Twenty CRM Review: Open Source CRM for IT Companies in Kazakhstan

Twenty is an open source CRM under the AGPL-3.0 license that you can deploy for free on your own server or buy in the vendor’s cloud. For an IT company in Kazakhstan, it is interesting for three reasons: a flexible data model for B2B sales, an open API and the ability to keep the customer database on a server inside the country. The weak spots are clear too: no built-in telephony, email campaigns or WhatsApp connector.

This article is for founders and executives of IT companies, studios and SaaS teams who are choosing a CRM or want to move away from scattered spreadsheets. We cover what Twenty offers out of the box, what it lacks and how to fill the gaps, how the cloud differs from self-hosted, how to build a data structure for an IT business and what makes up the total cost of ownership.

What Twenty is and how it works

Twenty positions itself as an open alternative to Salesforce. The code is on GitHub, the project is actively developed, and a large developer community has formed around it. The stack is modern: TypeScript, NestJS on the backend, React on the frontend, and PostgreSQL and Redis for data and queues.

It is important to understand the product philosophy. Twenty is not a “sales department in a box” with ready-made messenger scenarios. It is a CRM construction kit: objects, fields, views, automations and an API. You describe your data model and process, and the system adapts. For an IT company with a non-standard pipeline, that is a plus. For a team that needs it “working by tomorrow”, it is a burden.

There are two ways to use it:

• Twenty Cloud. The vendor runs the infrastructure, and you pay per user. According to the website, each cloud workspace comes with a built-in MCP server for connecting AI tools.
• Self-hosted. You deploy Twenty via Docker Compose on your own server. The license is free and the core features are the same, but updates, backups and monitoring are on you.

What Twenty offers out of the box

The basic set an IT company needs for B2B sales is all there in Twenty:

• Standard objects: companies, people (contacts), deals, tasks, notes.
• Custom objects and fields. You can add “Projects”, “Contracts”, “Tenders” or “Partners” and link them to the standard objects.
• Views: table and kanban, filters, sorting, saved views per role.
• Workflows and automations. A no-code engine: a trigger on an event or schedule, conditions, actions.
• API and webhooks. Any record can be created, read or modified from outside, and you can subscribe to events.
• CSV import. The main way to move data from spreadsheets and old CRMs.
• Email and calendar. Integration with Google and Microsoft: emails and meetings are attached to contacts and companies.
• AI features. The vendor’s website lists an AI chat, agents and an apps framework in which developers define objects and server-side logic in code.

Record-level permissions and SSO in the cloud belong to the Organization plan. A small team often does not need them; for a company with several sales teams, they are an argument.

Automations and the API in practice

Twenty’s strength for an IT company is that the CRM can be built into your other systems without workarounds. A few scenarios most often set up in the first month:

1. A lead from a website form arrives via the API and creates a company, a contact and a deal at the first pipeline stage.
2. A deal with no activity for more than a set number of days gets a “follow up” task assigned to the responsible manager.
3. Moving a deal to the “Won” stage sends a webhook to an external service that creates a project in the task tracker.
4. Once a week, a scheduled workflow collects deals without a decision date and reminds their owners.

The first two scenarios are usually built in the no-code workflow editor. The third and fourth are often simpler and more reliable as a small service that listens to webhooks and calls the API: this way, retry logic and error handling are under your control. For developers, Twenty has an apps framework where objects, server functions and UI components are defined in TypeScript code and stored in a repository.

A tip from practice: create a separate technical user in the CRM and an API key for each integration. Then the change history shows which system changed what, and you can disable one integration without touching the others.

What Twenty lacks and how to fill the gaps

The main thing to know before choosing: Twenty does not cover the communication layer of sales. Calls, SMS, messengers and email campaigns live in external services and are connected through integrations.

Capability	Twenty	How to fill the gap
Telephony and call recording	No built-in option as of version 2.1	A cloud PBX with webhooks: a call creates an activity on the contact via the API
SMS	No	An external SMS gateway, sending from a workflow via an HTTP request
Marketing email campaigns	No segmented campaigns with analytics	An email marketing service, syncing segments via the API
WhatsApp and Telegram	No connector	A middleware service for WhatsApp Business, writing conversations to the CRM via the API
Website forms	No form builder	The website form sends data to the API or a webhook
Task tracker connection	Nothing ready-made	A webhook on a deal stage change creates a project in Plane or Jira
Documents and invoices	No document generator	A custom “Contract” object plus an external service or script

Each row in the table is a small integration task. In our implementation experience, an IT company usually needs two or three of them: website forms, email and a task tracker connection. The task tracker connection is especially important: without it, a won deal turns into a project via a retelling in chat, and details get lost.

Cloud or self-hosted

The choice between the cloud and your own server in Twenty is hardly about features. It is about where the data lives, who is responsible for the infrastructure and how you pay.

Criterion	Twenty Cloud	Self-hosted Twenty
License	Per-user subscription	Free, AGPL-3.0
Where data is stored	Vendor infrastructure outside Kazakhstan	Your server, including with a hosting provider in Kazakhstan
Payment	Card in USD	Hosting in tenge under a contract
Updates and backups	Done by the vendor	Done by you or a contractor
SSO and record-level permissions	Organization plan	Depends on the edition; check the documentation
Time to launch	The day you sign up	From one or two days with setup
Engineer required	No	Yes

Self-hosted requires a clear stack: PostgreSQL, Redis, S3-compatible file storage, a server container and a worker container. For a sales team of 10–30 people, one mid-sized virtual machine is enough. But someone has to look after updates, backups and monitoring. If there is no such person, self-hosted becomes a risk.

Kazakhstan context. A CRM is a database of personal data: names, phone numbers, emails and job titles of your customers’ contacts. If the company wants such data stored in Kazakhstan, self-hosted Twenty with a local hosting provider will do; cloud CRMs with servers abroad will not. The second practical point is payment: the cloud is paid by card in dollars without closing documents that meet Kazakhstani standards, while hosting in Kazakhstan is arranged under a contract in tenge.

Data structure for an IT company

A typical mistake is to keep the standard “company, contact, deal” model and try to fit everything into it. For an IT company, a sale rarely ends at signing: then come the project, milestones, upsells and support. It is worth designing the model right away.

The basic set of objects we use as a starting point:

Object	Type	Key fields	Relationships
Company	Standard	BIN, industry, city, size, source	People, deals, projects
Person	Standard	Role in the decision, preferred language, contact channel	Company, deals
Deal	Standard	Stage, amount, currency, probability, decision date, type of work	Company, people, project
Project	Custom	Status, link to the project in the task tracker, manager	Deal, company
Contract	Custom	Number, date, term, amount, currency	Company, deal
Partner	Custom	Partnership type, commission, contact	Deals

A few details that save time later. A “preferred language” field with “Russian”, “Kazakh” and “English” options helps with bilingual clients. A “currency” field is needed if you sell in both tenge and dollars. The BIN (Kazakhstan’s business identification number) is a natural unique key for a company and makes it easy to find duplicates during import.

Who Twenty suits and who it doesn’t

Twenty is a good fit if:

• Sales are B2B, the deal cycle is several weeks or longer, and you have dozens of deals a month, not thousands.
• The team has an engineer or contractor who will maintain the server and integrations.
• You need to store customer data in Kazakhstan or in a closed environment.
• Your process is non-standard: tenders, partner deals, pilots, multi-step approvals.
• You want to connect the CRM to your task tracker, billing and internal services via the API.

Twenty is not a good fit if:

• Your main sales flow runs through WhatsApp and Instagram, with hundreds of inquiries a day and managers replying directly from the CRM. Here amoCRM with built-in messengers is stronger.
• You need telephony with call recording on launch day without extra development.
• There is no one to administer the system, and the cloud does not meet your data requirements.
• The sales team is used to ready-made scenarios and is not ready to take part in designing the system.

A detailed comparison across ten criteria is in our article Twenty or amoCRM: which CRM an IT company should choose in 2026.

Cost of ownership

The honest cost of a CRM is licenses plus infrastructure plus people’s work. For Twenty, the picture looks like this.

Cloud. At twenty.com prices as of October 2026 with annual billing: a team of 20 people on the Pro plan costs $2,160 per year (20 × $9 × 12), and on Organization $4,560 per year (20 × $19 × 12). Add integrations on top if you need them.

Self-hosted. The license is $0. Costs:

1. A server and S3 storage with a Kazakhstani hosting provider, in tenge. Get a quote from the provider for your volume.
2. Initial deployment and setup of the domain, SSL, email and backups.
3. Regular updates: the project evolves quickly, and it is not wise to postpone updates for long.
4. Integrations: website forms, email, task tracker, messengers.
5. Administrator time for user support and data model changes.

A handy formula: annual server cost + (engineer hours per month × 12 × rate) + one-time integrations. If the engineer’s hours at their rate exceed the subscription and there are no requirements to store data in Kazakhstan, the cloud is more cost-effective. If there are such requirements, self-hosted is the only option of the two.

How we implement Twenty

We start with a diagnostic: how a deal currently moves from first contact to project, where leads get lost, which data is personal and where it needs to be stored. Based on the results, we propose a data model, a pipeline and a list of integrations. Then we run a two- to four-week pilot with one sales team, adjust fields and automations based on actual use, and only then onboard everyone else. We covered a week-by-week plan in our article on implementing a CRM in an IT company.

If you want to go through this process with us, visit our Twenty and amoCRM implementation page: it describes the stages, timelines and what you get at the end.

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Sources. Product description and cloud pricing: twenty.com. Code, stack and self-hosting instructions: github.com/twentyhq/twenty. Information about amoCRM: amocrm.ru. Prices as of October 2026 and subject to change.

Terms in plain words

Open source

Software with open code: you can download it, install it on your own server and modify it without paying for a license. Twenty's code is published on GitHub.

AGPL-3.0

The open source license under which Twenty is released. You can use it and install it yourself for free; modifications that you make available over a network must be published.

Self-hosted

Installing Twenty on your own server, including with a Kazakhstani hosting provider, instead of using the vendor's cloud. The license is free, but updates, backups and monitoring are on you.

Docker Compose

A tool that runs a system as one set of ready-made containers: database, application server and background processes. It is used to deploy Twenty on your own server.

S3-compatible storage

File storage that follows the Amazon S3 standard, where CRM attachments are kept. It is required for self-hosted Twenty and is hosted with the same provider as the server.

SSO (Single Sign-On)

Single sign-on: an employee logs into the CRM with their corporate account without a separate password. In Twenty's cloud, it is part of the Organization plan.

Custom objects

Your own record types that a company adds alongside the standard companies, contacts and deals, such as 'Projects' or 'Contracts', with their own fields and relationships.

Workflow

An automated scenario inside the CRM: on an event or on a schedule, the system checks conditions and performs actions, such as creating a task for a manager on a forgotten deal.