Capsule CRM: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Capsule CRM?

Capsule CRM is a web-based customer relationship manager for small and mid-sized businesses. It keeps your contacts, sales opportunities, projects and tasks in one place, with mobile apps for iOS and Android. It is made by Zestia Ltd, a company based in Manchester in the UK, and the vendor says it is used by thousands of businesses.

The pitch is simplicity. Capsule’s founders started it because they found existing CRMs either too basic or too complicated, and the product still reflects that: a contact record, a pipeline board and a task list are usable within an hour, without an admin or a consultant. On top of that core sit workflow automation, reporting dashboards and a set of AI helpers, most of which unlock on the Growth plan.

Capsule has one feature many small-business CRMs lack: Projects. Alongside sales pipelines you can run project boards for delivery, onboarding, support cases or events, so a consultancy can win a deal and then track the work in the same tool. Email marketing is a separate add-on called Transpond, which Capsule owns.

Who it is for

• Small businesses with a handful of people selling. Capsule positions Starter for companies with one to five employees and Growth for small businesses with sales teams.
• Service firms that sell and then deliver. Consultants, accountants, agencies, construction firms and legal practices can move a won opportunity into a project board instead of switching to a separate project tool.
• Teams leaving spreadsheets. Imports from CSV are straightforward, and the free plan lets two people try the basics with no time limit.
• Privacy-conscious buyers. Capsule states that it never uses customer data to train AI models, and every AI feature can be switched off.

Capsule is a weaker fit if your sales motion is high-volume outbound. It has no built-in email sequences, dialer or prospect database; it relies on integrations such as lemlist and Lusha for that. Teams that live on the phone are better served by Close, and teams that prospect on LinkedIn and run email sequences from the CRM should compare folk. Large enterprises that need SAML single sign-on beyond Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and QuickBooks sign-in will also find it limited.

Key features

• Contact Management. People and Organization records that link to each other, with Tags, DataTags (structured custom data attached to a tag), Custom Fields, file attachments, full-text search across notes and emails, and saved lists built from filters. A Mail Drop Box gives you a unique address to forward emails into a contact’s history.
• Sales Pipeline. Opportunities with a value and milestones on a drag-and-drop Kanban board. The Pipeline Dashboard shows forecast, value by milestone and conversion rate, highlights stale opportunities and records lost reasons. Multiple pipelines are available from Growth (up to 50 on Advanced).
• Projects. Project boards with your own stages for delivery, onboarding, support or events. The free plan has one board; Growth adds multiple boards.
• Tasks & Calendar. Tasks with categories, repeating tasks, a week or month calendar, an iCal feed and a daily reminder email. Tracks are reusable sequences of tasks that activate one after another, useful for onboarding checklists.
• Workflow Automations (Growth+). Rules on pipelines and project boards that create tasks, send email notifications or move records between stages automatically.
• Reporting and Goals. Activity reporting on every paid plan, Goals for opportunities created or won and calls or meetings logged, and on Growth and above Advanced Sales Reporting (won/lost, pipeline growth, time to win) and build-your-own Reporting Dashboards.
• Email. A Gmail add-on and Outlook add-in on every plan; Email Templates and a Shared Mailbox from Starter; Email Sync and Reply on Growth and above, which logs past and new emails automatically and lets you reply from inside Capsule.
• Capsule AI. The AI Pipeline Generator (Starter+) drafts pipeline stages for your business. On Growth and above, AI Summaries condense the last 50 activities on a contact, opportunity or project, AI Meeting Prep (beta) writes a briefing for each external meeting on a connected Google or Outlook calendar, and AI Business and Contact Enrichment fills in company and person details. There is also AI Email Assist for drafting.
• ChatGPT connector and MCP. On Growth and above, the ChatGPT connector can read and write Capsule data: build follow-up lists, log activities, create tasks, update custom fields and draft emails. A Capsule MCP server for Claude and Cursor is in private beta at the time of writing.

Pricing

Capsule charges per user per month. Prices below are the US figures at the time of writing; the region selector on the pricing page switches to pounds or euros. Annual billing is the default and saves up to 18% (that maximum applies to Starter; the saving is about 10% on Growth and Advanced and 4% on Ultimate). There are no setup fees, you can cancel any time, and any paid plan can be trialled for 14 days with no card and unlimited users.

Plan	Annual billing	Monthly billing	Contacts	Key limits and features
Free	$0	$0	250	Max 2 users, 5 custom fields, 1 pipeline, Gmail/Outlook add-in, mobile app, 50MB storage; no AI
Starter	$18/user/month	$22/user/month	30,000	Email Templates, Shared Mailbox, Basic Reporting, Goals, premium integrations (Xero, Zendesk, Import2), AI Pipeline Generator; 10GB per user
Growth	$36/user/month	$40/user/month	60,000	Workflow Automations, Email Sync, multiple pipelines and project boards, Advanced Sales Reporting, dashboards, team access controls, AI Summaries, AI Meeting Prep, AI enrichment; 20GB per user
Advanced	$54/user/month	$60/user/month	120,000	Everything in Growth, up to 50 pipelines and 50 project boards; 30GB per user
Ultimate	$72/user/month	$75/user/month	240,000	All features, account manager, custom training, priority support; 50GB per user

UK prices are £14, £27, £42 and £60 per user per month on annual billing; EU prices are €15, €28, €49 and €68.

Two cost notes. First, the real decision for most teams is Starter versus Growth, because automation, email sync, multiple pipelines and nearly all AI start at Growth. Three users on Growth cost $108 a month billed annually or $120 a month billed monthly. Second, the Transpond marketing add-on for email campaigns and forms is extra, starting from $11 a month at the time of writing.

AI enrichment has quotas: Growth covers all Organizations plus 100 personal enrichments per user, while Advanced and Ultimate cover all Organizations plus 200 per user. Check capsulecrm.com/pricing before you buy, as prices change.

How to use Capsule CRM: step-by-step

1. Create your account

1. Go to capsulecrm.com and click Try Free to start a 14-day trial of a paid plan, or choose Free on the pricing page. No card is needed. Ultimate trials are followed up by Capsule’s sales team.
2. Capsule creates your account on its own subdomain, such as yourcompany.capsulecrm.com. Bookmark it; if you forget it, the site address reminder form on Capsule’s site will email it to you.
3. Work through the in-app onboarding steps, which walk you through the basics.

2. Set up your profile and security

1. Click your name in the top menu bar and open My Preferences.
2. Under Password and Security, click Enable Now for two-factor authentication and add a backup phone number.
3. Under Preferences, set your time zone, language and default currency. Under Notifications, decide whether you want the daily task reminder summary and emails for assignments and mentions.
4. If you call from your computer, choose a provider under Click to Call (for example Skype, CircleLoop or FaceTime) so phone numbers become clickable.

3. Configure the account and invite your team

1. As an administrator, open Account Settings. Under Appearance, add your logo and colour scheme.
2. Define the structure before you import: Custom Fields, Tags, task categories, activity types, pipeline milestones and project board stages. Changing these later means bulk edits.
3. Invite users and, on Growth and above, create Teams and restrict access to records where needed. A Super Administrator can require two-factor authentication for everyone.

4. Import your contacts and connect email

1. Use the import tools (Importing & Migrating Data in Capsule’s support centre) to upload a spreadsheet or CSV of contacts and opportunities. Map columns to People, Organizations and your custom fields.
2. If you are leaving another CRM, the Import2 premium integration (Starter and above) handles the migration.
3. Install the Gmail add-on or Outlook add-in so you can file emails to contacts from your inbox. On Growth and above, turn on Email Sync so emails are logged automatically and you can reply from Capsule.

5. Build your sales pipeline

1. On Starter or above, use the AI Pipeline Generator to draft milestones for your business, then edit them. On Free, set the milestones yourself.
2. Create an opportunity from a contact record: give it a value, milestone, owner and expected close date.
3. Open the pipeline to see the Kanban board. Drag opportunities between milestones, and check the Pipeline Dashboard for forecast and conversion rate. Record a lost reason whenever a deal is lost so reports stay useful.
4. On Growth, add a second pipeline if you sell distinct products or run partnerships separately.

6. Automate follow-up with Workflow Automations (Growth+)

1. Pick a pipeline or project board and add an automation tied to a stage change, for example “when an opportunity reaches Proposal sent”.
2. Choose the actions: create a follow-up task for the owner, send an email notification to a colleague, or move a related record to a new stage.
3. For repeatable checklists, build a Track (a sequence of tasks that activate one after another) and add it to new customers from the record’s history panel with Add a Track.

7. Prepare for meetings with AI (Growth+)

1. Make sure AI is enabled in account settings and your Google or Outlook calendar is connected.
2. Before a call, open the contact or opportunity and generate an AI Summary of the last 50 activities.
3. With AI Meeting Prep (beta), Capsule produces one briefing per external meeting on your calendar, so you walk in knowing the history.
4. If your team uses ChatGPT, connect the ChatGPT connector to ask for a list of overdue follow-ups or log a call without opening Capsule.

8. Run your day from the Home dashboard

The Home dashboard shows Your Summary, a feed of the last 50 updates, a Tasks tile (Today, Next 7 days, Overdue) and your Goals. Since October 2026 the main navigation sits in a collapsible left-hand menu with Tasks and Goals included. On each record, details are on the left, history (notes, emails, tasks, files, linked opportunities and projects) is in the centre, and integrated apps such as Xero or QuickBooks show in the right sidebar.

Tips to get better results

• Choose milestones and fields before importing. A clean structure on day one saves bulk edits later.
• Log activities with the right type. Calls, meetings and emails logged consistently feed Goals and activity reports.
• Use Tracks for onboarding. A five-task Track for every new customer is easier to maintain than remembering each step.
• Keep one owner per opportunity. Reports and stale-deal highlighting work better when ownership is clear.
• Start on Starter only if you do not need automation. If you already know you want Email Sync or Workflow Automations, trial Growth from the start.
• Use project boards for post-sale work. Linking a project to the won opportunity keeps the full customer history on one record.
• Check the Pipeline Dashboard weekly. Stale opportunities are highlighted, which makes the weekly pipeline review short.

Limitations and common problems

• The free plan is very small. Two users, 250 contacts, 5 custom fields and no AI make it a trial of the interface, not a long-term CRM for a growing team.
• Growth is the real entry point. Starter lacks Workflow Automations, Email Sync, multiple pipelines and most AI. Budget for Growth if those matter.
• No outbound engine. There are no sequences, dialer or lead database. Pair Capsule with lemlist or a data tool such as Apollo.io, or pick a CRM with sequences built in.
• Small annual discount on higher plans. Above Starter the saving from annual billing is 4-10%, so monthly billing can be the better choice while you test.
• MCP is still in beta. The Claude and Cursor connection is in private beta at the time of writing; the ChatGPT connector is the generally available option.
• Downgrades need cleanup. To move to a lower plan you must be within its limits, for example under 30,000 contacts for Starter.

Alternatives

• folk - a relationship CRM that captures contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail and WhatsApp and adds email sequences and AI assistants; no free plan.
• Close - built-in calling, SMS and email for inside sales teams that live on the phone.
• Pipedrive - a pipeline-first sales CRM with a larger app marketplace.
• HubSpot CRM - a free CRM tier with a much broader (and pricier) marketing and service suite; our Close vs HubSpot comparison prices its Sales Hub plans for small teams.
• ActiveCampaign - if email marketing automation matters more than the CRM itself.

See all options in our sales and CRM tools directory. If you plan to use Capsule’s ChatGPT connector or AI Email Assist, our guide on how to write better prompts will help you get useful drafts.

Verdict

Sign up for Capsule CRM if you run a small business that wants contacts, a pipeline, tasks and simple project tracking in one tool, with sensible AI that does not train on your data. Start the 14-day Growth trial, import a real contact list, build one pipeline and one automation, and you will know quickly whether it fits. Stay on Free only for a two-person test. Skip Capsule if your team depends on outbound sequences or calling, or needs enterprise-grade permissions and SSO.