Short answer
A CRM (customer relationship management) system is one shared record of every customer and deal: contact details, conversation history, quotations, the salesperson responsible and the next step, so no lead is forgotten. Off-the-shelf CRMs charge per user per month, some free for small teams; a custom CRM is a one-off build. Both connect to LINE OA through LINE's Messaging API.
Key points
- Free plans: HubSpot and Salesforce up to 2 users, Zoho up to 3, Odoo one app with unlimited users.
- Per-seat cost scales with headcount: at 1,000 baht a user a month, 10 users pay 120,000 baht a year.
- A focused custom CRM usually costs from the low hundreds of thousands of baht, plus yearly upkeep.
- LINE does not share phone numbers: match chats to customers with LINE's account-linking flow.
- Before entering data, check you can export all of it yourself, including notes and deal history.
What is a CRM system?
A CRM (customer relationship management) system is one shared record of every customer and deal: who they are, what they asked for, what you quoted, who on your team handles them, and what happens next. Its job is that no lead is forgotten and no customer has to repeat themselves to a different salesperson.
In a Thai business it looks like this. A factory buyer messages your LINE OA for a price on 500 units. The CRM creates a deal, assigns a salesperson and records the chat. The salesperson sends a quotation from the same record, and the system reminds them to follow up in three days if the buyer goes quiet. Six months later, when the buyer calls back, anyone on the team sees the whole history on one screen.
A CRM is not accounting or inventory: it covers the run-up to the sale and the relationship after it. If you need stock, invoices and purchasing on one database, that is an ERP question, covered in our guide to ERP and accounting software.
What does a CRM include?
Products differ in depth, but almost every CRM is built around the same six parts. If a product lacks the first three, it is a contact list, not a CRM.
- Customer and contact records: companies, the people at each one, and every conversation logged against them
- A sales pipeline: each deal as a card moving through stages you define, such as new enquiry, quoted, negotiating, won or lost
- Tasks and follow-up reminders, so a promised call-back is on someone's list rather than in their memory
- Quotations generated from the deal, with the customer's details already filled in
- Chat and email history, ideally including LINE, attached to the customer record
- Reports: deals by stage, win rate, and expected revenue by month, per salesperson
When have Excel and LINE chats stopped working?
When customer information lives on people's phones instead of in one place. A customer spreadsheet plus a sales LINE group is how most Thai SMEs start, and it works longer than vendors admit. These are the usual signs it has stopped.
Excel and LINE chats
- A customer already told someone, but the chat is on one salesperson's personal LINE
- A salesperson leaves, and their customers leave with the phone
- Open deals and their value mean asking each person
- Follow-ups slip because the reminder was a sticky note
- One customer, three rows, three spellings
- Quotations copied from an old Word file at outdated prices
A CRM
- Chats sit on the company's customer record
- History stays when a salesperson leaves
- Open deals and their value on one screen
- A reminder for every promised follow-up
- One record per customer
- Quotations issued from the deal at current prices
What are the ways to get a CRM?
There are four, and the right one is the cheapest that removes the problems above.
A better spreadsheet: a shared Google Sheet with one row per deal, a status column and a follow-up date, filtered each morning. It costs nothing and suits two or three people who sit together, but chats still live on personal phones.
An off-the-shelf SaaS CRM: pay per user per month and start the same day. HubSpot, Salesforce and Zoho have mature pipelines and mobile apps. Thai products such as Venio and Readyplanet R-CRM are built around how Thai sales teams work and mention LINE on their own pricing and product pages.
Odoo CRM: open source, with leads and a pipeline; add the Sales app and quotations come straight from the deal. The same system can later add invoicing, inventory and purchasing without moving your data again.
A custom CRM: worth it when the way you sell is itself specific, such as a pricing formula no product supports, an approval chain, a dealer network, or a tight link to a system you already run. There is no per-seat fee, but you pay once to build it and need someone to maintain it.
- Better spreadsheetA shared Google Sheet with status and follow-up columns; free, for two or three people
- SaaS CRMPer user per month, start today: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Venio, R-CRM
- Odoo CRMOpen source; add Sales for quotations, later invoicing and stock in the same system
- Custom CRMFor unusual pricing, approval chains, dealer networks or tight links to systems you run
Which CRM is best? Well-known options compared
No CRM is best for everyone, so this table compares what each vendor publishes instead of ranking them. Everything was checked on the vendors' own sites in September 2026. Prices change, and some show in different currencies depending on where you browse from, so check before deciding. The last two rows are SyncEdge's own routes, for comparison: a CRM we build, and Odoo CRM set up by our engineers.
Read the LINE column carefully: several products connect to LINE only through a separate chat product, a specific plan or a third-party app, which changes both the price and what you can actually do.
| Pricing model | Free tier | Thai interface | LINE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Per seat per month | Yes, up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts | Yes; support and onboarding are not in Thai | Through third-party marketplace apps, not built in |
| Salesforce | Per user per month; Starter Suite USD 25, higher editions billed annually | Free Suite, up to 2 users | Yes; help pages in English | A LINE messaging channel in its service product, not in the sales CRM |
| Zoho CRM | Per user per month, cheaper billed annually | Yes, up to 3 users | Yes | Built-in LINE business messaging on paid editions |
| Odoo CRM | Per user per month for all apps; USD 13.50 to 25.50 depending on plan | One app free with unlimited users on Odoo Online | Yes | No official connector; third-party modules or custom work |
| Venio (Thai) | Monthly base price covering 5 users, then per extra user; from 2,990 baht | Not published | Yes | Facebook, LINE and TikTok chat listed on the Pro+ plan |
| Readyplanet R-CRM (Thai) | Yearly; 31,500 baht for 3 users, 10,500 baht per extra user | Not published | Yes | LINE OA chat through its R-Chat product |
| SyncEdge (custom build) | A build cost set by the agreed scope; hosting and an optional maintenance retainer after launch | No; you pay for the build | Yes; screens and documents built in Thai | LINE OA connected through LINE's Messaging API, including account linking |
| Odoo CRM, set up by SyncEdge | Odoo's own price (Enterprise is bought from Odoo directly; Community is free), plus a setup fee agreed after scoping | Odoo Community is free to use; the setup work is paid | Yes; Thai quotations and tax settings configured | Connected to LINE OA through a custom Odoo module we write |
Which CRM fits a business like mine? Four example scenarios
These four businesses are illustrative composites of common situations, not our clients. Find the row closest to yours.
| Situation | What usually fits | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A 3-person online shop | The owner and two staff sell through LINE and Facebook chats and log orders in Google Sheets. Customers message whichever of them they know, on personal LINE. | Move customers onto one shop LINE OA and tidy the spreadsheet, or try Zoho's free plan, which allows 3 users. | Getting chats off personal phones and onto the shop's account fixes the biggest problem at no cost, and three people still fit inside a free plan. |
| A 12-person B2B sales team | Salespeople sell parts to factories, send quotations from old Word files and chase follow-ups from memory. Every Monday the sales manager asks each person what is still open. | A paid SaaS CRM, or Odoo CRM with the Sales app. | This team needs quotations issued from the deal, which both routes do. If invoicing and stock are next on the list, Odoo fits better because they are added to the same system without moving data. |
| An air-conditioner cleaning company that runs on LINE OA | Customers book slots, ask prices and send photos through the company LINE OA, but the chats are not tied to any customer record. Staff scroll back through chats to find which unit was serviced when. | A CRM with LINE on the plan you will actually pay for, such as Zoho's paid editions or Venio Pro+, or a custom connection through LINE's Messaging API. | The value is the chat sitting on the customer record, so check which plan includes LINE. Plan for LINE's account-linking step too, because LINE does not pass on customers' phone numbers. |
| A construction equipment rental company | Before each deal closes, staff check which machines are free on which dates, price the rental period and deposit, and issue a contract. The machine data lives in a booking system the company already runs. | A custom CRM connected directly to the existing booking system. | No off-the-shelf pipeline knows machine availability or the company's own pricing rules. A custom build reads from the booking system directly, so there are no two copies of the data to keep in step. |
An off-the-shelf CRM or a CRM built by SyncEdge: what is the difference?
A subscription CRM runs today, and the vendor maintains it. A CRM we build costs more up front and takes longer, but follows how your team sells, issues your own Thai documents, and connects to your LINE OA and the systems you already run. If a free or low-priced plan covers how you work, start there. Building pays off only when the products do not fit how you sell, or cannot connect to what you need.
There is a middle route too. If invoicing and stock are coming soon, we can set up Odoo CRM and write the missing pieces as Odoo modules instead of building everything from scratch. We are not an official Odoo partner and sell no licences.
| Off-the-shelf CRM | Built by SyncEdge | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to start | The same day, often on a free plan | After scoping and the build; how long depends on the scope |
| How you pay | Per user per month for as long as you use it | A build cost set by the agreed scope, then hosting and an optional monthly retainer |
| Fit to your sales process | Standard customer records and pipeline; unusual pricing, approval chains or dealer networks need workarounds | Records, stages, price rules and approvals follow how your team sells |
| Quotations and Thai documents | Depends on the product; Thai tax document formats may need an add-on or another app | Quotations and tax documents issued from the customer record, in the format your customers and accountant expect |
| LINE OA | Depends on the plan; some products connect only through a separate chat product or a third-party app | Connected through LINE's Messaging API, with account linking so each chat lands on the right customer |
| Connection to ERP, accounting and stock | Through the vendor's integrations or a connector, if one exists for your system | Built to read from and write to your existing ERP, accounting or stock system directly |
| Where the data sits | On the vendor's servers; it leaves only through the vendor's export tools | On cloud infrastructure in Thailand, under the terms set out in the contract |
| Who maintains it | The vendor: hosting, security and new features are included | We do, under a monthly retainer, or your own team using the handover documentation |
How does a CRM work with LINE OA?
Every LINE OA chat lands on a customer record instead of one person's phone, and your team replies from the CRM. This runs on LINE's Messaging API, and knowing what that API allows saves you from being oversold.
LINE does not give you the customer's phone number or name, only a user ID, sent when the customer adds your account as a friend or messages it. The ID differs for every LINE provider, so a customer has one ID with your business and another with anyone else. To tie it to an existing customer, LINE offers an account-linking flow: the customer taps a link in the chat, logs in or identifies themselves on your side, and your system stores the pairing. From then on, chats and the right customer record match automatically.
Sending comes in two kinds: one-to-one, such as a quotation or a delivery update, and broadcast to every friend at once, or narrowcast to a segment. Replies to a customer who has just messaged you are free. Messages your business starts, whether one-to-one push, broadcast or narrowcast, count against your LINE OA package's monthly quota, one per recipient. Prices and quotas are set per country and change, so check LINE for Business Thailand for the current ones.
One legal point before you broadcast: PDPA still applies to marketing messages. Ask for consent with a clearly stated purpose, record when and how the customer gave it, and offer an easy opt-out, because people have the right to object to direct marketing. Have your legal adviser check the wording once.
How much does a CRM cost?
A CRM is paid for in one of two ways: a subscription per user per month for as long as you use it, or a one-off custom build plus a smaller yearly cost for hosting and maintenance. Which is cheaper depends on how many people use it and for how many years.
An illustration with made-up round numbers, not a quote: at 1,000 baht per user per month, 10 users cost 120,000 baht a year, every year, before VAT, and 30 users cost 360,000 baht a year. Per-seat cost scales with headcount, which is why a growing sales team is the usual reason people look at a one-off build.
A custom CRM for one clear function with little integration usually lands in the low hundreds of thousands of baht; connecting it to LINE, your accounting system or an existing ERP pushes it higher. Our guide to custom software cost explains the ranges, and our SaaS versus custom guide works through a five-year comparison.
Whichever route you take, budget for three things that are not on the price page: moving your existing customer data in, setting up the pipeline stages and quotation template, and a paid LINE OA package if you will send more messages than the free quota covers.
- a year for 10 users
- 120,000 baht
- a year for 30 users
- 360,000 baht
Is there a free CRM, and what is the catch?
Yes. HubSpot and Salesforce offer free plans for up to 2 users, Zoho for up to 3, and Odoo runs one app, such as CRM, free with unlimited users on its own cloud. For a small team testing whether a pipeline helps, a free plan is a sensible start.
The limits are consistent: few users, capped contacts or records, and automation and detailed reports kept for paid plans. In Odoo, issuing quotations from a deal needs the Sales app as well, which makes two apps and takes you off the free plan.
Before putting customer data into any free plan, ask: can you export all of it yourself, including notes and deal history? If the answer is no, the price of free is being stuck there.
HubSpot and Salesforce allow 2 users free, Zoho 3; Odoo allows unlimited users on a single app.
Vendor sites, checked September 2026. HubSpot's free plan also caps contacts at 1,000. Odoo Online runs one app free with unlimited users, so it has no bar.
How do you roll out a CRM so salespeople actually use it?
Most CRMs fail because salespeople stop entering data, not because the software was wrong. The fix: the CRM has to save the salesperson time from the first week, not just give management a report.
- Pipeline firstCustomers, deals, stages and follow-up reminders; leave marketing automation and lead scoring for later
- Import clean dataLoad the existing customer list, duplicates removed, so nobody starts on an empty screen
- One place for workQuotations are issued from the CRM, and LINE OA chats land in it
- Meet from the pipelineThe weekly sales meeting reads the pipeline on screen, so entering data stops being optional
- Few, defined stagesFive or six at most, with a written rule for what moves a deal on
- Review after a monthRemove the fields nobody fills in
Is it time for a CRM?
- Can you see every open deal and its value without asking each salesperson?
- If a salesperson left tomorrow, would their customer chats stay with the company?
- Do customers message a company LINE OA, or salespeople's personal LINE?
- Is there a reminder for every promised follow-up?
- Are quotations issued from one current price list?
- Does each customer exist once in your records, not three times?
- Before choosing a CRM, have you confirmed you can export all your data?
- Do you have consent on record for the customers you send marketing messages to?
Frequently asked questions
What is a CRM system, in one sentence?
A CRM is one shared record of every customer and deal, holding the contact details, conversation history, quotations, the salesperson responsible and the next step, so that no lead is forgotten and anyone on the team can pick up where someone else left off. It covers selling and the customer relationship. Accounting and inventory belong to an ERP.
What is an example of a CRM in use?
A buyer asks for a price through your LINE OA. The CRM creates a deal, assigns it to a salesperson and saves the chat on the customer's record. The salesperson issues a quotation from that record, and the system reminds them to follow up if the buyer goes quiet. When the deal is won or lost, it moves to that stage, and the monthly report counts it automatically.
How much does a CRM system cost?
Off-the-shelf CRMs charge per user per month, so the yearly cost equals the price per user times users times 12, and it rises as your team grows. Published examples as of September 2026: Salesforce Starter Suite at USD 25 per user per month, and Venio from 2,990 baht a month for 5 users. A custom CRM costs a one-off sum instead, usually from the low hundreds of thousands of baht for a focused system, plus yearly maintenance.
Which CRM is best?
It depends on how you sell, so compare three things before features. Does it connect to LINE OA in a way you can actually use, and on which plan? Can your salespeople use it in Thai on their phones? Can you export all your data yourself? If you also expect to need invoicing and inventory, look at Odoo, whose CRM sits in the same system as those apps.
Can a CRM connect to LINE OA?
Yes. Through LINE's Messaging API, a CRM receives a user ID when a customer adds or messages your LINE OA, stores the chat on the customer's record, and can reply one-to-one or send a broadcast. LINE does not share the customer's phone number, so you match the LINE user to an existing customer through LINE's account-linking flow. Replies are free; messages your business initiates count against your LINE OA package quota.
Is there a free CRM that is actually usable?
Yes, for small teams. HubSpot and Salesforce have free plans for up to 2 users, Zoho for up to 3, and Odoo runs a single app free with unlimited users. The catches are capped users and records, automation kept for paid plans, and in Odoo's case quotations requiring a second app. Before committing, check that you can export all your data yourself.