Why We Built Our Own CRM for Client Projects

At the start of the new year, two client projects we were working on required solid CRM functionality.

These were not “nice to have” CRMs. They had to plug directly into real business and production workflows.

We reviewed existing CRM solutions. There are many on the market, including some very good open source projects.
None of them fully matched what was needed.

The requirements were clear:

• very simple and fast to use
• kanban-style lead management with drag and drop
• multiple pipelines with easy lead switching (for example sales to project)
• products and services module to simplify quoting
• built-in quotes
• automation and integrations (forms, webhooks, events)
• ability to trigger external systems (for example create a production order when a lead moves to a project pipeline with an approved quote)
• mobile-app ready, because one of the projects depends on it

At that point, SaaS CRMs were off the table.

We then evaluated self-hosted open source solutions. Some are impressive, but none covered all of this without major compromises or heavy rewrites.

So we built our own.

ApsloCRM.

A simple, modular, user-friendly CRM designed to be extended, automated, and integrated into real workflows, not just sales dashboards.

Because this may be useful beyond our own client work, we are considering releasing ApsloCRM as a free and open source project once the core has been validated across current client deployments.

Demo:
https://demo-crm.apslo.com/
(Some features are disabled in the demo.)

The idea is simple:
You host it yourself.
You own your data.
You pay only for hosting, and it can often be deployed on the same server you already use for your website.

If you are considering a self-hosted CRM or need something adapted to your workflows, feel free to reach out.