Twenty
Twenty 2.53 lets apps lock field permission actions, a day after role-aware relation pickers.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Close CRM Blog and Twenty — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Close ships a ChatGPT app, turning the CRM into a callable system for reports, lead research, and customer summaries.
Close's biggest April release is its official ChatGPT app, exposing report generation, lead-list research, customer-interaction summaries, and Workflow creation as things a sales rep can ask ChatGPT to do. Earlier work added Call Tasks (call-typed reminders that auto-complete when a Call activity lands), Smart Views column calculations (sums, averages, min/max instead of a spreadsheet export), and a reworked Opportunities List. February cleaned up Workflows with View-Run shortcuts and per-step communication-schedule overrides.
Twenty 2.52 lets apps run their own account-connection flows and adds inbox sharing.
Twenty 2.52.0 has a breaking change: apps can now connect accounts through their own authorization flow, and members manage personal app connections from preferences. The release also adds inbox thread sharing, global chat commands, email approval review, and weekly AI credits shown in chat. Much of the rest rebuilds record-form editing for emails, phones, links, files and addresses, and brings back table and toggle controls lost in 2.51's TipTap switch.
Close's biggest April release is its official ChatGPT app, exposing report generation, lead-list research, customer-interaction summaries, and Workflow creation as things a sales rep can ask ChatGPT to do. Earlier work added Call Tasks (call-typed reminders that auto-complete when a Call activity lands), Smart Views column calculations (sums, averages, min/max instead of a spreadsheet export), and a reworked Opportunities List. February cleaned up Workflows with View-Run shortcuts and per-step communication-schedule overrides.
Close is positioning itself as the CRM that sales operators run through chat rather than through the app shell. The ChatGPT integration is the visible surface for that bet, and recent Workflow improvements have been making Close more controllable from the outside — both pointing at an agent-mediated CRM. Smart Views aggregations also remove the most common reason reps export to spreadsheets, keeping work in-app.
Expect a native in-app AI assistant matching the ChatGPT app's capability set, more writable API surface to support agentic workflows (likely an MCP server within months), and continued reduction of the cases where reps leave Close to use other tools.
Twenty 2.52.0 has a breaking change: apps can now connect accounts through their own authorization flow, and members manage personal app connections from preferences. The release also adds inbox thread sharing, global chat commands, email approval review, and weekly AI credits shown in chat. Much of the rest rebuilds record-form editing for emails, phones, links, files and addresses, and brings back table and toggle controls lost in 2.51's TipTap switch.
Twenty is pushing its app platform outward: third-party apps now own their auth and channels, and SDK packages ship in lockstep with core. Alongside it, the product is building a shared inbox and an AI chat with metered credits and human approval steps. The editor and form work shows a team still paying down 2.51's TipTap migration.
Expect a 2.52.x patch round for the new connection flow and record-form bricks, and more approval-gated AI actions in chat. Removal of the deprecated blocknote sub-field is still pending.
Other CRM products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Close CRM Blog or Twenty.
Twenty 2.53 lets apps lock field permission actions, a day after role-aware relation pickers.
IntegCRM keeps building out invoicing, bookings, forms and email for service businesses.
folk ships a French interface weeks after moving its data storage to Europe.
GroupOffice patches its current 26.0 line and the older 25.0 line on the same afternoon.
Close takes Chloe Chat out of beta for every customer, a month after OIDC SSO.
Corteza 2026.9.0 goes final after a week of single-fix candidates.
See all Close CRM Blog alternatives → · See all Twenty alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Twenty is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Twenty is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other CRM products to evaluate alongside.
Top Close CRM Blog alternatives in CRM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Close CRM Blog alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/close-crm-blog for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top Twenty alternatives in CRM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Twenty alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/twenty for the full list with editorial commentary on each.