Last verified: 2026-07-27 · How we score · Disclosure
An open source CRM keeps your customer data on your own infrastructure and avoids the per-seat and per-contact pricing that makes commercial CRMs expensive as you grow. You take on hosting and maintenance in exchange.
If you want a modern CRM that feels like Attio and you're happy self-hosting, Twenty is the best option. If you need a mature, feature-complete CRM with sales automation, EspoCRM is the safer choice. If you want CRM alongside accounting, inventory, and the rest of your business systems, Odoo is the platform for that. And if you want the CRM to live in the same app as your email and team chat, Macro is AGPLv3 and includes one.
Below we compare each on licensing, hosting, features, and who they suit.
| Twenty | EspoCRM | SuiteCRM | Odoo | Macro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | AGPLv3 | GPLv3 | AGPLv3 | LGPLv3 community | AGPLv3 |
| Closest to | Attio | HubSpot Sales | Salesforce | An ERP suite | A workspace with CRM in it |
| Who it's for | Startups wanting a modern CRM | Teams needing mature sales features | Teams replacing Salesforce | Businesses wanting CRM plus ERP | Teams wanting CRM beside email and chat |
| Custom objects | Yes, flexible | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Email sync | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, native client |
| Auto-enrichment | Limited | No | No | Limited | Yes |
| Marketing automation | No | Basic | Basic | Yes, separate module | No |
| Sales sequences | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Self-host | Yes, Docker | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Managed cloud | Yes | Yes | Third-party | Yes | Yes |
| Native AI | Limited | Limited | No | Yes | Yes, workspace-wide |
| Setup effort | Low | Moderate | High | High | Low, or self-host |
Twenty is an AGPLv3 CRM built to feel like a modern tool rather than an enterprise application. The data model is flexible, with custom objects and relations, and the interface is fast and keyboard-aware.
It's the newest tool on this page and the one most likely to be adopted willingly by a sales team, which matters more than feature count. An unused CRM is worthless regardless of what it can do.
- A genuinely relational data model with custom objects, so you can model partnerships or investors properly rather than pretending everything is a deal
- Fast, clean interface that people don't resist using
- Email and calendar sync that populates records automatically
- AGPLv3 with straightforward Docker self-hosting, plus a managed cloud option
- Active development and a responsive team
- Good API
- Youngest project here, so expect gaps and rough edges
- No marketing automation, sequences are limited
- Reporting is basic compared to EspoCRM
- Small ecosystem and few prebuilt integrations
- Not suited to a large sales org with territories and quota management
Choose Twenty if you're a startup that wants a CRM people will actually update.
EspoCRM is a GPLv3 CRM that has been developed steadily for years. It's the most feature-complete open source CRM for sales teams specifically, and the closest open source equivalent to HubSpot Sales Hub.
- Full sales pipeline management, with quotes, invoices, and products
- Workflow automation and email campaigns in the free edition
- Custom entities, fields, and relationships through an admin UI, no code required
- Mature, stable, and well documented
- Good role and permission model
- Runs on ordinary PHP and MySQL hosting
- The interface is dated and feels like enterprise software
- Manual data entry, with no automatic enrichment
- Some advanced features are in the paid Advanced Pack
- Not a tool a modern sales team will enjoy using
Choose EspoCRM if you need real sales functionality now and interface quality is secondary.
SuiteCRM is an AGPLv3 fork of SugarCRM, aimed at organisations that want Salesforce-class functionality on their own servers.
- Very broad functionality, covering sales, marketing, support cases, and contracts
- Extensive customisation through Studio, including custom modules and workflows
- Long track record with a large installed base
- Genuinely capable of replacing a Salesforce deployment
- Available consultants who know it
- Heavy to install, configure, and maintain. Expect an administrator
- The interface is the oldest here
- Slow under real data volume without tuning
- Development pace has slowed
Choose SuiteCRM if you're replacing Salesforce and you have someone to run it.
Odoo's community edition is LGPLv3 and includes a CRM module alongside accounting, inventory, manufacturing, HR, and e-commerce. The CRM on its own is unremarkable. The reason to choose it is everything around it.
- One system for CRM, accounting, inventory, and operations, all sharing data
- Large module ecosystem, both official and community
- Strong for businesses that sell physical products, where CRM and inventory need to connect
- Mature, with a substantial company behind it and available partners
- Both self-hosted community edition and managed cloud
- The community edition is deliberately limited, and useful features sit in the paid enterprise edition
- Heavy and complex, with a real implementation project
- The CRM alone is weaker than Twenty or EspoCRM
- Upgrades between major versions are difficult
Choose Odoo if you need CRM connected to accounting and inventory, not CRM on its own.
Macro is an AGPLv3 workspace with a CRM alongside email, chat, docs, tasks, and calls, all over one database. We build it, so read the disclosure.
The argument is narrow. Every other CRM on this page is a separate application your team has to remember to open. Macro's CRM sits in the workspace where the customer conversation is already happening, records auto-enrich, and comments on a company use the same threading as your channels, so account discussion attaches to the account instead of scattering across chat.
- Email is already there, because the email client is in the same application
- Records auto-enrich from public sources
- Comments on companies and contacts use the same threading as channels, so context stays attached to the record
- AI reads the CRM alongside your email, chat, docs, and call transcripts
- Full MCP surface, so agents can read and write the CRM
- AGPLv3 and self-hostable
- No marketing automation, no sequences, no landing pages
- Less relational modelling depth than Twenty
- No sales-specific machinery like territories, quota, or forecasting
- Small ecosystem
- Only worth it if you're consolidating the rest of your stack. It is not a reason to adopt a workspace
- The hosted version is $40 per seat
Choose Macro if you're already consolidating onto it, not as a standalone CRM purchase.
All of these are free to self-host. Real costs are hosting, backups, and maintenance. Most run on a small VPS for a team of 10 to 25.
For comparison, Attio is $35 per seat per month on Plus and $79 on Pro, billed annually, with SSO and SCIM on Enterprise only and AI metered through seat and workspace credits. HubSpot's free CRM is genuinely good and free, but Professional tiers are roughly ten times the Starter price per seat and carry a mandatory four-figure onboarding fee, and Marketing Hub prices on contact count rather than seats.
That last point is the strongest argument for self-hosting a CRM. Contact-based pricing means your bill grows as your database does, whether or not your usage changes.
| Tool | Self-hosted | Managed cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Twenty | Free, AGPLv3 | Free tier, then paid per seat |
| EspoCRM | Free, GPLv3 | Paid per user |
| SuiteCRM | Free, AGPLv3 | Third-party hosts only |
| Odoo | Free community edition | Paid per user per app |
| Macro | Free, AGPLv3 | $40 per seat, everything included |
We have not verified current cloud pricing for Twenty, EspoCRM, or Odoo. Check directly.
Choose Twenty when you're a startup and you want a modern CRM your team will use.
Choose EspoCRM when you need complete sales functionality and can live with a dated interface.
Choose SuiteCRM when you're replacing Salesforce and have an administrator.
Choose Odoo when you need CRM connected to accounting and inventory.
Choose Macro when you want the CRM in the same app as your email and chat.
For a startup or small sales team, Twenty is the best open source CRM available. It's the only one here that a sales team will adopt without resistance, and adoption is the whole problem with CRM software.
If you need real sales features today, EspoCRM is more complete and more mature, and you should accept the interface.
If your business needs CRM connected to inventory and accounting, Odoo is the right architecture even though the CRM itself is weaker.
Whichever you pick, check how data gets in. A CRM that depends on people typing will be roughly 60% accurate within a quarter, and that's true of open source and commercial tools equally.
Twenty. It's the closest match in both data model and interface, with custom objects, relations, and email sync that populates records automatically. It's AGPLv3 and self-hostable. It's younger than Attio with a smaller ecosystem and weaker reporting, but for a startup that wants a modern CRM on its own infrastructure, it's the strongest option.
It depends which HubSpot you mean. For Sales Hub, EspoCRM is the closest equivalent and includes campaigns and workflow automation in the free edition. For the full suite with marketing automation and a service desk, Odoo is closer architecturally because it has separate connected modules. Nothing open source matches HubSpot's marketing automation depth.
The software can be. Whether your deployment is depends on you. Self-hosting means you own patching, TLS, backups, access control, and breach response, which a commercial vendor otherwise handles. If you don't have someone who will keep it patched, a hosted CRM is genuinely safer. Also check whether SSO is in the free edition, because in several tools here it is not.
Contacts, companies, and deals export cleanly and import fine. What doesn't move is the machinery: workflows, sequences, email templates, landing pages, dashboards, and reports. If you've spent three years building your go-to-market process in HubSpot, budget to rebuild all of that. That rebuilding cost is the real lock-in, and it's why renewal pricing in commercial CRMs is what it is.
Support is limited. Most have REST APIs you can point an agent at, and a few are adding MCP servers. Twenty has an API and is moving in this direction. Macro has a full MCP surface. If you want agents doing enrichment or research against your CRM, check for an MCP server rather than assuming an API is enough, and confirm the agent authenticates as a user with that user's permissions rather than as a workspace-wide bot.