Twenty

small businessindie hacker

Open-source CRM with a modern interface and fully customisable data model. Define custom objects, fields, and relationships, then manage contacts, deals, and pipelines on your own infrastructure

#crm#sales#contacts#open-source#self-hosted

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/twentyhq/twenty && cd twenty && cp packages/twenty-server/.env.example packages/twenty-server/.env && docker compose up -d

Overview

Twenty is an open-source CRM designed as a modern alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot. The interface takes clear design inspiration from Notion and Linear — clean, fast, and significantly less cluttered than legacy CRM tools. The data model is fully customisable: you can define your own objects, add fields of any type, and create relationships between them, building a CRM structure that reflects how your business actually works rather than conforming to a generic template.

Out of the box you get contacts, companies, deals, and a kanban pipeline view. The underlying data model is open, so if your business tracks something else — projects, properties, job candidates, accounts — you define a new object type and it integrates with the rest of the CRM immediately. The auto-generated API means any data you add is immediately accessible via REST or GraphQL for integration with other tools.

The design quality is genuinely good for an open-source project. Most self-hosted CRMs look like they were designed in 2012. Twenty looks like a modern SaaS product. For teams choosing between self-hosting and paying HubSpot, the interface difference is much smaller than it used to be.

The caveats are about maturity. Twenty is a younger project. Email sequence automation, advanced reporting, and deep third-party integrations that come standard in mature CRMs are either early-stage or missing. If those features are critical to your sales operation, it is worth checking the current roadmap before committing to self-hosting Twenty.

For indie hackers, small agencies, and teams that want customer data ownership without a five-figure CRM contract, it covers the core use case well.

Twenty: Pros & Cons

Pros (The Wins)Cons (The Friction)
Custom data model:
Define your own objects
and fields without code.
AGPL licence:
Commercial hosting or embedding
needs a licence agreement.
Modern interface:
Clean design significantly
less cluttered than Salesforce.
Younger project:
Advanced reporting and email
sequences still developing.
Auto-generated API:
REST and GraphQL available
from your data model.
Multi-container install:
Postgres and Redis required
alongside the main service.
47.6k stars:
One of the fastest-growing
open-source CRM projects.
Limited integrations:
Native connectors to marketing
tools are still limited.

Use Cases

Specific ways to use Twenty for your workflow.

01
Manage a sales pipeline and contact database without paying Salesforce or HubSpot's per-seat pricing
02
Build a custom CRM tailored to a specific workflow — add objects and fields that match your business, not a generic template
03
Keep customer data on your own infrastructure for GDPR compliance without building a CRM from scratch
04
Use as a flexible internal database for tracking clients, projects, or any structured business data

Deployment Strategy

Recommended ways to host Twenty in your own environment.

docker
self-hosted