It left Gmail in March, but only halfway

NetHunt CRM has spent roughly a decade as the CRM that lives inside your inbox: a sidebar next to every Gmail thread, contact records you open without leaving the mailbox, deals tied to the emails that created them. The team started in Kyiv and still calls itself a Ukrainian company, and its 2025 recap claims 10,000+ users across 93 countries. Two changes in 2026 rewrite the pitch. On March 24 it opened sign-up to any email address. On July 7 it shipped an MCP server, so ChatGPT or Claude can read and edit your CRM.

The first change is narrower than the headline. NetHunt's own changelog says "If you're not using Gmail, some features will be limited", and the list behind that sentence is long: the Gmail extension and every email feature, email campaigns, calendar events, Drive files, Google Contacts sync, Google Sheets export (you get CSV instead), Looker Studio, the "Send email" and "generate a PDF file" workflow steps, and logging in to the mobile app at all. There is no native Outlook or Microsoft 365 mailbox integration. The help centre sends Outlook users to third-party connectors such as viaSocket, Integrately and Zoho Flow.

So on Microsoft 365, NetHunt is a messenger inbox with a database attached. On Google Workspace it is something else entirely. Every plan gets Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive and Shared Drives, and Google Chat, and Google Contacts sync daily (hourly on Business Plus). Records and custom fields are unlimited on every tier.

Pricing: the plan you actually need is Business

There is no free plan. The 14-day trial opens every feature except custom SMTP for campaigns, has no user limit and asks for no card - in NetHunt's words, "you do not attach your card and do not need to cancel anything". When it ends, the workspace locks until you pick a plan. Billing is per user, and one user is one email address. Prices below were checked on nethunt.com/pricing on November 12, 2026.

The table hides a cliff. Basic has no workflows, no reports and no email campaigns. Basic Plus adds campaigns and the personal WhatsApp and Telegram connectors, but still no automation and still no reports. Webhooks, lead distribution, pipeline automation, email sequences, custom SMTP, activity and sales performance reports, and goals all begin at Business. A five-person team that wants something as ordinary as "when a deal reaches Proposal, create a follow-up task" is paying $300 a month on monthly billing.

NetHunt says annual billing saves 20%, which holds for the two cheaper plans. For Business and Business Plus it does not publish the annual figure at all, so the real price of the plan most teams need is a sales conversation. Do not budget on a discount nobody has quoted you.

The 2,000 automation actions on Business work out to about 90 per working day for the whole workspace, not per rep. Extra packs start at 5,000 actions for $20 a month and run to 1 million for $720. Two discounts are worth knowing: startups founded less than three years ago get 75% off Business for the first 12 months, and non-profits get 25% off by emailing sales. That startup deal is by far the cheapest route into the automation tier.

Messenger inboxes are where it beats other Gmail CRMs

Most Gmail CRMs assume the deal happens in email. NetHunt assumes some of it happens on WhatsApp. Facebook Messenger, Instagram, a Viber bot and a Telegram bot are on every plan; personal WhatsApp and personal Telegram accounts start at Basic Plus. WhatsApp Business support shipped in September 2025, and the iOS app got the messenger inbox in June 2026. Chats land on the contact record next to the email history, which is the whole point.

The catch is the counting. Messenger accounts are capped per workspace, not per user: 1, 3, 7 and 15 across the four priced plans. You can mix channels - NetHunt's own example is "7 Instagram accounts OR 5 Instagram accounts and 2 WhatsApp accounts" - but the total is the total. A six-rep team where every rep sells from their own WhatsApp number blows through Basic Plus's three and lands on Business for that reason alone. LinkedIn, listed as "Professional Network" in the pricing table, is also a Business feature.

AI: bring your own assistant

NetHunt has no built-in AI assistant, no AI email writer and no AI add-on to buy. What it has is an MCP server, launched July 7, 2026 and listed on every plan. You authorize ChatGPT, Claude or another MCP-compatible tool over OAuth, and then ask it about your pipeline in plain language or have it create and update records. It can also create folders and custom fields. Permissions follow the person who connected it: "AI can only access data the connected user is already allowed to view and edit."

That is a fair trade if your team already pays for ChatGPT or Claude, because you use the model you know and NetHunt charges nothing extra. If nobody does, the AI story costs another subscription per seat. And an assistant allowed to create custom fields can litter your schema in an afternoon, so connect it from an admin account first and hand it to reps later.

MCP traffic counts against the API quota. The pricing table lists API access "including MCP" at 5,000 calls a day on Basic, rising to 50,000 on Business Plus. The plan cards on the same page show API access only from Business, though, and an older help article quotes lower numbers. Get the limit for your plan in writing before you build anything on it.

What the sales page leaves out

No refunds, ever. "NetHunt does not issue refunds. You can cancel anytime, but no refund is provided for any unused portion of your subscription." That applies to annual plans too, and payment is by card only. Use the full 14-day trial before you commit to a year.

Your data sits in the US. Everything is stored on Google Cloud in us-central1, encrypted at rest, with 2FA on every plan. NetHunt has passed Google's security assessment every year since 2019. It states plainly that it is not HIPAA compliant, its GDPR page reads like it was written in 2020, and we found no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 claim. An EU buyer who needs EU data residency should look elsewhere, and so should anyone handling patient data.

Support is email-first. Replies come within 24 hours on Basic, Basic Plus and Business, and within 12 hours on Business Plus. Business includes two calls a month with an assistant and Business Plus four; past that, sessions are $150 an hour.

Leaving is manageable. Import and export are on every plan, and on Workspace you can export to Google Sheets. Deleting the workspace deletes all of its data, so export before you cancel, not after.

NetHunt vs Streak, Copper and Pipedrive

Streak is the closest rival: it also lives in Gmail, and it suits a team whose deals really are email threads. Pick NetHunt over it when Instagram DMs and WhatsApp chats matter as much as email. Copper is the other Workspace-native option and built around email and calendar rather than messenger chats.

If your company runs on Microsoft 365, skip all three and look at Pipedrive, which syncs with Outlook natively rather than through a third-party connector. If WhatsApp is the only gap in a CRM you already like, TimelinesAI bolts it on without a migration. Our best CRM software roundup covers the wider field.

Verdict

NetHunt is a good CRM for one specific team: three to fifteen people on Google Workspace, selling over WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram as much as over email, and willing to pay for Business. For them it puts every conversation on one record without leaving Gmail, and the MCP connector lets the ChatGPT or Claude seats they already pay for query the pipeline. A young startup gets that tier at 75% off for a year, which makes the choice easy.

It is the wrong buy in three cases. Microsoft 365 shops lose most of the product and should take Pipedrive. Teams who want automation on a Basic budget get none, since workflows and reports start at $60 per user a month. And anyone who needs HIPAA, SOC 2 or EU data residency will not find them here. NetHunt itself claims 4.6 on G2 and 4.8 on Capterra; the 14-day trial, with no card and no refunds afterwards, is the only rating that should decide it for you.

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