TL;DR
A CRM with a built-in phone system costs $14 to $139 a seat a month in 2026, and the dialer, not the CRM, is what moves the bill. For a two- or three-person outbound team, Close Growth at $99 a user (annual) is the pick: built-in calling, a power dialer, recording, and about $0.02 a minute on top. The cheapest working stack is Zoho CRM Standard at $14 plus Zoho Voice Basic at $34: unlimited US and Canada calling and recording for $48 a user. Already on HubSpot? Starter at $7 a seat covers 500 calling minutes a month per account. Service shops whose phone mostly rings in should look at Housecall Pro Voice or Jobber's $29 AI receptionist instead of a dialer. Pipedrive has no built-in calling; budget $29 to $49 a user for JustCall on top.
Disclosure: Skill Mammoth is a Jobber partner. Readers get 20 percent off through our link and we earn a commission. We have no arrangement with any other vendor on this page. Every price was read from the vendor's own pricing page or product catalog on October 11, 2026, or from a Skill Mammoth pricing post that states its own read date.
What "CRM with a phone system" actually means, in four columns
Vendors use the phrase for anything from a click-to-call button that opens your cell phone to a full predictive dialer. Four things decide whether the phone side is useful to a team of two to six, and they are the columns in the table below. Native calling means the call runs through the CRM's own softphone, so the recording and the notes land on the contact record without a plugin. Click-to-call means you click a number and the call starts; a power dialer runs down a list and dials the next contact the moment you hang up, which roughly doubles a rep's calls an hour. Recording and transcription are the column with the most hidden fees.
Call recording consent laws vary by state. Some states, including California, Florida and Washington, require every party on the call to consent, while most require only one. This is not legal advice; every tool below can play an announcement at the start of a recorded call, and a short conversation with your attorney about which calls you record is cheaper than finding out later.
2026 comparison: native calling, dialer type, minutes, recording, tier and price
| Tool | Native calling | Dialer type | Minutes | Recording and transcription | Tier and price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Yes, all plans | Click-to-call on all; power dialer on Growth; predictive on Scale | Usage billed, about $0.02 a minute outbound, numbers about $1 a month | Recording on all plans (30-day retention on Solo and Essentials, 90 on Growth, unlimited on Scale); transcription and summaries via Call Assistant at $50 a month plus $0.02 a minute | Growth $99 a user annual, $109 monthly |
| Zoho CRM + Zoho Voice | Yes, Zoho Voice runs inside Zoho CRM | Click-to-call; power dialer is a $10 a user add-on | Unlimited US and Canada calling on Voice Basic (toll-free excluded) | Dynamic call recording with storage on Basic; voicemail transcription at $0.05 a minute; Call Intelligence listed on Basic | CRM Standard $14 plus Voice Basic $34, both per user annual |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Yes | Click-to-call from the record; no power dialer | 500 a month per account on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, 12,000 on Enterprise | Recording and auto-logging included; transcription 750 hours a month on Professional, 1,500 on Enterprise | Starter $7 a seat annual ($20 list); Professional $90 annual plus $1,500 onboarding |
| GoHighLevel | Yes, LC Phone | Click-to-call from the conversation view; no power dialer we could verify on the pricing page | Per minute: $0.0166 out, $0.01165 in, number $1.15 a month | Recording $0.0025 a minute; transcription $0.024 a minute | Starter $97 a month, usage on top |
| Pipedrive + JustCall | No native calling; Marketplace app required | JustCall Pro adds a power dialer | JustCall lists unlimited inbound and outbound minutes on Pro | JustCall call recording plus unlimited AI transcription minutes | Pipedrive Growth $39 plus JustCall Pro $49, per user annual, 2-license minimum on JustCall |
| Housecall Pro Voice | Yes, as an add-on | Click-to-call; inbound call flows; no power dialer | Not published | All calls recorded and stored in the call log per the feature page; no transcription listed | Essentials $149 a month annual plus Voice, add-on price quoted by sales |
| ServiceTitan Phones Pro | Yes, softphone inside ServiceTitan | Answer, transfer and complete inbound calls; no outbound dialer described | Not published | Real-time call transcription, Call Insights, Second Chance Leads | No published price; tiers are Starter, Essentials and The Works by quote |
| Freshsales | Yes, phone listed on Growth | Click-to-call | Per-minute rate not published on the pricing page | Not listed on the pricing page | Growth $9 a user annual, Pro $39 |
| Kixie (add-on) | Plugs into HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, Salesforce | Single-line or up to 4-line power dialer | Unlimited US and Canada | Recording on all plans; Conversation Intelligence is a premium add-on | No prices on the plans page; 7-day trial |
| RingCentral RingEX (integration) | Separate phone system with CRM integrations | Click-to-dial through the HubSpot or Salesforce app; no sales power dialer in RingEX | Unlimited US and Canada | AI transcriptions and summaries by tier; Conversational Intelligence add-on from $60 | Per-user price shown after you pick a user count; confirm with sales |
| Verdict | If your reps dial out all day, buy the dialer first and let it pick the CRM: Close at $99 or Zoho Voice at $34 on top of Zoho CRM. If your phone mostly rings in, the field service vendors (Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan) record and route the call but will not help you make 80 of them before lunch. HubSpot and GoHighLevel sit in the middle, with bundled or metered minutes and no power dialer. | ||||
Eight CRMs with calling, ranked for small teams
1. Close: the one built around the phone
Close is a sales CRM where the phone is the main feature rather than an add-on. Every plan, from Solo at $9 a user to Scale at $139 (annual billing; $19 to $149 monthly), includes built-in calling, SMS and email on the contact record. Calling is usage billed at roughly $0.02 a minute outbound, and numbers run about $1 a month, so a rep who talks for 20 hours a month adds about $24 to the seat. Recording is on every plan, with the catch in the retention: 30 days on Solo and Essentials, 90 on Growth, unlimited on Scale. Transcription and AI summaries need the Call Assistant add-on at $50 a month plus $0.02 a minute.
The power dialer, the reason an outbound team picks Close, starts at Growth, $99 a user; Scale adds a predictive dialer and live call coaching. It fits a two- to six-person team selling remodels, commercial contracts, or anything with a quote-and-follow-up cycle. It does not fit a dispatch shop (no scheduling board, no invoicing, no job costing), so pair it with field software or read our CRM for contractors guide first.
2. Zoho CRM plus Zoho Voice: the cheapest unlimited-calling stack
Zoho CRM Standard is $14 a user a month on annual billing and lists built-in calling among its features. The phone itself is Zoho Voice, a separate product that plugs into the CRM. Voice Basic is $34 a user a month annual with unlimited calling to the US and Canada (toll-free excluded), dynamic call recording with storage, voicemail transcription at $0.05 a minute, SMS, a multi-level IVR and call queues. The power dialer is an add-on at 10 credits per user a month, and a credit is one US dollar.
Stack it and a rep costs $48 a month with unlimited domestic calling and recording, or $58 with the power dialer, the lowest fully working number on this page. Voice Standard at $49 is priced per admin with 10 telephony agents included, a better shape for an office where one person manages the phones and ten technicians just take calls. The trade-off is two products, two admin panels and small per-minute add-ons for recording storage, fine for an owner who reads the invoice.
3. HubSpot Sales Hub: bundled minutes, big cliff
HubSpot's calling is native, with recording and auto-logging to the contact record, and the minutes are bundled per account rather than per seat. HubSpot's product catalog lists 500 minutes a month on Starter with one phone number, 3,000 on Professional with up to three numbers, and 12,000 on Enterprise with five. Transcription is 750 hours a month on Professional and 1,500 on Enterprise; the catalog lists none for Starter. Starter is $7 a seat on the current annual promotion ($20 list), per our HubSpot pricing breakdown, the cheapest paid CRM with a working phone on this page for a light caller.
The problem is the step. Professional is $90 a seat on annual billing plus a required $1,500 onboarding fee, so the moment a two-person team passes 500 minutes a month, the bill goes from $14 to $180 a month plus $1,500 up front. There is no power dialer on any tier and the catalog does not mention buying extra minutes, so an outbound team ends up adding Kixie or JustCall anyway. HubSpot fits a business already on it that makes under 25 hours of calls a month across the account. Our HubSpot alternatives post covers what to do when you cross the cliff.
4. GoHighLevel: per-minute everything
GoHighLevel bundles a phone system (LC Phone) into its $97 Starter plan and bills it by usage through a prepaid wallet. Our GoHighLevel pricing guide, read October 1, 2026, lists the rates: $1.15 a month per local number, $0.0166 a minute outbound, $0.01165 inbound, $0.0025 a minute to record and $0.024 to transcribe. A one-truck shop with normal call and text volume lands at $135 to $150 a month before any AI.
Calls are placed from the conversation view with a click, and the recording and transcript attach to the contact. What we could not verify on the pricing page is a list-based power dialer, so this is a follow-up phone rather than a prospecting phone. The rates are low enough that 1,500 minutes a month costs under $30 in talk time, plus $36 to transcribe all of it. It fits an owner who wants phone, texting, reviews and funnels in one bill and will tolerate a usage ledger.
5. Pipedrive plus JustCall or Kixie: a good CRM that borrowed a phone
Pipedrive's plans run Lite $14, Growth $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79 a seat on annual billing, and none of them includes calling. Pipedrive's knowledge base says so in bold: there is no built-in calling integration, and the route is a Marketplace app such as CloudTalk, Kixie, CallHippo, Aircall, Toky, JustCall or Circleloop. What every plan does include is Nova, a meeting intelligence tool that transcribes meetings; that is a different thing from recording phone calls.
The sensible pairing for a small team is JustCall, which publishes its prices: Team $29, Pro $49 and Pro Plus $89 per user a month on annual billing with a two-license minimum. Pro adds the power dialer, and all three list call recording and unlimited AI transcription minutes. A two-person team on Pipedrive Growth and JustCall Pro pays $176 a month for a power dialer, unlimited minutes and transcripts, $20 less than Close Growth before Close's per-minute charges, at the cost of two logins and two invoices.
Not sure whether you need a dialer or a receptionist?
Most service businesses we talk to are buying an outbound dialer to solve an inbound problem. Fifteen minutes on a call and we will tell you which of these stacks matches your actual call log, including the ones we do not sell.
6. Housecall Pro Voice: for the shop whose phone rings in
Housecall Pro's plans are Basic $59, Essentials $149 and Max $299 a month on annual billing ($79, $189 and $329 monthly). Voice is an add-on the pricing page describes as managing calls, setting up call flows and syncing customer information on any device; the feature page adds that all calls are recorded and stored in the call log. The add-on's price is not published anywhere we could find, so get the number from sales before you compare.
Voice is for the inbound side: the caller's record pops when the phone rings and the call is recorded. There is no outbound dialer and no transcription listed. If your phone is mostly customers calling you, that is the right shape, and the recording alone settles a surprising number of "you said it would be $400" disputes. Our Housecall Pro pricing guide covers the base plans.
7. ServiceTitan Phones Pro: the enterprise version of the same idea
ServiceTitan does not publish prices for anything, Phones Pro included. The feature page describes a softphone inside ServiceTitan, real-time call transcription, Call Insights (call length, hold time, calls answered and missed per CSR) and Second Chance Leads, which flags unbooked calls worth calling back. It is an inbound call-center tool for an office with dedicated CSRs. Base tiers are Starter, Essentials and The Works, all by quote; the third-party ranges our ServiceTitan pricing post compiles run $245 to $500 per technician a month, out of reach for a three-truck shop whatever Phones Pro adds.
8. Freshsales: phone on the $9 plan, rates off the page
Freshsales lists "chat, email and phone" in its Growth plan at $9 a user a month on annual billing, with Pro at $39 and Enterprise at $59, which makes it the cheapest CRM here with native calling. It ranks last because of what the pricing page does not say: no per-minute rate, no minute bundle, no mention of recording or a dialer on the plan cards. We do not rank what we cannot price, so ask Freshworks for the phone rate card first.
Three to skip
Pipedrive on its own, expecting a dialer. It is a strong pipeline CRM and we recommend it in the Pipedrive vs HubSpot comparison, but the help article now says there is no built-in calling. Budget $29 to $49 a user for the phone, or buy Close.
RingCentral as your sales dialer. RingEX is a good business phone system with unlimited US and Canada calling, AI call summaries and integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce. It is not a list-based power dialer, its per-user price only appears after you pick a user count on the pricing page, and its add-ons (AI Receptionist from $39, Conversational Intelligence from $60) push the seat cost past Close before you have a dialer. Keep it for office phones; do not buy it as a sales dialer.
Kixie Multi-Line for a two-person shop. Dialing four numbers at once and connecting whoever answers first is a call-center technique. Kixie's single-line plan does the job for a small team, but Kixie publishes no prices on its plans page in 2026, so get the quote in writing and put it beside JustCall Pro at $49.
The same 1,500 outbound minutes on each stack
Take a two-person team that makes 25 hours of outbound calls a month, so 1,500 minutes, and wants recording. Here is the cheapest configuration on each stack that covers it, on annual billing.
| Stack | Configuration | Monthly cost | With transcription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM + Zoho Voice | CRM Standard $14 x 2, Voice Basic $34 x 2, power dialer $10 x 2, unlimited minutes | $116 | Voicemail transcription only, at $0.05 a minute |
| GoHighLevel | Starter $97, one number $1.15, 1,500 minutes at $0.0166, recording at $0.0025 | About $127 | About $163 with transcription at $0.024 a minute; no power dialer |
| Pipedrive + JustCall | Growth $39 x 2, JustCall Pro $49 x 2, unlimited minutes, power dialer | $176 | $176, transcription included |
| Close | Growth $99 x 2, two numbers about $2, 1,500 minutes at about $0.02, power dialer | About $230 | About $310 with Call Assistant ($50 plus $0.02 a minute) |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Starter caps at 500 minutes per account, so Professional $90 x 2 with 3,000 minutes | $180, plus $1,500 onboarding once | $180, 750 transcription hours included; no power dialer |
| Housecall Pro | Essentials $149 plus Voice add-on | $149 plus an unpublished add-on | Not offered; no outbound dialer |
| Verdict | For outbound work the spread is $116 to $230 a month, and the two cheapest stacks (Zoho, GoHighLevel) make you assemble or forgo the dialer. Pipedrive plus JustCall at $176 is the best-priced complete answer; Close at $230 is the best single-vendor one. HubSpot's $1,500 onboarding fee makes it the most expensive option in year one for this volume. | ||
One thing the table hides: the minute meters count inbound too on HubSpot and GoHighLevel, so a shop that also takes 1,000 minutes of customer calls a month burns through HubSpot Starter's 500 in a week.
Which one for you
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Two to six reps dialing lists all day | Close Growth, $99 a user | Power dialer, recording and the CRM in one login; the per-minute charge is small at this volume |
| Tight budget, willing to run two Zoho apps | Zoho CRM Standard $14 plus Voice Basic $34 | Unlimited US calling and recording for $48 a user, power dialer $10 more |
| Already on HubSpot, under 500 minutes a month | HubSpot Starter, $7 a seat | Native calling and recording are already there; do not cross into Professional for minutes alone |
| Already on Pipedrive | Add JustCall Pro, $49 a user | Power dialer, unlimited minutes and transcripts without changing CRMs |
| Want phone, texting, funnels and reviews in one bill | GoHighLevel Starter, $97 plus usage | Cheapest per minute on the page; accept that there is no list dialer |
| Service shop, phone mostly rings in | Housecall Pro Essentials plus Voice, or Jobber Core $29 plus the $29 AI Receptionist | You need the caller's job history on screen and a recording, not a dialer; Jobber's add-on books the visit while you are on a roof (partner link, 20 percent off) |
| Office with dedicated CSRs and 15 or more trucks | ServiceTitan Phones Pro | Call Insights and Second Chance Leads pay for themselves at that volume; get the quote |
| Verdict | Match the tool to the direction of the calls. Outbound teams buy Close or a CRM plus JustCall. Inbound shops buy the field service vendor's phone or an AI receptionist. The mistake we see most is a three-truck plumber paying for a power dialer to handle calls that were always coming in. | |
The inbound problem a dialer will not fix
Most home service businesses searching for a CRM with a phone system are losing money on the calls they do not answer rather than the calls they fail to make. A dialer does nothing for the homeowner who called at 2:15 while you were under a sink and hired the next company at 2:19. For that, the fix is a missed-call text-back and an answering layer; our AI receptionist comparison prices nine of them from $29 a month. Once inbound is handled and you have a list to work, the stacks above are the right spend, and the best field service software roundup covers the dispatch side none of these sales CRMs do.
Want the whole phone-to-booked-job path mapped?
We will look at your actual call volume, inbound and outbound, and tell you which of these stacks fits and what it will cost in year one, onboarding fees and per-minute charges included. No pitch for software we do not sell.
Frequently asked questions
Which CRM has the best built-in dialer for a small team?
Close. Calling is on every plan, the power dialer starts at Growth ($99 a user a month on annual billing) and a predictive dialer arrives at Scale ($139). The cheaper route is Zoho Voice Basic at $34, which adds unlimited US and Canada calling to Zoho CRM, with the power dialer as a $10 add-on.
Does HubSpot include calling minutes?
Yes. HubSpot's product catalog lists 500 calling minutes a month per account on Starter, 3,000 on Professional and 12,000 on Enterprise, with one, three and five phone numbers. Recording is included, and transcription is 750 hours a month on Professional and 1,500 on Enterprise. The catalog does not list a way to buy extra minutes.
Does Pipedrive have a built-in phone?
No. Pipedrive's knowledge base, updated September 2, 2026, states that Pipedrive doesn't have a built-in calling integration and points to Marketplace apps such as JustCall, Kixie, CloudTalk and Aircall. JustCall Pro, which adds a power dialer, is $49 a user a month on annual billing with a two-license minimum.
How much does 1,500 minutes of outbound calling cost a month?
For a two-person team on annual billing: about $116 on Zoho CRM plus Zoho Voice with the power dialer, about $127 on GoHighLevel Starter, $176 on Pipedrive Growth plus JustCall Pro, about $230 on Close Growth, and $180 plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee on HubSpot Professional, because Starter caps at 500 minutes per account.
Is it legal to record customer calls from my CRM?
It depends on where you and the caller are. Some states, including California, Florida and Washington, require all parties to consent, while most require one. This is not legal advice. Every tool on this page can play a recording announcement, so ask your attorney which calls to record and set the announcement accordingly.
Do Jobber or Housecall Pro have a dialer?
Neither has an outbound power dialer. Housecall Pro sells Voice, an add-on that records calls and pops the customer record on inbound calls, at a price quoted by sales on top of plans that run $59 to $299 a month. Jobber (Core $29, Connect $99, Grow $149; we are a partner and readers get 20 percent off) offers a $29 AI Receptionist add-on that answers and books rather than dials out.