Capsule
The Manchester-built small-business CRM: a usable free plan, £14 a user on Starter, £27 on the Growth tier a team needs, no setup fees, cancel with immediate effect, an MCP server in beta, and the honest caveats that the data sits on AWS in the United States and nobody answers a phone.
How we testCapsule (a service of Zestia Ltd, a private company registered in England, Manchester) is the CRM that does the small-business job without the platform theatre. The free plan is two users, 250 contacts and one pipeline. Starter is £14 a user a month on annual commitment or £17 paid monthly (GBP as shown to a UK visitor on 8 September 2026, VAT basis not stated), with 30,000 contacts, shared mailboxes, email templates and basic reporting. Growth, at £27 annual or £32 monthly, is the tier a 10-seat team needs: workflow automations, advanced sales reporting and dashboards, multiple pipelines and project boards, AI enrichment and summaries. Advanced is £42 / £52; Ultimate is sales-assisted with an account manager. Email marketing is Capsule's sister product Transpond, activated inside the account from £7 a month. There are no seat minimums, "zero setup fees", a 14-day trial without a card, and the super administrator can cancel "with immediate effect" from the settings page, which is as clean an exit as this category offers. The terms let Capsule change fees on 30 days' notice, taking effect from the renewal date for annual plans, and there are no refunds for partial periods.
Capsule shipped an official MCP server in private beta on 26 June 2026, for Growth plans and above, connecting Claude and Cursor to contacts, opportunities, projects, tasks and the timeline. The public API, Zapier and over 100 integrations including Xero, QuickBooks and Slack are in place, SOC 2 Type II is achieved, and two-factor authentication is available to all users. Two things to know before you sign a UK business up to a UK company: Capsule's own security page states customer data is hosted on AWS in the United States, with no EU or UK hosting option at any tier (covered by GDPR safeguards, but not in-region), and support is email and web chat on weekdays with no phone line. Single sign-on is Google Workspace login rather than SAML. Sales sequences and quoting were not found as native features in this research; if you need them, look at Pipedrive or HubSpot.
Trustpilot is 4.4 on 67 unprompted reviews (91% five-star, 6% one-star), and Capsule replies to every negative review; Capterra 4.5 on 167. Capsule's own site claims 4.7 on G2. The three one-star reviews since 2023 concern a login failure, a refund refused on cancelling an annual plan, and the removal of the Twitter integration when X started charging for its API. For a UK team that wants a CRM it can set up in an afternoon and leave without a fight, this is the one to try first.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +UK company, plain GBP pricing from one seat, no setup fees, cancel with immediate effect
- +Usable free plan; Growth at £27 covers automations, reporting and multiple pipelines
- +Official MCP server (beta), SOC 2 Type II, 2FA for all
Cons
- −Data hosted on AWS in the United States, no UK or EU hosting at any tier
- −No phone support; SSO is Google login, not SAML
- −No native sequences or quoting found; email marketing is a separate product
Pricing
Minimum commitment: £168 (£14/mo × 1 seat × 12 months). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
Starter
£17/mo · month-to-month
£14/mo on an annual commitment
Month-to-month costs 21% more
- ✓Per user, VAT basis not stated. 30,000 contacts, shared mailboxes, templates, basic reporting. Free plan: 2 users, 250 contacts, 1 pipeline. 14-day trial, no card.
Growth
£32/mo · month-to-month
£27/mo on an annual commitment
Month-to-month costs 19% more
- ✓The tier a team needs: workflow automations, advanced reporting and dashboards, multiple pipelines, project boards, AI enrichment, MCP (beta). Advanced £42 / £52. Transpond email marketing add-on from £7/mo.
Specifications
| Rating | 4.0 |
| Month-to-month (entry plan) | £17/mo |
| Annual commit, per month | £14/mo |
| Monthly premium | 21% |
| Real tier, per user* | £27/user/mo (Growth) |
| Real tier, month-to-month | £32/user/mo |
| Seat minimum (real tier) | None |
| Onboarding fee | None |
| Renewal terms** | Increase allowed, uncapped |
| Pricing pattern | Transparent tiers |
| Free tier | Limited free plan |
| How you get live | Self-serve |
| Built for | Micro (1 to 10) |
| Owner | Independent |
| Marketing automation | No |
| Email marketing built in | No |
| Quotes & invoicing | No |
| Built-in phone | No |
| AI assistant | ✓ |
| API | ✓ |
| MCP server | ✓ |
| SSO | No |
| EU data residency | No |
| UK data residency | No |
| Open source | No |
| Trustpilot (reviews) | 4.4 (67) |
| Real tier, monthly premium | 19% |
| Renewal clause | Customer Terms: fees may change on 30 days' notice; annual fees increase from the renewal date |
| Free trial (days) | 14 |
| Contact-based pricing | No |
| HQ | UK |
| Publicly listed | No |
| Email sequences | No |
| Gmail / Outlook sync | ✓ |
| Workflow automation | ✓ |
| Custom objects | No |
| Custom reporting | ✓ |
| Mobile app | ✓ |
| 2FA | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | No |
| Phone support | No |
| Support channels | Email, Web chat (weekdays) |
| Commitment for annual rate (months) | 12 |
*Real tier: the plan a 10-seat business with a pipeline, email sequences, basic automation and reporting actually needs, because CRM entry tiers are deliberately thin. Prices are per user per month on annual commitment, as shown to a UK visitor on the research date, in the currency the vendor bills UK customers in; see each profile for the VAT basis and for what the entry tier leaves out.
**Renewal terms: what the vendor's published customer terms allow it to do to your price when an annual contract renews. "Fixed" means the terms contain no uplift clause; "capped" means an increase is allowed up to a stated percentage; "uncapped" means the vendor may set a new price on notice. Read with the profile, which quotes the clause.
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Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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