Custom CRM: Replacing Salesforce for a 50-Person Sales Team
A purpose-built CRM that replaced a $48,000/year Salesforce contract with a $7,499 custom tool tailored to the company's exact sales workflow.
Client: Confidential B2B Company
CRM dashboard showing a pipeline view with deal stages, a contact list with company logos and last-touch dates, and a sidebar with today's tasks and follow-up reminders.
The Challenge
The company had been on Salesforce for 5 years, paying $80/seat/month for 50 users ($48,000/year). But their sales process was straightforward: inbound leads from the website, qualification call, demo, proposal, close. They didn't use forecasting, territories, CPQ, or any advanced Salesforce features. Reps complained that Salesforce was slow, required too many clicks to update a deal, and the mobile app was unusable. The sales director wanted a tool that was fast, matched their 5-stage pipeline, and could be updated in 2 clicks from a phone. Previous attempts to 'simplify' Salesforce with custom layouts had failed because the underlying complexity remained.
Our Approach
We built a stripped-down CRM focused on speed and mobile-first design. The pipeline view was a horizontal Kanban board where reps could drag deals between 5 stages. Each deal card showed the essentials: company name, value, days in stage, and next action. Updating a deal was 2 taps on mobile: tap the deal, tap the new stage. Contact records were minimal: name, company, email, phone, and a timeline of all interactions (calls, emails, meetings) auto-logged from email integration. The follow-up system sent push notifications for overdue tasks and morning digests of the day's priorities. We imported 3 years of Salesforce data via CSV export and built a mapping wizard that preserved deal history and contact relationships. The admin panel let managers see team-wide metrics: deals per stage, average cycle time, win rate, and rep performance.
What We Built
Delivery Timeline
Day 1-3: Foundation + Migration
Database schema, auth with SSO, Salesforce CSV import wizard, data mapping.
Day 4-7: Pipeline + Contacts
Kanban pipeline board, deal CRUD, contact records, interaction timeline.
Day 8-10: Mobile + Notifications
PWA setup, mobile-optimized views, push notifications, morning digest emails.
Day 11-12: Analytics
Team dashboard, pipeline metrics, win rate tracking, rep performance views.
Day 13: Hardening
Security audit, role-based access testing, Playwright E2E tests.
Day 14: Launch + Migration
Production deployment, full Salesforce data migration, team training.
Tech Stack
Architecture
frontend
Next.js with responsive mobile-first design and PWA capabilities.
backend
Hono on Railway with Drizzle ORM on PostgreSQL.
auth
Better Auth with company SSO (Google Workspace).
data
PostgreSQL with full-text search on contacts and deals.
notifications
Web push notifications via service worker. Resend for email digests.
Security
rbac
Rep, Manager, Admin roles. Reps see only their deals. Managers see team deals.
secrets
Railway environment variables.
monitoring
Sentry error tracking. Daily database backups.
qa
Playwright E2E tests for deal CRUD and pipeline movement.
The Results
“My reps hated Salesforce. They'd update deals once a week in batch, which meant our pipeline was always stale. Now they update deals in real-time from their phones because it takes 2 seconds. Our forecast accuracy went from 40% to 85%.”
Key Takeaways
Most companies use 10% of Salesforce. If your sales process is straightforward, a custom CRM costs less than one year of Salesforce licenses and is 10x faster to use.
Mobile-first design is non-negotiable for sales CRMs. Reps are in the field, at lunch, between meetings. If it takes more than 2 taps, they won't update it.
Data migration is the riskiest part of CRM replacement. We spent 2 full days on the Salesforce CSV import wizard to ensure zero data loss.
Deliverables
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
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