Customer Relationship Management systems, or CRM for short, are a widely utilized platform by businesses and freelancers alike, that allow them to effectively manage and analyze their customers, both current and prospective.
The concept of CRM is at the core of how modern-day business is carried out, providing a reliable way of understanding and engaging with customers while automating mundane tasks and optimizing workflows.
Salesforce is one name that many of you might recognize. It is the world's most popular cloud-based CRM solution used by many big corporations for streamlining their customer relations.
However, it is proprietary. That is where open source CRM software comes in, giving smaller businesses and freelancers a cost-effective and no vendor lock-in way of having a reliable CMS solution for their daily operations.
As it turns out, Twenty, an open source-focused CRM startup, is gearing up to take the fight to the likes of Salesforce, with some ambitious plans and a significant cash infusion.
Twenty Aims Big: What Does The Future Hold?
Offered under AGPL 3.0, Twenty is an under-development CRM solution that takes inspiration from Notion for its user-friendly interface and extensibility. It positions itself as a powerful yet affordable CRM platform that can be used for a range of tasks.
In a recent conversation with TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO of Twenty, Félix Malfait shared some interesting insights, and plans for the future.
He talked about how he had realized that CRM is the biggest software market overall because of how wide-ranging it has become for a business, covering customer support, marketing, operations, etc.
And, even though there have been companies who have entered the market in a bid to disrupt Salesforce's dominance, some have managed to backtrack on their open source roots, going the proprietary way.
He further added that:
I think that in every category, there will be an open source leader, and the more a category depends on network effects, ecosystems, and extensibility, the more effective open source will be.
We’re not there yet, but that’s what I believe. It’s my long-term thesis.
You might be wondering, So, what now?
Well, Twenty aims to change the status quo by building a flexible platform, one that works for the business that's deploying it and not the other way around.
They hope that eventually they can foster an active ecosystem of developers around Twenty, all working towards the same goal of building a quality alternative to the Salesforce product suite.
How do they aim to achieve that? Well, with the help of the open source community, and the recent funding rounds valued at $5 million from notable investors like Y Combinator, Dharmesh Shah, Automattic, Runa Capital, and a host of others.
Want To Check It Out?
As it is in its early development phase, there is an “Early Adopter” plan for those who want a managed Twenty installation, which can be opted for $9/user per month. It can be found on the official website.
Those looking to self-host, contribute to the code, or fork it can do so by visiting the project's GitHub repo. The official documentation is also worth a read.
On the other hand, if you just want to see how Twenty works, then you can always check out the live demo. Just use the email option and sign in with the pre-filled credentials.
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Ankush Das
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