A customizable CRM for less than $1 a day.

We asked Claude (Opus 4.5) a simple question: “Build a CRM”. In seconds, it came back with a CRM boasting the following features:
1. Add, edit, and delete contacts
2. Contact types
3. Status tracking: Lead, Prospect, Customer, Closed
4. Deal value tracking with pipeline totals
5. Search across name, email, and company
6. Filter by status and contact type
7. Dashboard stats (total contacts, pipeline value, active customers)
8. Contact details sidebar
9. Data persistence via local Storage

It suggested more features and asked if it should include them, an offer I graciously accepted. It added the following:
1. Tasks/to-do lists for each contact
2. Email templates or message drafts
3. Activity timeline (calls, meetings, emails logged)
4. Sales pipeline stages with drag-and-drop
5. Custom fields specific to your business
6. Export contacts to CSV
7. Dashboard charts/graphs
8. Appointment scheduling
9. Follow-up reminders
10. Tags or categories
11. File attachments or document links
12. Filter by contact type
13. Revenue tracking and forecasting
14. Notes history/changelog

It also supplied the code so I can build and host my own CRM, which I may do.

We tried AI (Claude) after being unable to find a CRM at a reasonable cost that would cover all our needs and be easily customisable as the business grows. A large provider wanted around $200 a month for the absolute basics, with a “set up” cost that could be as high as $10,000 (or higher).

Claude costs less than $1 a day and does most of our coding. It now hosts our CRM as well, and is effortless to change – just a simple instruction in natural language. I will be testing its ability to add AI-agentic functions, but I am cautiously optimistic because Claude is itself AI.

Large institutions with deep pockets may have no trouble paying a lot of money for their CRM, but small to medium enterprises are often careful with their spend, and I’m sure they will move to cheap AI agents that don’t demand endless expensive “packages” to get the functionality they are looking for.