Capsule CRM vs Flowlu
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentFlowlu compared with Capsule CRM
Capsule is the calmer, cleaner contact-first CRM with projects attached and a free tier, focused on doing less well. Flowlu does far more: Gantt charts, time tracking, invoicing, financial reports, and a client portal. Choose Capsule if you want a tidy CRM and nothing else; choose Flowlu if the invoice and the delivery schedule matter as much as the pipeline.
Choose Capsule CRM if
Small businesses and teams of roughly 2 to 30 people who want a clear, low-maintenance CRM with pipelines, tasks, and light delivery tracking, and who would rather have a stable independent vendor than a venture-backed platform that reprices every eighteen months.
Choose Flowlu if
Small service businesses, agencies, and consultancies of two to about twenty-five people who sell projects rather than products, and who want one affordable subscription covering the pipeline, the delivery work, and the invoice instead of three separate tools.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Capsule CRM | Flowlu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $0 for 2 users and 250 contacts, then about $18 per user per month on annual billing (Starter) (free plan available) | $0 for two users, then $6 per user per month on annual billing (Essential) (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription across a free 2-user plan and four paid plans, billed monthly or annually, with contact limits as the main scaling lever and marketing sold separately through the Transpond sibling product. | Per-user subscription across a free plan and three paid tiers, billed monthly or annually, with annual billing published at roughly half the monthly rate. |
| Free plan | Free plan for up to 2 users with 250 contacts, 5 custom fields, and 1 sales pipeline, which is enough to run a very small business indefinitely. | Free forever for 2 users with 100 contacts, one pipeline, lead capture forms, and core project and task management. |
| Free trial | 14 days, no credit card required | 7 days on paid plans with no credit card required, on top of the permanently free plan |
| Best for | Small businesses and teams of roughly 2 to 30 people who want a clear, low-maintenance CRM with pipelines, tasks, and light delivery tracking, and who would rather have a stable independent vendor than a venture-backed platform that reprices every eighteen months. | Small service businesses, agencies, and consultancies of two to about twenty-five people who sell projects rather than products, and who want one affordable subscription covering the pipeline, the delivery work, and the invoice instead of three separate tools. |
| Setup time | Under an hour for a working CRM: import contacts, set pipeline stages, connect the mailbox. The AI pipeline generator shortens even that. A team-wide rollout with automation and project boards is a few days rather than weeks. | A working CRM in under an hour. Setting up the project side properly, with templates, billable rates, invoice formats, and the automation that turns a won deal into a project, is a one to two week part-time job. |
| Learning curve | The lowest in this batch alongside Less Annoying CRM. Capsule is deliberately small, and the interface does not present options that most small businesses will never use. | Moderate, mostly because of breadth. Each module is straightforward, but a new user meeting CRM, projects, finance, and the knowledge base at once takes a while to orient. Sales-only users learn it in an afternoon. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook integrations | Web, iOS, Android |
| Compliance | GDPR, UK data protection compliance, SOC 2 aligned hosting practices | GDPR, Standard data processing agreement available |
| Founded | 2009 | 2016 |
| Headquarters | Manchester, United Kingdom | Distributed team, with origins in Chelyabinsk, Russia |
| Ownership | Bootstrapped and privately held (Zestia Ltd), with no outside investment | Privately held and bootstrapped |
Strengths and limitations
Capsule CRM
Strengths
- Genuinely easy to use, to the point that non-technical staff adopt it without training, which is the hardest problem in small-business CRM.
- A permanent free plan for two users, plus a clear upgrade ladder driven mostly by contact limits rather than feature removal.
- Project boards bring post-sale delivery onto the customer record at roughly a third of Insightly's price.
- Bootstrapped, profitable, independent vendor since 2009 with no investors, no acquisitions, and a track record of stable pricing.
Limitations
- No native calling and no serious email sequencing, so outbound-heavy teams need additional tools.
- No custom object types; the data model is contacts, organisations, opportunities, and projects extended by custom fields.
- Workflow automation and multiple pipelines are withheld from Starter, which makes the entry price less useful than it first appears.
- Reporting is clear but shallow, with no forecasting hierarchy or BI-grade analysis.
Flowlu
Strengths
- The CRM, project management, and invoicing genuinely share one client record, so a won deal becomes a project becomes an invoice without retyping anything.
- Pricing is exceptional: $11 a user on Advanced for a feature set that normally requires three or four separate subscriptions.
- A permanently free two-user plan makes it viable for freelancers and costless to evaluate properly.
- Project management is real rather than token: Gantt charts, dependencies, sprints, workload views, templates, and billable time tracking.
Limitations
- The CRM is competent rather than sophisticated; there is no custom object model, no advanced forecasting, and no lead scoring of consequence.
- Automation, email tracking, and the client portal are all withheld from the $6 Essential tier, making the headline price unrepresentative for teams.
- No native dialer, so telephony is an integration and call recording depends on the provider.
- The native integration list is short, and much of the long tail runs through Zapier rather than first-party connectors.
Pricing compared
Capsule CRM
Per-user subscription across a free 2-user plan and four paid plans, billed monthly or annually, with contact limits as the main scaling lever and marketing sold separately through the Transpond sibling product.
- Free$0
- StarterAbout $18
- GrowthAbout $36
- AdvancedAbout $54
- UltimateAbout $72
Starter at around $18 is good value for a single-pipeline business that mostly needs a shared address book with follow-up. Growth at around $36 is where the honest comparison happens, and there it sits just below Pipedrive Growth at $39 while offering project boards and AI enrichment that Pipedrive charges extra for or omits, and giving up automation depth, sequencing, and ecosystem size in return. What you are really buying is low total cost of ownership: nothing to administer, no add-on catalogue, no credit meters, and a vendor with no investors pushing it to reprice. For a small business that values predictability, that is worth more than a feature comparison suggests.
Flowlu
Per-user subscription across a free plan and three paid tiers, billed monthly or annually, with annual billing published at roughly half the monthly rate.
- Free$0
- Essential$6
- Advanced$11
- Ultimate$16
At $11 a user annually, Advanced buys a CRM, a project management system with Gantt charts and time tracking, quoting and recurring invoicing, financial reporting, a client portal, and a knowledge base. Priced individually those are four subscriptions and would run five to ten times as much. Against pure CRMs the comparison is less flattering: Bigin does sales better for $7 and Pipedrive does it much better for $39. So the buying question is simple. If you sell projects and deliver them, Flowlu is one of the best value purchases in this entire directory. If you only sell, you are buying software you will not open.
Editorial verdict on each
Capsule CRM
Capsule is the CRM to buy when you want the problem solved rather than a platform to administer. It is clear, quick to adopt, priced sensibly on contact limits rather than feature hostage-taking, and made by a bootstrapped British company that has been shipping steadily since 2009 with no investors demanding a repricing. Budget for Growth at roughly $36 a user, because workflow automation and multiple pipelines are the features most teams discover they need, and the project boards there are a real bonus for service businesses. The honest limits are that there is no sequencing, no dialer, no custom objects, and no big ecosystem. If you need those, look elsewhere. If you want a small business CRM your team will actually keep using, Capsule is one of the two or three best answers in this category.
Read the full Capsule CRM profileFlowlu
Flowlu is one of the best value purchases in this directory, provided you are the buyer it was built for. An agency or consultancy paying $11 a user gets a CRM, a real project management system with Gantt charts and billable time tracking, recurring invoicing, financial reporting, a client portal, and a knowledge base, which is four subscriptions replaced by one and a client record that finally stays in one place. Do not buy it as a pure CRM: the sales tooling is competent, not exceptional, there are no custom objects, no native dialer, and no AI, and Bigin or Pipedrive will serve a sales-only team better. Budget for Advanced rather than Essential, because automation and the client portal are the features that make the consolidation work, and take the annual billing, because monthly costs roughly double.
Read the full Flowlu profileCapsule CRM profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Flowlu last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.