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

What is Close?

Close is a sales CRM built around conversations. Where most CRMs store contacts and leave you to make calls and send emails somewhere else, Close puts a dialer, an SMS inbox and synced email on the same lead page, logs every interaction automatically and gives each rep a queue of who to contact next. It is made by Close (close.com), a remote company focused on inside sales teams, which reports more than 11,500 customer teams at the time of writing.

The current version adds Chloe, an AI sales teammate that is part of the product rather than an add-on. Chloe can call and qualify leads with a built-in voice agent, transcribe and summarise calls and meetings, enrich lead records from LinkedIn and the web, flag deals that need attention and answer questions about your pipeline in plain English. Every action it takes is logged in the CRM and can be reviewed or edited.

The problem Close solves is activity volume. A rep who makes 60 calls a day cannot afford a CRM that needs five clicks to log each one, so dialling, texting, emailing and updating the deal happen in the same place, and lists of leads become call queues with one click.

Who it is for

• Small and mid-sized sales teams of roughly two to fifty reps that sell by phone and email, especially in SaaS, services, education, real estate and insurance.
• Founders and solo sellers doing their own outbound who want a CRM that behaves like a phone system.
• Inside sales and SDR teams that run high-volume outreach and need a Power Dialer or Predictive Dialer.
• Teams moving off spreadsheets or HubSpot’s free CRM who want pipeline reporting without an admin.

Close is not the right choice if you need an enterprise CRM with complex permission models, custom objects on every plan, marketing automation, or a free tier for a tiny team. Field sales teams that rarely call from a desk, and businesses selling through long multi-stakeholder procurement cycles, will also find it thinner than Salesforce or HubSpot Sales Hub.

Key features

• Built-in calling and SMS. Rent a Close-issued number from Settings and call from the browser, desktop app or mobile app. Calls are recorded (retention depends on plan), and SMS lives in the same inbox as email. Usage is billed at cost; Close quotes most outbound calls at about $0.02 per minute and numbers from about $1 per month.
• Email sync. Connect Gmail, Microsoft 365 or any IMAP/SMTP account under Settings > Accounts & Apps. Close syncs every email between you and your contacts, including messages sent from your mail client, and supports templates and bulk email (Growth and above).
• Smart Views. Saved lead filters that update themselves. “Leads in Texas not called in 14 days with an open opportunity” becomes a sidebar item and a call queue.
• Workflows. Multi-step automations (email, SMS, call task, lead update, create opportunity, task, delay) that start from a trigger such as a new lead, a form submission or a status change, and stop when a goal like “incoming email” is met. Growth and Scale only.
• Power Dialer and Predictive Dialer. The Power Dialer calls through a Smart View one lead at a time and skips no-answers; the Predictive Dialer dials several numbers in parallel and connects a rep only when a person answers. Power on Growth, Predictive on Scale.
• Chloe. Voice calls to new or cold leads with your script and qualification criteria, Notetaker for Zoom, Teams and Meet, automatic CRM enrichment, pipeline suggestions and Chloe Chat (beta). Chloe always discloses it is an AI and is English-only at the time of writing.
• Opportunities and pipelines. Deals with status, value, confidence and estimated close date, shown as a board you can drag between stages, with a “Needs attention” toggle for stalled deals.
• Reporting, API and integrations. Activity and funnel reports, Explorer for custom graphs on Scale, a REST API, webhooks, an MCP server and integrations with Gmail, Microsoft 365, HubSpot, Zapier, Calendly, Zoom, Customer.io, Clay, Gong and WhatsApp.

Pricing

At the time of writing Close has four per-user plans plus custom pricing for larger teams. The pricing page shows two numbers for each plan; the lower one applies to annual billing. There is no free plan, but every plan has a 14-day trial with no credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	Key limits
Solo	$19/user/month	$9/user/month	1 user, 10,000 leads, no Workflows, 3 connected email accounts, 30-day call recording retention, 500 AI credits
Essentials	$49/user/month	$35/user/month	Unlimited leads and contacts, team inbox and tasks, calling, SMS, forms; no Workflows; 1,000 AI credits per user (pool up to 10,000)
Growth	$109/user/month	$99/user/month	Adds Workflows, Chloe in Workflows, Power Dialer, custom activities, bulk email, 10 email accounts, 90-day recording retention, 1,500 AI credits per user
Scale	$149/user/month	$139/user/month	Adds Predictive Dialer, role-based access, lead visibility rules, live call coaching, custom objects, Explorer graphs, unlimited recording retention, 2,000 AI credits per user

Costs that sit outside the seat price:

• Telephony and SMS are usage-based and passed through at cost. US SMS requires A2P 10DLC registration.
• Call Assistant (transcription and summaries of recorded calls) is $50 per month per organisation plus $0.02 per recorded minute.
• Extra AI credits can be bought on any plan; credits refresh monthly and do not roll over.
• Additional organisations are $50 per organisation per month; Growth and Scale include one secondary organisation.

Prices change, so check close.com/pricing before you buy.

How to use Close: step-by-step

1. Start the trial and connect your email

1. Go to close.com and click Start free trial. No card is needed.
2. Go to Settings > Accounts & Apps. Connect Gmail or Microsoft 365 through the guided sign-in, or click Custom Email and enter IMAP/SMTP details for another provider.
3. Each user who will send automated emails later must turn on Allow automated Workflows to send on your behalf under Settings > Send As. Do it now so Workflows do not error later.

2. Get a phone number

1. Go to Settings > Communication > Phone & Voicemail and click New Number. Search by city or area code; Close shows the number and its monthly cost before you commit. Some countries require regulatory documents; US numbers do not.
2. If you want to keep an existing number as caller ID, use + Add > External Number instead. External numbers make outbound calls only.
3. Click the phone icon in the top right and allow microphone access to enable browser calling. Install the iOS or Android app if you take calls away from your desk.

3. Import your leads

1. Click your name in the top right and choose Import data.
2. Upload a CSV or XLSX (15 MB per file), drag it in or paste from a spreadsheet. The first row should be headers; Close uses them to guess field mappings.
3. On the mapping screen, set each column with the This column will be assigned to dropdown. Prefix custom field columns with custom. so they map automatically. Phone numbers should include the country code (+1...), and multiple emails are separated by semicolons.
4. In the Options step, pick duplicate matching fields (for example company name or an ID column) and decide whether to update, replace or skip matches.
5. Click Import. The summary shows created, updated, skipped and failed rows, with a downloadable CSV of failures and an undo option for 30 days.

Close groups rows by company into one Lead with multiple Contacts, which is the data model you will work in: Leads are companies, Contacts are people.

4. Set up statuses and your pipeline

1. In your organisation Settings, edit the lead statuses so they match your process (for example Potential, Contacted, Qualified, Customer, Bad Fit).
2. Edit the opportunity statuses for your pipeline stages. Defaults are Demo Completed, Contract Sent, Proposal Sent, Won and Lost. Create a second pipeline if you sell distinct products to the same leads.
3. To create a deal, open a lead and click + next to Opportunities in the left sidebar. Fill in status, value (one-off or monthly), confidence, estimated close date and owner.
4. Open the Opportunities page to see the board. Drag cards between stages, and turn on Suggested Actions from the Options menu to see recommended next steps.

5. Build Smart Views as your daily queues

1. On the Leads page, click Add Filter and combine criteria: lead status, last call date, custom fields, opportunity stage, location.
2. Click Save as, name it (“New leads, uncalled”, “No answer, retry today”, “Open deals, no activity 7 days”) and choose whether to share it.
3. Drag Smart Views in the sidebar into the order you work them.

A good set of four or five Smart Views replaces most task reminders, because leads move in and out of them automatically as data changes.

6. Make calls with the dialer

1. Open a lead and click the phone number to call from the browser. Outcomes, notes and recordings are logged on the lead.
2. On Growth, open a Smart View and start the Power Dialer to call through the list in order. It skips busy and unanswered numbers and connects you when someone picks up.
3. On Scale, use the Predictive Dialer to dial several numbers at once; Close works through the lead list behind the scenes and routes only answered calls to you.
4. Set up Voicemail Drop under Phone & Voicemail (Growth and Scale) so you can leave a pre-recorded message with one click.

7. Automate follow-up with Workflows (Growth and Scale)

1. Click Workflows in the left sidebar, then New Workflow.
2. Name it and set a trigger: a lead event (for example status changes to Contacted), a form submission, an opportunity change, or Trigger manually.
3. Click Add Step in the Edit tab. A typical outbound sequence is Email, Delay 2 days, Call Task, Delay 3 days, SMS, Delay 4 days, Email. Delays can be 1 minute to 365 days and count weekends.
4. Click Recipient & Schedule to choose which contact receives messages and the sending window, and Workflow Goals to stop the sequence when the lead replies by email, SMS or call, or books a meeting.
5. Leave Run Once on so the same contact is never enrolled twice, set blackout dates under Settings > Blackout Dates if needed, and activate.
6. Enrol leads manually from a Smart View using the Workflow icon in the top right, or let the trigger enrol them automatically. The Runs and Report tabs show progress and goal rates per step.

8. Put Chloe to work

1. Notetaker, CRM enrichment, pipeline suggestions and Chloe Chat work without setup once AI credits are available on your plan.
2. To use Chloe Voice, open Chloe and answer its setup conversation: your business, qualification criteria, script and knowledge sources. Point it at a Smart View (batch calling) or, on Growth and above, add it as a step in a Workflow so it calls new inbound leads automatically.
3. Review Chloe’s call transcripts and the fields it updated. Restrict who can see Chloe settings under user permissions if needed.

Tips to get better results

• Decide on lead statuses before importing. Status and choice-type fields must exist before an import, and changing them later means bulk edits.
• Group by company on import. Close’s Lead-and-Contacts model works best when the lead is the company. Import people as contacts under it, not as separate leads.
• Use Smart Views instead of tasks. A view like “Contacted, no reply, last call over 3 days ago” is a task list that maintains itself.
• Record outcomes, not just calls. Set call outcomes consistently (No answer, Left voicemail, Connected) so Workflows and reports can use them.
• Keep Workflows short. Four to six steps with a clear goal outperform twelve-step sequences, and are easier to debug in the Runs tab.
• Watch your AI credits. Chloe calls and research draw from the monthly pool. Check usage before enabling Chloe batch calling on a large list.
• Use the Opportunities “Needs attention” toggle every morning to catch stale deals before the weekly pipeline review.

Limitations and common problems

• No free plan. Fourteen days is enough to test calling and imports, but set up email and a phone number on day one.
• Workflows and the Power Dialer are Growth-only. The jump from Essentials to Growth is large; if sequences are the reason you want Close, budget for Growth.
• Telephony costs add up. Per-minute calls, SMS, number rental and Call Assistant are separate lines on the bill. US SMS also needs A2P 10DLC registration, which takes days.
• Chloe is English-only and must announce it is an AI on every call, which some markets will reject. It does not cold call lists that have never engaged.
• Limited customisation on lower plans. Custom objects, custom roles and Explorer graphs are Scale features; every plan has 250 custom fields.
• Email deliverability is yours to manage. Bulk email through your own Gmail or Microsoft account is subject to your provider’s limits and reputation; use Workflows at modest daily volumes.

Alternatives

• HubSpot Sales Hub - broader platform with a free CRM and marketing tools; calling and sequences cost more per seat as you scale. See our sales and CRM tools.
• Pipedrive - cheaper visual pipeline CRM; calling and automation rely more on add-ons and integrations.
• Apollo.io - better if you need a B2B contact database with sequences and a dialer; weaker as a system of record. See our Apollo.io guide.
• Reply.io or lemlist - pure outreach tools for cold email and multichannel sequences that sync into a CRM rather than replacing it.
• Quo (formerly OpenPhone) plus a lightweight CRM - if calling and texting matter more than pipeline reporting. See our phone and communication tools.

For writing better call scripts and email templates for Chloe and Workflows, read our guide on how to write better prompts.

Verdict

Sign up for Close if your team sells by calling and texting, you want the dialer and the pipeline in one tab, and you can use the Growth plan’s Workflows and Power Dialer. Start the trial with a real lead list and a phone number, build three Smart Views and one Workflow, and you will know within a week whether it fits. Skip it if you need a free CRM, run a long enterprise sales cycle with heavy customisation, or sell in languages Chloe does not yet speak.