Replacing Your CRM With Notion or Airtable? The Four-Part Test It Has to Pass First

Y’all, I see this question on Threads every single week, and every single week I want to gently pull somebody’s car over to the side of the road. Can you replace your CRM with Notion? Airtable? Google Workspace? Squarespace? In this episode I’m answering it honestly — including the part where I tell you I use two of those tools daily and still wouldn’t hand either of them my client bookings.

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What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The four non-negotiable functions a tool has to perform before it counts as a real CRM — and how to test your current stack against them in about five minutes
• Why conditional logic is the single feature that separates a CRM from a very organized file cabinet
• Exactly what happens (and what doesn’t) when a lead fills out your Squarespace contact form at 11pm on a Saturday
• How to run the actual math on whether your CRM is worth the money, instead of staring at it as a line item
• Why “I already have Dubsado and I’m not using it” is a setup problem, not a CRM problem
• Where Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Asana genuinely belong in your business — alongside your CRM, not instead of it

Why Everybody Suddenly Wants to Cancel Their CRM

It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago that HoneyBook raised their prices, and then Dubsado followed about a year later. Ever since, the question has been living rent-free on Threads: do I really need a CRM?

And it’s usually not phrased as a strategy question. It’s phrased as a math question. Can I get this $30 back?

I’m not here to tell you Notion and Airtable are bad tools. I’d be a hypocrite. I use Airtable to manage clients inside my signature offer, Systems in Session, with TidyCal handling scheduling and Fillout collecting information and onboarding my clients. I switched over to Notion this year to manage my team, my content creation, and my podcast workflow, and I had an entire custom dashboard built for it. I’m in it every single day.

But neither one of those tools would have fully replaced the CRM inside my former photography business. Not even close.

So when I see creative service providers trying to stitch a CRM together out of three or four other tools, free or not, I feel like the person standing on the side of the road watching a wreck about to happen and having absolutely no way to stop it.

A booking tool is not a CRM. A project management tool is not a CRM.

Curious what my Notion setup actually looks like? Listen to Building a Custom Notion Dashboard: How I Streamlined My Entire Business with Ania Ha.

What Your CRM Is Actually Doing for You

Before we can talk about what to replace your CRM with, we have to get clear on what it’s doing in the first place. And I think a lot of photographers are genuinely fuzzy on this. They get sucked into the weeds on individual features — does it have a client portal, does it do proposals — instead of stepping back and asking what the tool is doing as a whole.

So here’s the test I use. There are four things I look for when I’m evaluating whether a tool can function as a real CRM for photographers.

1. Lead Management

Can you track who’s inquiring, see where each person is in the process, and follow up with them automatically when they go quiet?

That last part is the part everybody skips. Anybody can collect an inquiry. The question is what happens on day four when she hasn’t written back.

2. Contracts With E-Signatures

I’m not talking about the ability to email somebody a PDF. I’m not talking about a form where they check a box saying they agree.

I’m talking about an actual legally signable contract that lives inside the platform and is attached to their client record. When you need to find it eight months later, it’s sitting with everything else that belongs to that client.

3. Invoicing and Payment Collection

This one is probably the most important, and it’s the one people undervalue the hardest.

Not a separate link to Stripe. Not a Venmo request. Invoices that are tied to the client and to the project, with payment reminders that fire automatically whether or not you remembered it was the fifteenth.

4. Automated Client Communication

And I don’t just mean sending emails. Plenty of tools send emails.

I mean emails that respond to what your client does or doesn’t do. A follow-up that only fires if the invoice is still unpaid. A questionnaire reminder that only goes out if the form is still blank.

That’s conditional logic, and it is the single biggest thing separating a real CRM from a tool that just holds all your documents like a file cabinet.

If your tool can’t do all four of these cohesively — and do them in a way that feels seamless to your client, not just to you — it’s not a CRM. It might be a great tool. It might share some of the same features. It is still not a CRM.

A CRM is supposed to give your clients a seamless client experience. It is supposed to make your life easier without you managing every single step. If you go the Airtable or Notion route, it will take more effort from you, because the features don’t talk to each other. There has to be a whole lot of strategy and automation involved just to create continuity between tools that were never designed to be a CRM in the first place.

The Checklist Lies: Why Squarespace and Google Workspace Fall Apart

Here’s why this question is so seductive. On paper, the free-ish stack really does look complete.

Squarespace has scheduling through Acuity, a basic contract form, and an invoicing tool. Google has e-signatures, calendar booking, Gmail, and Drive. Line it up against your CRM feature by feature and it adds up to almost everything you’re currently paying for. Scheduling, check. Contracts, check. Invoicing, check.

Now watch what actually happens.

The Inquiry That Just Sits There

A lead fills out your Squarespace contact form. And then… nothing happens. Nobody gets moved into a pipeline. No follow-up fires. No notification goes anywhere except your inbox, where it lands underneath a Target receipt and a newsletter you don’t read.

Now it’s on you to remember that she inquired and to actually send her a response. On the day you’re shooting two sessions and editing a third.

The Signature That Connects to Nothing

A client signs a Google contract. That signature isn’t connected to an invoice. It isn’t connected to a questionnaire. It isn’t connected to a welcome email.

Every piece of the booking process lives in a different tab and a different app, and you are the connective tissue holding all of it together — unless you’re bringing Zapier or Make or another piece of automation software into the conversation, which is another subscription and another thing to maintain.

That is not a cohesive system. That is you manually doing what a system is supposed to be doing for you.

When It Breaks, Who Do You Call?

If you’re thinking about building a custom CRM in Notion or Airtable, I want you to sit with one question: when something breaks, who do you go to for customer service?

Because if you stitched it together after watching a few YouTube tutorials across four different platforms, and one of them stops talking to another, you are on hold with four different support teams trying to figure out which one is even the problem. Meanwhile your client is waiting on an invoice.

A real CRM is one system. One place to call.

Run the Actual Math Before You Cancel Anything

Okay, so here’s the thing I want you to sit with. Is the money you’re trying to save by ditching your CRM really worth the things that tool is already doing for you?

Your CRM is how you get paid. I say this all the time: even if you were only paying $50 a month and using it as nothing but an invoicing tool, you’re getting your money’s worth. It’s how someone goes from I’m interested to contract signed, invoice paid, and session confirmed.

Every hour you spend doing that process manually is an hour you’re not shooting, not editing, not with your family, not marketing, not doing literally anything else that brings you joy.

And the leads you’re losing because there’s no automated follow-up? Those aren’t just missed bookings. At your price point, each one of those is worth hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars walking out the door while you’re busy doing something else.

I know $20 to $40 feels like a lot when you’re looking at a line item every month. So flip the question. How many bookings do you need to justify that cost? Just one? Will one booking pay for your CRM for the entire year?

If that’s it, your CRM more than pays for itself.

“I Already Have Dubsado and I’m Not Using It”

Now I want to name something I hear constantly that quietly drives me absolutely crazy.

“I already have Dubsado and I’m not using it, so why should I keep paying for it?”

That is not the same thing as not needing a CRM. That is a setup problem.

You tried to build it yourself, something didn’t work right, and you walked away. And yes — you’re paying for a tool you’re not using, and that part is on you. But the answer isn’t to cancel it and switch to something cheaper with fewer options. The answer is to put time on your calendar, sit down, and finish it.

Because what I actually want for you is clients who get the seamless experience that brings you more rave reviews, more referrals, and more repeat bookings. You don’t get there by downgrading.

What Your Tech Stack Should Actually Look Like

Here’s the framework I use when I’m helping photographers think through this.

Your CRM Handles Four Things — Possibly Five

Leads. Contracts. Invoices. Automatic communication. And if you’re someone who needs to schedule sessions, calls, or reveals, you should also be looking for a CRM with integrated scheduling.

This is a category of tool you need in your stack, full stop. CRM is non-negotiable.

If you’re looking for a full CRM and you have no idea what’s out there beyond Dubsado and HoneyBook, I have a full comparison of the five CRMs I recommend for photographers.

See exactly how they stack up: The Best CRM for Photographers.

If Price Is Genuinely the Barrier

If you’re earlier in your business and cost is a real obstacle — not a preference, an obstacle — Session is a reasonable starting point for a photographer. I know. Did you ever think you’d hear me say that?

But go in knowing what it can do and what it can’t. And know that every hour you spend setting it up now is an hour you’ll likely spend again setting up a full CRM later, because you will outgrow it. When you do, the move isn’t complicated — it’s just time-consuming.

Where Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Asana Earn Their Place

Everything else — project management, team communication, content planning, operations — that’s exactly where these tools shine. Not replacing your CRM. Working alongside it.

I’ve actually seen more and more photographers using their CRM to get clients booked and then moving them into something like Notion or Airtable to manage the project and the client experience from there. I’m all about that. For a lot of businesses it’s a really smart approach, particularly if you have recurring calls, recurring forms, or a more comprehensive onboarding and service stage than your CRM can comfortably hold.

If you want something more substantial for project management, I’m happy to recommend it — after the inquiry and booking stage are handled inside a real CRM.

The goal is not fewer tools for the sake of fewer tools. The goal is the right tools for the right jobs.

I Know This Wasn’t the Permission Slip You Wanted

If you came here hoping I’d tell you that you can save some money and get rid of your CRM, I’m legitimately sorry.

But I would rather tell you the truth now than watch you spend the next six months manually doing what your CRM was already supposed to be doing — losing bookings because your process is inconsistent and there’s no way to automatically follow up.

And if you’re sitting on a CRM you set up but never fully figured out? That’s what I do. That’s the whole thing.

I’d love to talk with you about Systems in Session — my 60-day done-with-you build where we design and implement your client experience together, so you actually know how to run it and change it when your business changes. Details are at coliejames.com/systems.

Prefer to hear it? Listen to the full episode above.

Links Mentioned in This Episode

• The Best CRM for Photographers — my full comparison of the five CRMs I recommend
• Building a Custom Notion Dashboard: How I Streamlined My Entire Business with Ania Ha — what Notion is actually good for, and why it will never replace my CRM
• Systems in Session — the 60-day done-with-you build
• Tools mentioned: Dubsado, HoneyBook, Session, Airtable, Notion, TidyCal, Fillout, Acuity, ClickUp, Asana