CRM Development & Integration
A CRM your team will use, connected to your store, your website and your phones, with clean data moved across.
01 What it is
CRM Development & Integration: what it is
CRM development and integration covers two jobs: setting up or building the system that holds your contacts, deals and conversations, and connecting it to the other tools your business runs on. Most businesses should configure an existing platform. HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel and Zoho each ship pipelines, custom fields, automation and reporting, and a careful setup gets you a working CRM without writing an application.
A custom CRM makes sense in a narrower set of cases. You have a data model the platforms cannot hold without awkward workarounds, per-seat fees that outgrow the value at your headcount, or a process that is the product you sell. In those cases devinsta builds a web application on Postgres with your entities, your permissions and your screens.
Plan for integration on either route. We connect the CRM to Shopify orders and customers, WordPress forms, phone and SMS providers, email platforms and accounting tools, through native connectors where they exist and through APIs and webhooks where they do not. We also migrate the records you hold today, which means deduplicating contacts and mapping fields before a single row moves.
02 Who it's for
Who it is for
This service suits a business whose leads and customers sit in more than one place. A dental practice wants each web inquiry and missed call in one pipeline with a follow-up task. An auto dealer or repair shop wants service reminders tied to a vehicle record and a text thread with the owner. An e-commerce brand wants order history beside support conversations. A startup wants a sales pipeline that its product can write to as trial users sign up.
Configuring a platform is the right route for most of these. GoHighLevel fits local service businesses that want CRM, texting and booking in one tool. HubSpot fits teams that want marketing and sales on one record. Salesforce fits larger sales teams with complex territories and approvals. Zoho fits a business that wants a broad suite at a lower entry cost.
A custom CRM is the wrong choice if a platform covers your process with standard features, because you would pay to build and maintain screens a vendor gives you. The whole service is premature if two or three people touch customer records and a shared inbox works. Fix the process first, then buy the software.
03 How to use it
How a project runs with devinsta
A free 30-minute strategy call opens the engagement. You tell us where leads arrive, who follows up and which tools you pay for now. We give you a first view on configure versus build, and on which platform matches your team.
Discovery follows. We interview the people who will use the CRM, list each data source, export a sample of your records and check its quality. The output is a written plan: the pipeline stages, the fields, the integrations in order of value, and a migration map from old fields to new ones. You approve that plan before we build.
The build runs in two-week sprints with a demo each week. Early sprints deliver the pipeline and a first integration so your team can start entering real work. Later sprints add automation, reporting and the remaining connections. We run the migration twice: a trial run into a sandbox that you review, then the final run at cutover.
Handover includes training sessions for staff, an admin guide, and documentation for each integration. You hold the admin logins from the first day, and we can stay on for changes after launch if you want that.
04 How to deploy
How we deploy it
A configured CRM lives on the vendor's cloud, in an account your business owns and pays for. We set up a sandbox or test pipeline where the platform offers one, build there, and promote the changes once you sign off. Custom CRMs deploy to cloud hosting in your own account, with a managed Postgres database, automated backups and separate staging and production environments.
Security starts with access. We create role-based permissions so staff see the records their job requires, turn on two-factor authentication for all users, and connect integrations through dedicated API users with narrow scopes. For business texting from US local numbers we submit your A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration through your SMS provider. We build consent capture into each form, with the TCPA in mind for the US, CASL for Canada and PECR for the UK.
Dental practices handle patient data, so the CRM needs a HIPAA review and a signed BAA with each vendor in the US, PIPEDA and provincial rules in Canada, and UK GDPR in the UK. We flag these points and build to your advisor's decisions; we do not give legal advice.
After launch we monitor integration errors and failed webhooks, and alert a named person on your team.
05 What we provide
What you get from us
- Platform recommendation with the reasoning: HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel, Zoho or a custom build
- Pipeline, custom field and permission setup that matches your sales and service process
- Integrations with Shopify, WordPress forms, phone and SMS providers, email platforms and accounting tools
- Custom CRM web application on Postgres, for cases the platforms cannot model
- Data migration with a field map, deduplication, a trial run and a final cutover
- Automations for lead routing, follow-up tasks, reminders and review requests
- Dashboards and reports for pipeline value, response time and lead source
- Staff training sessions, an admin guide and integration documentation
FAQ
Common questions
Should we build a custom CRM or configure HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel or Zoho?
Configure a platform unless you have a clear reason not to. A custom build pays off if your data model does not fit the platforms, if per-seat fees outweigh the cost of owning software, or if the CRM is part of the product you sell. We compare both routes in writing during discovery so you can decide with the trade-offs in front of you.
When is a new CRM the wrong choice?
A new CRM is the wrong choice if your team does not follow a consistent process yet, because the software will record the inconsistency and add a monthly bill. It is also the wrong choice if your current CRM works and the real gap is one missing integration. In that case we build the integration and leave the rest alone.
Who owns the CRM account, the code and the data?
You do. Platform subscriptions sit in your name and under your billing, with devinsta added as a user you can remove. For custom builds the repository, the hosting account and the database belong to you from the first commit.
How do you migrate our existing contacts without losing history?
We export your records, map each old field to a new one, and merge duplicates using rules you approve. A trial migration goes into a sandbox so your team can check real records before cutover. Notes, deal history and attachments move across where the source system allows an export, and we tell you up front about anything it will not release.