Top 5 Simple CRMs for Cold Outreach Found on Reddit

When a founder or a small team starts cold outreach, Reddit's advice on tracking it is consistent: don't buy a heavy CRM on day one. Use something simple that shows who replied and what happens next. Five options come up most in those threads. ManyPI is first because its CRM is filled by the outreach itself, so nothing has to be copied across. These are the simple CRMs we found on Reddit, mostly in r/smallbusiness and r/CRM.

The quick list

1. ManyPI

The usual problem with a separate CRM is the gap between sending and tracking. Someone replies in Gmail, and the spreadsheet never hears about it. In ManyPI the CRM is part of the same workspace as the campaigns. Replies land next to the campaign that started them, and you can move an interested lead into the pipeline as a deal, with tasks and reminders for the next step.

You also find the leads there in the first place, from a one-sentence description, with every email checked before sending. Starter includes one pipeline and up to 2,500 deals. Pro gives you three pipelines and scores each reply from hostile to ready to buy. If you outgrow it, ManyPI can push contacts and notes to HubSpot, Pipedrive, Attio or Close. The CRM page shows the pipeline, and the free plan lets you try the lead finding first.

A one-sentence brief typed into the ManyPI agent, the start of every pipeline.

2. Google Sheets

The default answer on Reddit for anyone with fewer than a hundred prospects. One row per lead, columns for company, contact, date emailed, last reply and next step. Everyone knows how to use it, and it's free.

It falls apart in two places. Once you're past a few hundred rows, finding who needs a follow-up today takes longer than the follow-up. And nothing updates on its own, so a reply that never gets logged is a deal that quietly dies.

3. Notion

Notion's databases can be set up as a simple CRM, with a table of contacts and a board view of deal stages. Teams that already keep their docs in Notion like having everything in one place, and there are plenty of templates.

You're building the CRM yourself, though. Reminders and automations take setup, and Notion doesn't connect to your inbox to log replies for you.

4. Trello

Trello turns a pipeline into cards on a board: one column per stage, one card per deal, dragged to the right as the deal moves. It shows the whole pipeline at a glance.

It's a board, not a contact database. There's little room for details about each person, and with more than a few dozen deals the board gets long. It works best for a handful of high-value deals.

5. Airtable

Airtable sits between a spreadsheet and a database. You can link contacts to companies, add views per stage, and build simple automations without code. It's the option Reddit recommends to people who want a custom setup but don't want a full CRM.

The trade-off is setup time. A good Airtable CRM takes an afternoon to design, and the free plan has limits on records and automations that a growing pipeline can hit.

Five ways to track outreach, from a spreadsheet to a CRM filled by your campaigns.

What to track, whatever you use

Keep it to the fields that change what you do next:

• Company and contact, with how you found them.

• Stage: contacted, replied, meeting booked, proposal, won or lost.

• Next step and its date. The one field that stops deals going cold.

• Last reply. What they said, in a sentence.

• Lost reason, for deals that end. After twenty of these you'll see a pattern worth fixing.

Start with fewer fields than you think you need. A CRM nobody updates is worse than none, because it gives you false confidence about a pipeline that isn't there.