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Twenty: Build a Private Custom CRM for Small Businesses
Give a small business a CRM shaped to how it actually sells — custom objects, pipelines and automations on open-source software you set up and manage for a monthly fee.
Most small businesses run sales out of a spreadsheet, an inbox and memory — until deals slip. Big CRMs fix that, but charge per seat and force their way of working. Twenty is a CRM a business can shape to itself, on software it controls.
What Twenty is
Twenty is an open-source CRM — the open alternative to Salesforce, designed for AI. With 59,623 GitHub stars, its core is licensed under AGPL-3.0 (some files marked Enterprise are commercial, and some SDK packages are MIT), and it can be self-hosted with Docker Compose for free.
- Custom objects and fields: model the business as it really is — deals, jobs, renewals — with unlimited custom objects, fields and layouts.
- Views and dashboards: table, kanban and calendar views and unlimited dashboards, so every rep sees the pipeline their way.
- Email and calendar: connect inboxes and calendars and share emails against the right contact or deal.
- Workflows and AI agents: no-code workflows for follow-ups, plus AI agents with custom skills.
- APIs for builders: REST and GraphQL APIs, webhooks and an MCP server, so it connects to the tools around it.
The service: a private CRM, built around how they sell
You self-host Twenty, design its objects and pipelines around the client’s sales process, migrate contacts from spreadsheets, HubSpot or Salesforce, connect email and calendar, build the first automations, train the team, and keep it backed up for a monthly fee.
Why not just install it themselves? Installing is an afternoon. The value is the design: which objects, stages and fields a rep will actually fill in, clean migrated data, and someone to call when a workflow misfires.
Who buys it: service firms and sales teams outgrowing spreadsheets, and owners paying per-seat CRM bills who want customer data on infrastructure they control.
Pricing and costs
A sensible package: $899 one-time setup (hosting, design, migration, email connection and training) plus $149 a month to manage it. Those are this guide’s suggested prices, not Twenty’s.
| Clients | Monthly recurring | Your hours a month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $149 | ~3 |
| 10 | $1,490 | ~18 |
Your costs: self-hosted Twenty core is $0 under AGPL-3.0; the real cost is the server it runs on. If a client would rather pay Twenty itself, its plans run Pro at $9 and Organization at $19 per user per month, Enterprise from $50,000 a year — row-level permissions and SSO sit in Organization and above, so check the tier first.
How to find clients
- Find the spreadsheet businesses: any firm tracking leads in a shared sheet has the problem — offer the move to a real CRM, done for them.
- Audit a prospect’s per-seat bill: add up a year of Salesforce or HubSpot seats, then show the same pipeline privately for a flat fee.
- Demo with their data: import one real (anonymised) pipeline on a call — their stages, fields, a kanban board and one automation — and let them see their sales organised.
Getting started
- Install Twenty with its Docker Compose guide and run your own leads in it.
- Practise the full job — design objects, import and deduplicate a messy CSV, connect email, build a workflow, back up and restore — before a client depends on it.
- Set up one friendly business at a discount, write down your checklist, and make it the standard package.
Watch-outs
- Licence is mixed: the core is AGPL-3.0 — if you modify Twenty and run it as a network service, you must offer users the modified source — but files marked Enterprise are under a commercial licence, so don’t promise those features as free.
- A CRM holds sensitive data: access controls, tested backups and careful permissions are the service, not extras — and only import contacts the client lawfully holds.
- Migration is where projects die: agree what moves, deduplicate first, and never promise every old automation maps one-to-one.
- Scope the customisation: unlimited objects invite endless tinkering — launch with the pipeline and a few automations, then iterate monthly.
Sources
- Twenty on GitHub (59,623 stars; core AGPL-3.0, some Enterprise-marked files commercial), checked October 24, 2026
- Twenty pricing (Pro $9 and Organization $19 per user per month; Enterprise from $50,000 a year), checked October 24, 2026
- Twenty documentation, checked October 24, 2026