Most small teams struggle with CRMs that are either too complicated or too limited. What if you could build your own, perfectly tailored CRM—without writing thousands of lines of code? That’s exactly what we did using Airtable and a few well-placed automations.

The Problem

A startup team came to us frustrated with their off-the-shelf CRM. It was:

• Too rigid—couldn’t customize fields or views easily
• Too expensive for the features they actually used
• Too slow—manual data entry slowed down the sales cycle

They needed something lean, flexible, and fast to set up.

The Solution: Airtable as a Custom CRM

We helped them set up a fully functional CRM inside Airtable—complete with automations that felt like magic. Here’s what we included:

• Contact & Deal Tables: Structured records for companies, contacts, and deals with clear relationships between them.
• Status Pipelines: Visual Kanban views to track deal progress from lead to closed.
• Email Integration: Automatic logging of key emails and follow-ups using tools like Zapier or Airtable scripts.
• Slack Alerts: Sales team instantly notified when deals moved stages or new leads came in.
• Follow-up Reminders: Scripts to set next contact dates and flag stale deals.

The Results

Within days, the team had a fully customized CRM that matched their exact workflow. Benefits included:

• Zero training time—everyone already understood how to use it
• 70% faster deal tracking and less manual updating
• Full visibility into pipelines and team performance
• No more paying for features they didn’t use

The Airtable base became the single source of truth for all sales activity—without feeling like overhead.

Why Airtable Works So Well as a CRM

Traditional CRMs are built for the masses. Airtable lets you build for your team, your workflow, and your logic. It’s a perfect match for growing teams who need speed and flexibility over bells and whistles.

Thinking of Doing the Same?

If your current CRM is slowing you down—or if you’re still managing sales in spreadsheets—it’s time to upgrade. With Airtable + light scripting, you can build a smarter, faster CRM that actually works the way you do.

Want help designing your Airtable CRM? We’ve done it for others—and we’d love to do it for you.