Small teams fall back to spreadsheets when CRMs feel wrong
Small B2B teams struggle to manage leads and customer workflows in CRMs that feel cumbersome, costly, or poorly matched to their processes. Some keep paying for a disliked CRM while tracking work in spreadsheets; others build their own tools because they need integrations off-the-shelf products lack. The API-account provisioning request is a separate developer-infrastructure problem, not a core need for this CRM opportunity.
For small B2B teams managing leads and customer relationships. Mentioned from Nov 2023 to Aug 2026 on Bluesky and Hacker News.
4 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 5.0/10
- Pain
- 7.5/10
- Frequency
- 5.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 5.0/10
- Momentum
- 4.7/10
- Who pays
- Businesses
- Competition
- High
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
17% of teams pay for a CRM, hate using it, and quietly go back to a spreadsheet with color-coded tabs. The CRM still gets renewed because nobody wants to admit the $4,800 annual plan is just a guilty feelings subscription
The serious tools start at $10k - $50k per year and take months to set up, and everyone else that can't afford them use spreadsheets. There's almost nothing in the middle
Jide_Lambo on Hacker NewsFeb 2026
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 1 product idea with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 4 places to find your first customers
- 2 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks