Why

Solo, phone-driven, defined customer list, 5-year repeat cycles: your hardest job isn't moving deals fast — it's remembering in 2029 what you quoted, demo'd, and promised in 2024. A spreadsheet handles the contact list but falls apart on per-contact timelines and dated reminders that have to survive years. You don't need automation, AI scoring, email sync, or seats for a team — those are the features being upsold to people like you.

What you actually need

1. HubSpot Free CRM (free, unlimited contacts) — use it for the per-company timeline: every call, demo, and quote logged against the account so future-you can scroll back five years. Permanent free plan available, no seat cost since you're solo.
2. HubSpot Tasks with due dates (built into the free tier) — set "follow up Acme — replacement cycle" tasks dated 6, 12, 36, 54 months out the moment you close. This is the whole reminder system; you don't need anything else.
3. A weekly 20-minute habit — every Friday, log the week's calls and push any task whose date passed. Without this, no tool helps.

If you want a more visual deal board instead, Pipedrive Lite is the alternative at $14 per seat/month billed annually, or $24 per seat/month billed monthly — but for one person tracking known accounts, free is the right answer.

Do this today

Sign up at hubspot.com/products/crm, import (or hand-enter) your 20–50 known accounts as Companies, and on the three biggest ones create a Task dated to their next expected buying window with a one-line note: "last quoted $X for Y in [month/year]." 30 minutes, done.

What to ignore

Skip Salesforce and HubSpot Sales Hub paid — both are built for teams running high-velocity inbound and will cost you 10–50× what you need. Skip Pipedrive's Advanced/Premium tiers — Advanced adds email open tracking, prospect engagement scoring, and workflow automation, none of which matter when your channel is phone calls to a known list. Ignore any rep who tells you the free tier "won't scale" — you're solo on a 5-year cycle; scale isn't the problem.

What doing nothing costs you

One forgotten follow-up on a 5-year replacement is one lost renewal — and the customer rarely tells you they went elsewhere because you didn't call. The cost shows up as a quiet gap in revenue three years from now.

Where this leaves you

This plan gives you three things you don't have: a permanent timeline per account, dated reminders that fire years out, and a quote/demo history you can search. The contrarian beat: most CRM advice is about closing faster — yours needs to be about remembering longer.

When to revisit this

Revisit the day you hire a second person who also talks to customers — shared ownership is the real reason to pay for a CRM, not features.