Close
A sales CRM that puts calling, SMS, email, pipelines and reporting in one place, with Chloe, a built-in AI agent that phones leads, qualifies them, books meetings and keeps every record updated on its own.
What is Close?
Close is a sales CRM built by Elastic Inc, a company founded in 2013 in the wake of Y Combinator-backed ElasticSales and still bootstrapped, profitable and customer-funded, with roughly a hundred people working fully remotely from a registered base in Austin, Texas. Its pitch is a distinction rather than a feature list: most CRMs are a system of record that stores what happened, Close positions itself as a system of action that does the work.
In practice that means calling, SMS, WhatsApp, two-way email sync, pipeline management, forms and reporting live inside one product rather than being bolted on through integrations. There is a native VoIP dialer with call recording, local presence, listen-whisper-barge coaching and voicemail drop, plus a Power Dialer on the Growth plan and a Predictive Dialer on Scale. Workflows automate email, SMS and call sequences, route leads and create tasks. A Notetaker records, transcribes and summarises meetings pulled in from Zoom, Teams and Meet.
The AI layer is Chloe, an agent that sits inside the CRM rather than beside it. Chloe places outbound calls, answers inbound leads in under a second using live CRM context, runs qualification conversations, books meetings, writes follow-ups, enriches contact and company records, categorises conversations and fills custom fields. Chloe Chat answers plain-language questions about the pipeline: which deals are at risk, what happened this week, which leads to prioritise. Chloe is included on every plan with no extra seat and no commission; you pay through monthly AI credits and telephony usage.
For builders there is a REST API, an event log API, webhooks, OAuth and an official MCP server that connects Close to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf and n8n. More than a hundred integrations are listed, and native importers cover HubSpot, Pipedrive, HighLevel and spreadsheets. The company reports 11,500 customer teams, two billion calls, emails and texts run through the platform, and a 4.7 out of 5 rating on G2 from over 2,000 reviews.
What it does
- Call leads automatically and hold real qualifying conversations by voice
- Book meetings, assign the right rep and hand the conversation over
- Update CRM records, custom fields and deal stages after every interaction
- Write and send follow-up emails, or queue them for a rep to review
- Summarise calls, meetings and full lead history with transcripts and action items
- Enrich contact and company records from LinkedIn and the web
- Answer pipeline questions in plain language and surface stalled deals
When to use Close / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Close is the right fit.
When to use Close
- Founders and owner-operators still running sales themselves, who want a real CRM rather than a spreadsheet
- Heads of sales leading teams of roughly 5 to 50 reps who need calling, email and SMS in a single tool
- Outbound and inside sales reps who spend the day on the phone and need a Power or Predictive Dialer
- Agencies, recruiting and staffing firms, coaching businesses, insurance and financial services teams working large lead lists
- B2B SaaS and startup teams that want speed-to-lead automation without hiring a CRM administrator
When not to use Close
- Organisations that need built-in proposal generators, product or inventory management, which Close states it does not cover
- Marketing teams looking for landing pages and a full marketing automation suite rather than a sales CRM
- Field sales operations that require territory mapping and route planning for outside reps
- Teams outside the United States and Canada whose main interest is Chloe's outbound voice calling, since calls to other countries fail
- Companies that need a non-English interface or AI agent, or a documented list of subprocessors and hosting regions before signing
How to use Close
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up at app.close.com/signup with an email address or a Google account; no credit card is asked for
- Start the 14-day free trial, which comes with calling credits and AI credits so real conversations can be tested
- Import your data with the native HubSpot, Pipedrive or HighLevel importer, or from a spreadsheet, and merge duplicates
- Connect your email accounts and your Google or Microsoft Outlook calendar to sync conversations and meetings
- Set up telephony: port an existing number, bring your own carrier, or rent a line from Close from around one dollar a month
- Register for A2P 10DLC if you intend to send SMS to United States numbers
- Build your pipelines, Smart Views, custom fields and task rules so the CRM matches your sales process
- Configure Chloe through Voice Agent Setup: prompts, Skills, Playbooks and Knowledge Sources
- Add Workflows to automate outreach, follow-up, lead assignment and CRM updates, with blackout dates where needed
- Extend Close through the REST API, webhooks or the MCP server, and carry the CRM on the iOS, Android or desktop app
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Calling, SMS and email are native to the CRM, so no separate dialer or sequencing tool is required
- Chloe is included on every plan with no extra seat and no commission on the work it does
- Pricing is published in full, with a detailed feature comparison matrix rather than a quote request
- A 14-day trial without a credit card is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee after purchase
- SOC 2 Type 2, two-factor authentication and Google SSO come with every plan, and a DPA can be signed online
- Setup is genuinely self-service: native importers, free migration and support, no dedicated CRM administrator
- A bootstrapped, profitable vendor since 2013, with 11,500 customer teams and a 4.7 G2 rating from 2,000+ reviews
Cons
- There is no permanent free plan: once the 14-day trial ends the account is paused
- The seat price is only part of the bill, since calling, SMS and AI credits are all charged on usage
- AI credits refresh monthly and never roll over, so unused allowance is simply lost
- Workflows are absent from the Solo and Essentials plans, and the Predictive Dialer is reserved for Scale
- Chloe only places calls to United States and Canadian numbers, and only speaks English
- No subprocessor list and no hosting country or region are published; AWS is named only as an example
- Nothing states whether customer data is used to train AI models, and no opt-out is documented
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan. Close offers a 14-day free trial without a credit card, then four paid per-seat plans. The lowest entry point is the Solo plan at USD 9.00 per user per month on annual billing, or USD 19.00 per user per month billed monthly. Annual billing is advertised as saving up to 50 percent. Seat fees are not the whole bill: calling and SMS are passed through at cost, at roughly USD 0.02 per outbound minute with numbers from about USD 1 per month, and AI credits are consumed by Chloe. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies after purchase.
- core CRM for solo operators
- one user
- up to 10
- 000 leads
- 500 AI credits per user/month
- no Workflows
- unlimited contacts and leads
- team collaboration
- built-in forms
- calling and SMS
- unified inbox
- 1
- 000 AI credits per user/month
- automated Workflows
- Chloe inside Workflows
- Power Dialer
- custom activities
- bulk email
- 1
- 500 AI credits per user/month
- role-based access and permissions
- lead visibility rules
- Predictive Dialer
- unlimited call recording retention
- live call coaching
- custom objects
- 2
- 000 AI credits per user/month
- Custom pricing — on request for larger or more complex sales operations
- starting with a tailored demo
- Add-ons — premium phone numbers with IVR and round-robin routing at USD 19 per line/month
- Call Assistant at USD 50 per organisation/month plus USD 0.02 per minute
- additional organisations at USD 50/month
- with one free secondary organisation on Growth and Scale
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Close handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR coverage is documented rather than merely claimed. Close publishes a dedicated GDPR page, describes itself as meeting both controller and processor obligations, and says a risk-based gap analysis was validated by an independent third-party GDPR expert. A Data Processing Agreement is offered to any customer, signable online or downloadable as a PDF last updated 7 February 2023, and it embeds standard contractual clauses for transfers outside the EEA. DPAs are in place with subprocessors where the law requires. Requests go to dpo@close.com, and a data removal form is published; deleting a lead removes it from Close systems within thirty days. Two gaps remain: no Article 27 EU representative is named, and Close itself notes that no accredited GDPR certification exists.
Who owns the data?
The terms of service are explicit: Close does not claim any ownership rights in Your Content, and the help centre adds that the customer retains full control of their data. What the customer grants is a licence, and it is a broad one: worldwide, irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable and royalty-free, held by Elastic Inc, the company operating Close. It covers providing, maintaining and improving the service, actions the customer authorises, and use of that content as input to AI features built either by Close or by third parties. Inside the product, data is visible to the customer's own organisation and to a small number of Close support and technical staff.
Reuse rights
Customers keep their data and may reuse it freely: nothing in the agreement restricts the rights they already hold over the content they upload, and the help centre documents a self-service export path. On Close's side, the licence covers running and improving the service, plus use as inputs in features incorporating Artificial Intelligence, whether developed by Close or by third parties. Separately, usage data is collected and analysed to optimise the product. The security page states that data is never shared with third parties without consent, and the CCPA notice states that Close does not sell customer data. Nothing published says whether customer data trains AI models, and no opt-out is documented.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Close does not publish a hosting country or region for customer data, and a targeted search across its legal, security and help pages returned nothing. What is stated is indirect. The GDPR page names Amazon Web Services as a key data subprocessor and says such subprocessors hold SOC 2 and/or ISO 27001 certifications where possible and undergo annual vendor reviews; no full subprocessor list is published. The privacy policy says data is processed at the owner's operating offices and wherever the parties involved are located, the owner being Elastic Inc, registered in the United States. Transfers outside the European Economic Area are covered by standard contractual clauses embedded in the Data Processing Agreement. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The public website resolves to a United States address behind Cloudflare, but that says nothing about where product data lives. Buyers with data residency requirements should ask before signing.
Where Close works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Close.
- Automated outbound calling carries real legal exposure: Close states that obtaining TCPA or CRTC consent, identifying your business, offering an opt-out, respecting calling hours and honouring Do Not Call lists are entirely your responsibility, and that it does not verify consent for you
- Letting an AI agent work leads unsupervised can erode a team's own calling and qualifying skills; the reps who never make the first call may never learn to make it
- Usage-based billing is easy to lose track of: per-minute calling, SMS and AI credits can quietly outgrow the seat price, and unused credits vanish at the end of each month
- The licence granted over your content is broad and irrevocable, and expressly covers use as input to AI features built by Close or by third parties; nothing states whether that includes model training
- No hosting country, region or subprocessor list is published, which makes a serious data residency assessment impossible from public information alone
- Content stays retrievable for only 30 days after an account is terminated, so an unplanned cancellation can become permanent data loss
- Trusting an AI summary of a call instead of reading the transcript invites quiet errors into the pipeline, and those errors then drive automated follow-ups
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low. Signing up is self-service, with no credit card and no sales call required, and Close claims a team can import leads and start selling within an hour. Native importers cover HubSpot, Pipedrive, HighLevel and spreadsheets, with duplicate detection built in, and no dedicated CRM administrator is needed for most rollouts. Migration and support are free. Two steps demand more attention: telephony setup, where you port a number, bring your own carrier or rent a line, with A2P 10DLC registration required for United States SMS; and configuring Chloe's prompts, Skills, Playbooks and Knowledge Sources.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Close
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Close.
Frequently asked questions
Is a credit card needed to start the free trial?
What happens when the free trial ends?
Is Chloe included on every plan, and how is it billed?
Which countries can Chloe call, and which languages does it speak?
How much do calling and SMS cost?
Is there a money-back guarantee?
How hard is it to migrate from another CRM?
Is Close GDPR compliant, and is a DPA available?
What security certifications does Close hold?
Is customer data used to train AI models?
Should you pick Close?
Close is one of the rare AI-era sales tools that is neither a startup nor a bolt-on. Elastic Inc has been building this CRM since 2013 without outside funding, and that shows in the product: telephony, SMS and email are native, the pricing grid is published in full, and the vendor is candid enough to list on its own comparison page what it does not do well.
What makes it interesting for a buyer shopping for AI is Chloe. Because the agent lives inside the CRM rather than connecting to it, it already has the contacts, conversation history, opportunities and workflows it needs to act — placing calls, qualifying prospects, booking meetings, writing follow-ups and filling records without a rep touching anything. Chloe is included on every plan with no extra seat, which is unusual, and paid for through AI credits and telephony usage.
Two reservations deserve weight. The first is commercial: the advertised USD 9 per user per month assumes annual billing, and the real invoice adds per-minute calling, SMS and AI credits that never roll over. The second is geographic and linguistic: Chloe only calls United States and Canadian numbers and only speaks English, which removes most of the AI value for a European or Asian team. A third is documentary: nothing published says where customer data is hosted, no subprocessor list exists beyond a mention of AWS, and the question of AI model training is left unanswered.
For a sales team of fewer than a hundred people in North America whose day revolves around calls and follow-ups, Close is a strong and honestly priced option. Elsewhere, it remains a solid CRM whose AI headline feature will be partly out of reach.
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