// The situation

i have a real estate investing business along with a business/commercial dscr brokering company ( one feeds deals to another , do I need a crm to keep track of these deals and how to grow and scale to at least 3-5 isa's and track then properly? in addition , I need to have a document generator for LOI's and psa' to be sent out via email , pipedrive has this but is $80.00 seat , what other via options that is not so per seat heavy for a startup? Hubspot quickly goes to $760 mo and also on the free plan , there are no permission , so everybody sees each other leads contacts etc , what other options ? outbound calling and the use of mcp nowadays is useful. Ive used airtable, automations and the folloups get messy real quick, bigin seems to be a simpler version of pipedrive, just comes with help that comes with thick indian accent which become hard to understand here in the usa. oh and I need a lead generater for outreach ? Team size: Just me.

The verdict · Jul 21, 2026

Yes.

You need a simple CRM — but not any of the ones being pitched to you.

What's really going on

You run two businesses that hand deals to each other, and you're trying to pick a tool before you've drawn the handoff. That's why Airtable got messy — the followups weren't messy, the ownership was. At solo volume, $80/seat Pipedrive and $760/mo HubSpot are both wrong answers to a question you haven't finished asking. You don't have 3-5 ISAs yet. You have you.

What to do instead

  1. Pipedrive, ~$14-15/user/mo entry tier (check current pricing) — one seat, two pipelines: "REI acquisitions" and "DSCR brokering". The same deal moves between them with a clear owner at each stage. Document templates live inside deals; LOIs and PSAs merge from deal fields and send from your email.
  2. A Google Doc with merge fields, free — for LOI and PSA templates today, while you're still one person. Doc generators inside CRMs are worth paying for when you send 20+ a month, not 2.
  3. Habit: one 15-minute end-of-day pass — every lead touched gets a next action and a date, or it gets killed. Do this before you hire anyone.

First action, 30 minutes: open Pipedrive's free trial, create two pipelines with stages named after what actually happens (not "qualified/proposal"), and drag your last 10 deals in. If you can't place a deal cleanly, that's the handoff you haven't defined.

What you're being oversold

Follow Up Boss is for retail agents chasing MLS buyer leads — wrong shape for DSCR brokering. Outreach and Apollo are for 20-person outbound teams; buying them solo is lighting money on fire. HubSpot's $760 tier is what a rep quotes when free stops working — you're nowhere near that ceiling. Bigin is fine software; the support accent is not a reason to pay 5x elsewhere. Doing nothing costs you the deal that closes slowly because you forgot to send the LOI on Tuesday — you know which one.

When to revisit this

When you actually hire your first ISA and need to hide your personal deals from theirs.

The part worth getting right

Decide which business owns the lead at intake. If every lead lands in the brokering company first and gets routed to REI only when the numbers fit, you need one CRM with two pipelines and stage-based handoff. If leads come in from separate channels and belong to different entities from day one, you need two CRM accounts with a clear referral trigger between them — different setup, different reporting, different tax trail. Pick wrong and you're rebuilding this in six months, or worse, explaining commingled records to an accountant. Which way do your leads actually arrive?

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