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Agencies and marketingClaude

Replace your agency’s CRM subscription with one you build on Claude

Picked and checked by Olga Pearson, host of The Practical AI Show · Published

Result

self-reported

His own AI-native CRM costs about €100 a month to run, mainly Claude API calls. Dropping the old CRM saves at least €17,000 a year.

Tino Ferreira runs Rect Solutions, a recruitment agency, and HiCalibre. He sent notice to his company CRM that they won’t renew, after building his own CRM with only the features his team actually uses. He says it runs on about €100 a month, mostly Claude API calls, and saves €17k a year at minimum.

Who did it

Tino Ferreira (@Tino_Ferreira23)Rect Solutions (recruitment agency)Tino Ferreira on X · Oct 20, 2026

Try it now

  1. Write down the CRM features your team used in the last 30 days. Usually it’s a short list.
  2. Add up what the current CRM costs per year, including seats and add-ons.
  3. Have Claude Code (or a developer using it) build only that list: contacts, pipeline stages, notes, reminders and an export.
  4. Run both systems side by side for one month, and move your data over with a tested export.
  5. Give notice only after the team has used the new one for a full month.
Copy-paste prompt
I run [type of agency] with [number] people. Here’s every CRM feature we used in the last 30 days: [list]. Here’s what we pay now: [cost]. Plan a simple internal CRM that does only these things. Give me: the data tables, the screens, how we import our current data from a [CRM] export, how backups work, and a monthly running cost estimate. Flag anything that would be risky to build ourselves, like email deliverability or data privacy.

Make it run every week

A play works once. Turn it into a routine in three small steps:

  1. Run it once and check the result yourself.
  2. Give your AI a schedule. Tell it when to run this play (every week, or every month) and to message you with what it found before you act.
  3. Keep a log. One line per run: what was checked, anything flagged, what you did.

See how owners turn plays into systems →

What to watch out for

Self-reported in one short post with no build details. Your own CRM means you own the backups, security and fixes, and you’ll be the one called when it breaks. Check your contract’s notice period and get a full data export before you cancel. Build it with Page: a candidate or client intake page that feeds the new CRM.

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