# Competitors and adjacent tools

This comparison is only for scope calibration. It identifies the shared baseline across SME CRMs so the MVP matches real market expectations without drifting into broader CRM platforms.

## Common baseline across SME CRM products
Across Pipedrive, HubSpot CRM, Zoho Bigin, and Freshsales, the repeatable baseline is:

- Contact and company or account records
- Opportunity or deal tracking through pipeline stages
- Tasks or activities attached to records
- Notes or timeline context on records
- Manager visibility into pending work and pipeline state

That baseline aligns directly with this MVP.

## Direct competitors

### Pipedrive
Observed emphasis:

- Pipeline-first workflow
- Activities as the mechanism for next actions
- Clear visibility into overdue or missing activity

Why it matters for this MVP:

- Confirms that stage movement alone is not enough
- Reinforces the need to tie action tracking to opportunities, contacts, and companies
- Supports a dashboard view that highlights overdue follow-up, not just pipeline totals

Relevant MVP overlap:

- Opportunities
- Pipeline stages
- Tasks
- Contacts and companies
- Dashboard

### HubSpot CRM
Observed emphasis:

- The CRM database is built around contacts, companies, and deals
- Tasks are presented as a daily work queue
- Record context is meant to reduce switching between tools

Why it matters for this MVP:

- Validates contacts and companies as first-class records, not just supporting metadata
- Supports a task-centric dashboard for daily execution
- Reinforces the value of notes and relationship history inside records

Relevant MVP overlap:

- Contacts
- Companies
- Opportunities
- Tasks
- Dashboard

### Zoho Bigin
Observed emphasis:

- A pipeline-centric CRM positioned specifically for small businesses
- Simple record keeping around contacts, notes, and activities
- Small-team usability over enterprise breadth

Why it matters for this MVP:

- Confirms that the small-business market accepts a narrow, operationally focused CRM
- Supports the decision to keep stage management and follow-up workflows central
- Suggests the MVP should favor clarity and speed over heavy customization

Relevant MVP overlap:

- Contacts
- Companies
- Opportunities
- Pipeline stages
- Tasks
- Notes

### Freshsales
Observed emphasis:

- Contact and account context in one place
- Notes and tasks on records to support handoff and collaboration
- Deal tracking plus simple views of pending work

Why it matters for this MVP:

- Validates the value of notes for continuity between users
- Supports linking tasks and notes directly to accounts and deals
- Confirms that SMEs expect basic work visibility before advanced automation

Relevant MVP overlap:

- Contacts
- Companies
- Opportunities
- Tasks
- Notes
- Dashboard

## Adjacent tools SMEs often use instead

### Spreadsheets
What they do well:

- Cheap and familiar
- Flexible for list-building

Why they fail:

- No reliable ownership model for follow-up
- No durable record timeline
- Hard to maintain current pipeline stages across multiple users

### Inboxes and email folders
What they do well:

- Preserve conversation history for one user

Why they fail:

- Shared visibility is weak
- Context stays trapped with the sender or recipient
- Open work is difficult to audit at team level

### Task managers
What they do well:

- Assignment and due dates

Why they fail:

- They are not a system of record for contacts, companies, and opportunities
- Customer context and commercial context split apart quickly

## Competitive implications for the MVP

### Must match
- Fast creation and editing of contacts and companies
- Opportunity tracking through a small set of clear stages
- Tasks with owner and due date
- Notes attached to the relevant customer record
- A dashboard that surfaces overdue work and current pipeline state

### Must not expand yet
- Email or calendar sync
- Sales sequences or automations
- Marketing features
- Ticketing or help desk workflows
- Quotes, invoices, or payments
- Advanced analytics and forecasting

## Research basis
This comparison is grounded in current vendor materials that consistently describe:

- Pipedrive as a pipeline and activity-driven CRM for follow-up execution
- HubSpot CRM as a contacts, companies, deals, and task management foundation
- Zoho Bigin as a pipeline-centric CRM for small businesses
- Freshsales as a contact, account, deal, task, and notes-based CRM workflow
