The code is public, the licence lets you run it on your own server, and nobody can switch it off. Here is what that buys you, where it stops, and where Reloop CRM fits.
An open source CRM publishes its source code under a licence that lets you read it, run it, change it and pass it on. For a CRM that matters more than for most software, because the database holds the one thing your company cannot rebuild from memory: every customer, every quote, and every reason someone stopped ordering.
The licence is the part people skip. Reloop CRM uses the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. You can run it for any purpose, for any number of users, without a licence fee. If you change the code and offer the changed version to other people over a network, you publish your changes under the same licence. Using it inside your own company creates no such duty. The full licence text is on the open source page, and it is the source, not this summary.
Open source is not the same as free of cost. Someone still pays for the server, the backups and the hours. The difference is who decides. You pay for what you use, at the price of the provider you choose, and the bill for the software itself stays at zero.
Four things you get from the licence, not from a feature list.
Your customer list lives in a Postgres database you can open, dump and move. There is no export button with a row limit and no support ticket to get your own data back.
A hosted CRM can raise the price per seat, move a feature to a higher plan or retire the plan you are on. The open source version you run today runs at the same cost tomorrow.
Reloop CRM reads your mailbox history. With a hosted product you trust a privacy page. With open source, you or someone you hire can read the code that touches each message.
If the maintainers stop, the code stays public and anyone can fork it. A hosted CRM that shuts down gives you a deadline and an export file.
Nobody runs it for you. You need a server, a domain and a person who is comfortable with a terminal for one afternoon. The self-hosted CRM page lists what that takes in money and time.
Support is the community and the issue tracker, not a phone number. An answer comes when a maintainer or another user has time. A company that needs a support contract with a response time is better served by a commercial product.
The ecosystem is smaller. A large hosted CRM has years of integrations, agencies and training material behind it. An open source CRM has what its contributors have built, and that is less. The comparison with HubSpot spells this out.
Updates are your job. Docker Compose makes an update two commands, but nobody presses the button for you, and nobody reads the changelog for you either.
Reloop CRM is an open source CRM for a small sales team that already has years of email. It connects to Gmail, Microsoft 365 or any IMAP mailbox, reads the history once, and builds companies, contacts and deals from real conversations. Then it tells you which past customers went quiet and why they are worth a new call. It started inside a freight forwarding company, and that is still the clearest example of the job it does.
The AI part is optional. Bring an OpenRouter, OpenAI or Anthropic key and the agent summarises threads and ranks the win back list. Without a key it is a normal CRM with clean contacts and a deal board.
The honest limits: Reloop CRM does not send email campaigns or sequences. There is no mobile app. The hosted version is not open yet. It is derived from the open source CRM by Comp AI and it is a young project, so expect rough edges and read the changelog before an update.
To try it, install it on your own server with one command, then read the docs for the mailbox and AI setup.
The software is. The licence fee is zero for any number of users. You pay for the server it runs on and for optional AI credits.
Only if you change the code and give the changed version to other people over a network. Running it inside your own company creates no duty to publish.
Yes. Everything sits in one Postgres database on your server. A pg_dump gives you a complete copy in one file.
Yes. Without an API key it is a normal CRM with clean contacts, companies and deals. The summaries and the win back scores need a key.