# Capsule CRM

> Capsule is a simple, well-built CRM for small businesses made by Zestia, a bootstrapped software company in Manchester, offering contact management, sales pipelines, project boards, workflow automation, and AI assistance across a free 2-user plan and four paid plans running from roughly $18 to $72 per user per month on annual billing, with contact limits rather than feature bloat as the main scaling lever.

- Category: Sales CRM (https://saastracker.org/categories/crm)
- Website: https://capsulecrm.com
- Starting price: $0 for 2 users and 250 contacts, then about $18 per user per month on annual billing (Starter)
- 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 trial: 14 days, no credit card required
- Founded: 2009, HQ: Manchester, United Kingdom, Ownership: Bootstrapped and privately held (Zestia Ltd), with no outside investment
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/capsule-crm

## Overview

Capsule is the CRM equivalent of a well-made hand tool. It has been sold by the same small, profitable, bootstrapped company in Manchester since 2009, it has never taken outside investment, and it has resisted the temptation to become a platform. What you get is contacts, opportunities, tasks, project boards, and now a sensible AI layer, presented in an interface a non-technical business owner can understand in an afternoon. Around 54 people build it and Zestia reports revenue in the region of $7 million, which tells you the pace: steady improvement, no repricing drama, no acquisition upheaval.

The plan structure is contact-led rather than feature-led, which is unusual and buyer-friendly. Free covers 2 users, 250 contacts, 5 custom fields, and 1 sales pipeline. Starter, published around $18 per user per month on annual billing (roughly $21 monthly), lifts you to 30,000 contacts with email templates, a shared mailbox, basic reporting, premium integrations, goals, and an AI pipeline generator. Growth, around $36 annually (roughly $38 monthly), is where workflow automation, advanced sales reporting, reporting dashboards, multiple pipelines and project boards, team controls, and the AI features live. Advanced at roughly $54 and Ultimate at roughly $72 mostly buy more contacts, more boards, and an account manager.

That gating is honest by category standards but the same trap applies: workflow automation and multiple pipelines sit on Growth, so the working price for a team with more than one sales motion is roughly $36 a user rather than $18. What Capsule does not do is nickel-and-dime. There are no per-company add-on modules for lead capture or documents, no AI credit meters, and the only real add-on is Transpond, the sibling marketing tool, from about $11 a month.

One practical caveat on pricing: Capsule's pricing page renders rates by region and currency, and the US dollar figures above reflect published rates reported at the time of review rather than a fixed global list. Confirm the number in your own checkout. The 14-day trial needs no card, and the free plan means a two-person business can run on Capsule indefinitely at zero cost, which very few CRMs of this quality allow.

## How it works

1. You import contacts by CSV or from Gmail, Outlook, or another CRM, and Capsule builds a people-and-organisations address book with tags, custom fields, and a full activity history on each record.

2. Sales work happens in opportunity pipelines with configurable stages, values, and expected close dates, plus tasks and calendar activity. Free and Starter give one pipeline, and multiple pipelines arrive on Growth.

3. Email flows through mailbox integration and a shared team mailbox, with templates and tracking. Capsule deliberately keeps email marketing outside the CRM, pushing it to Transpond, its sibling product, rather than building a half-hearted campaign tool.

4. From Growth upward, workflow automation handles repetitive steps such as creating tasks on stage change, updating fields, and sending notifications, while project boards track post-sale delivery. The AI layer adds contact and business enrichment, meeting preparation, summaries, and pipeline generation, and the whole system extends through a REST API, Zapier, and a curated set of native integrations.

## 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.

## Not the right fit for

- High-volume outbound sales teams needing sequences, dialers, and cadence analytics; Capsule has no serious sequencing engine and no native calling.
- Companies that need custom object types or complex data models; Capsule extends contacts and opportunities with custom fields and nothing more.
- Marketing-led businesses wanting campaigns inside the CRM; email marketing is a separate product (Transpond) by design.
- Teams needing advanced reporting, forecasting hierarchies, or BI-grade analytics; the reporting is clear and shallow.
- Organisations wanting a large integration marketplace or a partner ecosystem; Capsule's native catalogue is curated and small, with Zapier filling the gaps.

## Features

### Contacts and organisation

A genuinely good address book, which is more than most CRMs manage.

- **People and organisations**: Linked contact and company records with a complete history of emails, notes, calls, and files, presented plainly enough that non-technical staff use it without training.
- **Tags and custom fields**: Flexible tagging plus custom fields, capped at 5 on the free plan and expanded on paid plans, with data lists and filters built on top.
- **Contact limits by plan**: 250 contacts on Free, 30,000 on Starter, 60,000 on Growth, and 120,000 on Advanced, with the Ultimate plan higher still. Contacts, not features, are the primary scaling lever.
- **Shared team mailbox**: A shared inbox tied to CRM records from the Starter plan, so enquiries to a general address land against the right contact rather than in one person's mail.
- **Saved lists and filters**: Segmented, saved views of contacts by tag, field, or activity, which is how most Capsule users run their outreach and follow-up.

### Sales pipeline and tasks

Straightforward opportunity management without ceremony.

- **Opportunity pipelines**: Kanban and list views with configurable stages, values, and milestones; one pipeline on Free and Starter, multiple pipelines from Growth.
- **Tasks and calendar**: Task assignment with due dates, recurring tasks, and calendar sync so follow-up lives in the CRM rather than in a rep's head.
- **Goals and targets**: Sales targets tracked against actual performance, available from the Starter plan, which is unusual at that price.
- **Sales reporting**: Basic reporting on Starter and advanced sales reporting with dashboards from Growth, covering pipeline value, conversion, and activity.
- **Project boards**: Post-sale delivery boards for onboarding or fulfilment work, with up to 50 boards on the Advanced plan, so a won deal can become a tracked piece of work.

### Automation and AI

Introduced carefully rather than sprayed across the product.

- **Workflow automation**: Rule-based automation for task creation, field updates, and notifications, available from the Growth plan and the single most common reason to upgrade from Starter.
- **AI pipeline generator**: Generates a suggested pipeline structure from a description of how you sell, available from the Starter plan, which is a genuinely thoughtful onboarding aid.
- **AI contact and business enrichment**: Fills in company and contact detail automatically on the Growth plan and above, reducing the manual research that kills CRM hygiene in small teams.
- **AI summaries**: Condenses long record histories into a readable summary before a call, so account context does not require reading six months of notes.
- **AI meeting prep**: Assembles a briefing from the record ahead of a scheduled meeting, on Growth and above.

### Email and collaboration

Deliberately scoped, with marketing kept separate.

- **Mailbox integration**: Gmail and Outlook integration with a bcc dropbox address, so correspondence attaches to records without changing how people work.
- **Email templates**: Shared templates with merge fields from the Starter plan, covering repeat outreach without a sequencing engine.
- **Team controls and permissions**: User roles and record visibility controls from the Growth plan for teams that need reps to see only their own accounts.
- **Transpond marketing integration**: Zestia's sibling marketing product, from about $11 per month, handles campaigns, newsletters, and automations against CRM segments.

### Platform and administration

Small, tidy, and adequately open.

- **REST API**: A documented REST API with webhooks for building custom integrations, available on paid plans, with reasonable published rate limits for a product of this size.
- **Native integrations**: A curated catalogue covering accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent), email, e-signature, support, and telephony, with premium integrations unlocked from Starter.
- **Zapier and Make**: The practical route to anything outside the native catalogue, which matters because Capsule's marketplace is small by design.
- **Mobile apps**: iOS and Android apps covering contacts, opportunities, and tasks, competent for looking things up and logging activity on the move.
- **Import and export**: CSV import with field mapping and complete CSV export of contacts, opportunities, tasks, and notes, so leaving is a straightforward data exercise.

## Use cases

- **Two-person consultancy**: Client contacts live in a phone and a spreadsheet, and follow-ups get missed between projects. Outcome: The free plan covers both users with 250 contacts, one pipeline, and task management at zero cost, and upgrading to Starter at around $18 when the contact list grows is a small, predictable step.
- **Ten-person B2B firm with two sales motions**: New business and renewals need different stages, and repetitive admin after each stage change eats rep time. Outcome: Growth at roughly $36 a user brings multiple pipelines, workflow automation, dashboards, and the AI enrichment and summary features, which is the plan most Capsule customers of this size settle on.
- **Service business that delivers after the sale**: Won work becomes onboarding and fulfilment tasks that currently live in a separate project tool nobody links back to the client record. Outcome: Project boards attached to the same contacts keep delivery and account history together, in the same spirit as Insightly but at roughly a third of the price.
- **Owner who wants to stop maintaining a CRM**: A previous system needed constant configuration and the team stopped using it. Outcome: Capsule's small, opinionated feature set and stable independent vendor mean there is very little to administer, and the product does not change out from under the business every quarter.

## Pricing

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 for up to 2 users. 250 contacts; 5 custom fields; 1 sales pipeline; Tasks, calendar, and contact history; Mobile apps. Small but real. Two-person businesses can live here for years.
- **Starter**: About $18 per user per month, billed annually (about $21 billed monthly). 30,000 contacts; Email templates and shared mailbox; Basic reporting and sales goals; Premium integrations; AI pipeline generator. No workflow automation and still one pipeline; fine for a single, simple sales motion.
- **Growth**: About $36 per user per month, billed annually (about $38 billed monthly). 60,000 contacts; Workflow automation; Multiple pipelines and project boards; Advanced sales reporting and dashboards; AI enrichment, summaries, and meeting prep. The plan most real teams need, and the honest price for Capsule.
- **Advanced**: About $54 per user per month, billed annually (about $60 billed monthly). 120,000 contacts; 50 sales pipelines and 50 project boards; Everything in Growth at higher limits; Team controls at scale.
- **Ultimate**: About $72 per user per month, billed annually (about $75 billed monthly). Highest contact and board limits; Dedicated account manager; Custom training and onboarding; Suited to teams of 5 or more scaling on Capsule.

Add-ons:

- Transpond marketing (From about $11 per month): Zestia's sibling email marketing and automation product, priced by contact volume.

Billing notes:

- Annual billing saves roughly 10 to 15 percent against monthly across the paid plans.
- Capsule's pricing page renders by region and currency, so the US dollar figures here reflect published rates reported at review time and should be confirmed in your own checkout.
- Contact limits, not feature removal, are the primary difference between the higher plans, which makes upgrade decisions unusually easy to predict.
- Workflow automation and multiple pipelines require the Growth plan, so budget from roughly $36 a user rather than $18 if you have more than one sales motion.
- There are no per-company add-on modules and no AI credit meters; the only significant extra is Transpond for marketing from about $11 a month.
- The free plan is a permanent 2-user plan rather than a trial, so evaluation can be open-ended.

Value assessment: 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.

## 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.
- A thoughtful AI layer (pipeline generation, enrichment, summaries, meeting prep) added without an AI credit meter attached.
- Clean import and complete CSV export, so trying Capsule carries almost no switching risk.

## 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.
- The native integration catalogue is small and curated, so a lot of connections route through Zapier.
- It is a small company: roughly 54 staff and about $7 million of revenue, which means slower feature velocity than venture-backed rivals, for better and for worse.

## Comparisons

- **Capsule CRM vs Insightly**: Both put project delivery next to the pipeline. Insightly scales much further, with up to 500,000 records, sandboxes, audit logging, and unlimited permission roles, and charges $49 a user for its automation tier. Capsule does the same core job at roughly $36 with a free plan underneath it. Small service businesses should start with Capsule; firms that need permission structures and six-figure record counts belong on Insightly.
- **Capsule CRM vs Less Annoying CRM**: Less Annoying CRM is one flat $15 per user per month with every feature included and famously good human support, but no workflow automation and no project boards. Capsule offers automation, multiple pipelines, project delivery, and an AI layer at roughly $36 on Growth. Choose Less Annoying CRM for absolute simplicity and support; choose Capsule when you want automation and delivery tracking without leaving the simple end of the market.
- **Capsule CRM vs Nutshell**: Nutshell bundles email marketing, forms, landing pages, and a chatbot into every plan from $13 per user per month, where Capsule keeps marketing in the separate Transpond product. Capsule is cleaner, has a free plan, and is easier to administer. Teams that want marketing included should price Nutshell; teams that want a tidy CRM and already have a marketing tool should take Capsule.
- **Capsule CRM vs folk**: folk is the modern relationship CRM with LinkedIn-first capture and a fast, contemporary interface aimed at network-driven deals. Capsule is more traditional, includes project boards and workflow automation, and comes from a fifteen-year-old profitable vendor. Agencies and investors working their network fit folk; small businesses running a repeatable pipeline with delivery work behind it fit Capsule.
- **Capsule CRM vs Salesflare**: Salesflare automates data capture aggressively, building the CRM from mailboxes, calendars, and signatures so reps enter almost nothing. Capsule expects a little more manual upkeep but covers project delivery, goals, and a broader range of small-business workflows. Email-led B2B teams that hate data entry should try Salesflare; businesses that need pipelines plus delivery should take Capsule.

## Implementation

- 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.
- 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.
- Onboarding: Entirely self-serve, with a 14-day trial that needs no card and a permanent free plan underneath it. The Ultimate plan adds an account manager and custom training for teams that want a guided rollout.
- Migration: CSV import with field mapping plus direct imports from Gmail and Outlook contacts cover most moves, and the support team is known for helping with imports personally. Export is complete: contacts, organisations, opportunities, tasks, and notes all come out as CSV, and the REST API supports full extraction, so the switching cost in either direction is low.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook integrations
- API: Documented REST API with webhooks on paid plans, plus Zapier and Make connectors for everything outside the curated native catalogue.
- Compliance: GDPR, UK data protection compliance, SOC 2 aligned hosting practices
- Data residency: Hosting in the European Union and the United States depending on account configuration; the vendor is UK-based, which suits UK and EU buyers with residency preferences.
- SSO: Google and Microsoft sign-in supported; SAML single sign-on availability depends on plan.
- Security notes: Two-factor authentication, role-based permissions and record visibility controls from the Growth plan, encryption in transit and at rest, and regular backups. As a small independent vendor, Capsule publishes fewer formal compliance certifications than the public companies in this category.

## Support

- Channels: Email support on all plans including free, Priority support on higher plans, Dedicated account manager and custom training on Ultimate
- Documentation: Clear product documentation and a developer portal covering the REST API, webhooks, and integration setup.
- Community: A modest but loyal user base with an active help centre and a network of UK-based consultants; there is no large community forum or conference.

## Company

- Founded: 2009
- Headquarters: Manchester, United Kingdom
- Ownership: Bootstrapped and privately held (Zestia Ltd), with no outside investment
- Employees: Approximately 54 (2026)
- Funding: Zestia has never raised venture capital. Reported revenue is in the region of $7 million a year, with the business funded entirely from customer subscriptions since 2009.

Timeline:

- 2009: Zestia founded in Manchester and Capsule launched as a simple, affordable CRM for small businesses, funded entirely from revenue.
- 2015: Adds deeper integrations with accounting and productivity tools, establishing the curated rather than sprawling integration approach that still defines the product.
- 2021: Introduces project boards, extending the CRM past the closed-won line for service businesses that deliver work after the sale.
- 2023: Restructures plans around contact limits (Starter, Growth, Advanced, Ultimate) with workflow automation as the key Growth-tier capability.
- 2024: Adds the Transpond marketing product as a sibling application rather than building email marketing into the CRM.
- 2026: Ships an AI layer covering pipeline generation, contact and business enrichment, record summaries, and meeting prep, without introducing a credit meter.

## Integrations

Gmail and Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Outlook, Xero, QuickBooks, and FreeAgent, Transpond marketing, Mailchimp, Slack, Zapier and Make, Google Data Studio and Looker Studio, REST API and webhooks

## FAQ

### What is Capsule CRM?

Capsule is a simple CRM for small businesses, made by Zestia, a bootstrapped company in Manchester. It covers contacts and organisations, sales pipelines, tasks, project boards for post-sale delivery, workflow automation, and an AI assistance layer, sold on a free 2-user plan plus four paid plans running from roughly $18 to $72 per user per month on annual billing.

### How much does Capsule cost?

The free plan covers 2 users and 250 contacts. Starter is about $18 per user per month on annual billing, Growth about $36, Advanced about $54, and Ultimate about $72, with monthly billing roughly 10 to 15 percent higher. Capsule renders prices by region, so confirm the exact figure in your own checkout.

### What does the free plan include?

Two users, 250 contacts, 5 custom fields, one sales pipeline, tasks and calendar, contact history, and the mobile apps. It is small but genuinely permanent, which makes it a workable long-term home for a two-person business rather than a time-limited trial.

### Which plan do I actually need?

Starter if you have one simple sales pipeline and want templates, a shared mailbox, and basic reporting. Growth if you need workflow automation, multiple pipelines, project boards, dashboards, or the AI enrichment and summary features, which is most teams of more than about four people. Advanced and Ultimate mainly buy higher contact and board limits.

### Does Capsule do email sequencing or calling?

No to both, in any serious sense. You get mailbox integration, a shared team mailbox, and email templates, but there is no multi-step sequencing engine and no native dialer. Outbound-heavy teams should look at Close or Freshsales, and email marketing is handled by Transpond, Zestia's separate product from about $11 a month.

### Does Capsule support custom objects?

No. The data model is people, organisations, opportunities, projects, and tasks, extended with custom fields and tags. That is a deliberate simplicity choice. Businesses that need custom object types should look at Zoho CRM, which offers custom modules from $14 per user per month, or Attio.

### How does Capsule handle project work after a sale?

Project boards let a won opportunity become tracked delivery work attached to the same contacts and organisations, with up to 50 boards on the Advanced plan. It is lighter than Insightly's project module but covers onboarding, fulfilment, and implementation workflows for most small service businesses at a much lower price.

### Can I export everything if I leave?

Yes. Contacts, organisations, opportunities, tasks, and notes all export as CSV from the interface, and the REST API supports full programmatic extraction. Capsule's support team is also known for helping with imports and exports directly, which is one of the advantages of buying from a small vendor.

### Who makes Capsule and is the company stable?

Capsule is made by Zestia Ltd, founded in Manchester in 2009. The company is bootstrapped with no outside investment, employs roughly 54 people, and reports revenue in the region of $7 million. It has never been acquired or repriced dramatically, which is a meaningful stability argument in a category full of private equity transactions.

### What size of team is Capsule built for?

Roughly 2 to 30 people. It is excellent for very small businesses and comfortable through the twenties. Beyond about 30 users the shallow reporting, absence of custom objects, small integration catalogue, and lack of sequencing start to matter, and teams usually move to Zoho, HubSpot, or a dedicated sales platform.

## Editorial verdict

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.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology