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003 Crm Billing Platform

8 min read

ADR-003: CRM, Lead Management, and Billing Platform

Status

Proposed (2026-04-02) — awaiting board review

Context

We need tooling for two related concerns across the full product lifecycle:

  1. Now (MVP): Lead capture from “try me” scans, drip email campaigns, CRM
  2. Later (Beta/GA): Subscription billing, usage metering, invoicing, customer portal

Selecting separate tools risks a migration when billing arrives. The board wants a platform that covers the full known scope.

Options Considered

Option A: HubSpot Free CRM + Stripe Billing (separate tools)

CRM/Marketing (HubSpot Free):

  • 1M contacts, 2K marketing emails/mo, forms, landing pages, drip workflows
  • Solid CRM with deal pipeline, contact management
  • Free tier is extremely generous

Billing (Stripe — added in Beta):

  • Industry standard for SaaS billing: subscriptions, metering, invoices, customer portal

  • Usage-based billing fits our model (per-image, per-scan)

  • HubSpot has a native Stripe integration (syncs payment data to CRM)

  • Pros: Best-in-class at each job. Both have free/low-cost tiers. Native integration between them. Industry standard pairing for SaaS.

  • Cons: Two vendors. HubSpot’s advanced marketing features (sequences, workflows beyond basic) require paid tiers ($20+/mo).

Option B: Odoo (self-hosted on K8s lab)

Full ERP: CRM + email marketing + subscriptions + invoicing + accounting + helpdesk.

  • Pros: One platform, full control, open source (Community Edition), handles everything from lead to invoice.
  • Cons: Must self-host (K8s ops, upgrades, backups, monitoring). Community Edition lacks some marketing automation features — Enterprise Edition is $24/user/mo. Significant setup effort. Not our core competency.

Option C: Zoho One

CRM + email campaigns + subscriptions (Zoho Subscriptions) + invoicing + helpdesk — all integrated.

  • Pros: True all-in-one SaaS. Single vendor. $45/employee/mo for the full suite.
  • Cons: No meaningful free tier. $45/mo from day one. UI/UX is functional but dated. Lock-in to Zoho ecosystem.

Option D: Paddle (merchant of record)

Handles billing, tax, compliance as merchant of record. Basic customer management.

  • Pros: Simplifies international tax/VAT compliance (they’re the seller of record). Subscription + usage billing.
  • Cons: No CRM or marketing capabilities at all. Higher transaction fees (5%+ vs Stripe’s 2.9%). Would still need a separate CRM tool. Less control over billing UX.

Option E: Lago (open source billing) + HubSpot

Lago is open-source usage-based billing. Self-hosted or cloud. Pair with HubSpot for CRM.

  • Pros: Usage-based billing is Lago’s specialty (fits our per-image/per-scan model well). Open source, no vendor lock-in on billing. HubSpot handles CRM/marketing.
  • Cons: Two tools. Lago cloud has limited free tier. Self-hosted Lago = more ops burden. Younger product, smaller community than Stripe.

Option F: Stripe alone (billing + basic CRM via metadata)

Use Stripe for billing AND manage leads/contacts via Stripe’s customer objects + metadata. Use Resend or SES for drip emails.

  • Pros: Single billing vendor from day one. Stripe customer records can store lead data.
  • Cons: Stripe is not a CRM. No deal pipeline, no marketing automation, no lead scoring. Would need to build or bolt on email campaigns separately. Poor fit for pre-revenue lead nurturing.

Option G: Attio + Loops + Stripe (developer-tool-native stack)

Attio is a modern CRM used by developer-tool startups (Modal, Railway, Replicate). Loops is a SaaS-native email platform (YC-backed). Both integrate with Clerk (our auth provider, ADR-002) and Stripe.

  • Pros: Purpose-built for the startup/developer-tool ecosystem. Attio has a free tier (3 seats, unlimited contacts). Loops free tier covers 1K contacts. Highly flexible data model in Attio. Native Clerk integration means CRM contacts sync with auth users automatically when we add login.
  • Cons: Three vendors instead of two. Attio’s free tier lacks automations (requires Pro at $69/seat/mo). Loops has weaker marketing features than HubSpot Free (no landing pages, no forms). The combined stack requires more integration work than HubSpot alone. Less mature ecosystem than HubSpot.

Option H: Usage-based billing specialist (Orb or Chargebee) + HubSpot

Orb and Chargebee are billing platforms purpose-built for usage-based pricing with real-time metering, price modeling, and customer-facing usage dashboards. Orb is used by Vercel, Replit, Supabase, and LaunchDarkly. Chargebee is a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader used by Zapier and others.

  • Pros: Superior usage-based billing capabilities vs Stripe — multi-dimensional metering, price experimentation, spend controls, customer usage dashboards. Better fit for our per-image + per-scan + per-proxy-request model as it scales across multiple tiers.
  • Cons: No meaningful free tier. Orb is enterprise-priced (requires sales conversation). Chargebee starts with a free trial but paid plans follow. Significant overkill for MVP/Beta when we’ll have a small number of customers. Would still need HubSpot or similar for CRM/marketing. Adds complexity before we’ve validated product-market fit.

Option I: HubSpot + Metronome (Stripe-owned usage-based billing)

Metronome is a usage-based billing platform acquired by Stripe in January 2026. It continues to operate as a separate product (app.metronome.com) with its own free Starter tier and native Stripe integration for payment processing. Used by OpenAI, Fly.io, Cribl, and Starburst.

Metronome Starter (free) includes:

  • Real-time event ingestion

  • Usage-based, seat-based, subscription, and hybrid pricing

  • Self-serve and custom enterprise contract support

  • Real-time alerting and embeddable billing dashboards

  • Native Stripe integration (Stripe still handles payment processing)

  • Pros: Purpose-built for usage-based billing — significantly better metering, price modeling, and customer-facing usage dashboards than Stripe Billing alone. Free Starter tier means zero cost at MVP, same as Option A. Being Stripe-owned reduces vendor risk (vs independent startups like Orb or Lago). Native Stripe integration means payments still go through Stripe. HubSpot handles CRM/marketing as in Option A. If we instrument usage events for Metronome early, we avoid rework when billing complexity grows — build the metering once.

  • Cons: Three tools in the stack (HubSpot + Metronome + Stripe) instead of two. Metronome’s only CRM integration is Salesforce — there is no HubSpot integration. Syncing billing/usage data back to HubSpot would require custom webhook or API glue. Adds integration complexity — Metronome sits between your product and Stripe rather than using Stripe Billing directly. Requires instrumenting usage event ingestion in the API before there are paying customers. Unclear long-term product roadmap as Stripe integrates the acquisition (may be merged into Stripe, may remain separate).

Should we start with Metronome from day one? The free Starter tier removes the cost argument against it, and instrumenting usage events early avoids rework. The arguments against are: (1) no HubSpot integration means billing data won’t flow into the CRM without custom work, (2) MVP has no paying customers so billing instrumentation competes with product work for engineering time, and (3) Stripe’s basic metered subscriptions are sufficient for early Beta customers. The strongest case for starting with Metronome now is if we expect usage-based billing complexity to arrive quickly (multiple metering dimensions across per-image + per-scan + per-proxy-request) and want to avoid building on Stripe Billing only to migrate later.

Recommendation

Decide in two stages: HubSpot Free CRM now (MVP), defer billing platform choice to Beta.

Stage 1 — MVP (now): HubSpot Free CRM

HubSpot Free is the only decision we need to make today. It covers everything the MVP requires:

  1. Lead capture. Forms, landing pages, and contact management for the “try me” scan flow.
  2. Drip campaigns. 2K marketing emails/mo, basic workflows — sufficient for MVP lead nurturing.
  3. Deal pipeline. Track leads from scan → email capture → interest → future paying customer.
  4. Zero cost. Free tier with 1M contacts.
  5. No lock-in on billing. HubSpot has native integrations with Stripe, and can be connected to other billing tools via webhooks/API. Choosing HubSpot now does not constrain the billing decision later.

Stage 2 — Beta (when billing is needed): Evaluate billing platform

Defer the billing platform decision until Beta, when we have clearer signal on:

  • How many metering dimensions we actually need (per-image only? per-image + per-scan + per-proxy-request?)
  • Whether Stripe’s Metronome integration has progressed (Metronome may be more tightly integrated into Stripe by then, simplifying the choice)
  • What pricing model works (pure usage-based? hybrid with subscription tiers? prepaid credits?)
  • What our engineering capacity looks like for billing integration work

When that decision comes, the leading candidates are:

  • Stripe Billing (Option A) — simplest, industry standard, native HubSpot integration, sufficient if metering needs are straightforward
  • Metronome + Stripe (Option I) — if we need multi-dimensional usage metering, customer-facing usage dashboards, or price experimentation beyond what Stripe Billing offers natively. Free Starter tier. Note: no HubSpot integration (Salesforce only), so syncing billing data to CRM requires custom work
  • Orb or Chargebee (Option H) — if neither Stripe nor Metronome fit our usage-based billing needs

When to reconsider HubSpot

  • If we outgrow HubSpot Free and want to avoid $20+/mo marketing tiers → evaluate Loops (email) with a lighter CRM like Attio
  • If we hire a dedicated sales/ops person who wants a unified back-office → revisit Odoo
  • If Clerk integration for CRM becomes important (syncing auth users to CRM contacts automatically) → evaluate Attio, which has a native Clerk connector
  • If the team prefers a fully developer-tool-native stack over HubSpot → evaluate Option G (Attio + Loops + Stripe)
  • If we need a merchant-of-record model (international tax complexity) → evaluate Paddle for billing

Consequences

  • Positive: Only one decision to make now (CRM), reducing analysis paralysis
  • Positive: Zero cost — HubSpot Free covers MVP entirely
  • Positive: No premature commitment to a billing platform before we understand our billing needs
  • Positive: HubSpot integrates with all leading billing options, so no lock-in
  • Negative: Billing platform decision is deferred, not eliminated — still needs to happen at Beta
  • Negative: HubSpot’s advanced marketing features (A/B testing, advanced workflows) are gated behind paid tiers

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