{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "id": "capsule",
 "name": "Capsule",
 "research_status": "researched",
 "vendor_domain": "capsulecrm.com",
 "category": "Growth & Revenue",
 "task": "Sales outreach, leads & CRM",
 "summary": "Deliberately simple CRM for small businesses: contacts, pipeline and tasks. The simplicity is the product — advanced automation, deep reporting and integrations thin out, and a scaling sales org can outgrow it.",
 "best_for": "small businesses that want a clean, genuinely simple CRM for contacts, pipeline and tasks — one the team will actually keep updated",
 "skip_if": "you need marketing automation, complex territory logic or enterprise reporting (bigger platforms exist for a reason)",
 "honest_knock": "Capsule's simplicity is the product: it deliberately does less than the CRM giants, which is why small teams actually use it. The honest flip side — advanced automation, deep reporting and integrations thin out at the top tiers, and a scaling sales org can outgrow it. Buy it to finally have a CRM the team fills in; plan a migration path if you're heading toward enterprise process complexity.",
 "pricing": {
  "status": "see_details",
  "entry_price": null,
  "entry_price_terms": null,
  "from_price_usd_month": null,
  "plans": [
   {
    "name": "Free",
    "price": "US$0",
    "includes": "250 contacts, maximum 2 users"
   },
   {
    "name": "Starter",
    "price": "US$18 per user/mo billed annually",
    "includes": "30,000 contacts, email templates, shared mailbox"
   },
   {
    "name": "Growth",
    "price": "US$36 per user/mo billed annually",
    "includes": "60,000 contacts, workflow automations, reporting dashboards"
   },
   {
    "name": "Advanced",
    "price": "US$54 per user/mo billed annually",
    "includes": "120,000 contacts, 50 project boards, 50 pipelines"
   },
   {
    "name": "Ultimate",
    "price": "no price on the card — trial and a sales call",
    "includes": "5+ users, dedicated account manager, custom training"
   }
  ],
  "plans_source": "hand-curated from the vendor's pricing page",
  "notes": "(price page re-read 2026-09-11) The free tier covers two users and 250 contacts, and every paid card is quoted per user a month with a 14-day trial that needs no card. Read over a US connection on 26 August the annual figures were US$18 for Starter, US$36 for Growth and US$54 for Advanced, with contacts as the rungs: 250, 30,000, 60,000 and 120,000. The reading on 11 September was taken from the Netherlands, where those same four cards render in euros at €15, €28 and €49 on annual billing. Capsule prices through a third-party geo lookup, so read that as a regional difference rather than a cut, and take your own figure from the live page. What did change is the shape of the page: it now carries a fifth card, Ultimate, for teams of five or more, and it is the only one printing no amount at all — Capsule asks you to start a trial and have its sales team get in touch. An earlier note here said the page stopped at Advanced; it does not. A Marketing add-on is sold beside the CRM, and the AI features can be switched off in your account.",
  "verified_at": "2026-09-07",
  "source_url": null
 },
 "free_plan": true,
 "free_plan_evidence": "(price page re-read 2026-09-11) The free tier covers two users and 250 contacts, and every paid card is quoted per user a month with a 14-day trial that needs no card.",
 "cost_traps": [
  {
   "id": "per_seat",
   "label": "Per-seat pricing",
   "evidence": "(price page re-read 2026-09-11) The free tier covers two users and 250 contacts, and every paid card is quoted per user a month with a 14-day trial that needs no card.",
   "verified_at": "2026-09-07",
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "id": "addons_extra",
   "label": "Key features are paid add-ons",
   "evidence": "A Marketing add-on is sold beside the CRM, and the AI features can be switched off in your account.",
   "verified_at": "2026-09-07",
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "id": "annual_lock",
   "label": "Annual commitment",
   "evidence": "The reading on 11 September was taken from the Netherlands, where those same four cards render in euros at €15, €28 and €49 on annual billing.",
   "verified_at": "2026-09-07",
   "source_url": null
  }
 ],
 "compare_with": {
  "name": "Pipedrive or folk",
  "why": "the SMB-CRM peer group — Capsule wins on calm simplicity, Pipedrive on pipeline power; pick by which your team will really use"
 },
 "links": {
  "record": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/api/v1/products/capsule.json",
  "review": "https://marketingandsalessoftware.com/capsule-review.html",
  "marketplace": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/marketplace/capsule/",
  "vendor_site": "https://capsulecrm.com"
 },
 "purchase": {
  "seller": "the vendor",
  "how": "AIBuilder Marketplace does not sell this software. Sign up, start a trial or buy on the vendor's site.",
  "handoff_url": "https://get.capsulenow.io/q99x0fa3klb8",
  "affiliate": true,
  "disclosure": "Where purchase.affiliate is true, purchase.handoff_url is an affiliate link: AIBuilder Marketplace may earn a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. Commission never changes what a record says, and products are not ranked by commission. Where it is false the link is the vendor's plain site."
 },
 "provenance": {
  "research": "hand-researched dossier, read on the vendor's own pages",
  "researched_since": "2026-07",
  "method": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/how-we-review/",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Credit 'AIBuilder Marketplace' with a link to https://aibuildermarketplace.com/atlas/.",
  "note": "A rebuild is not a new measurement: pricing.verified_at is the date that matters."
 },
 "cost": {
  "status": "not_yet",
  "engine": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/agents/#cost",
  "rules": null,
  "growth": null
 },
 "unknowns": [
  "Pricing status is 'see_details': no single public entry price.",
  "Contract terms (cancellation, data export, data location, minimum seats) are not researched as separate fields; pricing.notes mentions them only where the vendor's pricing page does.",
  "No computable price rules yet: cost at a given team size cannot be calculated for this product."
 ],
 "task_evidence": {
  "structured_checks": [],
  "sessions": [
   {
    "source": "session",
    "product_name": "Capsule",
    "product_id": "capsule",
    "run_date": "2026-09-07",
    "what": "We ran the import ourselves instead of summarising Capsule's help pages. Daan created the account; everything after that was measured in the product. We built a deliberately messy CSV — 24 rows, one row repeated with a different job title and phone number, and one row carrying nothing but an organisation name — imported it with “Import and update duplicates” and the overwrite box ticked, and then tried to undo it. The account was a fresh one on the 14-day premium trial, so nothing below is a free-plan restriction.",
    "findings": [
     "24 rows became 34 contacts. Capsule creates a separate Organisation record for every distinct organisation name in the file — 22 people plus 12 organisations. Nobody warns you, and it matters: the free plan stops at 250 contacts, so a 24-row spreadsheet costs 34 of them.",
     "A row with only the Organisation column filled does build a company record on its own. Our “Solitary Holdings BV” row arrived as an organisation with its phone number attached.",
     "The duplicate row wins. Anna Bakker went in twice, second time as “Head of Marketing” instead of “Marketing Lead”, and the record ended up with the later title. So the last occurrence in the file overwrites the earlier one, inside a single import.",
     "But “overwrite” means exactly the four fields it names — name, job title, organisation and custom fields — and nothing else. The two rows carried different phone numbers and the contact now holds BOTH, sitting side by side. Contact channels are appended, not replaced, so a bad update pass leaves duplicate numbers on the record rather than wrong ones.",
     "There is no undo, and that is worth knowing before you press Import. The import history logs “34 total imported, 34 contacts created” and offers exactly two things: View and Close. View opens a saved filter holding precisely those 34 contacts — which looks like the undo route until you select all of them and find the only bulk actions are Tag, Create Campaign and Export. No delete. Not on that list, not on the full contact list, not on the contact record, and not on its edit screen. We could not reach a delete anywhere in the interface.",
     "So the practical rule is the opposite of reassuring: an import is one-way. Test on a handful of rows first, because the clean-up you are counting on does not exist where you would look for it."
    ],
    "not_tested": null,
    "report": null,
    "result": "reported",
    "note": "Findings as written up after the session; no pass/fail per task was scored.",
    "in_catalog": true
   }
  ]
 },
 "open_questions": [
  {
   "question_id": "capsule:cancellation_terms",
   "key": "cancellation_terms",
   "question": "Can a customer cancel at any time, and what happens to an annual plan that is cancelled mid-term?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "capsule:data_export",
   "key": "data_export",
   "question": "Which data can a customer export, in which formats, on which plans?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "capsule:data_location",
   "key": "data_location",
   "question": "Where is customer data stored, and can a customer choose the region?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "capsule:minimum_seats",
   "key": "minimum_seats",
   "question": "Is there a minimum number of seats or users on any plan?",
   "status": "open"
  }
 ],
 "vendor_answers": [],
 "agent_channels": {
  "vendor_mcp": null,
  "agent_checkout": {
   "status": "not_found",
   "detail": "No explicit support for purchases by AI agents on the vendor's own pages.",
   "checked_at": "2026-10-07",
   "method": "homepage, /pricing and the pricing page we cite, read as plain HTML (no JavaScript) and searched for explicit support of purchases by AI agents: Agentic Commerce Protocol, Instant Checkout, Agent Payments Protocol, buy in ChatGPT, agentic checkout"
  }
 },
 "task_scope": {
  "scope": "crm",
  "label": "CRM (contacts, deals and pipeline)",
  "why": "Deliberately simple CRM for small businesses: contacts, pipeline and tasks.",
  "source": "our dossier",
  "phrases": [
   "crm",
   "a crm",
   "sales crm",
   "simple crm",
   "small business crm",
   "customer relationship management",
   "pipeline management",
   "track deals",
   "manage deals",
   "contact management"
  ]
 }
}