Fat Free CRM is a Ruby on Rails CRM platform that provides group collaboration, campaign and lead management, contact lists, and opportunity tracking out of the box.
The tool addresses the need for an open-source customer relationship management system by bundling core CRM functionality into a self-contained Rails application. It organizes customer data through contacts, accounts, opportunities, and tasks, with the ability to extend these with custom fields and tags. Teams and groups can be modeled within the system to reflect organizational structure, and the platform supports group-based collaboration on CRM activities.
Organizations considering adoption should evaluate whether they need a self-hosted, customizable CRM rather than a commercial SaaS offering. The tool suits teams already invested in the Ruby on Rails ecosystem or those wanting to avoid vendor lock-in. It can be deployed as a standalone Rails application on Linux, Mac OS, or cloud platforms, or run as a Rails engine embedded within an existing Rails project for teams needing deeper customization. The project offers plugins for webhooks, record merging, and time tracking to extend core functionality.
The project maintains active community engagement through a Discord channel and welcomes pull requests and bug reports. Documentation is available through both a dedicated guide site and API documentation. The codebase requires Ruby 3.1 or later and supports multiple database backends including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, with optional ImageMagick support for avatar handling.
