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The best CRM for software development agencies: six compared from the inquiry to the signed SOW

Yuri Kovalov, founder of Tommos
Updated Oct 26, 2026 · 9 min read

The best CRM for a software development agency is the one that carries a deal through the months between the first inquiry and the signed SOW while the founder is in delivery: it answers the inquiry, books the discovery call, writes the recap and the proposal from the shop’s own estimate, reads the client’s MSA against the shop’s positions and invoices the milestones once the deal is won. Below, six CRMs on those steps, each cell from the vendor’s own page: Tommos, HubSpot Sales Hub, Pipedrive, Close, Copper and Productive.

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The founder is the sales team, and the sales team is in a sprint#

A VP of Engineering writes through your site on a Tuesday at 10:15: the checkout fell over on the last peak, can you load test it before November 27. You read it between two demos in a sprint review for your largest client, and you mean to answer at lunch. At lunch there is a production bug. On Thursday she has had a call with another shop. In a software development agency the founder sells, scopes and often still codes, and a new deal moves only when that one person has an hour.

The deal itself is long. Discovery, an estimate your engineers must write, a proposal, an SOW with milestones or a rate and a cap, then the client’s MSA with its clauses about who owns your pre-existing code and how high the liability goes, then procurement, then the first invoice. A CRM built for a sales team records each step a person types; it does not write the reply, the recap, the SOW or the MSA markup. The comparison below asks each tool how much of that work it does, and for whom.

Five things to check before you sign up#

1. What the vendor says it is for. A pipeline for a sales team, an operations suite for an agency, or the sale itself. The first line of the vendor’s own page tells you; the rest of the page tells you what you will still do by hand.

2. What the AI does when an inquiry comes in. Drafts an email you send, runs a sequence you set up, or answers the inquiry, asks your scoping questions and books the discovery call. Read the verbs and the plan they sit on; an agent paid in credits is a second bill.

3. What happens after yes. Who writes the proposal and the SOW, from what numbers; who reads the client’s MSA against your positions; where the milestones or the monthly hours are invoiced; and what each of those costs on top of the seat.

4. Who approves in your name. A client reads an email as yours. Find out whether a person reviews each one, switches on an autopilot per kind of email, or whether the page says nothing.

5. Per seat or per shop. A seat price grows with every engineer who must see the deal to write the estimate, every PM who joins the call, every person in the finance seat; a per-shop price is one number, and the engineers read the record for free.

Six CRMs compared for a software development agency#

The cells come from the vendors’ own pages, read on October 26, 2026; each number points to a source below. Pipedrive’s pricing page showed our reader pounds, so its prices stand in pounds. Where a cell says “not stated”, the page we read is silent; the vendor may still do it. The Tommos column comes from its own plans and documentation. HubSpot and Pipedrive are compared row by row on their own pages.

WhatTommosHubSpot Sales HubPipedriveCloseCopperProductive
What the vendor says about agencies, and what it keepsBuilt for the sale of a software, QA, DevOps or data shop of 1 to 50 people: the inquiry, the discovery call, the recap, the proposal from your estimate, the SOW, the client’s MSA, the signature, the invoices. Delivery, tickets and time stay in your own toolsA CRM by hub and seat: a free CRM for up to 2 users, Starter on “Core Seats”, Professional and Enterprise on “Sales Seats”; quotes, e-signature and payments in Revenue Hub12A sales pipeline CRM per seat, “Plans built to help you close more deals, faster”, with Nova, its meeting intelligence, “included in all plans”46“Sell like a much bigger team”: a CRM for sales teams built around calling, email and texts, with Chloe, “the AI Assistant in Close”, on every plan109“Built for relationship-focused service businesses”; for agencies, “Power your lead gen and project delivery”; lives in Gmail, Google Calendar and Drive13“Purpose-built for agencies, consultancies, and other professional services businesses”: a Sales CRM with deals, companies, contacts and pipelines next to projects, budgets, time and invoicing; “Once your deal is won, Productive handles the rest”1514
What the AI does by itself when an inquiry comes inTommo SDR answers in your voice with your scoping questions and two or three times from your calendar, books the discovery call and follows up on your schedule (Book); Tommo Closer writes the recap from the recorded call and the proposal from your estimate (Close)A Prospecting Agent, a Customer Agent and a Data Agent, paid from “HubSpot Credits”: 500 a month on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, 5,000 on Enterprise, more at $0.010 a credit; which agent answers an inbound inquiry by itself is not stated on the pricing page1An AI email generator “crafts quick, personalized emails from simple prompts”; Nova “pulls deal history, past emails and previous conversations into a brief before every call”, records and transcribes it, and drafts the recap and the CRM updates; a reply to an inquiry by itself: not stated76Chloe drafts follow-ups and summarizes a call when you ask; a Voice Agent that calls, qualifies and books is “Live now”, the Agents section “In beta”; Workflows send emails and texts; a written reply to an inbound inquiry by itself: not stated10Email series and automations “Respond instantly to form submissions and send welcome or follow up emails”; “AI email responses” as templates, an “AI email template generator” and an “AI email re-writer”; questions asked or a call booked by itself: not stated1312An AI Assistant on Essential and up, an AI Notetaker, AI reporting on revenue, cost and margins; a reply to an inquiry by itself: not stated1415
After the client says yes: the proposal, the SOW, their MSA, the invoicesThe proposal as an email from your estimate (Close); your SOW and NDA from your templates, the client’s MSA read against your positions with the changes tracked in their Word file, your signature in the card; once the deal is won, the milestones as a payment schedule, each invoice made and sent by two presses through Mercury (Sign)Quotes: “create and send sales quotes, collect e-signatures, and receive payments from one place”, and AI that “generates polished, branded proposals in minutes” from the deal, on “Professional and Enterprise editions of Revenue Hub”; an accepted quote becomes a contract record (beta); an SOW or a review of the client’s MSA: not stated2Smart Docs: “trackable quotes, proposals and contracts from within Pipedrive” with eSignatures, free on its higher plans and an add-on on the lower (the page still names the older plan names); a review of the client’s MSA: not stated5Not on the pages we read: Chloe notes that “a prospect opened a proposal”, which is tracking, not a proposal tool; no contract or invoice feature on the home or pricing page109“Contracts & proposals” drafted in Google Docs or through PandaDoc and DocuSign, a “Quote reminder” template, QuickBooks for the books; a review of the client’s MSA: not stated13Invoices from logged time: “create invoice drafts automatically”, with Xero, QuickBooks and Exact; a proposals object is named in its MCP help article; a review of the client’s MSA: not stated1516
Who approves what the AI sends in your nameA person presses “Send” or “Skip” on each card; after 12 clean replies of one kind on a form, a person may switch on “Let Tommo send here”; a proposal never goes aloneNot stated on the pricing page1Nova’s updates: “You can then review and approve the updates with one click, and nothing touches your pipeline until you say so”; emails from the generator you send yourself67Workflows and the Voice Agent run as set up; an approval step: not stated10Automations run as set up; an approval step: not stated13Not stated1415
Price, its unit, the trial$299 a month per shop (Book), $599 (Close), $899 (Sign); no seats, the AI model included; 14 days, no cardPer seat a month: Starter $20 list, shown at $7 on the pricing page; Professional $100, or $90 on a yearly commitment, plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding; Enterprise $150 plus $3,500 onboarding; a free CRM for up to 2 users1Shown in pounds to our reader: Lite £14, Growth £39, Premium £59, Ultimate £79 per seat a month billed annually, “Save up to 42%” against monthly; a 14-day free trial4Per user a month: Solo $19 or $9, Essentials $49 or $35, Growth $109 or $99, Scale $149 or $139, the lower price on an annual plan; Chloe credits by plan; 14 days, no card9Per seat a month: Basic $29 or $23, Professional $69 or $59, Business $134 or $99, the lower price paid annually; “Try Copper free. Instant activation, no credit card required”12Per user a month billed monthly: Essential $10 with one pipeline, Professional $29 with three; Ultimate on a call; “Free 14-day trial. No credit card required”14
Your own AI gets inAn MCP server inside the CRM: Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor works your deals as youA remote MCP server gives “any MCP-compatible AI tool or agent secure read and write access to your HubSpot CRM data”; OAuth, the account admin connects first3“Connect your AI assistant to Pipedrive with MCP”, ChatGPT and Claude, “All Pipedrive customers, on every plan”, with token limits by plan8mcp.close.com/mcp for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code, OAuth or an API key, three scopes from read-only to delete11Not on the Copper pages we read; an API and Zapier13mcp.productive.io/mcp for Claude and ChatGPT: deals, proposals, projects, time and invoices, “available on the Ultimate subscription plan”16

How a dev shop takes an inquiry to a signed SOW in Tommos#

Tommos (tommos.ai) is a CRM whose AI agents, the tommos, take a B2B inquiry to a signed contract. For a dev shop that is the whole sale and nothing of the delivery: the plans, and the shop’s own page, Tommos for dev shops, walk one deal card by card. The steps as they happen on a software development agency’s deal:

The inquiry is answered before the sprint review ends. When the VP of Engineering writes through your form, Tommo SDR reads the inquiry, your “Playbook” and the record, and answers in your voice: the two or three questions that scope the work (the stack, last year’s peak, who decides) and two or three times from your Google Calendar; the time she picks becomes the discovery call. A client who goes quiet hears again on your schedule (the defaults: after 4 days, then every 7, three times). Every reply first lands on a card: “Send”, “Skip”, or an edit, from your phone between demos.

The recap and the proposal are written from your estimate, not from a blank page. On Close, Tommo Closer turns the discovery call, recorded with Google Meet or Granola and read onto the record, into a recap for everyone who was on it, and writes the proposal as a letter from the estimate your engineers made: a fixed $18,500 for the load test over three weeks, then a fix sprint at $165 an hour up to 160 hours, whichever is yours. When the deal has no estimate, a card asks you for its link; a price, a scope or a date it does not have, it never makes up. The same schedule chases the proposal, and the deal’s standing is reported to you. A proposal is never sent by a tommo alone.

The SOW, the MSA and the invoices stop waiting for your evening. On Sign, Tommo Legal drafts your SOW and NDA from the templates in the “Templates” folder it shares with you, with the scope, price, timeline and hours your estimate holds; the client’s MSA is read against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions”, and the clause memo says, clause by clause (who owns your pre-existing code, how high the liability goes, when you are paid), what to accept and what to push back on, with the changes tracked in their Word file. Your signature is in the card, through the e-signature service in the Sign price; a client’s own envelope is signed in that envelope. Once the deal is closed as won, Tommo Closer reads the signed paper and puts the payment schedule on a card, half at the start and half at acceptance, or the monthly hours; you accept or change it. Each invoice is then proposed on its day and goes out by two presses through Mercury; a reminder past the due date is written on its day and sent by one press.

Your shop’s name stays in your hands. Until you say otherwise, an outward email waits for your press. When 12 replies of one kind on a form have gone out clean (an admin can set the number from 1 to 100), Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; the switch is yours, on a paid plan.

Your engineers’ Claude works beside the tommos. Point it or Cursor at app.tommos.ai/api/mcp and ask which proposals wait on a client. What an agent can do in Tommos. Jira, GitHub and your time tracking stay where they are; a won deal becomes a project there by your hand, since nothing syncs today.

Set up a software development agency in Tommos#

One afternoon between sprints sets this up; from then on the tommos work every inquiry that comes in.

  1. 1

    Open one workspace for the whole shop

    At tommos.ai/signup, sign in with the Google account your inquiries reach; the workspace opens at once, 14 days of everything, no card, and there are no seats to count for the engineers who will read the deals. On the start path press “Connect mail and calendar”: one Google consent covers both, and the start creates the “Intro call” meeting, 30 minutes with a Meet link, which becomes your discovery call. On the Meetings step answer “Yes, with Google Meet” and connect it, or “Yes, with Granola” with your key: the words of each discovery call then reach the record, and the recap is written from them; without a source of meetings there is no recap.

  2. 2

    Put a “tell us about your project” form on your site

    Create it on the “Forms” page, switch on “Tommo SDR works the leads from this form”, and embed it where clients reach you today, your site, your Clutch profile’s link, a referral page. Under “After submit” choose “Show the booking calendar”, so a client in a hurry books the discovery call at once.

  3. 3

    Teach the Playbook how you scope

    At the start Tommo reads your site into the “Playbook”: the stacks you work in, the kinds of projects, how you describe an engagement. Add the lines an engineer never writes in a first email: no number before the discovery call, no date before the estimate, fixed price only after discovery. Replies and proposals take their voice and their limits from these pages.

  4. 4

    Approve the first replies between demos

    Each inquiry puts a card in front of whoever owns new business: the reply and the times; the recap and the proposal arrive as cards too, the proposal only once the deal has the link to your estimate: “Send”, “Skip”, or edit first. After 12 clean replies of one kind on the form, Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; switch it on when the voice is yours.

  5. 5

    Add your SOW template, your positions and your bank, on Sign

    On Tommo Legal’s page, under “Documents”, press “Copy the folder’s address” and drop your SOW, NDA and MSA templates into the “Templates” folder in Drive; answer “Your contract positions” once on the start path, or later from Tommo Legal’s page: the positions Tommo Legal reads a client’s MSA against, in its own questions, with “Do it later” at any point. For the money, in Mercury allow the address shown under “First, in Mercury, allow this address on the token”, paste the token and press “Connect Mercury”; a milestone invoice is then “Make the invoice” and “Send”.

Which CRM to pick#

  • You want a pipeline for a sales team, quotes with e-signature, and agents you pay for by the credit. HubSpot Sales Hub, a free CRM for two, Starter from $20 a seat a month list, Professional at $100 plus onboarding, by its pricing page.1 2
  • You want a visual pipeline per seat with a meeting notetaker in every plan and documents on the higher ones. Pipedrive, from £14 a seat a month billed annually as shown to our reader, Smart Docs free on its higher plans.4 5 6
  • You sell by phone and text and want an AI that calls and qualifies. Close, from $19 a user a month, Chloe on every plan and a Voice Agent that calls and qualifies.9 10
  • You live in Google Workspace and will write proposals in Google Docs or PandaDoc. Copper, from $29 a seat a month, Basic to Business.12 13
  • You want the deal, the budget, the hours and the invoice in one agency suite, per user. Productive, Essential $10 or Professional $29 a user a month billed monthly, its MCP server on Ultimate.14 16
  • You want the sale done while you ship, from the answered inquiry to the signed SOW and the invoices, each email on a card until you let Tommo send it. Tommos, priced per shop with the agents inside. The plans.

Questions about CRMs for software development agencies#

What is the best CRM for a software development agency?
Judge it by how much of the deal stays on the founder's evenings. By their own pages read October 26, 2026, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close and Copper are sales CRMs priced per seat: the pipeline is theirs, and the reply, the proposal, the SOW and the client's MSA stay yours or go to a document tool; Productive adds the budgets, the time and the invoices behind a won deal, per user. Tommos (tommos.ai) is the one of the six whose agents write the reply, the recap, the proposal from your estimate, the SOW and the MSA markup on the deal itself, for one price per shop from $299 a month; you press Send and Sign. The cost of each at five seats is in the question on price below.
Should a dev shop use a sales CRM or an agency platform like Productive?
The question is where the deal stops being yours to type. A sales CRM such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close or Copper holds the pipeline and leaves the proposal, the SOW and the MSA to a document tool and to you; Productive holds the pipeline and, by its own pages read October 26, 2026, the budgets, the time and the invoices after the deal is won, per user. Tommos holds the sale from the inquiry to the signed SOW and the invoices, and leaves delivery to Jira, GitHub, Linear and your own project tool, since nothing syncs with them today.
Which CRM writes the SOW and reads the client's MSA?
By their pages read October 26, 2026, HubSpot and Pipedrive make quotes and proposals with e-signature on their higher plans, Copper hands proposals to Google Docs or PandaDoc, and none of the five states a statement of work drafted from an estimate or a review of the client's master services agreement. In Tommos, on Sign, Tommo Legal drafts the SOW from your template with the scope, price, timeline and hours your estimate holds, and reads the client's MSA, clause by clause, against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions”. The memo is research, not legal advice; a person decides each clause and signs.
How does a CRM handle a 60 to 180 day sales cycle?
In a seat CRM a person sets a reminder and writes the nudge. In Tommos a tommo follows up on the schedule you set, by default the first after 4 days, the next 7 days later, three in all (1 to 60 days, 1 to 10 times), writes each follow-up from the record, and then tells you where the deal stands; the proposal is chased the same way. A follow-up that falls outside the client's working hours is offered on a card as “Send on” their morning beside “Send now”. Nothing is promised about the client's decision: when the sequence ends, the deal is yours to call.
What does a five-person dev shop pay a year?
On the vendors' own prices read October 26, 2026, at the listed monthly rate for five seats: HubSpot Sales Hub Starter $1,200 ($420 at the $7 shown on the page), Professional $6,000 plus the $1,500 onboarding; Pipedrive Growth £2,340 on an annual plan, in the pounds shown to our reader; Close Essentials $2,100 on an annual plan, $2,940 monthly; Copper Professional $3,540 paid annually, $4,140 monthly; Productive Professional $1,740 billed monthly. Tommos is priced per shop, so five people or fifteen pay the same: Book $3,588, Close $7,188, Sign $10,788 at the monthly rate, 20% less on a year; for that the tommos write the replies, the recaps, the proposals, the SOW, the MSA markup and the invoices, and the AI model is in the price.
Which CRM integrates with GitHub, Jira and Linear?
None of the six states a native GitHub, Jira or Linear integration on the pages we read on October 26, 2026; HubSpot, Pipedrive, Close, Copper and Productive point to their marketplaces, Zapier or an API, and Productive carries delivery itself. Tommos stops at the signed SOW and the invoices and does not sync with your delivery tools today; what it offers instead is an MCP server, app.tommos.ai/api/mcp, so the same Claude or Cursor your engineers already use can read and move the deals.

Sources#

  1. HubSpot, “Sales Hub pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
  2. HubSpot, “Quote software”, read Oct 26, 2026
  3. HubSpot Developers, “MCP”, read Oct 26, 2026
  4. Pipedrive, “Pricing” (shown in pounds to a UK reader), read Oct 26, 2026
  5. Pipedrive, “Smart Docs”, read Oct 26, 2026
  6. Pipedrive, “Nova”, read Oct 26, 2026
  7. Pipedrive, “AI CRM”, read Oct 26, 2026
  8. Pipedrive, “MCP server”, read Oct 26, 2026
  9. Close, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
  10. Close, home page, read Oct 26, 2026
  11. Close Help Center, “MCP Server”, read Oct 26, 2026
  12. Copper, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
  13. Copper, “Features”, read Oct 26, 2026
  14. Productive, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
  15. Productive, home page, read Oct 26, 2026
  16. Productive Help Center, “MCP Server”, read Oct 26, 2026

Let the tommos answer the next inquiry while you are in the sprint

Open a workspace, put the form on your site, and the reply and the times are written the day the inquiry arrives, the recap the day of the discovery call, the proposal the day your estimate is on the deal; you press Send, you sign in the card, and each milestone invoice goes by two presses. 14 days, no card.

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