more than the license.

Pricing and ratings verified September 2026. Vendors change prices often, so check the live page before you buy.

Close CRM alternatives compared at a glance#

Close sits at the top as the baseline you are comparing against, and SmartReach.io is the row to read first because it is the pick for outbound teams. Scroll sideways on mobile to see every column.

The 9 best Close CRM alternatives#

Every review below runs the same playbook. Quick facts, what the tool does well, where it beats Close, honest pros and cons, and the real cost once you scale to a team.

1. SmartReach.io#

SmartReach.io is a cold email software that doubles as a lightweight CRM for outbound teams. On its Sales Engagement plans it runs email, LinkedIn, calls and WhatsApp from one sequence, which is why it leads this list for anyone leaving Close over reach or cost. It is rated 4.6 on G2 from 60 reviews and 4.7 on Capterra as of September 2026.

The difference from Close shows up in two places.

First, the sequence. A single SmartReach.io cadence can open with an email, wait for no reply, fire a LinkedIn connection request, queue a call task on the built-in dialer, and send a WhatsApp follow-up, all governed by one reply-pause rule that stops every channel the moment a prospect answers on any of them. In Close you can do that across email, calls and SMS only.

Second, the bill. SmartReach.io has no per-seat pricing. Plans scale by active prospects, and every plan above Basic includes unlimited users and unlimited sending email accounts. Calling and LinkedIn seats are bundled into the Sales Engagement tiers rather than metered per minute.

It also works as a sales engagement platform for teams replacing Outreach or Salesloft, and it syncs two-way with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Zoho, so you can keep a pipeline CRM behind it if you want one.

Core capabilities#

• Four channels in one cadence. Email, LinkedIn, cold calling and WhatsApp, with a shared reply-pause rule across all of them.
• Built-in dialer with calling seats included. Personalized caller ID, recording and dispositions, logged against the prospect, from 1 seat on Sales Engagement Basic to 100 seats on Scale.
• Deliverability suite. Email validation, spam test reports, spintax, inbox rotation and campaign soft-start that ramps volume gradually on a new domain.
• Prospect feed and reply sentiment. Real-time opens, clicks and replies, with incoming replies auto-sorted by sentiment in a shared team inbox.
• Duplicate prospect management. Duplicate profiles are detected and merged automatically, so two reps never work the same contact.
• Groups, tags and prospect categories. Label prospects by how they responded, then trigger the next action off that label.
• Two-way CRM sync. Native sync with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Zoho, plus webhooks and an open API.

Pricing of SmartReach.io#

2. Salesmate#

Salesmate is the closest like-for-like Close replacement on this list. It is a full sales CRM with pipelines, a built-in phone, sequences and its own AI assistant, priced from $23 per user per month against Close's $49 Essentials tier.

The 2025 and 2026 releases pushed it beyond sales. Ticket management and SLA tracking turned it into a light service desk, and Sandy AI, its conversational assistant, now drafts messages, summarizes calls and answers questions about your pipeline.

Core capabilities#

• Pipeline management with customizable stages, automation and deal rotting alerts.
• Communication across channels including phone, text, email, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, all logged on the contact.
• Power dialer and voicemail drop on the Business plan, plus call recording and dispositions.
• Workflows and playbooks that automate repetitive steps, metered as automation credits per user per month.
• Sandy AI, a conversational assistant for drafting, summarizing and answering pipeline questions.
• Ticket management and SLA tracking, so post-sale support lives beside the deal record.

Pricing of Salesmate#

• Basic: $23 per user per month
• Pro: $39 per user per month, adds sequences, ticketing and Sandy AI
• Business: $63 per user per month, adds the power dialer and voicemail drop
• Enterprise: custom, with onboarding packages from $1,999

Annual billing saves up to 20%.

3. Freshsales#

Freshsales, the CRM inside the Freshworks suite, is the cheapest serious CRM here. Growth is $9 per user per month billed annually, which is less than a fifth of Close Essentials, and it still includes a built-in phone, sequences and Freddy AI contact scoring.

The pull is the AI. Contact scoring ranks prospects on engagement, Deal Insights flags deals going cold, and Next Best Action suggests the follow-up, all on tiers most small teams can afford.

Core capabilities#

• Customer 360, which pulls contact details, interaction history and deal history onto one record.
• Multiple channels including email, chat, messenger, SMS and Zoom, with a built-in phone.
• Workflows, sales sequences and territory management, plus auto-profile enrichment from public sources.
• Freddy AI for contact scoring, deal insights, next best action and forecasting.
• Deal management with customizable pipelines, weighted forecasting and CPQ.

Pricing of Freshsales#

• Growth: $9 per user per month, billed annually
• Pro: $39 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: $59 per user per month, billed annually
• Add-ons: branded documents at $19 per user per month, Freddy AI agent at $49 per 100 sessions

4. folk#

folk is the lightweight CRM on this list, and it is aimed at a different job than Close. Where Close is built for reps working a call queue, folk is built for people whose pipeline lives in their contacts, so agencies, founders, recruiters, partnership teams and venture funds.

Setup is the selling point. The folkX Chrome extension pulls contacts straight off LinkedIn, one-click enrichment fills in the missing fields, and email, calendar and WhatsApp conversations sync in automatically. Most teams are running a real pipeline inside an hour, which is a different experience from configuring a Salesforce org.

The AI layer is unusually practical. Its assistants read across your synced conversations to flag who needs a follow-up, recap a thread before a meeting, and research a company without leaving the record. folk says it is used by more than 5,000 companies, and its plans list 5,000+ integrations.

The honest limitation is the phone. folk has no built-in dialer, so if you are leaving Close because of the price but you still make eighty calls a day, folk is the wrong swap.

Core capabilities#

• folkX Chrome extension for one-click contact capture from LinkedIn and any web page.
• 1-click enrichment, with 500 enrichment credits per month on Standard and 1,000 on Premium.
• Email, calendar and WhatsApp sync, so conversations land on the contact without manual logging.
• AI assistants for follow-up detection, meeting recaps, company research and workflow steps.
• Email campaigns on Standard, and email sequences on Premium, with 2,000 to 5,000 messages per member per month.
• Pipelines and dashboards, with custom objects and deals on the Premium plan.
• 5,000+ integrations, with Zapier and Make on Standard and REST API access on Premium.

Pricing of folk#

• Standard: $24 per member per month billed annually, or $30 monthly
• Premium: $48 per member per month billed annually, or $60 monthly
• Enterprise: from $80 per member per month billed annually, or from $100 monthly

5. Salesforce Sales Cloud#

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the enterprise answer to Close. Nothing else here matches its customization, reporting or app ecosystem, and the Agentforce tiers now put AI agents into the sales process rather than bolting a chatbot on the side.

That power has a price and a cost in time. Starter Suite is $25 per user per month, but the tiers most sales teams actually need start at $100 and run to $550 per user per month, and a real deployment needs an admin.

Core capabilities#

• Core sales force automation for leads, opportunities, channel sales, CPQ and billing.
• Forecasting and pipeline inspection, with Revenue Intelligence dashboards for flexible analysis.
• Einstein and Agentforce AI for lead scoring, relationship insights and autonomous agents.
• Sales engagement cadences triggered by lead assignment or stage changes.
• Territory and quota planning, plus Salesforce Maps for field teams.
• Slack collaboration on live Salesforce records.

Pricing of Salesforce Sales Cloud#

• Starter Suite: $25 per user per month
• Pro Suite: $100 per user per month
• Agentforce Core: $195 per user per month
• Agentforce Advanced: $395 per user per month
• Agentforce Max: $550 per user per month

All figures are billed annually. If the cost or complexity puts you off, our roundup of sales engagement platforms covers the lighter options.

6. HubSpot Sales Hub#

HubSpot Sales Hub is the alternative to pick when the problem is not Close itself but the gap between your sales tool and your marketing tool. Everything runs off one contact record, so a form fill, an email open and a deal stage sit in the same timeline.

The free edition is genuinely usable for two users, and Starter is $20 per seat per month billed monthly, or $7 billed annually. The cliff comes later.

Core capabilities#

• Sequences and workflow extensions for automated follow-up and task creation.
• eSignature, quotes and calculated properties for closing without leaving the record.
• Custom reporting and 1:1 video on Professional and above.
• Live chat, conversational bots and conversation routing on the same contact timeline.
• Native integrations with Salesforce, Slack and thousands of apps.

Pricing of HubSpot Sales Hub#

• Free: $0 for up to 2 users
• Starter: $20 per seat per month billed monthly, $7 billed annually
• Professional: $100 per seat per month billed monthly, $90 annually, plus $1,500 one-time onboarding
• Enterprise: from $150 per seat per month, plus $3,500 one-time onboarding

7. Zoho CRM#

Zoho CRM is the value pick. At $14 per user per month billed annually for Standard, it delivers workflow automation, process management, journey orchestration and the Zia AI assistant for a fraction of what Salesforce or HubSpot charge for the same list of capabilities.

The free edition covers three users forever, which makes it the easiest way to test a Close replacement without a card.

Core capabilities#

• Sales force automation for lead capture, scoring, deal stages and follow-up tasks.
• Process management (Blueprint) that encodes your offline sales process into enforced stages and approvals.
• Journey orchestration (CommandCenter) with real-time journey maps across departments and third-party apps.
• Zia AI for predictions, dictation, data retrieval and anomaly detection on the top tiers.
• Omnichannel email, telephony via partners, social and live chat on one timeline.

Pricing of Zoho CRM#

• Free: $0 for up to 3 users
• Standard: $14 per user per month billed annually
• Professional: $23 per user per month billed annually
• Enterprise: $40 per user per month billed annually
• Ultimate: $52 per user per month billed annually

Monthly billing runs roughly 40% higher on every tier.

8. Pipedrive#

Pipedrive is the simplest CRM here. The drag-and-drop pipeline is the whole product, and that focus is why small teams adopt it faster than anything else on this list.

It has grown up since 2024 with an AI sales assistant, better automation and a wider app marketplace, but the entry tier is still deliberately thin.

Core capabilities#

• Visual drag-and-drop pipelines, customizable per team or product line.
• Workflow automation, webhooks, an open API and one-click contact data collection.
• AI sales assistant that surfaces next actions and flags stalling deals.
• Lead management with source capture, quality scoring and rep assignment.
• Customizable sales reports for forecasting and performance review.

Pricing of Pipedrive#

Pipedrive starts at $14 per seat per month billed annually and runs to roughly $99 per seat per month on the top tier, with add-ons priced separately. Plan names changed in 2025, so check the live page against the tier you are quoted. If you are weighing it seriously, our Pipedrive alternatives comparison breaks down where it stops.

9. Keap#

Keap is the outlier on pricing. It dropped feature-based tiers in favor of one plan starting at $299 per month, billed annually at $2,988, with two user licenses included and extra users at $39 per month.

That flat shape is the appeal for a small business. You get CRM, marketing automation, landing pages, invoicing and campaign templates without deciding which tier hides the feature you need.

Core capabilities#

• When-then automation built from conditional triggers, with templates for lead forms, invoice reminders and offers.
• Lead scoring that weighs form submissions, email interactions, clicks and tags.
• 2,500+ integrations across email, lead generation and pre-built campaigns.
• Invoicing and payments attached to the contact record.
• Text marketing in tiers, from 500 included messages up to paid tiers at $24 to $279 per month.

Pricing of Keap#

Keap is a single plan from $299 per month, billed annually at $2,988. Two user licenses are included and additional users are $39 per month each. Contact tiers and text marketing tiers, from $24 to $279 per month, are priced on top.

How to choose the right Close CRM alternative#

Rank order aside, the right tool is the one that fixes your reason for leaving. Work through these seven questions in order.

1. Name what Close is actually costing you. Is it the per-user price, the metered calling minutes, the missing LinkedIn and WhatsApp steps, or the AI credit pool. Write down your top one or two. That line decides your shortlist, because a cheaper CRM will not help if your real problem is reach.
2. Decide how much calling you do. If reps dial all day, only SmartReach.io, Salesmate, Freshsales and Salesforce keep a phone in the product. folk, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive and Keap will send you to a third-party dialer.
3. Count the channels you need in one sequence. Email and calls alone means almost anything here works. If you want LinkedIn and WhatsApp steps with a shared reply-pause rule, that narrows to SmartReach.io.
4. Price it for your real team, add-ons included. Multiply the seat price by headcount, then add dialer add-ons, AI credits, onboarding fees and contact-tier jumps. This is where per-user tools quietly balloon and where volume-based pricing pulls ahead past a solo user.
5. Check the automation you will actually use. AI lead scoring points to Freshsales, journey orchestration to Zoho CRM, marketing automation to Keap or HubSpot, and sequence automation across four channels to SmartReach.io.
6. Confirm the CRM sync and the migration path. Ask support directly how Close customers move across. The good ones have a documented import and two-way sync with your system of record.
7. Test on real data during the trial. Import a live list, run one real campaign, and check reply rates and inbox placement before you migrate. Every tool here has a trial or a free edition, so there is no reason to switch on faith.

So which Close CRM alternative is right for you?#

There is no single winner, but there is a clear best fit per situation.

• Outbound and pre-sales teams: SmartReach.io. Four channels in one sequence, calling seats in the plan, and no per-seat pricing, which is exactly the three things that push teams off Close.
• Teams that want a like-for-like CRM for less: Salesmate at $23 per user per month, or Freshsales at $9 if AI lead scoring matters more than polish.
• Agencies, founders and partnership teams: folk. Contacts captured from LinkedIn, conversations synced from email and WhatsApp, and a pipeline live in an hour.
• Enterprises: Salesforce Sales Cloud, with an admin budgeted from day one.
• Sales and marketing on one database: HubSpot Sales Hub, watching the Professional jump.
• Lowest cost per seat: Zoho CRM at $14, or Pipedrive at $14 if simplicity beats depth.
• Small businesses needing marketing automation: Keap, if $299 per month buys features you will use.

The short version#

Close CRM is a good phone-first CRM that gets expensive in a specific way. It charges per user, meters calling on top, and stops at email, calls and SMS.

If that is why you are here, you have better options. Zoho CRM and Pipedrive win on price, Freshsales on AI scoring for the money, Salesmate on being the closest like-for-like swap, folk on speed and relationship data, Salesforce on enterprise depth, HubSpot on sales and marketing alignment, and Keap on marketing automation.

For outbound teams, SmartReach.io is the pick. It is a cold email software whose Sales Engagement plans run email, LinkedIn, calls and WhatsApp from one cadence, include calling seats rather than metering minutes, and price by active prospects with unlimited users above the Basic plan. Test it against your real list for a week and let the reply rate settle the argument.

Close CRM alternatives FAQs#