Close Review
Sales CRM built for startups and SMB sales teams, with calling, email, and SMS built in
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Looking for a Close alternative? See our ranked comparison.→What is Close?
Close is a CRM built for small and midsize sales teams that sell over the phone and email, not through a long enterprise cycle. It bundles a power and predictive dialer, built-in calling and SMS, email sequencing, and pipeline management into one product, so reps don't have to bounce between a CRM and a separate sales engagement tool.
Steli Efti, Anthony Nemitz, and Thomas Steinacher founded the company in 2013. It started as an internal tool for their own outsourced sales agency, ElasticSales, before launching as Close.io. The company has stayed bootstrapped and profitable, runs fully remote, and later rebranded to Close.
Recent releases focus on workflow automation and AI. Chloe, Close's built-in AI voice agent, calls and qualifies leads, books meetings, and updates CRM records on its own. A separate ChatGPT app, launched in 2026, generates reports, researches leads, and drafts workflows from plain-language prompts. The latest release added native meeting scheduling directly on Lead Pages.
Close screenshots
Who it's for
- ✓ Small and midsize teams doing high-volume outbound calling and email who want calling, SMS, and email built into the CRM
- ✓ Bootstrapped startups that want predictable per-seat pricing without enterprise-only gates
- ✓ Sales teams that want built-in automation, including workflows, sequences, and a power or predictive dialer, without stitching together separate tools
Who should look elsewhere
- ✗ Large enterprises that need deep customization, complex territory or quota management, or a large marketplace of third-party apps
- ✗ Teams whose main need is marketing automation or multi-channel customer service rather than outbound sales
- ✗ Solo users or very small teams who don't want to pay $35+ a seat a month once they outgrow the 1-user Solo plan
Pros
- + Calling, SMS, and email are built into the product, not bolted on, so call and message activity logs straight to the lead record
- + The power dialer speeds up high-volume outbound calling, and the predictive dialer on the Scale plan speeds it up further
- + Workflow automation, multi-step email, call, and SMS sequences with branching, comes starting on the Growth plan instead of a separate add-on product
- + Per-seat pricing is public and transparent, with no sales call needed to see the numbers
- + Product updates are frequent and visible. The changelog shows near-weekly updates in 2026, including new AI-assisted reporting and native meeting scheduling
Cons
- – There's no free-forever tier, only a 14-day trial, so teams can't run it long-term at zero cost the way they can with HubSpot's free CRM
- – The Solo plan caps out at 1 user and 10,000 leads, so almost any real team has to jump straight to the $35-a-seat Essentials tier
- – Calling costs, per-minute usage and phone number rental, are billed on top of the seat price, so the real monthly cost runs higher than the sticker price for call-heavy teams
- – AI features are metered by monthly credits per plan, so heavy users of Chloe can rack up extra usage charges
- – The predictive dialer and unlimited call recording are reserved for the top Scale tier, at $139 a seat a month billed annually
Close pricing
What you pay for
Close charges per seat each month, billed annually, and the price covers the CRM plus its built-in dialer, email, and SMS. Calling minutes and phone numbers are billed separately on usage. The cheapest paid plan, Solo at $9 a seat a month, caps out at 1 user and 10,000 leads, with calling, email, SMS, and 500 AI credits included. There's no free-forever tier, only a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Pricing is public on Close's website, not quote-only.
At about $9/month to start, it is one of the cheaper options in CRM & Marketing.
| Plan | Price | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | $9/seat/mo | 1 user max · Up to 10k leads · Calling, email, SMS · 500 AI credits/month |
| Essentials | $35/seat/mo | Unlimited contacts and leads · Team collaboration · Built-in web forms · Centralized inbox · 1,000 AI credits/month |
| Growth | $99/seat/mo | Workflow automation · Power dialer · Bulk email · 1,500 AI credits/month |
| Scale | $139/seat/mo | Role-based permissions · Predictive dialer · Unlimited call recording · Live call coaching · 2,000 AI credits/month |
Prices shown are per user a month, billed annually. Monthly billing costs more: Solo $19, Essentials $49, Growth $109, Scale $149 per user a month. Calling is billed on usage on top of the seat price, roughly $0.02 a minute outbound, with phone numbers from about $1 a month. Chloe, Close's built-in AI, comes with every plan and a monthly credit allowance. Extra usage beyond that is billed separately. There's no free-forever plan, only the 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Pricing verified July 6, 2026 · source
How Close's pricing compares
Close next to its closest alternatives on entry price, billing, and whether pricing is public.
| Tool | Starting price | Billing | Free option | Pricing disclosed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | $9/seat/mo | per-seat | Trial (14 days, no credit card required) | Public |
| HubSpot | $7/seat/mo | tiered | Yes | Public |
| Salesforce | $25/seat/mo | per-seat | Yes | Public |
| Pipedrive | $14/seat/mo | per-seat | Trial (14 days, full access to the selected plan, no credit card required) | Public |
| Zoho CRM | $14/seat/mo | per-seat | Yes | Public |
| ActiveCampaign | $15/seat/mo | tiered | Trial (14 days, no credit card required) | Public |
Is Close still actively developed?
Last significant update: May 2026. Added native scheduling. Users can embed a Google Calendar booking link on Lead Pages so prospects can book meetings themselves. Microsoft 365 support is planned.
Top Close alternatives
Close FAQ
Does Close have a free plan?+
No. Close doesn't offer a free-forever tier. It offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans.
How much does Close cost per user?+
Billed annually, per-seat pricing runs from $9 a month for Solo, which caps at 1 user, up to $139 a month for Scale, as of July 2026. Monthly billing costs more per seat than annual billing on every tier.
Are calling minutes included in the price?+
The seat price covers the CRM and dialer software. Outbound calling minutes and phone number rental are billed separately on usage, roughly $0.02 a minute plus about $1 a month per phone number.
What is Chloe in Close?+
Chloe is Close's built-in AI voice agent. She calls and qualifies leads, books meetings, and updates CRM records on her own, and answers plain-English questions about your pipeline through Chloe Chat. She runs on the AI credit allowance included with every plan, 500 to 2,000 credits a month depending on tier, which also covers her telephony usage. Report generation, lead research, and workflow drafting are handled separately by Close's ChatGPT app.