Solve CRM vs Capsule CRM (2026)

TL;DR

• Solve CRM has exactly one plan: Standard at $39/user/month, full web and iOS apps, no feature gates. The catch is a four-user minimum, so the smallest possible bill is $156/month.
• Capsule CRM runs Free (2 users, 250 contacts), Starter $18, Growth $36, Advanced $54 per seat annually, with no seat minimum at all — one person can buy one seat.
• Below four people, Capsule wins by structure. Between four and twenty-five, the real comparison is Solve's built-in project layer against Capsule Growth's automation and cheaper seats.

Two ways to price a small-business CRM

Capsule meters contacts. Seats set the sticker, but the thing that pushes accounts up a tier is the database ceiling — 250 on Free, 30,000 on Starter, 60,000 on Growth, 120,000 on Advanced. A two-person agency sitting on a 40,000-record prospect list pays more than a ten-person team keeping 20,000 tidy ones. Audit your export before you count heads; that number picks your price.

Solve meters nothing except people, and then insists on at least four of them. There is no Professional tier withholding reporting and no Enterprise tier holding the API back. Whatever the product does, $39 buys, which makes budgeting trivially easy once you clear the floor.

The four-seat floor is the whole decision at small scale

For a solo consultant, Solve is not a $39 CRM. It is a $156 one — four times the advertised rate and more per head than Salesforce Enterprise. A two-person practice pays $78 effective. There is no negotiating around it and no cheap viewer license for a bookkeeper who logs in twice a quarter; every login is full freight, which quietly pushes small teams toward shared credentials.

Capsule has the opposite shape at the bottom. One seat on Starter is $18. Free covers two users indefinitely with 250 contacts, one pipeline, and five custom fields — enough for a genuinely tiny operation, though most businesses cross 250 contacts within a year. Adding a third person converts the whole account, so three users on Starter is $54, not $18.

Where the money buys different things

Capsule's meaningful upgrade is Starter to Growth. That doubling from $18 to $36 is what turns a contact list into a CRM: workflow automations, multiple pipelines and project boards, advanced reporting, AI enrichment and summaries. Steep on paper, but Starter's manual-only workflow becomes a time tax fast. The Growth-to-Advanced step is much weaker — 120,000 contacts instead of 60,000 and higher board caps, all volume rather than capability. Buy it when a limit actually stops you.

Solve's $39 lands where mid-tier plans sit elsewhere, and gives you the top of its own range. For a professional-services firm the honest comparison is not CRM-to-CRM but Solve against a CRM plus a lightweight project tool, since Solve carries client and project workflow natively — contacts, companies, projects, properties, and cases in one record model, with the deal not treated as the final object.

Google Workspace versus general integration

Solve is built around Google. Two-way Gmail sync, Calendar scheduling, and Google Sheets reporting behave like native parts of the product rather than connectors, and the repo notes that pushing data to Sheets is how you get custom analysis at all — reporting inside the tool is limited. If your firm runs on Workspace, that tightness is the main reason to look at Solve.

Capsule spreads wider and shallower: Google Workspace, Outlook, Xero, Mailchimp, Zapier, plus premium integrations from Starter up. Its own gap is email marketing, which sits outside every plan as the Transpond add-on from $11/month, scaling with your list. If you want marketing in the same bill, stack that total before calling Capsule the cheaper option.

Commercial terms and evaluation

Capsule quotes annual by default with up to 14% off monthly — a modest discount that makes monthly billing defensible during evaluation. There is no seat minimum, no multi-year contract, and a 14-day trial that drops to Free rather than locking you out when it ends.

Solve offers a 14-day trial with no card, and then the meter starts at four seats. No annual discount is advertised, which is unusual in this bracket; ask sales rather than assuming the standard 20% exists. Storage limits are not published either, worth confirming in writing before you migrate client documents in.

One warning on Capsule that catches people at renewal: downgrading is not just a billing change. Dropping from Growth's 60,000 contacts to Starter's 30,000 requires deleting 30,000 records first.

Who should pick what

• Solo operators and two-person practices → Capsule, on Free or Starter. Solve's minimum makes it two to four times more expensive per person than it looks.
• Service firms of four to twenty-five living in Google Workspace → Solve, especially if you currently pay for a separate project tool.
• Small B2B sales teams that want automation cheaply → Capsule Growth at $36.
• Teams with a long tail of light-touch users → Capsule, where seats are cheaper and the entry tier is real.
• HVAC, field service, and consultancies tracking jobs past the close → Solve, for the project and case record types.
• Anyone holding a very large contact database → neither is ideal, but check Capsule's ceilings first; record-metered pricing is the wrong shape above a few hundred thousand records.

Bottom line

Capsule is the more flexible purchase and the safer default: it starts free, scales one seat at a time, and Growth gives you automation for less than Solve's single price. Solve is the better answer for a narrower buyer — a Google-centric services firm of four or more that manages ongoing client work and would otherwise pay for a CRM and a project tool separately. Count your seats first. Under four, the choice is already made for you.