Close vs Sellsy 2026

Close wins this clearly at 4.3 versus 3.4. During testing, Close reached full setup, email sync, and first live call in under one hour. The free one-click migration tool pulled contacts from competing CRMs cleanly. The unified inbox showing calls, emails, and SMS per lead in chronological order means reps get context without switching tabs, and automatic call transcription means zero manual logging.

Sellsy requires 2-3 hours to configure pipelines, custom fields, and document templates before the team is productive. Navigation between modules (CRM, invoicing, projects, accounting) involves multiple clicks, and the interface feels slightly dated compared to modern-born competitors. A 4-person sales team needed three training sessions before hitting full stride. That said, Sellsy's friction is structural: it handles more jobs (CRM, invoicing, e-signature, projects) in one place, so the onboarding overhead is the cost of a genuinely broader tool.

The honest bémol on Close: its non-standard "Leads" data model (no separate Contacts, Companies, or Deals objects) trips up teams migrating from Salesforce or HubSpot. Expect 2-3 days of adjustment. Workflow automation is also locked behind Growth at $99/user/month.

Both tools score an identical 3.2 because both have headline prices that understate the real monthly cost. On Close, the $99/user/month Growth plan sounds reasonable until you add calling at $0.02/minute. Five reps each making 60 calls a day at 3 minutes average across 22 working days adds roughly $396/month in usage fees on top of the $495 plan cost: a real monthly total near $891. If premium support is added, that becomes $1,641 for five reps. On Sellsy, the 2-user minimum means a solo founder pays for a ghost seat: €58-158/month (annual) before doing any work. Add Aircall for telephony at ~€30/user/month, and a 5-rep team on Vente Evolution reaches €395/month for CRM plus calling.

Close wins for pure CRM teams without invoicing needs, especially the $9 Solo plan for solo operators. Sellsy wins for French companies because the Vente and Facturation bundle at €59/user/month (annual) replaces DocuSign (~€20-30/month), a separate invoicing tool, and the cost of September 2026 e-invoicing compliance in a single subscription. Both tools require annual billing, no monthly escape. Sellsy forced existing monthly customers onto annual billing during a summer period with minimal notice, a documented pain point in a G2 review that is worth knowing before you sign.

Close takes this 4.6 to 4.2, and the gap is the dialer. The Power Dialer (Growth) and Predictive Dialer (Scale) are not integrations: they are core features that log every call automatically, transcribe in real time, and queue leads for minimum dead time between dials. No comparable native dialer exists in Sellsy.

Then there is Chloe, Close's voice AI agent, launched for general availability on June 9, 2026. Chloe makes outbound calls autonomously, qualifies prospects, books meetings, and updates CRM records without rep intervention. It completed 818,000 calls with 306 businesses during beta. The catch: Chloe is available only in the US and Canada as of June 2026. French, Spanish, and other non-US/CA teams cannot access it, which partially deflates this score for international buyers.

Sellsy's strength is breadth of commercial management. CRM, invoicing, projects, pre-accounting, e-signature (50-500 per year depending on plan), cash flow, and PA-certified e-invoicing in one platform. For companies needing both sales operations and finance management, Close requires stitching in two or three separate tools. Sellsy AI on Evolution+ covers email and document generation but is described by reviewers as recent and less mature. Close's pipeline reporting has a documented flaw: non-linear deal movement (stages skipped or reversed) produces incorrect counts.

Sellsy wins this convincingly, 4.1 to 2.8, and the score difference is structural. Sellsy runs a French-language support team based in La Rochelle. Live chat is available on Evolution and Elite plans, with tested response times under 10 minutes. Phone support exists on higher plans. Personalized onboarding calls are included on Evolution and Elite. Email responses arrived in 4-6 hours in four contacts over three months, always in French, always specific to the question.

Close defaults to email-only support on all plans. No live chat on any plan. No phone number to call. Two support tickets during testing were answered within 24 hours with technically competent responses, but for a platform where reps make their living on live calls, a 24-hour email floor is a structural mismatch. G2 reviewers document 194 mentions of call-related issues (charges during hold times, recording failures), with no real-time escalation path unless you purchase the $750/month premium support add-on. That price point eliminates it for most of the SMB teams Close explicitly targets.

The honest caveat on Sellsy: no phone support on the Standard plan, and the community forum is less active than HubSpot. One G2 reviewer documented being misled by support during the billing model switch. Neither tool is flawless, but the gap here is wide enough to give Sellsy a clear win.

Close edges this 4.0 to 3.9 on the strength of its AI-native stack. Close publishes an MCP server exposing CRM data to compatible AI models, has native Claude and ChatGPT integrations, supports Zapier, Make, Integrately, Pabbly, and Latenode, and connects 370+ additional apps via LeadsBridge. For teams building AI-augmented sales workflows in 2026, that combination is ahead of what Sellsy offers today.

Sellsy's integration story is cohesive for the French market: native Aircall connector (click-to-dial, call logging, recording sync), Order Invoicer for Shopify, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop, and Tiime for pre-accounting. Zapier and Make are available. The catalog covers French SMB essentials well, but the international SaaS coverage is weaker compared to HubSpot (1,000+) or Salesforce.

The honest bémol on Close: no native Apollo integration. Apollo is one of the most commonly paired prospecting tools for Close users, yet the connection requires Zapier. HubSpot has a native Apollo connector. On Sellsy, no native Slack notifications, no Notion sync, limited LinkedIn automation. A thin round for both: the gap in raw score is small but Close's AI-native direction is the deciding factor in 2026.