The 5-person agency stack
Same scenario we use across our CRM testing: a 5-person agency, new business mostly from referrals, work that lives in email until it hits a pipeline. Here's the full stack we'd run for that team — and the real monthly total.
Pipedrive for the pipeline, ActiveCampaign for client nurture, beehiiv (free) for a referral-building newsletter. Total for a 5-person team: $85/month.
1. CRM: Pipedrive
We cover the full reasoning in our best-CRM-for-agencies guide — short version: Pipedrive gets a referral pipeline running in under 15 minutes, prices flatly per seat with no contact-count traps, and every account manager on a 5-person team will actually keep it updated. That last part is the one that matters; a CRM nobody updates is worse than no CRM.
2. Client nurture: ActiveCampaign
A referral-driven agency's real leak isn't new leads — it's past clients who'd refer you again if you ever crossed their mind. ActiveCampaign runs the "quarterly check-in," "happy client asks for case study," and "dormant lead re-engagement" sequences on autopilot, on top of a light CRM of its own if you ever want to consolidate. At 1,000 contacts it comfortably covers a 5-person agency's full client and prospect list for one flat monthly fee, not a per-seat charge. Read our full ActiveCampaign pricing & fit guide →
3. Referral flywheel: beehiiv (free)
Referrals compound when past clients and their network hear from you regularly. A monthly or biweekly newsletter — a case study, a lesson from a recent project, a genuinely useful resource — keeps the agency top of mind without anyone on the team having to remember to "follow up." beehiiv's free plan covers a 5-person agency's list for a long time before you'd need to pay anything. Read our full beehiiv guide →
Total monthly cost
| Tool | Plan | Monthly cost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRM | Pipedrive | Lite, 5 seats | $70 |
| Nurture | ActiveCampaign | Starter, 1k contacts | $15 |
| Newsletter | beehiiv | Launch (free) | $0 |
| Total | $85/month |
Optional add-ons (researched picks)
Proposals & contracts: PandaDoc. At five people, proposals are usually the founder's bottleneck. PandaDoc puts templated, tracked proposals with e-signature in one place — you'll know when a client opened the proposal instead of wondering. Realistically you only pay for the one or two seats that actually send documents (Starter, $19/seat/mo billed annually), and the free eSign plan covers you while you evaluate. Researched, not yet hands-on tested — our PandaDoc guide is explicit about what we verified.
Glue & automation: Make. The classic 5-person-agency win is client onboarding: deal marked won in Pipedrive → project folder created, welcome email sent, channel posted. Make's Core plan at $10.20/mo billed annually ($12 monthly, 10,000 credits) is usually the cheapest line in the whole stack, pricing is per-usage rather than per-seat, and EU (AWS) hosting is available on every plan. Also researched rather than hands-on so far: our Make pricing & fit guide.
If you also do outbound prospecting
This stack assumes new business comes mostly from referrals and inbound, which is the common case for a 5-person agency. If you're also running cold outbound, add Apollo (from $49/user/mo) for contact data and sequencing — it's the one tool here we'd treat as optional rather than default, since it's a real added cost that only pays for itself if outbound is a genuine growth channel for you, not a "just in case." Read our full Apollo pricing & fit guide →
Bottom line
Start with Pipedrive and beehiiv (both effectively free to trial, and beehiiv stays free for a while). Add ActiveCampaign once you notice past clients going quiet — that's the $15/month that pays for itself the first time it resurfaces a dormant client.
Running solo instead? See the solo consultant stack, or take the 2-minute stack finder for a recommendation tailored to your exact situation.