The biggest risk isn’t whether you can build the CRM. It’s whether you want to become the company responsible for maintaining one. I think an AI-built CRM can absolutely work for a 15-person agency, especially when your requirements are relatively simple and easy.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by  Bernice David.

Great breakdown

Honestly, I think testing it alongside Salesforce first is the safest move. Building the prototype is one thing, but maintaining it, handling integrations, backups, and random issues six months later is where the real challenge comes in. The potential savings are huge though, so if the maintenance stays manageable, I can definitely see why you’d consider making the switch.

The biggest risk isn’t whether the AI-built CRM works today, but whether it remains maintainable six months from now. The $30k annual savings are compelling, but factor in your time, backups, security, integrations, monitoring, and the risk of being the only person who understands it.

I’d be a little cautious about going all in right away, the $30k savings sounds great, but the real test is what happens when the prototype has to run every day without you babysitting it, i’d probably keep Salesforce running and use the new CRM alongside it for a few months first, if the integrations, backups, and maintenance stay painless, then the switch would make a lot more sense.

if an AI generated scripts drops a database constraint or messes up a sync between quickBooks and your custom CRM, you risk losing historical deal data .if you are the only technical person you are creating a massive single of failure for a 15 person business

I’d be interested in hearing how teams handle reliability, security, and maintenance after making the switch. The upfront savings are attractive, but the long-term operational cost is what really matters.

Well, 200 active deals isn’t an enterprise scale yet, but it is enough to expose the weaknesses of AI-generated code. The prototype phase is a trap because LLMs are great at the happy path but terrible at the unhappy path like network timeouts, duplicate records and OAuth refresh.