Yes.
You need a simple CRM — but a lightweight one, not a sales machine.
What's really going on
Leads land in LinkedIn and Instagram DMs. Both apps are designed to hide old threads. You're losing follow-ups not because you forgot — because the thread scrolled. "Intelligent documentation" tells me you also want to remember context per person: what they asked, what you promised, when to circle back. A spreadsheet won't cut it at 200/month. A heavy CRM is overkill for one person.
What to do instead
- Folk (per-seat paid, check current pricing) — use it as a contact hub. One card per lead, paste the DM thread, tag by source, set a next-step date. Built for relationship pipelines, which is what DMs are.
- Zapier (free tier, paid scales with volume) — pipe Instagram leads in automatically. LinkedIn won't connect cleanly (their API is locked down), so you'll paste those by hand.
- Habit: a 20-minute "DM sweep" every morning. Open both inboxes, log anything new in Folk, set a follow-up date on each one. Do it before email.
First action, today: create a Folk workspace, make one pipeline called "Inbound DMs" with three stages — New, Waiting on me, Waiting on them. Add the last ten people who DM'd you. That's it.
What you're being oversold
Someone will point you at HubSpot or Pipedrive. Skip both. HubSpot's free tier is built for teams of 3-10 sharing email leads — you're solo on DMs. Pipedrive assumes a sales pipeline with deal values; you have conversations, not quotes. Follow Up Boss is US real-estate only. Doing nothing costs you the 10-20% of leads that go cold because the thread got buried — every month, the same leak.
When to revisit this
When you hire a second person, or when you start sending actual quotes with dollar amounts attached. Either one changes the shape of the tool you need.
The part worth getting right
The fork: are these DMs conversations (long, relationship-led, weeks to convert) or inquiries (quick yes/no, transactional, decide in days)? If conversations, Folk plus a habit is the answer for the next year. If inquiries at 200/month, you need automated replies and a real intake form feeding a pipeline — a different setup entirely, and the wrong choice here means rebuilding in three months.