The Close alternative you own, with no per-minute meter
Close is one of the best outbound calling CRMs on the market. The dialer is genuinely excellent, and inside-sales teams pay for it accordingly: per user per month, billed annually, with calling and SMS metered on top by the minute. Nanobox CRM takes a different deal. You buy the software once, host it yourself, and own the source and the data. No seat meter, no per-minute calling bill, and no AI surcharge.
Close vs. Nanobox CRM
5-year cost
Close: Growth plan runs about $99 per user per month billed annually, so a five-rep team is roughly $29,700 over five years, before calling and SMS usage
Nanobox CRM: $399 one-time for a single domain, or $1,999 for the agency license. No seats, no renewal, no usage meter
Per-seat pricing
Close: Billed per user per month across Solo, Essentials, Growth, and Scale tiers
Nanobox CRM: No seats. One license covers your whole sales team
Usage charges
Close: Calling and SMS are passed through by usage, often around $0.02 per minute, plus per-number monthly fees
Nanobox CRM: No usage billing. What you self-host is yours to run as hard as you like
Data ownership
Close: Your leads, calls, and recordings live in Close's cloud
Nanobox CRM: Your Postgres database on your server, yours to export and keep
Source access
Close: Closed SaaS, extended through its API
Nanobox CRM: Full source code ships with the license
AI markup
Close: An AI Sales Agent and AI features sit on higher tiers and add-ons
Nanobox CRM: No AI features by design, so no AI premium
Self-host
Close: Cloud only
Nanobox CRM: Self-hosted via Docker, or we host it flat at $29 a month
Built-in calling and dialer
Close: Genuinely best-in-class: native power and predictive dialers, call recording, and a communication hub purpose-built for high-volume outbound
Nanobox CRM: A general CRM without a native dialer. You bring your own calling tool and log activity in the pipeline
Why teams switch
- One flat license instead of per-rep monthly billing that climbs with every hire.
- No per-minute calling meter, so a heavy outbound week never inflates the bill.
- You own the source and the lead database, so price changes can't reach you.
- No AI tier. The deliberate absence keeps the product simpler and cheaper.
A dialer you rent, priced by the minute
Close earns its reputation. For outbound inside-sales teams, the built-in dialer is one of the best in the category: native power and predictive dialing, call recording, SMS, and a communication hub that keeps reps moving through a list. That focus is the honest reason teams choose it, and it is a real strength Nanobox does not try to copy.
The cost of that focus is two meters running at once. The first is the seat meter: the Growth plan is around $99 per user per month billed annually, so a five-rep team is roughly $29,700 over five years, climbing every time you hire. The second is usage. Calling and SMS are passed through by the minute, commonly near $0.02, plus monthly fees for each phone number. A heavy outbound month shows up directly on the invoice, and the lead database that runs your pipeline lives in someone else's cloud.
A CRM you own, with no meter
Nanobox CRM is a different deal. You buy it once ($399 for a single domain, $1,999 for the agency license), receive the full source code, and self-host it with Docker. Every rep you add is free, there is no per-minute calling bill, and there is no AI tier, because there are deliberately no AI features and no AI markup. If you would rather not run the server, we host it for a flat $29 a month, never per seat.
The trade is clear-eyed. Close gives you a best-in-class dialer on a rented, per-seat, per-minute model. Nanobox gives you a clean, focused CRM that you own outright and pay for once, with your own calling tool plugged in. If high-volume native dialing is the heart of your day, Close is the better tool. If owning your system and capping your cost matters more, Nanobox is the better deal.
See the full Nanobox CRM overview and our one-time pricing. Running a specific workflow? Browse industry presets for real estate, clinics, and field service.
Nanobox CRM
Run your whole business on a CRM you own, tuned to your industry.
from $399 · one-time
See Nanobox CRMBuy a licenseQuestions, answered.
- Outbound calling. Close has one of the best built-in dialers in any CRM, with native power and predictive dialing, call recording, and a communication hub designed for high-volume inside sales. If your team lives in the dialer all day, that depth is real and Nanobox does not match it out of the box.
- For most teams, yes, and the gap widens with headcount and call volume. Close charges per user per month plus metered calling and SMS, so a five-rep team on the Growth plan is roughly $29,700 over five years before usage. Nanobox is $399 once, or $1,999 for the agency license, with no seat or usage meter.
- Yes, but you bring your own calling tool. Nanobox does not ship a native dialer, so you connect the phone system you prefer and log call activity against contacts and deals in the pipeline. If a built-in dialer is non-negotiable, Close is the stronger fit.
- Yes. Export your leads, contacts, and activity from Close as CSV and import them into Nanobox. Because you own the Postgres database directly, a larger or more precise migration is fully in your control.