Definition
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) is software used to manage interactions with current and prospective customers. At its core, a CRM stores contacts and the history of interactions with each: calls, emails, meetings, deals in progress, notes. On top of that core are features like pipeline management, email sequencing, reporting, permissions, and integrations with the rest of your stack.
CRM platforms range from free (HubSpot Free, Streak) to enterprise (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics). For many small businesses, especially those with fewer than 1,000 leads per month, a well-organized Google Sheet with columns for status, owner, and last-contact date functions as a perfectly adequate CRM - and costs nothing.
How SheetLinkWP relates to CRM
SheetLink Forms can replace a CRM for simpler use cases - a Sheet with the right columns is a pipeline - or feed into one of several CRMs via the CRM Fan-Out add-on: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive. Every WordPress form submission creates or updates contacts and deals in your chosen CRM, with field mapping configured in the plugin settings. Many customers use both: the Sheet as the source of truth and a CRM as the working surface for sales.