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“Easy to use and... wait for it ... 100% buy in!
“Nutshell is both simple and powerful
Choosing the right CRM is crucial for your business. Explore why Nutshell is the right CRM over Close CRM. Nutshell’s standout features include:
Nutshell wins on built-in automation, email marketing, predictable pricing, and free live support. Close CRM wins on raw calling volume for outbound teams that live on the phone. If you run a 5- to 50-person B2B sales team that wants automation and email marketing bundled into one price, Nutshell saves a 10-person team about $570 a month over Close’s equivalent automation-ready plan.
Comparing Nutshell Pro against Close Growth, the first tier on each platform that includes sales automation. Close’s cheaper Essentials plan looks close to Nutshell Pro on price, but it doesn’t include workflows or automation at all, so it isn’t a fair match for a team that needs either.
Starting price (billed annually)
Sales automation and workflows
Built-in email marketing
Calling costs
Data storage and contacts
Support
Implementation time
Best fit
Free trial
$42/user/month
Included
Included, with 150 free email sends a month. Extra email marketing contacts start at $5/month
One-click calling included, no per-minute charges
Unlimited
Free live chat on every plan from day one of the trial
Days, with free onboarding data import
5- to 50-person B2B sales teams that need automation and marketing in one place
14 days, no credit card required
$99/user/month
Included, but not on Close’s two cheapest plans
Not available as a native product
Usage-based per-minute and per-call charges, plus $1/month per phone line
Unlimited on Growth, capped at 10,000 leads on Solo
Email support included, but a guaranteed 2-hour response time costs $750/month extra
Close’s own implementation guide plans for up to six weeks
Solo reps and high-volume outbound teams built around cold-calling
14 days
Feature lists only tell you what exists. Here’s what actually happens inside each platform during three situations a growing sales team runs into every week.
A VP of Sales at a 20-person B2B services company needs a forecast that holds up in front of the board, not a spreadsheet stitched together the night before. In Nutshell, that forecast lives in the pipeline reporting already, pulled straight from pipeline stage and deal value with no export required.
Close CRM reviewers doing the same task keep hitting the same wall in public feedback: the reporting screen counts and filters records, but it doesn’t compare pipeline data across time periods or hold up as a real dashboard.
A rep who just finished a demo needs a follow-up sequence to fire automatically, not a task reminder to write one later. Nutshell’s sales automation triggers a personalized email sequence the moment a deal moves stage, and pauses it the instant the prospect replies.
Close reserves that kind of automation for its Growth plan and up, so a team on Close’s cheaper Essentials tier is stuck sending that follow-up by hand.
A sales ops manager onboarding five new reps needs one playbook that doesn’t require a spreadsheet export to check. Nutshell’s stage-based task guidance and custom reports keep that playbook inside the CRM, visible to every rep on a plan that includes automation.
Close reviewers in this exact role describe a different experience, since dashboards don’t exist natively and often push them toward Zapier or a support partner just to get a visual view of the data.
For a 10-person team paying annually, Nutshell Pro runs $5,040 a year. Close’s Growth plan, the cheapest one that actually includes the automation this comparison assumes, runs $11,880 a year for the same 10 people. That’s a $6,840 annual gap before either team makes a single phone call.
Calling adds more distance. Close bills usage-based per-minute and per-call charges on top of that subscription, plus $1 a month for each phone line. Nutshell’s calling is built into the plan a team already pays for.
Support costs the same way. Close’s premium SLA tier, with a guaranteed 2-hour response time, adds another $750 a month for that same 10-person team. Nutshell’s live chat support is free on every plan, starting the day the trial begins.
Nutshell is built for 5- to 50-person B2B sales teams that want automation, pipeline reporting, email marketing, and free live support under one login and one price. If a team is outgrowing a spreadsheet or a bare-bones contact list and needs everyone selling, not just one admin, to actually use the CRM, Nutshell’s four pipeline views and stage-based automation are built for that adoption curve.
Close earns its following among solo reps and high-volume outbound teams whose day is built around cold-calling volume. Its power dialer and predictive dialer are more purpose-built for that specific workflow than Nutshell’s calling tools, and a one-person team on the Solo plan can get moving for less money upfront than Nutshell’s automation tiers. If a team’s success metric is calls dialed per hour and it doesn’t need built-in email marketing, Close’s calling-first design is a legitimate reason to consider it.
To compare all of Nutshell’s Sales plans, go to our pricing page and click “compare all plans”.
Steve K. Speedwagon Properties
Vimmi
Lisa L. Generations Now LLC
Brian S. Testimonial Tree
Ryan M. Reichel Insulation
Nutshell is the better choice for B2B sales teams between 5 and 50 people that want sales automation, pipeline reporting, email marketing, and free live support bundled into one platform and one price. Close CRM is the better choice for solo reps and high-volume outbound teams whose workflow centers on dialer-driven cold calling and who don’t need native email marketing built into their CRM.
Contacts, deals, notes, and email history all transfer when a team moves from Close to Nutshell, and Nutshell’s team handles the data import for free as part of onboarding. Close’s workflows get recreated as Nutshell sales automations, and custom activity types or pipeline stages get mapped over during setup rather than migrated automatically.
Most teams are live in days, not the up-to-six-week timeline Close’s own implementation guide describes. Free onboarding support and live chat are available from the moment a trial starts, so no one is paying extra or waiting on a scheduled call to get help during the switch.
Start your free trial → (no credit card required)
Switching from Close CRM? Talk to our onboarding team about a free, guided migration →
Yes, for any team that needs sales automation. Nutshell Pro costs $42 a user each month billed annually, while Close’s cheapest automation-ready plan, Growth, costs $99 a user each month billed annually. For a 10-person team, that’s a $6,840 difference over a year, before Close’s per-minute calling charges get added in.
Most of what matters moves over automatically. Contacts, deals, notes, and email history all transfer when a team switches, and Nutshell’s onboarding team handles the import for free. Workflows built in Close get rebuilt as Nutshell sales automations during setup, since automation rules don’t carry over between any two CRMs.
Nutshell is built to get a team live in days. Close’s own implementation content plans for a rollout of up to six weeks, which reflects the more involved setup its workflow and dialer configuration require.
It does, and the gap shows up fast. Close leaves workflows and automation out of its Solo and Essentials plans entirely, so a team has to upgrade to Close Growth, at $99 a user each month billed annually, to get automation that comes standard with Nutshell Pro.
Not on Nutshell’s end. Live chat support is free on every plan, starting the day a trial begins. Close includes standard email support on all plans, but a guaranteed 2-hour response time requires its Premium Support add-on, which starts at $750 a month.
Try Nutshell free for 14 days or let us show you around before you dive in.
