Guide
A Notion CRM template is a database of companies, a database of people, a relation between them, and a status property acting as a pipeline. It works, for a while, and the point at which it stops is predictable. Here is where that point is and what to move to.
Almost every Notion CRM is the same four pieces: a Companies database, a People database, a relation joining them, and a Deals database with a select property for the stage, viewed as a board. Add a rollup or two and it looks like a CRM.
For one person tracking thirty accounts this is genuinely good. It costs nothing extra, it sits next to the notes and the project docs, and it bends to whatever you want it to be. Anyone who tells you it is not a real system has not tried running a solo consultancy from one.
What makes it work is also what ends it: every property is a decision, and every record is typed in by a person. Notion has no opinion about what a CRM should be, which is fine while one person holds the opinion in their head.
Nothing arrives on its own. Emails, meetings, and calls are not in Notion, so the history is whatever someone remembered to paste. By the time a template has been running six months, the last-contacted property is the least reliable field in the database, and it is the one everything else depends on.
The second person breaks the conventions. One person writes the company name as "Acme", the other as "Acme Ltd", and the relation quietly points at two different pages. Notion will not stop this, because it has no idea the two are the same company.
It does not remind you of anything. A CRM earns its keep by saying which client has gone quiet, and a Notion template can only show you what you already told it. A formula that flags thirty days since last contact is only as good as the field it reads.
Reporting is a rebuild every time. "Revenue by client, last twelve months" is a rollup exercise, not a report, and the answer changes if someone edits a property. At small scale this is an evening. At real scale it is why nobody asks the question.
Performance and permissions arrive together. A database of a few thousand rows with several relations and rollups gets slow, and page-level sharing was never designed to express who may see which client.
Every row on the same billing basis, at the same seat count, from each vendor own professional-band plan. Switch the basis to see how annual commitment changes the total, or use the CRM cost calculator at your own seat count.
| Best for | Free | Pro / seat | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Complete $49.17 base, 2 seats included | Relationship-led B2B service firms | $24.17 | $24.17 | $194 | |
Nutshell Growth | Sequences in the plan | $13 | $25 | $200 | |
Capsule Growth | Simple and cheap to leave | $14 | $28 | $224 | |
Attio Plus | Keep building, on a CRM | $29 | $29 | $232 | |
folk Premium | Contacts and network first | $24 | $48 | $384 | |
Pipedrive Professional | A pipeline everyone will use | $14 | $49 | $392 | |
HubSpot Professional | The free tier that is actually free | $7 | $90 | $720 |
8 users, USD, list price, cheapest professional-band plan, pricing checked 31 August 2026. A vendor with no published price for that plan on this basis shows “Not published” rather than a price borrowed from a cheaper plan. Verify on the vendor own pricing page.
What each one is, the kind of team it fits, what it costs to start, and the one thing that will annoy you. Cheapest first.
Our product. A full-funnel CRM that captures email, meetings, and LinkedIn on its own, ranks who needs attention, and carries a won deal into delivery and invoicing on the same client record.
Fits: teams whose template broke because nobody kept it current, since the history arrives without anyone logging it.
The drawback: you cannot reshape the data model the way a blank tool lets you. That is the trade you are making.
A small-team B2B CRM with outbound sequences, forms, and reporting included.
Fits: teams that were about to bolt an email tool onto the template.
The drawback: nothing after the sale, and lighter reporting than the platform tools.
A calm CRM with contacts, a pipeline, and projects, in clear tiers with a free plan for two users.
Fits: a small team that wants the smallest possible step up from a table.
The drawback: light automation and reporting as the team grows.
A data-model CRM: you define objects, attributes, and automations, and the interface follows what you built.
Fits: the person who enjoyed building the template and does not want to give that up, but wants CRM behaviour underneath it.
The drawback: it ships blank, so you own the design and its upkeep, which is the part that went wrong last time.
A contact-first CRM with a LinkedIn extension and shared lists, light on process.
Fits: small teams whose database is really a network they want to keep warm.
The drawback: thin on deals and reporting once several people are selling.
A focused deal pipeline that takes an afternoon to set up, with a large app marketplace.
Fits: teams whose template was really a deal tracker with extra steps.
The drawback: a won deal leaves the board, so anything after the sale needs somewhere else to live.
A platform with a genuinely usable free CRM tier and the largest app marketplace in the category.
Fits: teams leaving a template on cost grounds who want to pay nothing for a while.
The drawback: the step from free to Sales Hub Professional is large, and it carries a five-seat minimum.
Notion exports databases to CSV, one file per database, with relations rendered as the related page titles rather than as ids. That is the thing to plan for: your join is a text match on names, so clean the company names before exporting, not after. Page content, which is where most of the actual notes live in a Notion CRM, comes out as Markdown separately and does not attach itself to anything, so decide deliberately whether those notes are worth carrying across.
Moving to Lumenbase runs through Portage, which scans the source, maps fields and owners, shows you a preview with record counts, then imports in the background with rollback. It comes with the plan rather than as a paid service.
Prices come from each vendor's own pricing page, on whichever basis the table is set to: annual-billed or month-to-month. A basis is never calculated from the other, so a vendor publishing only one shows a dash on the other rather than an estimate. The 8-seat column always uses the cheapest plan in a vendor's professional band, and a vendor with no published price for that plan is left blank instead of being quoted from a cheaper tier. This page lists 7 CRMs, 7 of them priced on the default basis. Pricing was refreshed 31 August 2026. See the CRM feature comparison for the full method, capability data, and treatment of flat and quote-only plans.
Notion is a trademark of Notion Labs, Inc. Lumenbase is independent of Notion and competes with the CRM use of it described here.
Lumenbase, Nutshell, Capsule, Attio, folk, Pipedrive, HubSpot, and other names are trademarks of their respective owners. Lumenbase is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by them. Prices describe the vendors as of 31 August 2026; products, pricing, and features change and vary by plan, so verify on each vendor's pricing page before deciding.
We use cookies to improve your experience. Cookie Policy
Essential
Required for the website to function. Cannot be disabled.
Analytics
Helps us understand how visitors use the site so we can improve it.
Marketing
Used for advertising and measuring campaign effectiveness.
