# Competitors (context, not feature-by-feature)

This document is a high-level context scan to inform positioning and scope discipline for a **bounded CRM MVP** (auth, contacts, companies, opportunities, pipeline stages, tasks, notes, dashboard). It intentionally avoids pricing and deep feature comparisons.

## Common categories
### Lightweight sales CRM (pipeline-first)
- Typically optimized for small sales teams.
- Strong in pipeline stage movement, activity reminders, and simple reporting.

### All-in-one SMB suite CRM
- CRM is part of a broader suite (marketing, support, invoicing).
- Valuable but can be over-scoped for teams that only need relationship + pipeline + follow-up tracking.

### Enterprise CRM
- Highly configurable and extensible.
- Often requires admin time, customization, and governance that many SMEs can’t justify for an MVP.

## Representative products (examples)
- HubSpot CRM
- Pipedrive
- Zoho CRM
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Freshsales / Freshworks CRM
- Copper
- Insightly

## What SMEs often like (takeaways relevant to MVP)
- **Fast capture:** create contact + company quickly.
- **Clear next steps:** tasks/reminders integrated with records.
- **Simple pipeline:** stages that match their process and are easy to update.
- **Visibility:** a dashboard that makes “what to do next” obvious.

## What SMEs often struggle with (takeaways relevant to MVP)
- **Overwhelming configuration:** too many modules and settings before value is visible.
- **Feature creep pressure:** teams adopt partially and end up with inconsistent usage.
- **Data entry burden:** if adding notes/tasks is slow, the system is abandoned.

## MVP focus (scope guardrails)
Within this repo’s scope boundaries, the MVP stays focused on:
- A narrow workflow around contacts/companies → opportunities → tasks/notes → dashboard.
- Defaults that reduce configuration overhead while keeping pipeline stages configurable.
