Yes.
You need a simple CRM — and a WhatsApp inbox, which is the real leak.
What's really going on
Your problem isn't tracking deals. It's that a WhatsApp ping, an Instagram DM, and a web form all land in different places with no shared owner. At 500 a month across 4–10 people, "who's replying to this one?" is the question killing you. Legal and education inquiries have long decision cycles — a lead that waits 18 hours for a reply has already messaged a competitor. The channels are the fire. The CRM is just the bucket you pour them into after.
What to do instead
- Respond.io (paid monthly, check current pricing in AUD) — one shared inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram DM, and email, with assignment rules so every message has one owner within minutes.
- HubSpot Free CRM (free, unlimited users) — the pipeline behind the inbox: contact record, stage, next action, owner. Free covers 4–10 people; ignore the Sales Hub upsell for now.
- Today, in 30 minutes: open HubSpot, create one pipeline with four stages — New / Contacted / Consult Booked / Enrolled-or-Retained — and import last week's inquiries from WhatsApp and email as contacts. One pipeline, one owner per lead.
What you're being oversold
Someone will pitch you Salesforce, Zoho One, or a full Freshsales rollout with phone and automation. At your stage that's a six-week setup for a problem a free CRM plus a shared WhatsApp inbox solves this week. Wati is the other common pitch — it's fine for WhatsApp alone, but you have eight channels, so a single-channel tool just moves the mess. Every week you wait, a chunk of those 500 inquiries go cold in a personal phone — in legal and education, each one is worth hundreds to thousands in fees.
When to revisit this
When a staff member says "I didn't know that lead was mine" more than once in a week — your assignment rules aren't biting and you need to tighten them, not add tools.
The part worth getting right
The one call that decides this: are your 500 inquiries mostly WhatsApp and Instagram, or mostly email and web form? If it's chat-heavy, Respond.io is the spine and HubSpot is the ledger behind it. If it's email-heavy, HubSpot alone handles 80% and you can delay the paid inbox. Pick wrong and you either pay for a messaging tool you barely use, or you keep losing chat leads for another quarter while your CRM sits pretty. Which channel actually brings the paying clients?