Layer 04 · Memory

CRM & audience — keeping the list

This layer's shelf was empty on purpose until a candidate could be run to ground. On November 9, 2026 two of them were — installed locally and put through the same test: create a contact and a pipeline item, move it through stages, read it back, and check the way out. Both earned their stamps, and they are different tools: a true CRM takes the primary slot, and the table that behaves like software — this page's original hunch — takes the alternate, with its one material limit stated where this catalogue prints it.

Primary pick

EspoCRM

A true CRM — contacts, deals and an enforced sales pipeline as native objects — self-hosted, with a free core that carries no per-seat fee.

Evaluated · November 9, 2026 espocrm.com No affiliate relationship — direct link

What the evaluation was: on November 9, 2026 we installed EspoCRM 10.1.0 locally — assembled from vendor binaries (a static PHP build and MariaDB) and installed with its own CLI installer — authenticated to its API, created a contact and a $1,200 opportunity linked to it, and moved the deal through EspoCRM's actual pipeline — Prospecting → Qualification → Proposal → Negotiation — confirming every move on read-back and in the web UI, where the same row sits at Negotiation with its amount and contact link intact. One honest detail from the log: a stage name from an older EspoCRM version was rejected with a validation error along the way — the pipeline enforces its stages rather than accepting free text. That is the whole basis of this stamp — a hands-on trial, not production use.

EspoCRM is the only candidate that is a CRM: Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns, Target Lists, Cases, Knowledge Base, Documents and Import are all in the free core, and list export is there too. For a launch list that is about to become a pipeline, that is the shape that holds. Its costs are real but disclosed and bounded — they are in the facts below, not in a sales call.

Free tier: The self-hosted core is free (AGPLv3): no per-user fee, and no seat or record cap.
The wall: Automation is the paywall — workflows/BPM and advanced reports live in a paid extension pack (quotes and invoices in another). The vendor's cloud bundles the extensions at $15/user/month with a three-user minimum and six-month or annual billing — about $270 up front for a one-person operation. And self-hosting means you are the hosting department: you run and patch the PHP + database stack, and its cron job, yourself.
Price: Self-hosted core $0. As checked November 9, 2026

Alternate — and why it is the alternate

NocoDB

The table that behaves like software: a single self-hosted program running a staged launch list, with an API in both directions.

Evaluated · November 9, 2026 nocodb.com No affiliate relationship — direct link

What the evaluation was: on November 9, 2026 we ran NocoDB's official standalone program (version 2026.06.1 — the newest release ships no standalone program at all, only container images), created a base and a “Launch list” table with a stage column (New, Contacted, In conversation, Launched, Passed), inserted two contacts through its record API, moved one through New → Contacted → In conversation, and read the table back — the same record, at the same stage, in the API and in the web UI's grid. The way out is proven by the test itself: the API that wrote the data reads it all back. (A CSV export endpoint was probed and not found at the expected paths — recorded as unverified, not absent.)

For the launch-list job — names, stages, next steps — this is genuinely enough, and it starts in minutes. It is the alternate and not the primary because pipeline-shaped CRM behaviour is something you model in it, not something it is — and because of the wall below, which this catalogue states on the face of the pick: the waitlist-form mechanism, the exact job this layer exists for, is licence-gated on the current build.

Free tier: The community program is free to run yourself, under NocoDB's Sustainable Use Licence (fair-code, not OSI open source — internal use is fine; offering it as a hosted service is not). Its cloud free tier caps at 1,000 records and 3 editors.
The wall: Shared form views require an Enterprise licence on this build — the evaluation asked for one and got HTTP 402, ERR_LICENSE_REQUIRED — so a launch list is fed by API or manual entry, not by a NocoDB form. External-database connections are a paid tier, and the standalone program trails the main release line by roughly four months.
Price: Self-hosted $0; cloud free tier, then per-seat plans. As checked November 9, 2026

Not run, with reasons

The rest of the record

SuiteCRM was not needed: it is the heavier route of the same PHP-stack family as the primary, and both a PHP-stack candidate and a standalone candidate ran — a third evaluation would add breadth, not a missing verdict. Twenty was skipped: it is distributed as a containerised stack expecting PostgreSQL and Redis, and the evaluation environment has no container runtime. The household-name CRM suites remain where this page originally left them — unevaluated, neither picked nor panned: they cannot be trialed at all without opening an account first, and this directory does not open accounts to fill shelves or stamp verdicts from brochures.