Why Buying a CRM Slows Early-Stage SaaS

"I need a CRM."

So you sign up for HubSpot. Or Pipedrive. Or Salesforce (if you're feeling ambitious).

Three hours later, you're watching YouTube tutorials on custom properties, deal stages, and workflow automations.

You still have zero customers. But hey, your CRM is ready.

The CRM Trap

Third-party CRMs feel productive. You're setting up infrastructure. You're being professional. You're preparing for scale.

But here's what you're actually doing:

• Learning a new tool instead of building your product
• Configuring integrations instead of talking to customers
• Paying monthly fees before making a dollar
• Splitting your data across multiple systems

The CRM becomes another project. Another thing to maintain. Another distraction from what matters.

What You Actually Need

At the early stage, your "CRM" needs are simple:

• A list of leads
• Where they came from
• What stage they're at
• Whether they've paid

That's four columns in a database table. You don't need Salesforce for this.

The Integration Tax

External CRMs mean external integrations:

• Form → CRM (Zapier or custom webhook)
• CRM → Email (another integration)
• Stripe → CRM (yet another integration)
• Booking → CRM (you get the idea)

Every integration is code you maintain, APIs that change, and syncs that break at 2 AM.

When your production-ready SaaS has the CRM built in, these integrations don't exist. It's all one database.

When External CRMs Make Sense

External CRMs become valuable when:

• You have a sales team (not just you)
• You need enterprise features (territories, forecasting)
• You're doing account-based sales with complex org charts
• You have investors asking for specific pipeline reports

If none of these apply, you're overcomplicating.

Start Simple. Add Complexity Later.

LaunchKit is a Next.js SaaS starter with built-in CRM and payments. No external tools. No integrations. Just ship.

Get LaunchKit →