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Hourglass and legacy CRM suites, side by side
How the day-to-day work compares for marketing, sales and service teams.
| Feature | Hourglass | Legacy CRM suites |
|---|---|---|
| Time to go live | Weeks, with a planned, team-by-team start | Months of configuration, often with an outside consultant |
| Customer record | One record shared by marketing, sales and service | Separate products that need connectors to share data |
| AI agents | Built in, with permissions, approvals and an activity log | Sold as add-ons and set up separately for each product |
| Who runs it | Your own admins, with guided setup | A dedicated admin team or an outside partner |
| Pricing | A free CRM, then hubs and seats as you grow | Long contracts and a separate bill for each product |
| Upgrades | New features arrive in place, with nothing to migrate | Major upgrades planned and run as projects |
One platform or a stack of tools
What changes when every team works from the same customer record.
| Feature | Hourglass | A stack of point tools |
|---|---|---|
| Customer data | One record that every tool shares | A copy in each tool, kept in step by hand or by connectors |
| Handoffs | Marketing, sales and service on the same timeline | Exports, imports and context lost in between |
| Reporting | One report from first visit to renewal | A spreadsheet stitched together from several dashboards |
| AI agents | Agents that read the whole customer record | Separate assistants that only see their own tool |
| Admin | One login and one set of permissions | Separate users, roles and bills for every tool |
| Cost | One price that grows with you | Several subscriptions that grow separately |
Why teams outgrow the spreadsheet
The free Smart CRM does what the spreadsheet did, and the work around it.
| Feature | Hourglass | Spreadsheets and inboxes |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts and deals | Shared, searchable and always current | Copies on laptops that drift apart |
| Follow-ups | Reminders and tasks in the right person’s queue | Remembered, or not |
| Customer emails | Logged on the contact for the whole team | Hidden in personal inboxes |
| Reporting | Live dashboards anyone can open | Redone by hand every month |
| Security | Permissions and a history of every change | Files shared by link |
| Cost | Free for your whole team to start | Free, plus the hours spent keeping it current |
Buying Hourglass or building your own
Where your engineers’ time goes in each case.
| Feature | Hourglass | A homegrown CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Flexibility | Custom objects, fields and pipelines, without code | Anything, once an engineer builds it |
| Upkeep | Updates, security and backups included | Your team maintains every part |
| AI agents | Ready to use, with permissions and review built in | A project to build, govern and maintain |
| Integrations | Ready-made two-way syncs | Custom code for each connection |
| Time to value | Weeks | Months, then ongoing work |
| Your data | Yours, and exportable at any time | Yours, in your own database |