Salesmate Alternative: Customermates and Salesmate Compared

Which CRM fits which team

Who Salesmate is a good choice for

Salesmate is a hosted CRM aimed at startups and small to mid-sized businesses. Its strength is reaching customers on many channels from one screen. Full email sync with templates and tracking, web forms and a meeting scheduler come with Basic. Calling and texting are an add-on with local and toll-free numbers, and customers can chat with you on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and your website.

Pro adds sequences, product and quote management, tickets, a team inbox, SSO and Sandy AI. Sandy is part of what Salesmate calls its AI Employee, which transcribes sales calls, summarizes conversations and drafts emails. Business adds custom modules, a power dialer and voicemail drop. Every plan includes apps for iPhone, iPad and Android and access to Salesmate's REST APIs.

Why teams look for a Salesmate alternative

The advertised price is the yearly rate. The pricing page opens on yearly billing: Basic $23, Pro $39 and Business $63 per user per month. Switch to monthly billing and the same plans cost $29, $49 and $79.

The features people ask about sit one or two plans up. Sequences, Sandy AI and field-based permissions need Pro. The power dialer and custom modules need Business, and audit logs need Enterprise, whose onboarding packages start at $1,999.

Usage is billed on top of seats. Phone numbers start at $1.1 a month, and you top up credits for calls and texts. Smart Flow automations run on monthly credits per user, and Salesmate's AI agents (Skara) on AI agent credits, with more of both sold as add-ons. The seat price alone does not give you the monthly total.

LinkedIn and Telegram are not on the channel list. Salesmate's conversations page names Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, website chat, text messages and email. If your clients write to you in LinkedIn messages, that gap matters.

Hosted only, and the region is not stated. The pricing page lists no self-hosted edition and no open-source licence. The security page says Salesmate runs dedicated VPCs on Google Cloud infrastructure but names no region, so ask before you sign if location matters for your GDPR assessment.

What five people pay per month

Prices checked on 8 October 2026 from Salesmate's pricing page, which lists US dollars. Customermates bills monthly, in euros, so convert before you compare totals.

The rows buy different things, so read them in pairs:

• Salesmate Basic includes email; Customermates Starter does not. Starter is the CRM with REST, webhooks, MCP and, in Customermates Cloud, Mate. If you want email next to your contacts on the smallest plan, Basic gives you that.
• On Pro, each side buys something the other lacks. Customermates Pro adds the unified inbox with 1 connected account per user, read-only calendar access, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and 5 routines per user. Salesmate Pro buys sequences, tickets, SSO and Sandy AI, none of which Customermates has.
• Business differs too. Salesmate Business adds the power dialer and custom modules. Customermates Business gives each user 3 connected accounts and lets the team share whole accounts.
• Calls cost extra on every Salesmate row. With Customermates, calls stay on your own phone system and are not logged in the CRM.

Every Customermates Cloud plan includes monthly hosted AI credits per active user for Mate, listed on the pricing page. There are no top-ups and no automatic overage charges.

Where Customermates fits

Customermates is an open-source, AI-native CRM built in Germany for small client-facing teams: consultants, agencies, other service businesses and founders.

Conversations next to the deal. From Pro, the unified inbox brings Gmail, Outlook and IMAP mailboxes, LinkedIn (including Sales Navigator and Recruiter), WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram into one list, and you reply on the original channel. Link a participant to a contact once, and every conversation with that address or handle shows up on the contact's timeline.

AI that keeps the records current. In Customermates Cloud, Mate summarizes conversations, drafts replies and updates records, using hosted AI credits. It asks for a fresh approval before every delete, but sends a message without asking again when you tell it to send. Routines run a saved instruction on a schedule or when a record changes. Prefer Claude, ChatGPT or another client you already pay for? Connect it to the MCP server, with 53 tools on every plan and on self-hosted installs.

Open source, a cloud configured in the AWS Frankfurt region, or your own server. The core is AGPL-3.0 and runs with Docker Compose and PostgreSQL 16, including REST, webhooks and MCP. A self-hosted install has no subscription, and also no inbox, no Mate and no hosted credits. In Customermates Cloud the database is configured in the AWS Frankfurt region, a DPA is available, and the subprocessors, including US providers, are listed. The audit log records changes to records and workspace settings on every plan.

Where Customermates is the wrong choice

• No telephony and no SMS. No dialer, no call recording, no transcription. A phone number goes into a Phone field.
• No sequences and no campaigns. You write or approve each message and send it on its own.
• No help desk. No tickets, no live chat widget, no chatbots and no surveys.
• No web forms and no meeting scheduler. Website leads arrive through the REST API or an n8n instance you run yourself. Pro reads your calendar but does not book meetings.
• No lead scoring, no enrichment and no AI forecasting. The weighted pipeline multiplies each deal's value by its stage probability. That is arithmetic on your own numbers, not a prediction.
• No field-level permissions and no SSO. Permissions apply per list and action. Saved views are personal.
• No native mobile apps, no free plan and no certification. Customermates runs in the phone's browser. Salesmate's security page states ISO 27001:2013 and SOC 2; Customermates holds no certification.

A worked setup: an agency moving from Salesmate Pro

Take a five-person brand and web agency. Two account managers hear from clients mostly on WhatsApp, the founder on LinkedIn, the two project leads by email. Nobody makes sales calls from the CRM.

In Configure for Deals, the agency renames the Stage options to Lead, Briefing, Proposal sent, Negotiation, Won and Lost, and sets their Probability % to 10%, 30%, 50%, 75%, 100% and 0%. Each account manager saves a board of their own deals grouped by Stage. The founder keeps a table of open deals grouped by assigned user.

Each person connects one channel, so Pro fits, at €145 a month for the team. If the founder wants LinkedIn and email side by side, the workspace moves to Business at €345.

Each account manager also sets up a routine for their own deals. A routine runs as its owner, so it sees that person's deals and conversations, and it uses hosted AI credits in Customermates Cloud. The trigger is When something changes with the event Deal Updated, the changed field Stage, and record filters for Stage is Won and deals assigned to the owner:

Switching from Salesmate in five steps

1. Export from Salesmate before you cancel

   In Salesmate you pick the columns you want, start the export and get a download link when it is ready. Salesmate's security page says data is deleted 30 days after a trial expires or a subscription is cancelled, so export first.

2. Save each export as an Excel workbook

   Customermates imports .xlsx workbooks only. Open each exported file in Excel or LibreOffice and save it as .xlsx, one list per workbook.

3. Prepare the workspace

   Rename lists in Configure, create custom fields for the Salesmate fields you keep, such as a lead source, and set the Stage field with its probabilities.

4. Import one list at a time

   On each list, open More actions, then Add from file: organizations first, then contacts, then deals. Link columns match records by name, so a contact's company column finds the organization imported before. Map email addresses and WhatsApp numbers to the contact's channels. Size limits are in the records documentation.

5. Connect channels and AI

   On Pro or during the trial, connect a mailbox, LinkedIn or WhatsApp under Settings › Channels. Message history stored in Salesmate does not come across; the inbox shows conversations from the accounts you connect. Then set up routines, or connect your own AI client through MCP.

Other Salesmate alternatives worth a look

Customermates publishes this list. Details come from each vendor's pricing page, checked on 8 October 2026.

• Close suits teams that live on the phone. Calling, email and SMS are built in, and Close passes call and SMS usage through at cost; it quotes most outbound calls at around $0.02 a minute. Solo costs $9 per user per month billed yearly or $19 monthly, for one user. Growth, at $99 or $109, adds workflows, a power dialer and bulk email; Scale, at $139 or $149, adds a predictive dialer. The trial runs 14 days.
• Freshsales fits a phone and email team that wants a free start. The free plan covers up to 3 users. Growth costs $9 per user per month billed yearly, with chat, email and phone; Pro, at $39, adds sales sequences, contact scoring and deal insights. The trial runs 21 days. See our Freshsales comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Competitor details checked on 8 October 2026 against Salesmate's pricing page, conversations page, AI Employee page, security page, article on data export and MCP announcement, and against the pricing pages of Close and Freshsales and the Freshsales plan comparison.