Close vs Steampipe

Close offers four plans: Solo ($9-19/user/month), Essentials ($35-49), Growth ($99-109), and Scale ($139-149). All include calling, email, SMS, and Chloe AI agent access. Essentials adds unlimited contacts and team collaboration. Growth adds automation, power dialer, and custom activities. Scale adds role-based permissions and unlimited recording. Annual billing saves up to 50%.

May 2021, about four months after the project went public. It is a settled licence rather than a recent change, and predates the Business Source Licence wave it is often confused with.

Close charges usage-based fees for calling (~$0.02 per minute), SMS charges per message, and phone number rentals ($1-5/month). The AI Call Assistant add-on costs $50/month plus $0.02 per minute for transcription. Heavy outbound calling teams can see their total costs increase 30-50% beyond the base seat price.

Into Powerpipe. They were deprecated in March 2024 and removed from Steampipe at version 1.0 in October 2024, so the check, dashboard, mod and variable commands are gone.

Chloe is an AI sales agent built into Close that automatically calls leads, qualifies prospects through real conversations, and can book meetings while updating the CRM automatically. Chloe features AI-generated call summaries, transcripts, and action items automatically logged to contacts.

Not always. Queries call provider APIs at request time, so rate limits rather than query planning set the pace, and there is no persistent store by default.

No. Close does not provide built-in lead lists, company intelligence, or contact enrichment features. Organizations must source leads separately or use third-party data providers. This differs from platforms like HubSpot which include integrated lead databases.

Running it internally for your own analysis is fine. Putting a web interface in front of it that other people use is where the network clause becomes a question for your legal team.

Close includes built-in calling with automatic call logging, email templates and bulk email capabilities, SMS messaging with tracking and automation, email syncing with Gmail, and automated follow-up workflows. All communication happens within the CRM platform.

It cuts both ways. There is no investor pressure toward a licence change or an exit, and there are also fifteen people supporting a large product surface.

Close's marketing automation features are limited compared to HubSpot. It includes basic email sequences, task reminders, and workflow automation, but lacks advanced lead scoring, nurturing campaigns, and detailed marketing analytics. Organizations requiring extensive marketing automation need separate tools.