A solar CRM tracks deals from lead through installation to payment.
What the net-meter file actually stalls on
A customer signs. Documentation goes in. Two weeks later the DISCOM rejects the file because one page is missing. You ring someone for status. They check the folder. Meanwhile the customer is angry and the project sits. This is where most EPCs lose time — not in the sale, but in the hundred-task slog after it: site survey, loan sanction, DISCOM approval, material dispatch, installation, net-meter activation, subsidy claim. A CRM built for B2B sales (Zoho, HubSpot, LeadSquared) has no stage for any of this. It ends at 'closed-won'.
A solar CRM starts where a sales CRM stops. It holds the project through all 15 working stages, writes the checklist for each stage the moment it opens, flags what is overdue, gates what cannot proceed, and puts the whole picture on one screen: kW against target, cash due, stuck projects by person and day.
Why a generic CRM fails an EPC
A rooftop solar project has conditions a generic CRM knows nothing about. Some deals have loans; some don't. One site needs net metering (BRPL, PVVNL, DHBVN have different forms and timelines). Another qualifies for PM Surya Ghar but the window closes mid-build. A customer bounces a cheque and the instalment needs to reopen. One family of 57 recurring tasks sits inside zero generic products: site survey due two days after its stage opens, loan sanction paperwork due four days after, structure install ten days after, net-meter confirmation fourteen days after, DCR certificate and PM Surya Ghar submission both due eighteen days after. You either hand-build them in a workflow engine (six weeks of setup and testing for a feature that was already solved) or you run them in Excel and WhatsApp, which means nobody escalates anything.
Solar-specific software exists, but none of it is an EPC operations system built for India. Sunbase is a US contractor-management platform priced per user in USD; Aurora Solar is a US design-and-proposal tool, also priced per user in USD. Arka 360 sells solar design software with lead management as a paid add-on, priced per seat in INR plus a one-time onboarding fee. None of the three tracks DISCOM approvals or PM Surya Ghar eligibility, and none generates a GST invoice. Zoho CRM's feature set is strong, but the money flow (instalments, payment gates, cheque-bounce reopening, GST invoices) lives in a separate product, Zoho Books, that must be kept in sync.
What moves when nothing is left to chance
The first change is visible in five minutes: every open task carries the date it was due, because a stage checklist is written the moment the project enters that stage. The second change is felt by day two: any task that runs late does not sit in someone's backlog until a Monday status call. Every night, on its own, it climbs one rung up the org chart, first to the assignee's manager, then that manager's manager, and it keeps climbing until someone closes it or it reaches the top of the chart. It is added, never taken away: the person it started with still sees it on their own list, so escalating is not a transfer and not a punishment. It stops one late job being one person's private problem.
The second change is that no one holds material without the money: a project cannot dispatch structure or panels until the agreed share is collected. A customer bounces a cheque and the instalment comes back as outstanding rather than quietly disappearing into a bank statement. At 7am every day, anything overdue goes to the person responsible and to their manager, first thing. A quote and a GST invoice come out of the same system that holds the project, so what you invoiced and what you agreed cannot drift apart.
The three gates nobody can skip
One: a project cannot advance to the next stage while its checklist has open items. A project that skipped site survey because the week was busy cannot hide that until month three. Rolling a project back stays free; the gate only stands in the way of pretending work is finished.
Two: material does not dispatch until the agreed share of the sale is collected. You set the thresholds — commonly a quarter collected before structure goes out, most of the balance before panels and inverter follow. Whoever is under pressure to keep a customer happy no longer gets to make that call alone on the phone.
Three: a document is done when operations marks it correct, not when somebody ticks a box. A salesperson photographs the papers on their phone at the customer's house, the moment the sale closes. Operations marks each file correct or incorrect; incorrect needs a reason and files go straight back to the person who took the photo, not into a folder nobody opens. Two items late and three still open means the button that moves this project forward is simply not available.
What it costs and what it does not
Pricing is ₹10,000 per month or ₹99,999 per year plus 18 per cent GST, unlimited users, no setup fee, nothing per project, cancel any time, 30-day free trial with no card. A flat workspace fee means ten more people cost nothing; a per-user model (Zoho at ₹800–₹2,600/user/month, LeadSquared at $60–$100/user/month, Sunbase at $59+/user/month) makes a field team of installers, engineers and telecallers prohibitively expensive.
What it does not do: it does not chase your customer, and it does not do the work. It makes sure a human being knows the work is late before the customer does. It does not guarantee a result. No software can, and we will not pretend otherwise. The owner's job is to step in for the exceptions. The week that is left is for growing the business.
What to ask when shortlisting a solar CRM
- Do the 15 rooftop stages come prebuilt, or do you hand-build them?
- Are checklists conditional — loan tasks only on loan projects, subsidy tasks on subsidy projects, DISCOM forms matched to the electricity board that project actually falls under?
- Is there a stage gate that blocks advancement while checklist items are open?
- Does a late task escalate automatically up your org chart, or do you rely on a Monday meeting to find out?
- Can you gate material dispatch on a percentage of payment collected, and does a cheque bounce reopen the instalment?
- Does a document upload gate stage progression, or just sit in a folder?
- Does pricing charge per user (meaning a field team of installers is expensive) or flat per workspace (meaning unlimited people cost nothing)?
- Can you export all your data any time, or are you locked in by design?
- Is there a 30-day free trial linked directly from the pricing page, or does the vendor make you call for a demo?
How Solar Spine compares to the alternatives
| Vendor | Pricing | Category | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | Zoho CRM is priced per user per month on an annual billing cycle, with five tiers in INR: Free (no charge, up to 3 users), Standard (₹800), Professional (₹1,400), Enterprise (₹2,400) and Ultimate (₹2,600). Monthly billing runs roughly 50% higher per the vendor's own 'save up to 34%' discount messaging. No setup fee. Paid implementation is offered separately for enterprise buyers. | Generic CRM | Compare |
| LeadSquared | LeadSquared prices two products separately: Sales CRM at $60–$100 per user per month, Marketing Automation at $2,000–$3,500 per account per month (flat, not per user), both billed annually with no self-serve pricing revealed. No INR list price is published on leadsquared.com. Every site CTA is 'Book a Demo'; live self-serve trial-signup pages exist but are not linked from the main funnel. | Generic CRM | Compare |
| Sunbase | Sunbase is per-user, custom-quoted, and USD-only. The published starting price is $59/user/month (approximately ₹5,575/user/month at the 2026-09-08 market rate of ₹94.50 per USD). Real-world deployments are estimated by third-party reviewer heavengreenenergy.com to cost $100–$300/user/month. The vendor publishes no fixed tier grid, no INR pricing, and no free trial; every quote depends on the number of users, modules selected (CRM, proposals, project management, inventory, financial, reporting), industry workflow, and implementation and training scope. | Generic CRM | Compare |
Built for the work that actually follows a sale
Questions about solar CRM software
What does a solar CRM do differently from a general-purpose CRM?
A general CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho) tracks pipeline from lead to close; it stops when the deal is signed. Solar CRM software starts there. It automates the 15 working stages after the sale, from site survey and loan sanction through DISCOM approval, structure installation, net-meter activation and commissioning, with checklists that branch on loan type, subsidy status, and which electricity board the site falls under. The generic CRM has no concept of material dispatch gates, payment schedules per project, or the specifics of Indian DISCOM workflows.
What features should a solar CRM actually have?
Prebuilt solar stages and conditional checklists, so you are not hand-building workflows. A stage gate that blocks advancement while checklist items are open. Automatic escalation, so a task that runs late climbs the org chart every night without anyone noticing. Payment scheduling and gates (for example 10/70/20, gate material on collected share). A document-verification gate where ops marks each photo correct or incorrect rather than filing it unread. Role-based dashboards so the director sees kW against target and cash due, while a field role sees their day's work. Meta lead intake and writeback so your ad account learns which leads actually bought.
Can a solar CRM track a deal from lead through installation to final payment?
Yes. The sales stages (lead, site visit, proposal, deal) feed into the project stages (documentation, site survey, loan, structure dispatch, material dispatch, net-meter activation, handover). Payment gates default to 25% collected before structure dispatch, 65% to 95% before material dispatch depending on whether the project has a loan, and 100% before net-meter activation and completion. A bounced cheque reopens the instalment. Everything sits in one system of record, so status updates do not get lost between a CRM and an invoice book.
Does a solar CRM handle net-metering and subsidy paperwork, or just sales?
A purpose-built one does. Generic CRMs do not. Solar CRM software should track which DISCOM applies to each site (BRPL, BYPL, TPDDL, PVVNL, NPCL, DHBVN, UHBVN) because each board has different forms and timelines. It should flag PM Surya Ghar eligibility windows so the office notices before the deadline closes. It should hold a family of tasks keyed to the project type: a loan project gets loan-sanction paperwork due four days after that stage opens, and a subsidy project gets a DCR (domestic content requirement) check due eighteen days after net-meter activation opens. Generic CRMs require weeks of hand configuration to do what a solar vertical product ships.
Is there a CRM built specifically for Indian solar EPCs rather than for the US market?
Solar Spine is built from the system run for a Delhi-NCR rooftop EPC. It models Indian stages (15 working project stages plus Complete and Cancelled), Indian compliance (DISCOM varieties, PM Surya Ghar, GBI, net-metering timelines), Indian payments (GST invoices, cheque-bounce workflows, Razorpay checkout), and Indian money (₹ symbols, lakh and crore). Pricing is in INR, and a 30-day trial starts directly from the pricing page with no card and no call.
How much does a solar CRM typically cost?
Per-user models run ₹800 to ₹2,600 per user per month (Zoho), $60 to $100 per user per month (LeadSquared, roughly ₹5,000 to ₹8,400), or $59 and up per user per month (Sunbase, roughly ₹5,575 and up). A field team of installers, engineers and telecallers gets expensive fast under per-seat billing. Solar Spine is ₹10,000 a month or ₹99,999 a year plus 18% GST for unlimited users, one price for the whole company, whether five people or fifty. No setup fee, nothing per project, cancel any time.
Can a solar CRM send WhatsApp updates to customers?
Solar Spine ships click-to-chat WhatsApp linked from the project screen, with the conversation logged against the customer record; it does not send templated or automated WhatsApp messages. Zoho ships WhatsApp natively, with full two-way inbox logging reserved for its higher tiers; LeadSquared ships built-in WhatsApp with templates and automated messages; Sunbase has no WhatsApp integration.
Where this leads next
Run one real project through it this month. You will know by the end of it.
30 days free, no card, no call. Then ₹10,000 a month for the whole company, however many people you put on it.