Google Sheets.
Stick with me - yes, it sounds absurdly basic, but for early stage it's genuinely the most effective thing you can do. There's a reason almost every agency I've worked with starts clients here before they're ready for a proper automation platform.
The trap is over-engineering before you understand your own data model. A CRM is only as good as the fields you've actually validated against real sales conversations. Spreadsheets force you to think about what you're tracking - lead source, deal stage, next action date, maybe a simple stage probability - without the abstraction of a UI that hides the logic.
I'd set it up with three tabs: Contacts (source, status, first touch date), Deals (value, stage, owner), and Activities (date, type, notes). Use basic conditional formatting to colour stages. That's it. Once you find yourself wishing you could automate email logging or run a recurring report without copy‑pasting, then look at HubSpot's free tier or Zoho's lightweight plan. But skip Salesforce - you're right to avoid it. The admin overhead will drown an early stage operation.
If you want to be clever, build a simple scorecard column using a formula like =IF(AND(status="qualified",last_contact<TODAY()-7),"follow up",""). That gives you a working lead management loop without spending a penny on licences.
