if you asked me 24 months ago I'd tell you CRM was a BS category, now I think of it as a backend component on par with the DB
it took an hour every time I had to do anything, and I ended up with a collection of python scripts that solved random problems that were already solved somewhere else, which grew and grew
I tried a few programmable shared inbox tools and they were all clunky and meh. tried lighter things like supabase + some golang list manager, also meh.
postmark has a CRM they acquired, iirc it was too expensive
zoho seems reasonable on price, but did not try it
but to be clear, even if I paid up for something dumb like hubspot, my life would have been simpler and better
zapier is a good place to shop for these