Why We Built Our Own CRM (And Dropped GoHighLevel)

Why We Built Our Own CRM (And Dropped GoHighLevel)

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We were paying for a CRM we barely used

When we started Black Tiger Partners, we did what everyone does: we signed up for GoHighLevel. The pitch is hard to resist — an all-in-one CRM for $97/month with pipeline, automations, landing pages, email marketing, and more.

The problem is that "all-in-one" also means "30% useful, 70% noise." We used the pipeline, the calendar, and not much else. The rest was functionality we didn't need, an interface that didn't represent us, and a monthly cost that kept growing every time we wanted something custom.

After 4 months, we asked ourselves the uncomfortable question: Are we paying rent for a tool, or can we own our own infrastructure?

The decision: build vs buy

It wasn't an impulsive decision. We evaluated three options:

Option 1: Stay with GoHighLevel. $97-$497/month depending on the plan. Functional, but generic. Zero control over user experience or business logic.

Option 2: Migrate to another SaaS (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Monday). Same trap, different name. We'd still depend on another company's product decisions.

Option 3: Build our own CRM. High initial time investment, but near-zero operating cost, full control, and — most importantly — the ability to turn it into a product for our own clients.

We chose option 3. And we don't regret it.

What we built

Our CRM doesn't try to compete with Salesforce. It does exactly what we need, nothing more and nothing less:

Sales pipeline

Prospects with customizable stages, deal value, activity history, automatic lead scoring, and custom fields. Everything you need to know where each opportunity stands and what your pipeline is worth at any given moment.

Kanban boards

Task and project management by client. Configurable columns, priorities, labels, due dates, comments, and assignees. Each client gets their own board; every task has a clear owner.

Workflows and automations

Triggers based on days in stage, stage changes, inactivity, or prospect creation. Actions: move stage, notify on Slack, add note, assign owner, or add tags. No fancy drag-and-drop — but functional and precise.

Bilingual blog with SEO

Integrated publishing system with full SEO fields in Spanish and English: meta titles, descriptions, excerpts, tags, and custom slugs. You're reading this post from that system right now.

Calendar and events

Events linked to prospects, Google Calendar integration, event types (call, meeting, follow-up, demo), and completion tracking.

Shopify Store Analyzer

A productized diagnostic tool that analyzes any Shopify store in 30 seconds. Integrated into the CRM for automatic lead capture.

The tech stack

We built on modern, proven, and affordable technology:

Frontend: Next.js + React. Server-side rendering, fast, with the largest available component ecosystem.

Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL). Auth, real-time, storage, and Row Level Security included. Cost: practically $0 at our current volume.

Artificial intelligence: Anthropic's Claude as a conversational interface over the entire CRM, connected via MCP (Model Context Protocol). Instead of clicking through menus, you tell Claude: "show me prospects in Proposal Sent stage" or "create a card to install Meta Pixel on the Dentalist website" — and it does it.

Integrations: Slack, Google Calendar, Gmail, Meta Ads — all connected as MCP servers.

Claude as the interface: the paradigm shift

This is what sets us apart the most. Most CRMs give you dashboards, menus, filters, and buttons. We eliminated all of that.

Our CRM is operated by talking to Claude. There's no traditional web interface where you spend 15 minutes navigating to find what you're looking for. You ask Claude and he has access to everything: prospects, pipeline, cards, events, blog, Meta Ads metrics, emails, calendar.

Want a pipeline summary? Just ask. Need to create 8 cards for a new client onboarding? Describe the project and it creates them with titles, descriptions, priorities, and dates. Want to know how many prospects came in this month by channel? You get the report with a single message.

This isn't science fiction. It's what we use every day to run Black Tiger Partners.

The numbers: how much we save

GoHighLevel: $97-$497 USD/month = $1,164-$5,964 USD/year.

Our CRM: Supabase free tier + Vercel free tier + domain = ~$20 USD/month in infrastructure. The real cost was development time — but that time became intellectual property, not a monthly subscription that vanishes if you stop paying.

Estimated annual savings: $1,000-$5,700 USD depending on which plan we'd be using. And those savings compound with every passing month, because the CRM improves while the cost stays flat.

Is it for everyone?

No. Let's be honest.

If your business doesn't have internal technical capacity, GoHighLevel or HubSpot are still valid options. Paying $97/month for something that works is better than building something nobody maintains.

But if you have a technical team (or a technical partner), and your business depends on tools you could own, the question worth asking is: Are you paying rent or building equity?

We chose to build. And now we have an asset that doesn't just run our business — it will eventually become a product for other businesses like ours.


Is your business overpaying for tools it doesn't fully use?

If you feel like your tool stack is bloated, that you're paying for features you never touch, or that your data lives across 5 platforms that don't talk to each other — let's talk.

Not everyone needs a custom CRM. But everyone deserves clarity on where their tech budget is going.

Book a free strategy consultation →

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