Comparison
Custom CRM vs Salesforce vs Zoho: An Honest Comparison
When a ready-made CRM is the right answer, when it quietly costs more than a custom one, and the per-seat maths that decides it for Indian teams.
We build custom CRMs, so treat this as an interested party being careful. Most teams should buy, not build. Here is where that flips.
Buy when
- Your sales process looks like everyone else's: leads, stages, follow-ups, reports.
- You have fewer than about fifteen users.
- You need it next week.
- Nobody on the team wants to own software.
Build when
- Your process is the business — dealer beat plans, loan origination rules, channel-partner commissions. Bending a product to fit these costs more than building.
- Per-seat cost is becoming a reason not to add users. That is the wrong incentive for a sales team.
- You need deep integration with something Indian — Tally, an NBFC's decisioning rules, a WhatsApp workflow, GST invoicing.
- The data is sensitive enough that where it sits matters.
| 25 users, 3 years | Per-seat product | Custom build |
|---|---|---|
| Licences | ₹15–30 lakh | ₹0 |
| Build | ₹0 | ₹3–12 lakh, once |
| Customisation / consultants | ₹2–8 lakh | included |
| Maintenance | included | ₹1–3 lakh over 3 years |
| You own | nothing | the code and the data |
The middle path most people miss
Keep the off-the-shelf CRM for the generic parts and build only the piece that is genuinely yours — the dealer portal, the origination workflow, the field app — and integrate the two. That is often the cheapest correct answer, and it is what we recommend more often than a full replacement.
Questions
How long does a custom CRM take?
A focused first version in 8–14 weeks, with a working demo in the first fortnight. We shipped a logistics sales CRM in 14 weeks including WhatsApp and call integration.
Can you migrate our existing CRM data?
Yes, and it is usually the least glamorous, most valuable part. Export, clean, map, import, reconcile — with a rollback if the numbers do not match.
