Close CRM is a sales CRM with the phone built into it. Not integrated, not available as an add-on: calling, SMS and email are part of the product, and most of what distinguishes it from the rest of the category follows from that one decision.
It also follows from that decision that you will not receive one bill. You will receive three.
OUR TAKE: The software is priced honestly and rated higher by its own users than anything else we have measured in this category. The complication is that the licence is the smallest of three separate invoices for any team that actually uses the phone, and the most prominent number on the pricing page, the AI allowance per user, stops being true above ten users. Buy it for the dialer and the speed. Model the telephony and the credits before you sign, because the vendor does not.
A CRM built around outbound calling. Leads, contacts, an inbox and a pipeline sit underneath, but the organising idea is a sales person working a list by phone and email in one window.
The capability ladder is built the same way. Email, calling and SMS are in from the second tier. A power dialer arrives at the third, a predictive dialer and live call coaching at the fourth, with unlimited call recording retention alongside them[1].
What it is not: a marketing platform or a service desk. There is no equivalent of the suites it competes against, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
Price the licence at Growth rather than Essentials. Workflows do not exist on either cheaper tier, and automation is usually the reason a team buys a CRM at all, so the real entry price is $99 a user per month.
Every figure is per user, per month. The second column is the rate when the year is paid up front.
| Tier | Month to month | Billed annually | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo | $19 | $9 | one user only, 10,000 leads, no workflows |
| Essentials | $49 | $35 | multi-user, still no workflows |
| Growth | $109 | $99 | automation arrives here |
| Scale | $149 | $139 | permissions, predictive dialer, coaching |
| Custom | not published | not published | no figure, no threshold |
Four of the five carry a number. That is better than most of this category manages. The vendor also publishes all eight figures verbatim in a dated plain-text file written for AI systems, which is the only one of its kind we have come across[2].
The entry tier deserves a warning rather than a recommendation. Solo is capped at one user, capped at 10,000 leads, and has no workflows at all[1]. It is described on the page by subtraction, as everything in the tier above it minus three things, which is an unusual and honest way to put it. For a team it is not an option.
Three bills, not one
This is the thing to understand before anything else, and the vendor states it plainly in its own documentation: the CRM plan, telephony usage, and AI credits are billed and invoiced separately[3].
Telephony is passed through at the underlying carrier's cost rather than marked up. The page puts outbound calls at around two cents a minute and phone numbers at about a dollar a month, and calls round up to the whole minute[1]. Pass-through is a genuinely fair arrangement and it is rare. It is also a bill nobody can forecast from a pricing page.
AI credits come with an allowance per user: 500 a month on Solo, 1,000 on Essentials, 1,500 on Growth and 2,000 on Scale[1]. They reset monthly and do not carry over[4].
The licence is the only one of the three that behaves like a software subscription.
For a team of five making calls all day, the smallest of those three numbers is usually the one on the pricing page. The licence is not the bill.
Model the telephony before signing. Calls round up to the whole minute, so a team making two hours of calls a day each can spend as much on the phone as on the software.
The pricing page advertises its AI allowance per user per month, with no qualification anywhere near it.
The documentation adds the part that changes the arithmetic: the per-user scaling stops at ten users, and additional users beyond that cap add no further included credits[4].
So an account with thirty seats on Growth receives 15,000 included credits, not the 45,000 the pricing page implies. On Essentials the account ceiling is 10,000 however many seats you buy.
This is the most expensive discrepancy we have found on any vendor page in this category. And it is not between two sources. It is between a vendor's pricing page and its own help centre.
No spending cap, anywhere
There is no global credit limit and no per-agent limit[4].
That matters because of what the credits are spent on. Voice agents place and hold calls, and the vendor states that those calls accrue both AI credits and telephony charges for their full connected duration, including periods of dead air[4].
Two meters running, neither capped, on a feature designed to call without a person present. Put a budget alarm on it. Do not discover it at the end of a month.
Put a budget alarm on the AI credits. There is no global cap and no per-agent cap, and voice agent calls consume credits and telephony simultaneously for their full connected duration.
The reviews are unusually clear on this, and they say the same thing three ways.
Setup averages 4.9 stars. Complexity is raised by 3% of reviewers, and those reviews average 5.0, which means the people who mention it are mentioning its absence. The interface theme sits at 4.1 across 14% of reviews.
That is the profile of a tool people start using rather than one they are trained into.
The product reason is narrowness. One window. A list, a dialer, an inbox. There is no marketing module to ignore and no service desk to configure around.
The limit of that virtue shows in the one theme that scores badly. Data and reporting averages 2.3, the weakest in the corpus, and it matches the published ceiling exactly: 250 custom fields on every tier, including the most expensive one. A simple product is simple everywhere, including where you wanted depth.
Who this is not for, stated early
Three cases, and they are easy to check.
You do not sell by phone. Then you are paying for a dialer nobody opens, and two of the competitors we have measured are cheaper.
You need marketing or support on the same bill. There is neither, and there is no plan that adds them.
You are more than ten people sending from individual email addresses. Connected accounts cap at ten[1]. No tier raises it.
The entry tier is capped at one user. It is not a cheap plan for a small team, it is a single-operator product, and the pricing card says so by describing it as the tier above minus three things.
The published ceilings are modest and unusually flat.
| Limit | Solo | Essentials | Growth | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leads | 10,000 | unlimited | unlimited | unlimited |
| Custom fields | 250 | 250 | 250 | 250 |
| Connected email accounts | 3 | 3 | 10 | 10 |
| Call recording retention | 30 days | 30 days | 90 days | unlimited |
| AI credits per user | 500 | 1,000 | 1,500 | 2,000 |
Two rows are worth a second look. Custom fields stay at 250 on every tier, including the most expensive one. That is the ceiling of the data model at any price this product sells, and it is the same shape of limit we found at one competitor where formula fields stopped moving at the top.
And connected email accounts cap at ten[1]. For a team larger than ten people each sending from their own address, that is a hard wall rather than a soft one.
What users say, and why we checked
Three product-level pools, all high and all in agreement: Capterra 4.7 across 164 reviews[6], G2 4.7 across roughly 2,100[8], and Trustpilot 4.5 across 75[7].
We read all 75 of the Trustpilot reviews rather than citing the average, because at another product in this category that exercise changed what the number meant.
Here it confirms the number. The distribution is sharply bimodal, 61 five-star against 9 one-star. Of the English five-star reviews, 72% name a product feature and 2% name an individual member of staff. At the competitor we measured the same way, those figures were 29% and 46%. The praise here is about the software.
Sorted by theme:
| Theme | Share of English reviews | Average stars |
|---|---|---|
| Support | 27% | 3.8 |
| Interface | 14% | 4.1 |
| Setup | 12% | 4.9 |
| Price | 9% | 4.3 |
| Data and reporting | 4% | 2.3 |
| Complexity | 3% | 5.0 |
| Contracts | 1% | 1.0 |
Setup at 4.9 is the highest-rated theme we have measured on any product in this category. Price at 4.3 is the only positive price sentiment we have recorded: at the competitor we measured, the same theme sat at 2.3.
Connected email accounts cap at ten on every tier above Essentials. A team larger than ten people each sending from their own address hits a wall that no plan removes.
The only product in our CRM corpus that publishes an AI allowance as a number: 500 credits per user per month at the entry tier rising to 2,000 at the top, with a published ladder of seventeen top-up subscriptions. Capability is real rather than decorative, covering workflow automation and voice agents that place calls. Two things hold the mark down. The per-user scaling stops at ten users, a ceiling that appears only in the support documentation while the pricing page advertises the allowance per user without qualification, so a thirty-seat account on the middle plan receives a third of what the page implies. And there is no spending cap of any kind: voice agent calls consume both credits and telephony for their full connected duration, including silence.
The cheapest entry in the category at $9 per user per month on annual billing, and the only vendor here that passes telephony through at carrier cost rather than marking it up. Users agree: price is raised in 9% of the reviews we read and averages 4.3 stars, which is the highest price sentiment we have measured in this category. Against that, the licence is one of three separate bills, the step from the second tier to the third is $64 per seat, and the advertised annual saving of up to 50% describes only the single-user tier, which saves 52.6%, while the top tier saves 6.7%. The entry tier is also capped at one user, so the cheap number buys a product a team cannot use.
Deep where it chooses to be and deliberately narrow elsewhere. Calling, SMS and email are built in rather than integrated, with a power dialer at the third tier and a predictive dialer, live call coaching and unlimited recording retention at the fourth. Workflows, sequences and bulk email sit at the third tier; custom objects, user groups and customizable permission roles at the fourth. There is no marketing platform and no service desk, which is a decision rather than a gap. One limit is flat across the whole ladder: 250 custom fields on every plan including the most expensive, which is the ceiling of the data model at any price.
The highest mark we have given on this axis, and the review evidence is unusually clean. Across all 75 Trustpilot reviews read in full, setup is raised in 12% of the English ones and averages 4.9 stars, the interface in 14% averaging 4.1, and complexity in only 3%, where it averages 5.0. More telling than the averages: 72% of the English five-star reviews name a product feature, against 2% that name an individual member of staff. The praise is about the software.
Scored conservatively because we did not measure it. No integration catalogue page and no published API limits were read for this product, so no credit is given here for a surface we have not seen, in the same way we scored Zoho. What is documented is that telephony runs through an external carrier at pass-through cost, which is an integration of a different kind and a real one, and that connected email accounts are capped at three on the lower plans and ten above them. That cap is low enough to matter for a team of more than ten people sending from individual addresses.
The strongest sentiment profile in our CRM corpus, and consistent across three product-level pools: Capterra 4.7 across 164 reviews, G2 4.7 across roughly 2,100, and Trustpilot 4.5 across 75. Reading all 75 Trustpilot reviews, the distribution is sharply bimodal at 61 five-star against 9 one-star, and the five-star reviews are about the product rather than about the people who sold it. The caveat is size: 75 reviews is a small pool, and the G2 count could not be verified on a live page because that site refuses every request we can make.
The documentation is thorough and answers the questions a buyer has to ask: the ceiling on included AI credits, the per-field cost of data enrichment, the mandatory messaging registration fees, how proration works on an upgrade and why a downgrade can be blocked. The vendor also publishes a dated plain-text file aimed at AI systems, carrying every plan price verbatim, which is the only one of its kind in our corpus. The mark is not higher because of where that information sits: four figures that belong on a pricing page exist only in support articles, which means the documentation is doing work the pricing page should be doing.
Support is the largest review theme at 27% of the English reviews and averages 3.8 stars, which is solid for this category. The one-star reviews are specific rather than vague, and they cluster: templated replies to real problems, a redesigned lead page that reviewers describe as slower and buggier than what it replaced, and a trial that one reviewer reports cannot be cancelled inside the first fortnight without contacting support. Contracts are raised by only one reviewer, which is the lowest rate on that theme we have measured, and the vendor offers a thirty-day refund window.
Weighted across the axes above (weights reflect what actually drives the decision in this category). How we score →
The one-star reviews are specific, which makes them useful. They cluster on three things: support replies that reviewers describe as templated rather than engaged, a redesigned lead page that several describe as slower and buggier than what it replaced, and a trial one reviewer reports cannot be cancelled inside the first fortnight without contacting support.
The data and reporting theme at 2.3 stars is the weakest in the corpus and the one that matches the published limits: 250 custom fields on every tier is not a reporting foundation for a complex business.
What the pricing page leaves out
Four figures that belong on a pricing page exist only in support articles: the price of additional AI credits, the cost of data enrichment at five cents per field every time it is used[5], the mandatory messaging registration fees for United States SMS, and the ten-user ceiling on included credits[4].
Data enrichment deserves particular attention because the comparison matrix ticks it as included on all four tiers. The vendor's own documentation prices it and warns that bulk enrichment becomes expensive[5].
Data enrichment is ticked as included on all four tiers in the comparison matrix and is metered at five cents per field every time it is used, with the vendor's own documentation warning that bulk enrichment becomes expensive.
One detail worth pausing on, because we have not seen it anywhere else in this category.
Close maintains a dated plain-text file written explicitly for AI systems researching the product. It carries every plan price verbatim, names the three billing areas, and adds two capabilities that the top tier's own pricing card leaves out[2].
We checked it against the pricing page. All eight price figures match exactly. It also uses the phrase "billed annually", which the cards themselves never say, and which is the difference between a nine-dollar month and a nine-dollar year.
Make of the motive what you like. As a reader of vendor pages for a living, our observation is narrower: it is the single most accurate description of this product's commercial terms that the vendor publishes, and it is not the page a human lands on.
How it sits against the three we have measured
| Entry, annual | Mid tier, annual | Automation starts at | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close CRM | $9 | $99 | $99 |
| Zoho CRM | $14 | $23 | free tier |
| Pipedrive | $14 | $59 | $39 |
| HubSpot | $7 | $90 | $90 |
| Salesforce | $25 | $195 | $100 |
Read that last column rather than the first. Close has the second cheapest entry price in the category and the third most expensive point at which automation becomes available.
What it has that none of the others does is the phone, built in and billed at cost. For a team whose day is calls, that is not a feature comparison, it is a different product. For a team whose day is email and meetings, it is paying for a dialer nobody opens.
Getting out
Worth a paragraph, because at a competitor this was the single worst thing we found.
Here it is unremarkable, which is the point. Monthly subscriptions can be upgraded, downgraded or cancelled at any time[3]. There is a thirty-day refund window after purchase[1]. Contracts are raised by exactly one reviewer in the corpus we read.
One catch, and it is real. A downgrade is blocked until your usage falls below the lower tier's limits[3]. If you have 40,000 leads and want to move to the tier that caps at 10,000, you delete thirty thousand leads first. That is defensible as engineering and surprising as a customer experience.
Where the vendor contradicts itself
Five places, all on the vendor's own pages, and we list them because a buyer reading one page will not see the other.
The AI allowance. Advertised per user on the pricing page, capped at ten users in the documentation[4]. Covered above, and the most expensive of the five.
Unlimited contacts. The second tier's card lists unlimited contacts and leads as something it adds over the entry tier. The same page's comparison matrix ticks unlimited contacts on the entry tier too. The real difference is leads alone[1].
Data enrichment. Ticked as included on all four tiers in the matrix, and metered at five cents per field each time in the documentation, with the vendor's own warning about bulk use[5].
The annual badge. Up to 50%, against a real range of 52.6% down to 6.7%[1]. Beaten at one end, nowhere near at the other.
The transcription fee. The pricing page says fifty dollars a month per organization. The documentation says once per billing account, not multiplied across organizations[5]. For a multi-entity customer the pricing page overstates the cost, which is an unusual direction for a pricing page to err in.
None of these is fatal. All of them are the kind of thing that turns a quote into a surprise, and all of them are settled by one email.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Close CRM cost?+
On annual billing, $9 per user per month on Solo, $35 on Essentials, $99 on Growth and $139 on Scale. Month to month those become $19, $49, $109 and $149. A fifth tier is quote-only.
Does Close CRM include phone calls?+
Calling and SMS are built into the product, but the usage is billed separately at the underlying carrier's cost, around two cents a minute with numbers at about a dollar a month. Calls round up to the whole minute.
How many AI credits do you get?+
500 per user per month on Solo rising to 2,000 on Scale, but the per-user scaling stops at ten users, so the account ceiling is 10,000 to 20,000 depending on tier however many seats you buy.
Is there a free plan?+
No. There is a 14-day trial with no credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee after purchase.
Which tier has automation?+
Growth, at $99 per user per month on annual billing. Neither Solo nor Essentials has workflows of any kind.
A sales team that lives on the phone, between three and twenty people, that wants a dialer and a CRM in one window rather than two. The setup evidence is the strongest we have measured and the interface sentiment supports it.
Price it at Growth rather than Essentials, because workflows do not exist below Growth and automation is usually why a team buys a CRM at all.
Who should not: anyone needing marketing or support on the same bill; any team over ten people sending from individual email addresses, because of the connected account cap; and any business whose reporting needs more than 250 custom fields, which is every tier's ceiling.
- [1] Close vendor pricing page, read from the United States (2026-10) https://close.com/pricing
- [2] Close vendor file for AI systems (2026-10) https://close.com/llms.txt
- [3] Close vendor billing documentation (2026-10) https://help.close.com/docs/plans-and-billing
- [4] Close vendor documentation on AI credits (2026-10) https://help.close.com/docs/ai-credits
- [5] Close vendor documentation on usage costs (2026-10) https://help.close.com/docs/variable-usage-costs
- [6] Capterra, user sentiment only (2026-10) https://www.capterra.com/p/132667/Close-io/
- [7] Trustpilot, user sentiment only (2026-10) https://www.trustpilot.com/review/close.com
- [8] G2, user sentiment only (2026-10) https://www.g2.com/products/close/competitors/alternatives
