Custom CRM development for sales and service operations that do not fit Salesforce.

No per-seat licences. No vendor lock-in. Built for your workflow, not the platform’s. 100% Australian team.

The case for a custom CRM

Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive all do the same thing well. They give you a pipeline, contact records, activity tracking, and reporting on top. If your sales process is a fairly typical B2B pipeline (lead, qualified, demo, proposal, close), they are excellent. For most businesses, one of these platforms is the right answer.

The custom CRM case starts when your sales or service workflow is something other vendors do not model well. A repeat-purchase service relationship. A multi-stakeholder enrolment process. A field-based service business where the CRM is also a job-management system. A franchise model where the CRM has to handle franchisor and franchisee permissions. A regulated industry where the CRM is also a compliance system.

In those cases, the generic CRM becomes a tax. You pay per seat, per month, forever, for software that does about half of what you actually need. The other half is in spreadsheets, Outlook tasks, or someone’s head. The CRM is technically deployed. The business is being run around it.

The honest moment most CRM agencies skip: most businesses should not build a custom CRM. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive cover the standard sales pipeline well enough that custom is overkill for the majority of teams. We will tell you that directly. About one in three CRM discovery sessions ends with us recommending a platform configuration project rather than a custom build. The discovery cost was $5,000. The answer was “you do not need us.”

If your CRM is fighting you, call 0431 000 062. The first conversation will tell you whether custom is the right answer for your situation.

Symptoms to look for

The custom CRM conversation usually starts after a year or two of trying to make the platform work. These are the patterns that consistently push businesses across the line.

• Salesforce is paid for but half-empty. Sales staff put the bare minimum in. Real customer notes live in email or a shared drive. The CRM has become a compliance exercise for management reporting, not a tool for the team.
• You have a CRM and a separate system for “what we actually do.” The CRM is for reporting. The other system is for working. Data flows between them on a manual cadence, or not at all. Half the team treats the CRM as a homework assignment they do on Friday.
• Custom objects in Salesforce or HubSpot are now your biggest configuration burden. Every change requires a consultant. The platform you bought for flexibility has become the source of your inflexibility.
• Per-seat pricing is constraining who has access. Frontline staff cannot use the CRM because the per-seat cost adds up to a junior salary. The people closest to the customer are the people locked out of the customer record.
• Your sales process is genuinely different. Multi-stakeholder, multi-year, partner-mediated, regulated, or otherwise outside the standard pipeline model. The platform has a “phase” field and you have 12 named workflow states the field cannot represent.
• You have hit the API or workflow limits. Daily API call caps. Workflow step limits. Custom object limits. Storage limits. The platform’s pricing tiers are now the bottleneck on what you can automate.
• The annual renewal feels worse every year. Per-seat costs keep increasing. New features that used to be standard are now add-on SKUs. The vendor’s profit motive and your operational reality have started to diverge.

DIAGNOSTIC

If three or more apply, the cost of your current CRM (licence plus workarounds plus integrations plus configuration) is probably exceeding the cost of a custom build over a five-year window.

The architecture we deploy

Custom CRM is not built by replicating Salesforce. It is built by modelling the workflow that actually drives your revenue. The difference is the difference between a CRM that fits and a CRM that fights.

Domain model first

We start with the entities. Customer. Account. Opportunity. Job. Member. Whatever you actually work with. We model them properly with proper relationships, not as flat fields on a contact record. The domain model is the difference between a CRM that fits and a CRM that fights. Get this wrong on day one and every feature you build on top of it inherits the problem.

Workflow before features

We map the real sales or service workflow before designing screens. Where does a lead enter? Who works it? What triggers a status change? What handovers happen? What automations are appropriate? Most CRMs fail because the workflow was never properly mapped. Features pile on top of an unfit foundation. The fix is not more features. The fix is starting from the workflow.

Integrations as first-class citizens

A CRM that does not talk to your other systems is a half-CRM. Custom CRMs we build integrate cleanly with your finance system, your operations system, your marketing platform, and your support tools. Event-driven, idempotent, auditable. The CRM is the system of record for the customer relationship; the other systems own their own responsibilities, and the integrations between them are reliable.

Reporting that the team will actually use

The CRM is a system of record. The reports come out of it, on demand, for the team that needs them. No exporting to Excel and joining in Power Query. Real-time dashboards for managers. Operator-level reports for sales staff. Custom reports for whatever the business needs. If the report needs an export-to-Excel step, the CRM is incomplete.

Permissions modelled for your structure

Permissions in off-the-shelf CRMs are generic by design. Custom CRMs handle real-world structures properly. Franchise hierarchies. Regional rollups. Confidential customer notes only the account manager can see. Compliance flags that are visible to some roles and hidden from others. Permissions are designed around the actual structure of your organisation, not a vendor’s idea of what a sales team looks like.

Three engagement shapes

We structure custom CRM engagements one of three ways. All three start with discovery.

• CRM discovery. From $5,000. Two to four weeks. Workflow map, domain model, fixed-scope build quote. About one in three discoveries ends with us recommending a Salesforce or HubSpot configuration project rather than a custom build. That recommendation is the audit deliverable, not a sales failure.
• Fixed-scope build. From $50,000. Full custom CRM delivered to a defined scope. Most builds are $80,000 to $200,000. Discovery happens first; the build quote is fixed once the workflow and domain model are signed off.
• Embedded team. From $18,000 per month. Continuous build capacity. Best fit for clients with a multi-quarter rollout, especially where the CRM is part of a wider operational platform being built in parallel.

Call 0431 000 062 to discuss which shape fits.

Custom CRMs we have built

Three custom CRM builds. Named clients. Real outcomes. Reference calls available.

Quickway, civil construction

• Problem: Multi-site civil construction operation where the CRM was also a job management system. Standard sales pipeline did not fit. Repeat-customer relationships spanned years and multiple jobs. Salesforce configuration had been quoted at $180,000.
• Built: Custom CRM combining sales pipeline, job tracking, and customer relationship across the operation. Integrated with their custom-built ERP. Single domain model spanning lead, customer, account, opportunity, and job.
• Result: Single source of truth for every customer. Sales-to-delivery handover documented and traceable. Repeat-customer revenue lifted measurably in the first 12 months post-launch.
• Stack: Symfony 7, PostgreSQL, AWS Sydney, Doctrine ORM, custom job-relationship model.

Motiv8sports, multi-site franchise

• Problem: Franchise model with two distinct CRM audiences: new franchisees in a B2B sales pipeline, and parents in a B2C enrolment workflow. Neither HubSpot nor Salesforce modelled the combined picture without significant custom development.
• Built: Franchise CRM with sales pipeline for new franchisees, parent enrolment workflow for end customers, and fundraising integration. Stripe Connect handling payment splits. Permissions modelled around the franchisor / franchisee hierarchy.
• Result: Two admin roles removed by self-service. Parent self-enrolment converted at 3x the previous manual-touch rate. Franchise-level reporting available in real time.
• Stack: Symfony, Stripe Connect, PostgreSQL, React Native mobile, AWS Sydney.

Corporate Bodies, strata management

• Problem: Strata-specific customer hierarchy with body corporate, lot, owner, committee, and contractor relationships. No off-the-shelf CRM modelled the relationships properly. Multi-year customer relationships were impossible to track meaningfully.
• Built: Owner-managed CRM with body corporate, lot, owner, and committee records. Integrated with contractor management, levy calculation, and compliance reporting. Audit log captures every committee handover.
• Result: Multi-year customer relationships tracked with full history. Committee handovers no longer require knowledge transfer. Reporting moved from days to hours.
• Stack: Symfony, PostgreSQL, AWS, custom strata domain model, audit-grade logging.

Who you will work with

Custom CRM design depends on correctly understanding the workflow before any code is written. The senior engineer who runs discovery is the same engineer who builds and deploys. No discovery handover. No offshore subcontract. The person who hears your sales process described is the person who codes the screens that enforce it.

How we ship it

Five named stages. Each one is fixed scope and fixed price. Working software at the end of every sprint, not at the end of the programme.

Most custom CRM builds run four to nine months end to end. Smaller, single-pipeline CRMs can be live in 12 to 16 weeks.

Custom CRM FAQs