Insightly vs Nutshell
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
Both sides assessedInsightly compared with Nutshell
Nutshell is cheaper per seat and bundles marketing tooling, forms, and landing pages into every tier, where Insightly sells marketing as a $99-plus monthly product. Insightly counters with project delivery, deeper permissions, and much higher record ceilings. Sales-and-marketing teams take Nutshell; sales-and-delivery teams take Insightly.
Nutshell compared with Insightly
Insightly charges $49 a user for its automation tier and sells marketing separately from $99 a month, but it adds native project delivery that Nutshell does not have. Nutshell bundles the marketing and keeps contacts unlimited. Project-based service firms fit Insightly; sales-and-marketing teams with no delivery workflow fit Nutshell.
Choose Insightly if
Small and mid-sized project-based businesses (agencies, consultancies, professional services, specialist contractors) that need the sale and the delivery to share one system, and that value record scale and permissions over deep sales automation.
Choose Nutshell if
Small B2B businesses of roughly 3 to 30 people that have no marketing team, want lead capture, campaigns, and pipeline in one subscription, and would rather pay one vendor $42 a seat than assemble a CRM plus a form tool plus an email platform.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Insightly | Nutshell |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $29 per user per month, billed annually (Plus) (14 days trial) | $13 per user per month on annual billing (Foundation) (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription across three CRM plans billed annually, with marketing automation priced by prospect volume, service ticketing priced per user, and the AppConnect integration platform priced by monthly task volume. | Per-user subscription across five tiers with unlimited contacts on every plan, an AI outcomes allowance per tier, and separate add-ons for marketing depth, SMS and social messaging, prospecting data, and quotes and invoices. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized project-based businesses (agencies, consultancies, professional services, specialist contractors) that need the sale and the delivery to share one system, and that value record scale and permissions over deep sales automation. | Small B2B businesses of roughly 3 to 30 people that have no marketing team, want lead capture, campaigns, and pipeline in one subscription, and would rather pay one vendor $42 a seat than assemble a CRM plus a form tool plus an email platform. |
| Setup time | A working CRM in a day or two through CSV import and pipeline configuration. Setting up project pipelines, task templates, routing rules, and dashboards so that sales and delivery genuinely connect takes 2 to 4 weeks of part-time work. | A usable CRM in a few hours: import contacts, define pipeline stages, connect the mailbox. Adding forms, landing pages, chat, and an email campaign is another day or two, which is still much faster than assembling equivalent tools separately. |
| Learning curve | Moderate. The CRM half is conventional and familiar, and the project half requires deliberate process design, since the value only appears if the opportunity-to-project handoff mirrors how the business actually delivers. | Low. The CRM half is conventional and the marketing tools are deliberately simple, aimed at business owners rather than marketing operations specialists. Administration effort is minimal because there is no custom object model to design. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook integrations | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook integrations |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR, ISO 27001, HIPAA support on eligible configurations | SOC 2, GDPR |
| Founded | 2009 | 2010 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States | Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States |
| Ownership | PE-owned (Crest Rock Partners, merged with Unbounce in July 2024) | Owned by WebFX, a privately held digital marketing agency, since October 2022 |
Strengths and limitations
Insightly
Strengths
- Genuine project management inside the CRM, with opportunities converting into delivery projects that keep the customer history attached; almost nothing else in this price band does this properly.
- Generous record and storage limits (up to 500,000 records and 250 GB) compared with most small-business CRMs.
- Serious administrative controls at the top tier including sandboxes, audit logging, and serverless function authoring.
- One vendor now covers landing pages, CRM, marketing automation, and service following the 2024 Unbounce merger, which is a coherent story for marketing-led service businesses.
Limitations
- No free plan and a 14-day trial only, with an entry price double Zoho Standard for less configurability.
- The Plus plan has no workflow automation and only two permission roles, which makes $49 Professional the real starting point.
- Native sales sequencing and cadence tooling are thin; serious outbound follow-up pushes you toward the separately priced marketing product.
- Four separate subscriptions (CRM, Marketing, Service, AppConnect) make total cost of ownership opaque, and AppConnect at $249 a month is expensive for an integration layer.
Nutshell
Strengths
- Marketing tooling (chat, AI chatbot, forms, landing pages, email marketing, attribution) is included on every plan, including the $13 tier.
- Unlimited contacts on all tiers, removing the list-size metering that makes competing stacks expensive as you grow.
- The Engagement add-on brings SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram into a unified CRM inbox, which almost nothing else in this price band does.
- Direct SQL read access to your own data on the Enterprise plan, a rare and genuinely useful offering at $79 a seat.
Limitations
- No free plan, and only a 14-day trial, which makes evaluation more time-pressured than with HubSpot, Zoho, or Capsule.
- AI usage is allotted rather than included, with only 10 outcomes a month on Foundation, which makes the AI story feel like an upsell lever.
- No custom object types, and unlimited custom fields require the $79 Enterprise tier.
- The integration ecosystem and developer surface are modest compared with HubSpot, Zoho, or Pipedrive.
Pricing compared
Insightly
Per-user subscription across three CRM plans billed annually, with marketing automation priced by prospect volume, service ticketing priced per user, and the AppConnect integration platform priced by monthly task volume.
- Plus$29
- Professional$49
- Enterprise$99
Insightly is not cheap and does not pretend to be. Against pure sales CRMs it looks expensive: $49 for the automation tier where Zoho charges $23 and includes far more configuration. The value case rests entirely on the project layer. If your business genuinely delivers work after the sale and would otherwise buy a CRM plus a project tool plus an integration between them, Insightly at $49 a user is competitive and simpler. If you would never open the project module, you are paying a premium for shelf space, and the multi-product pricing around it makes the total cost harder to predict than most competitors here.
Nutshell
Per-user subscription across five tiers with unlimited contacts on every plan, an AI outcomes allowance per tier, and separate add-ons for marketing depth, SMS and social messaging, prospecting data, and quotes and invoices.
- Foundation$13
- Growth$25
- Pro$42
- Business$59
- Enterprise$79
Judged as a pure sales CRM, Nutshell Pro at $42 is fractionally more expensive than Pipedrive Growth and less refined. Judged as a CRM plus a marketing toolkit, it is one of the best-value products in this category: forms, landing pages, chat, an AI chatbot, email marketing, and attribution reporting are included at every tier, and contacts are unlimited. That combination costs several hundred dollars a month elsewhere, or $90 a seat plus onboarding at HubSpot. The value proposition collapses if you already own a marketing stack, so the honest test is simple: count how many subscriptions Nutshell would replace, and if the answer is two or more it is very good value indeed.
Editorial verdict on each
Insightly
Insightly is a specialist wearing a generalist's clothes. As a sales CRM it is fine and slightly expensive; as a system that carries a customer from lead to won deal to delivered project on one record, it is one of very few options a small business can buy self-serve. Agencies, consultancies, and contractors are the natural buyers, and they should budget for the $49 Professional plan because Plus has no automation and only two permission roles. Treat the surrounding product family with caution: marketing, service, and AppConnect are separate subscriptions that can triple the bill. And factor in that the company is two years into private equity ownership and a merger with Unbounce, so the combined-platform pitch is still a promise. If the project layer is not the reason you are looking, buy something cheaper.
Read the full Insightly profileNutshell
Nutshell is the right answer to a specific question: what if the CRM also handled the marketing? Chat, an AI chatbot, forms, landing pages, email campaigns, and attribution reporting are included on every plan, contacts are unlimited, and the SMS and social inbox add-on covers channels most competitors ignore entirely. Buy it at Pro, $42 a seat, where pipelines, sales automation, and real reporting live. The case is strongest for a small B2B company with no marketing hire that would otherwise buy two or three separate tools, and weakest for anyone who already owns a marketing stack, since the bundled value is then dead weight and Pipedrive does the sales half better. The AI allowances and the add-on catalogue deserve scrutiny before signing, but as a consolidation play under 30 people it is one of the best-value CRMs in this directory.
Read the full Nutshell profileInsightly profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Nutshell last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.