Externalize Madagascar
Custom CRM

Custom CRM development built around your sales process

A custom CRM is a client management system built around your own pipeline, quoting rules and reporting rather than a generic product. Budget €9,000 to €25,000 depending on the number of modules, delivered in six to fourteen weeks, with data migration included. Firm quote within 24 hours.

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When does a custom CRM make sense?

Most companies should use an off-the-shelf CRM. Salesforce, HubSpot and Pipedrive are mature products and rebuilding them is a bad idea. A custom build earns its place in a narrower case: when your sales process has rules the market products cannot express, and when working around those rules costs real money every month.

The usual signs are consistent. Quotes are produced outside the CRM because its pricing model does not fit yours. Commission is calculated in a spreadsheet afterwards. Half your team keeps a private copy of the pipeline because the shared one does not reflect how deals actually progress. Per-seat licensing has become a significant line item for features you do not use.

At that point the comparison is not CRM versus no CRM, it is licence fees plus workarounds versus a one-off build you own. Over five years the arithmetic often favours the build — and often does not. We run that calculation with you before quoting.

What a custom CRM includes

Modules are delivered one at a time, each in production before the next begins. You keep the ability to stop after any module with something useful already running.

Pipeline and deal tracking

Your stages, your qualification criteria, your probability model. Including the stages that only exist in your industry.

Contacts and organisations

Companies, contacts, relationships and history, with deduplication rules that match how your data is actually entered.

Quoting and documents

Pricing rules encoded once, quotes generated from them, versioning and approval chains. The part spreadsheets usually own.

Commission and compensation

Commission calculated by the system from real deal data, with statements per period and per person.

Data migration

Import from your current CRM, spreadsheets or mailboxes, with a cleaning pass and a reconciliation report before go-live.

Integrations and reporting

Accounting, email, calendar, e-commerce or supplier APIs, plus dashboards built from the data you already hold.

How much does a custom CRM cost?

Price follows the number of modules and integrations. These are our real ranges, set against French market rates, in euros excluding tax.

How much does a custom CRM cost?
ServiceFrench agencyFrench freelancerExternalize
Custom CRM25 000 – 60 000 €12 000 – 30 000 €9 000 – 25 000 €
Internal tool / automation10 000 – 40 000 €5 000 – 20 000 €4 000 – 15 000 €
Developer day rate500 – 900 €/day350 – 650 €/day180 – 320 €/day
Monthly maintenance300 – 1 500 €/month150 – 600 €/month90 – 400 €/month

Compare this to what you pay in licences over the same period. A twenty-seat product at €80 per seat per month is around €96,000 over five years. Request a firm quote within 24 hours.

Our five-step process

  1. 1

    Pipeline mapping

    We follow a real deal from first contact to invoice, with the people who handle it, and write down every step including the ones that happen outside your current tools.

  2. 2

    Build versus buy

    We compare the cost of building against licences plus workarounds over five years. If an off-the-shelf product with one integration solves it, we say so and you save the budget.

  3. 3

    First module in production

    Usually the pipeline itself. Real users, real deals, real data, within a few weeks — before committing to the rest of the scope.

  4. 4

    Migration and remaining modules

    Data migration with a cleaning pass and a reconciliation report, then the remaining modules in one to two week batches.

  5. 5

    Training and handover

    Admin training, written documentation, repository transfer. Support afterwards if you want it, with no lock-in either way.

Technologies we use

Mainstream technologies with large talent pools, so the system can be maintained by any competent team, including one you hire yourself.

Next.js
React
TypeScript
Node.js
Python
Django
PostgreSQL
R
REST APIs
Docker
M
Metabase

Why a team in Madagascar?

A CRM project is mostly a conversation about how your company sells, which is why language and overlapping hours matter more here than raw engineering. Our team is in Antananarivo, one to two hours ahead of Western Europe, working in French and English.

Local costs let us charge 50 to 70 percent less than a Western European agency at the same seniority. On a build-versus-licence comparison, that ratio is frequently what tips the five-year arithmetic.

Your data stays yours, on infrastructure in your name, hosted inside the EU when your customers are European. Developers work on anonymised datasets rather than copies of your production pipeline, and access is revoked the day an engagement ends.

Frequently asked questions

Is a custom CRM really cheaper than HubSpot or Salesforce?

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Not at the start, and not always. A custom build costs €9,000 to €25,000 up front against a subscription that starts small. It becomes cheaper when seat counts grow and when the workarounds around the product cost real hours. Twenty seats at €80 per month is roughly €96,000 over five years, before counting the spreadsheet work the product did not cover. We run the comparison with your own numbers before quoting.

Can you migrate our existing data?

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Yes, and it is part of every project rather than an extra. We export from your current system, run a cleaning and deduplication pass, import into a staging environment and produce a reconciliation report showing what came across and what did not. You sign that report off before go-live.

What if we want to leave you afterwards?

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You can. Source code, repositories and hosting accounts are in your name from the start, the technologies are mainstream, and the system is documented as part of the delivery. There is no licence and no mandatory support contract. Several clients have taken systems in-house; we treat that as a good outcome.

How long does it take?

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Six to fourteen weeks depending on the number of modules, with the first module in production within a few weeks rather than at the end. Deploying module by module means you get value early and can stop if priorities change.

Can it connect to our accounting and email?

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Yes, through documented APIs where they exist and through scheduled file exchange where they do not. Accounting, email, calendar and e-commerce integrations are routine. Older products with no API at all are the awkward case, and we check that before committing to a date.

Who uses this rather than an off-the-shelf CRM?

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Companies whose pricing or commission rules are genuinely specific — brokers, distributors with complex tariffs, service firms with multi-stage approval. If your process fits a standard pipeline with standard fields, buy the product. We will tell you when that is the case.

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