When searching for a small business CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, Capsule CRM often appears as a potential option.
Capsule markets itself as a straightforward CRM. It promises a user-friendly interface and offers a free plan with some basic functionality for sales opportunity management.
However, simplicity can sometimes mean missing essential features. So, the question remains: is Capsule CRM the right choice for your small business?
We put Capsule CRM through rigorous testing to evaluate how well it serves small businesses.
Capsule CRM was made for managing sales opportunities. It takes a minimalist approach to this by offering just the basics without the complexity found in larger systems.
The CRM lets you track sales opportunities through customizable pipelines, manage contacts and organizations in one place, and handle basic task management. You can visualize your sales process using a Kanban board, and there’s an “Add” button at the top of every tab for quick data entry.
Capsule also provides activity and sales reports, a simple dashboard, and integration with 70+ business apps through its marketplace.
However, this small business CRM lacks several critical features even on paid plans. There’s no two-way email sync on any tier—not even the most expensive one. Follow-up tracking doesn’t exist, and email sequences require purchasing an add-on for an extra fee each month.
Moreover, the contact enrichment feature and different reports are gated behind higher pricing plans. Surprisingly, you also need to pay extra to get email notifications about contacts or opportunities assigned to you.
If this isn’t enough for you to make your decision, keep reading. We’ve provided more detailed information about what to expect when using Capsule CRM for small businesses.
Capsule CRM has several pros and cons for you to consider.
To understand if Capsule CRM has what your small business needs, we’ve provided a table overview, as well as a comprehensive breakdown of its features at the $18/month Starter plan level.
Here’s the table showing Capsule CRM’s features.
Below, let’s examine the key features in detail.
You can create contacts and organizations, import them via Excel documents, or migrate them from another CRM—in a few clicks.
All contacts and organizations are jam-packed in the People & Organizations tab. There, you can view a list of all contacts and add tags, log activities, or send mass marketing emails (only if you’ve installed the Transpond tool).
You can also click on a contact to view all its information: details, projects, value, opportunities, tasks, activity logs, files, outreach emails, and comments, if any. This is lean, compared to a host of other CRMs with a lot more contextual data.
The Starter plan allows storage of up to 30,000 contacts, which should be sufficient for most small businesses.
Capsule CRM doesn’t have follow-up tracking. It only offers Task Management.
You can create various kinds of tasks and set deadlines for them. Task types include call, email, meeting, send, follow-up, and the like. You can even create new categories.
All your tasks appear in your calendar and tasks list, where they’re automatically organized according to their deadlines. From here, you can mark a task as completed or click on it to edit the details.
Similarly, the Home page features a list of your most urgent tasks. You’ll see your overdue tasks, those for ‘today’, and the ones you have to complete within the next 7 days. And everything is arranged according to their deadlines, down to the minute.
Interestingly, Capsule CRM color codes tasks according to their deadlines, just like a bona fide follow-up tracker. It also sends you email reminders of tasks you need to complete each day.
However, adding tasks to Capsule CRM is akin to working with a project management tool. There are quite a few fields to fill out with different drop-downs.
This is in contrast to a small business CRM like OnePageCRM, where you need only type what you want to do in the Next Action field—and the system automatically saves the task.
In Capsule CRM, you can add sales opportunities to your pipeline, organize everything in a Kanban board, and advance them using drag and drop.
There’s also a list view option if you prefer that format.
However, Capsule’s Starter plan gives you just one sales pipeline and one project board. While you can customize this single sales pipeline, businesses with multiple products or services will find this limiting.
Capsule CRM doesn’t have a deal management module, but it does have one for sales opportunities. It’s worth noting that sales opportunities in Capsule are much like deals in other CRMs. The only difference is that the former encompasses various kinds of opportunities that can lead to sales, including deals, bids, and proposals.
When creating a sales opportunity, you must link it to a contact (person or organization) and a sales pipeline. You can then select the pipeline stage (Milestone), expected value, payment terms, and owner.
You’ll find all added sales opportunities in the Sales Pipeline tab. Click on an opportunity to get the full context about it. That means basic details, activity history, associated contacts, emails, tasks, comments, and files. You can also view and update the opportunity’s progress from there.
There’s no two-way email sync on the lowest plan or any of the other plans. The best you can do is connect your email account and send an email directly from the CRM. The email and its content will also be logged.
However, emails sent from contacts will not appear in your CRM.
The only way to see those is to use the drop box functionality (BCC). You’ll get a unique email from Capsule, to which you’ll forward emails. The forwarded emails will then be logged into your CRM.
This manual process is time-consuming and error-prone, which can be a problem if you rely heavily on email communication.
Collaboration features on Capsule are quite simple. You can tag and leave comments for your team members right on the CRM. You can also assign tasks to them, share mailboxes, and track everyone’s calendar.
Capsule CRM provides a straightforward duplicate management feature. Simply open the duplicate records, select the drop-down arrow beside the Edit button, and click “merge”.
Likewise, if you’re importing new contacts and some of them already have records in your CRM, Capsule allows you to merge the duplicates into one.
Capsule CRM offers modules for activity and sales reports. The former allows you to generate overviews of completed activities by user and type, while the latter provides insights into your won/lost sales opportunities. You can also track sales goals and export reports as spreadsheets or images.
This small business CRM has a simple dashboard for a pipeline overview. You’ll find it in the Sales Pipeline tab, and it displays your conversion rate, opportunities at each stage of the pipeline, revenue forecast, and other insights you might want to include.
Capsule CRM comes with native workflow automation that can only be accessed by the account Admin.
You can set up your CRM to automatically carry out tasks — like assigning opportunities to a team member, creating projects, sending emails, and more — when certain events take place (say, an opportunity moves to the proposal stage, for example).
Capsule CRM also allows you to capture contacts automatically. You can download the “Magical” browser extension to help you pull contacts’ data directly from LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Gmail, and Outlook.
However, this small business CRM doesn’t offer native email sequences. For this, you’ll need to use Transpond, an email marketing add-on. This paid tool lets you create email campaigns, set up email sequences, segment your email list, and track stats.
Capsule CRM can integrate with Gmail, Outlook, QuickBooks, Mailchimp, Transpond (email marketing tool), and 70+ other business apps on the marketplace. You can even use Zapier to connect with over 1,000 more.
You can use Capsule CRM on Android and iOS devices via the mobile apps available on Google Play and the App Store, respectively.
The mobile app supports offline access, so you can communicate, manage tasks, and advance sales opportunities without an internet connection.
The app also features a map for locating nearby contacts. And if you’re using the iOS version, you’ll be able to see caller IDs when CRM contacts call you—even if their phone number isn’t saved on your mobile device.
Capsule CRM has a clean design and a user-friendly layout. It comes with just a few tabs, neatly organized at the top of the page. These tabs are also named according to exactly what they contain, so you won’t have to dig around to find what you need.
There aren’t too many buttons or modules, the 360° contact and opportunity pages are lean, and you’re not overwhelmed with a slew of functionalities. And since you’re only getting the basic functionalities of a small business CRM, the learning curve is minimal.
Moreover, the CRM features drag and drop. There’s also an “Add” button at the top of every screen; it lets you add new contacts, organizations, sales opportunities, and projects, no matter where you are on the CRM.
After you create an account and log in to your CRM, you’ll find several short video guides to help you get started. There’s also a short video tutorial by one of Capsule’s customer success managers.
However, the CRM’s use of color is not much to write home about. Empty user profiles have different colors in their profile icons. Likewise, color labels are randomly assigned to different kinds of tasks, and have no meaning. While this can make the interface less bland, it’s also distracting.
Capsule CRM has an average rating of 4.7/5 on G2 from over 425 customers. Many users say that while Capsule only offers the basics, it makes up for it by being user-friendly.
Customer support on Capsule CRM is not very impressive. On the free plan and lowest tier (Starter), support is limited to self-help resources and tutorials, an AI chatbot, and assistance from the Capsule team via email (Monday – Friday).
The same applies to all other plans except Ultimate. Support is more robust here. You get custom training, implementation support, and a dedicated customer success manager.
However, unlike many of the top CRMs for small businesses, phone support is not available on any of Capsule CRM’s plans. There’s also no live chat.
This limited support can be a problem for small businesses that are new to CRM software and need immediate assistance when issues arise.
Capsule offers monthly and annual billing options, with pricing calculated per user per month. Like most CRMs, you’ll get a discount if you commit to annual billing.
The pricing tiers range from a free plan with severe limitations to enterprise-level options. However, the jump between tiers is significant, and essential features are missing even from paid plans.
The CRM’s pricing structure also features a paid add-on for marketing.
Capsule CRM has a free plan, but it lacks two-way email sync, and the number of records you can create is limited to 250. File storage is also capped at just 50MB per user. Unless you’re a solopreneur who deals with just a handful of sales, the free plan will not be worth your while.
Small businesses can begin with the Starter plan. It costs $18 per user/month, which is within the range of what a small business CRM’s lowest tier costs.
However, this Starter plan has limits:
In the end, you might need to upgrade to the next tier (Growth). It allows you to automate your CRM workflows and lets you create up to 5 pipelines.
However, the Growth plan costs $36 per user/month, and still doesn’t feature 2-way email sync and email sequences. In fact, the former isn’t available on any plan, while the latter requires Transpond—an add-on with an extra cost.
Capsule CRM offers a 14-day free trial for all plans. So, you can test the tool and then decide if it’s worth your time, energy, and money.
Capsule’s pricing appears reasonable at first glance, but the value proposition is questionable.
At $18 per user/month for the Starter plan, the price is competitive. However, you’re missing critical features that most small businesses need.
The Growth plan doubles your costs just to get basic automation and multiple pipelines—features that many CRMs include in their lowest tiers.
Add the Transpond email marketing tool for $11+ per month if you need email sequences, and costs quickly escalate beyond what many small businesses can afford.
There are affordable CRMs that include all these features, even on the lowest plan. One of those might be a better choice than paying $18 or $36 per user/month for a subscription that’s lacking essential functionalities.
Capsule CRM excels at being simple and user-friendly. The intuitive interface, lean functionality, and onboarding resources make it a good choice for small businesses looking for a tool that’s easy to learn and implement.
However, the absence of full email integration and phone support on any plan can be a dealbreaker for many small businesses. The lack of follow-up tracking, limited pipeline options, and missing workflow automation on lower plans further limit its usefulness.
Capsule CRM might work for small businesses that have extremely basic needs and prioritize simplicity over functionality. But for small businesses that rely on email communication and need comprehensive functionality to grow their sales, Capsule falls short.
According to our criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Capsule CRM’s fit for small businesses is Moderate.
If Capsule’s limitations are deal-breakers for your small business, OnePageCRM might just be what you need.
Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95
Unlike Capsule, OnePageCRM provides essential features like two-way email sync, workflow automation, multiple pipelines, and proper follow-up tracking—even on its lowest plan.
With a starting price nearly half that of Capsule’s, and a more complete feature set, OnePageCRM delivers better value for small businesses.