# A free CRM for two people, and an honest account of what it leaves out

> TicAte CRM is free for two users permanently, with no trial clock — one pipeline, real contacts and deals, and 1 GB of storage. Paid plans start when you need a third seat, more pipelines, or API access.

Source: https://ticate.com/blog/free-crm-for-small-business-india
Published: 10 October 2026
Publisher: TicAte, Chennai, India — https://ticate.com
Product: TicAte CRM

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Most "free CRM" offers are a trial wearing a costume: thirty days, or a seat count so low the product cannot be used, or a free tier that quietly stops letting you export. Here is what ours actually is, and where it stops.

## What free means here

**Two seats, indefinitely.** No card, no countdown, no feature that disappears on day thirty-one. Two people can run their sales on it for a year if that is what the business needs.

You get:

- Leads, contacts, companies and deals — a real customer record, not a notes field
- One pipeline, with stages you name and reorder yourself
- Tasks, activities and the timeline of what changed and who changed it
- 1 GB of file storage
- Your own address, and **your own database schema** — the same isolation a paying customer gets

That last point is the one we would not compromise on. Free accounts are not rows in a shared table with a tenant column on them; they get a schema of their own, like everybody else. Isolation is the database's job, not a filter in the code that one missing clause can defeat.

## What it does not include

Being straight about this is cheaper for both of us than a disappointed signup:

- **No automation rules.** Nothing fires on a stage change. Follow-ups are yours to remember.
- **One pipeline only.** If you sell two different ways, you will feel this quickly.
- **No custom fields or sections** on the cards.
- **No quotes or invoices.** Those live on Standard.
- **No native join to TicAte WhatsApp or ChatIQ** — the conversation and the customer record stay separate.

## The honest moment to start paying

Not when a salesperson tells you to. When the manual version costs more than the plan.

In practice that is one of three moments:

- **A third person joins.** Two people can hold a shared understanding in their heads. Three cannot, and the day someone double-calls a customer is the day the free plan ended.
- **You forget a follow-up that mattered.** One missed quote usually costs more than a year of Standard.
- **You start selling in two different ways** — direct and through partners, or new business and renewals. One pipeline stops describing reality.

Standard is [₹299 per seat a month](/pricing#crm-plans) paid annually at launch pricing. For two people that is less than most teams spend on coffee in a week, which is roughly the right comparison for software that stops you forgetting a deal.

## Starting on free is not a trap

Moving up a tier is a setting, not a migration. Your records, your pipeline and your history stay exactly as they are; the limits lift. And because the data was never in a shared table, nothing has to be untangled from anyone else's.

If you are weighing it against the obvious alternatives, [what makes this CRM different](/blog/crm-that-fits-how-you-sell) is the more useful read — the free tier is an on-ramp, not the argument.

## Frequently asked

### Is TicAte CRM really free?

Yes, for two seats, with no card and no trial clock. You get leads, contacts, companies, deals, one pipeline with your own stages, tasks and the record timeline, plus 1 GB of file storage.

### What is missing from the free plan?

Automation rules, custom fields and sections, quotes and invoices, more than one pipeline, and the integrations with TicAte WhatsApp and ChatIQ. Those start on Standard.

### Does my data get held hostage if I never pay?

No. Every workspace gets its own database schema on every tier, free included, and you can export your data whenever you like.

### When should a small business pay for a CRM?

When the thing you are doing by hand costs more than the plan. The usual trigger is a third person joining, or the first time a follow-up is forgotten that was worth more than a few hundred rupees.


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