Capsule CRM
Capsule CRM is a British-built customer relationship management app for small and mid-sized businesses, bringing contacts, sales pipelines, projects and tasks together, with AI summaries, meeting briefs and email drafting built in.
What is Capsule CRM?
Capsule CRM is a cloud customer relationship management application published by Zestia Limited, a private company registered in England and based in Manchester. It markets itself as a simple yet powerful CRM and claims more than 10,000 businesses worldwide. The product is organised around six core modules: contact management, a visual sales pipeline, kanban project boards for client delivery, tasks and calendar, workflow automations, and reporting. Marketing capability - email campaigns, social posting to X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, and a Conversations service desk - lives in a separate paid add-on called Transpond, not in Capsule itself.
The AI layer is where the tool has changed most recently. AI Summaries condenses the last fifty activities on a contact, opportunity or project. AI Meeting Prep, still in beta, produces a focused brief before a calendar event. AI Email Assist drafts routine follow-ups from a subject and a tone, with responses passed through OpenAI's moderation endpoint. AI Pipeline Generator turns a plain-language description of a sales process into a structured pipeline with milestones. AI Business and Contact Enrichment fills records with revenue, headcount, industry, job title, seniority and LinkedIn details. Capsule MCP, in early access, exposes Capsule's data through the Model Context Protocol so an AI client such as Claude can query and, where enabled, modify records. OpenAI is the declared AI provider; Anthropic appears only for the Claude connector.
Capsule runs in the browser and ships native iOS and Android apps with offline sync, automatic call logging and caller ID on iOS. A documented REST v2 API with REST hooks is available at developer.capsulecrm.com. Five tiers - Free, Starter, Growth, Advanced and Ultimate - scale contact limits from 250 to 240,000. Hosting is on Amazon Web Services, with encryption in transit and at rest, and a public status page advertising 99.99 percent availability. The integration marketplace covers accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent, FreshBooks), email and calendar (Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace), automation (Zapier, Make) and dozens of telephony, proposal and form tools.
What it does
- Centralise contacts, emails, notes and files against a single customer record
- Track opportunities through a drag-and-drop sales pipeline and forecast revenue
- Summarise a contact's recent history, or prepare a meeting brief, with one click
- Draft routine follow-up emails from a short instruction and a chosen tone
- Build a tailored sales pipeline from a plain-language description of the business
- Enrich company and contact records automatically with firmographic and job data
- Automate repeatable sales and project steps through workflows and task sequences
When to use Capsule CRM / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Capsule CRM is the right fit.
When to use Capsule CRM
- Small business owners and solopreneurs who want a working CRM without a lengthy implementation project
- Sales teams that need a visual pipeline, forecasting and activity reporting in one place
- Consultants, accountants and other professional services firms juggling client relationships and delivery
- Construction, manufacturing and field-based businesses that run both a sales process and client projects
- Non-profits and membership organisations tracking supporters, donors and outreach in a single record
When not to use Capsule CRM
- Private individuals in the European Union, where the terms restrict the service to businesses with a registered VAT number
- Anyone under 16, who may not hold an account under the privacy policy
- Organisations that need to store special-category personal data, which the contract expressly forbids
- Buyers with a strict European data residency requirement, since hosting and every listed sub-processor sit in the United States
- Marketing teams expecting campaign tooling out of the box, as email, social and conversational features sit in the paid Transpond add-on
How to use Capsule CRM
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up at capsulecrm.com/signup - the Free plan starts immediately, and paid plans offer a 14-day trial with no card required
- Import your existing data from another CRM or a spreadsheet, using the built-in importer or the Import2 and MigrateMyCRM integrations
- Connect your mailbox with the Gmail or Outlook add-in, and set up a shared inbox or Mail Drop Box if the team answers from one address
- Sync your Google or Microsoft calendar so tasks and appointments sit in one view
- Build your sales pipeline by hand, or describe your sales process and let the AI Pipeline Generator create the stages and milestones
- Customise the record: add custom fields, tags, activity types, milestones and lost reasons to match how the business actually works
- Invite colleagues, assign permissions and enable two-factor authentication or Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace single sign-on
- Install the iOS or Android app for work done away from the desk, with offline sync and automatic call logging
- On Growth and above, set up workflow automations and project boards so repeatable steps run themselves
- If you use an AI client with Capsule MCP, configure it yourself and review every tool call before it executes, since changes are applied immediately
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A genuinely permanent free plan for up to two users, plus a 14-day trial of paid tiers with no card required
- An unusually clear AI data stance: no training on customer data, stateless API calls, and AI features that can be switched off
- Compliance documentation that is complete and public - DPA, sub-processor list, GDPR FAQ, security page and an Article 27 EU representative
- Fast onboarding and a deliberately simple interface, backed by free imports from more than 25 other CRMs
- A broad integration marketplace covering accounting, email, telephony, proposals, forms and automation platforms
- A public REST API with REST hooks, documented and available without a visible surcharge
- Long track record: the domain dates from 2010, the vendor is an established UK company, and a public status page advertises 99.99 percent uptime
Cons
- Prices for the Growth and Advanced tiers are injected by JavaScript and cannot be read from the static pricing page
- The free plan is tightly capped at two users, 250 contacts, five custom fields and a single pipeline
- Automations, project boards, advanced reporting and access controls only appear from the Growth tier upwards
- Marketing features - email campaigns, social posting, Conversations - require the separate paid Transpond add-on
- Hosting and every declared sub-processor are located in the United States, with no documented European hosting option
- In the European Union the service is restricted to businesses able to evidence a VAT number, and storing special-category data is contractually forbidden
- No interface language other than English is documented, and support is answered Monday to Friday only
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available, capped at two users and 250 contacts, with no time limit. The lowest paid entry point is the Starter plan at 18.00 USD per user per month, and the published range across the vendor's own comparison pages runs from 0 to 72 USD per user per month, the upper figure corresponding to the Ultimate tier. All paid plans include a 14-day free trial with no payment card required. Annual billing is the default and is presented as saving up to 14 percent against monthly billing. Three billing regions are offered: US and International in USD, UK and Europe in GBP, and Europe in EUR. Note that the amounts for the Growth and Advanced tiers are not published in the static pages, and that the customer terms allow fees to change with 30 days' notice.
- 0
- permanent
- maximum 2 users
- 250 contacts
- 5 custom fields
- 1 sales pipeline
- custom sales milestones
- Outlook and Gmail add-in
- 18.00 USD per user per month
- 30
- 000 contacts
- email templates
- shared mailbox
- basic reporting
- premium integrations (Xero
- Zendesk
- recommended tier
- 60
- 000 contacts
- workflow automations
- advanced sales reporting
- reporting dashboards
- multiple pipelines and project boards
- project management
- 120
- 000 contacts
- 50 project boards
- 50 sales pipelines
- price not published in the static pages
- 240
- 000 contacts
- dedicated account manager
- custom training
- ongoing priority support
- 432 USD per month for 6 users
- i.e. 72 USD per user per month
- paid marketing add-on for email campaigns
- social campaigns and the Conversations service desk
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Capsule CRM handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is concrete and documented rather than declarative. Zestia Limited publishes a dedicated GDPR FAQ, a Data Processing Agreement with Schedules 1 to 3 and a restricted-transfers page, and a public sub-processor list naming Amazon Web Services, Google, Help Scout, Twilio, SolarWinds, CapsuleCRM Inc., Pendo, Clearbit, Datadog and OpenAI. An Article 27 representative is appointed: DataRep, reachable at capsule@datarep.com or through www.datarep.com/data-request, with addresses in each member state. CapsuleCRM Inc. is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, its UK extension and the Swiss-U.S. framework. Breach notification is targeted within 72 hours, and access, rectification, erasure, export, restriction, objection and consent withdrawal are all covered. The privacy policy carries an effective date of 21 August 2025.
Who owns the data?
Customers keep ownership of what they put in. The AI terms state that the customer, or its licensors, owns the Input supplied to the AI features, and grants Zestia only a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use it for generating Output. AI providers may access that Input solely to produce the customer's Output, and for nothing else. Under the GDPR pages the customer is the controller of its own contacts' data, while Zestia is the controller of the account data it holds about the customer. The privacy policy states plainly that personal data is neither sold nor rented, and data can be exported at any time.
Reuse rights
Output belongs to the customer to use for its business purposes, without asking permission, provided the use is lawful and complies with the AI terms. Two conditions attach: a human must judge whether the Output is fit before it is relied upon, and the customer must disclose that content was AI-generated before publishing or distributing it. On the vendor's side, the AI terms are unusually explicit: customer Input is not used by AI providers for machine learning of their models, and Output is not used to train, fine-tune, retrain or adapt any model, requests being stateless API calls. The product pages repeat the commitment and add that AI features can be switched off from account settings. Beyond AI, the privacy policy limits use to running the service, billing, security, legal duties and consented marketing, on a legitimate-interest basis, and rules out selling or renting personal data.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Capsule runs on Amazon Web Services, and the published sub-processor table gives the United States as the location for every declared processor: AWS for hosting and application logs, Google for email, Help Scout for support, Twilio SendGrid for system email, SolarWinds and Datadog for log aggregation, CapsuleCRM Inc. for customer support, Pendo for in-app guidance, Clearbit for enrichment and OpenAI for AI processing. Transfers rely on the Data Privacy Framework for AWS, Google, Twilio, CapsuleCRM Inc. and Datadog, and on standard contractual clauses for the others. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with AWS encryption keys stated to be stored in the EU, and replicated across multiple locations in real time with continuous backups. AWS certifications cited include ISO 27001, PCI and SOC reports; Zestia maintains its own PCI-DSS compliance for payment collection and stores no card details. No European hosting region is offered.
Where Capsule CRM works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Capsule CRM.
- A CRM concentrates a company's entire commercial memory in one place - losing account access, or letting a super administrator leave without a handover, puts the whole relationship history at risk
- AI summaries and meeting briefs are convenient enough that people stop reading the underlying history; the vendor itself insists a human must judge Output before relying on it
- The contract requires you to disclose that content was AI-generated before publishing or distributing it, an obligation easily forgotten when a drafted email goes straight out
- Capsule MCP lets a connected AI client create, update or delete records immediately; every tool call must be reviewed before execution, and the vendor accepts no liability for changes once executed
- Data and every declared sub-processor sit in the United States, so a European buyer relies on the Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses rather than local hosting
- Storing special-category personal data is contractually forbidden, and teams that dump notes into a CRM without thinking can breach that without noticing
- Fees can change with 30 days' notice and annual increases apply from renewal, so a cheap entry price is not a locked one
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low. Capsule is a browser application with iOS and Android companions, so nothing is installed. Signing up, importing contacts from a spreadsheet or another CRM - free from more than 25 systems via Import2 - and connecting Gmail or Outlook through an add-in takes a working session rather than a project. The AI Pipeline Generator will even build the sales stages from a description of the business. Effort rises only for workflow automations, access controls and single sign-on on the higher tiers, and for connecting your own AI client to Capsule MCP, which the vendor leaves entirely to the customer to configure and evaluate.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Capsule CRM
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Capsule CRM.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Capsule CRM?
How much does the cheapest paid plan cost?
Does Capsule use my data to train AI models?
Can the AI features be turned off?
Which AI providers are involved?
Where is customer data hosted?
Is there an API and are there mobile apps?
Is a Data Processing Agreement available?
What is the minimum age to use Capsule?
How long is my data kept after I close my account?
Should you pick Capsule CRM?
Capsule CRM is the rare CRM that has stayed deliberately small in scope while its market grew large. Zestia Limited has published it from Manchester since 2010, and the pitch has not really moved: contacts, a visual pipeline, projects, tasks and reports, assembled so that a two-person business can be productive on day one and a fifty-person sales team can still find what it needs. The AI layer added on top follows the same logic - summaries, meeting briefs, email drafts, pipeline generation and record enrichment are chores lifted off the user, not a new product to learn.
What stands out on inspection is the paperwork. The AI terms, the DPA, the sub-processor table, the GDPR FAQ and the named EU representative are all public and specific, and the commitment not to train models on customer data is written into the contract rather than left on a marketing page. For a small business that has to answer a client's security questionnaire, that matters more than a feature count.
The reservations are practical. Everything is hosted in the United States, with no European region on offer, which will decide the question for some buyers before anything else. Prices for the two middle tiers are not readable without running the site's JavaScript, so the published entry point of 18.00 USD per user per month and the ceiling of 72 USD leave a gap to check directly. Marketing capability sits behind a separate paid add-on, automations and project boards start only at the Growth tier, and inside the European Union the service is open to businesses alone. Read those constraints first; if none of them binds, this is a well-documented and unusually honest CRM.
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