[echelon]

How much money do you wager that Salesforce license costs?

I know there's the whole build-vs-buy debate, but with the cost of Salesforce, might it not be better to just stick everything in a database and throw a MySQL WYSIWYG tool like phpmyadmin in front in order to let non-engineers see the schema and build forms?

I suppose if you're earning money hand over fist (or keep getting VC funds) then the cost of your Salesforce license doesn't matter. But I bet that hurts. And unlike a lot of the other software in use, Salesforce comes with steep lock-in.

[dtech]

You severely, severely, underestimate the complexity and business value of a CRM

[masonhensley]

Been there, done that. Agree with dtech.

You also get to a point in hiring where the field of sales/ops people judge you & your maturity based on whether you use a commercial tool like Salesforce/HubSpot vs build your own.

Can you imagine joining a tech org and they have a half baked phpadmin wysiwyg as a standin for github + code reviews?

While yes, you could calculate out how much the subscription is vs development time to build a simple CRM, the maintenance & mental overload is righteously terrible. Better to spend that effort integrating your foos to your bars than building a sales crm.