CRM Development
The shortcut: Most clients who ask for a "custom CRM" don't need one. They need HubSpot or Zoho configured correctly, wired into their billing system, with three automations written. The whole job is figuring out which side of that line a prospect is on before you code — and refusing the bespoke build for clients under 50 seats unless they can document why HubSpot won't work.
Industry: Software & Tech | Investment level: Small — $2,000-$10,000 | Time to launch: 4-8 weeks (HubSpot or Salesforce certification + one paid configuration project gate the launch)
Best for: A developer or technical generalist who can read sales-team workflows, write a Zapier scenario, and explain to a CFO why they don't need to spend $80,000 building a Salesforce clone. What you'll likely make: $2,000-$3,500 month 3, $5,000-$8,000 month 6, $9,000-$14,000 month 12 (configuration projects plus a small admin retainer book). Math is in Section 4.
Market Opportunity
The buyer for CRM customization isn't the CTO — it's a sales ops person at a 30-person company whose VP of Sales just spent four months yelling about "the CRM" before realizing nobody ever finished setting it up. No IT department, no Salesforce admin. They have budget because the boss is blaming the CRM for missed quota.
You cannot win "custom CRM from scratch" work as a solo developer and shouldn't try — the maintenance burden almost always outlasts the original rationale within 18 months. The win is configuration and integration on platforms that already exist. HubSpot has a free CRM tier and paid Sales Hub starts at $15/seat/month. Zoho CRM is free for 3 users and $14-$52/user/month above that. Pipedrive starts around $14/seat/month. Every one of those clients can outgrow the default setup inside six months and almost none have an internal admin to fix it.
Two paths sit on top of platform work: lightweight CRMs on Airtable Pro at $20/seat/month for teams under 50, and Retool internal dashboards from $10/user/month when the client needs a custom view on a database the off-the-shelf CRMs can't read.
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