No.
You don't need a CRM. You need a time-tracker that spits out invoices.
What's really going on
You're a solo consultant with under 10 inquiries a month and 20-50 clients. That's not a sales pipeline problem. That's a billing operations problem. Your leads close over a call or a referral intro — no CRM stages will change that. What actually leaks money is untracked hours and slow invoicing. Every unlogged 15 minutes is billable work you gave away.
What to do instead
- Harvest (~$11/mo per user, check current pricing) — timers per client, turn tracked hours into a branded invoice, share a time report with the client in two clicks. Integrates with Google Workspace SSO and calendar.
- Google Sheets (free) — one tab per client for scope and notes. That is your "CRM" at this volume. Pin it next to Gmail.
- Zapier (free tier) — one zap: web form submission → row in Sheets + email to you. That's your lead intake. Done.
First action, 30 minutes: open Harvest, create a project for each active client tonight, and start the timer the next time you open a client's doc. Do not set up stages, tags, or automations yet.
What you're being oversold
HubSpot Free looks tempting because it's free, but you'll spend a weekend configuring pipelines you don't need, and the whole product is engineered to push you into paid Sales Hub the moment you get comfortable. Same story with Dubsado, HoneyBook, or Bonsai "all-in-ones" — you'd pay for proposals, contracts, and CRM you don't use. Doing nothing costs you in unlogged hours and invoices sent late — real money, but I won't fake a figure without your rates.
When to revisit this
When you hire your first subcontractor or employee and someone else needs to see who owns which client.
The part worth getting right
The real fork is whether you also need contracts and proposals in the same tool, or just time and invoices. If your work is repeat retainers with the same 20-50 clients, Harvest alone is enough — proposals live in a Google Doc template. If half your revenue is new one-off scopes with signed SOWs each time, a Bonsai or Dubsado starts to earn its keep, and picking Harvest now means migrating in a year. Which shape is your book?