The Close alternative for teams that live on the phone
SAGARIS is a Close alternative for teams whose day is the phone and whose follow-up has to happen without anyone remembering to do it. Both are a CRM with calling, email and SMS in one seat. The differences are the price shape, what surrounds the dialer, and whether inbound calls are answered by an AI. Close is cheaper. We publish $499 per seat per month, and our pricing page states no usage charges on the published plans.
Close facts read from www.close.com's own pricing page on October 5, 2026
SAGARIS vs Close, on the facts
| Dimension | SAGARIS | Close |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | $499 per seat per month, printed in plain server-rendered HTML on our pricing page. Monthly on the founding plan, cancel anytime. | Four published plans, per user per month, monthly or annual: Solo $19 or $9, Essentials $49 or $35, Growth $109 or $99, Scale $149 or $139 (read October 5, 2026). More granular than most of this category publishes. |
| What the seat price includes on calls | Calling is in the seat and the usage is not invoiced. Our pricing page states no usage charges on the published plans, with calls, texts, email and AI included up to the plan's limits (sagaris.ai/pricing, read October 6, 2026). No per-minute charge and no per-number line rental arrive on the bill afterwards. | Calling is billed on usage on top of the seat. Its pricing page states that most outbound calls cost around $0.02 per minute and phone numbers start at about $1 per month, and Call Assistant for recording, transcription and summaries is an add-on at $50 per month per organization plus $0.02 per minute (close.com/pricing, October 5, 2026). |
| AI metering | Not sold to you as credits, and this row deliberately claims nothing stronger than that. Our pricing page states AI is included up to the plan's limits with no usage charges on the published plans (sagaris.ai/pricing, read October 6, 2026). What it does not do is price AI work in a currency you buy, spend and top up as a separate line. | AI credits per user per month, refreshing monthly with no rollover, with an account pool: 500 on Solo, 1,000 on Essentials (10,000 pool), 1,500 on Growth (15,000), 2,000 on Scale (20,000). Additional credits are available to buy. |
| Dialing | Parallel dialing on number pools provisioned to your workspace and never shared, each capped at 50 dials a day, with local presence matching, health monitoring and carrier registration tracked per number. | A power dialer listed from the Growth plan and a predictive dialer from Scale. Calling and SMS usage is passed through at cost: its pricing page puts phone numbers at about $1 per month (close.com/pricing, October 5, 2026). |
| Inbound AI voice | An AI receptionist answers real inbound calls around the clock, qualifies the caller, books on a connected calendar and warm-transfers to a human. | Not a product category listed on Close's own pricing page. |
| Where a solo operator lands | One price, $499 per seat. We do not publish a cheaper tier for a single user. | A Solo plan at $9 per user per month on annual billing (close.com/pricing, October 5, 2026), limited to one user and 10,000 leads, with workflows excluded. If you are one person with a laptop, this is the honest answer and it is not ours. |
| Trying it | A live workflow run on your own pipeline data, scheduled with a founder. | A 14-day free trial with no credit card, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee, both stated on its pricing page. Lower friction than ours, plainly. |
The price shape is the decision, not the price
Close costs less per seat than SAGARIS at every published tier, and the comparison a buyer actually has to do is not seat against seat. Close bills calling on usage: its own pricing page puts outbound calls at around $0.02 per minute, phone numbers at about $1 per month, and Call Assistant, which records, transcribes and summarises the call, at $50 per month per organization plus $0.02 per minute (close.com/pricing, October 5, 2026). AI usage is metered in credits that refresh monthly and do not roll over.
So the number to put next to our $499 is a Close seat plus the minutes that seat will actually talk, plus the numbers it dials from, plus Call Assistant if you want the calls transcribed, plus credits if the AI is doing real work, all priced on close.com/pricing as read on October 5, 2026. For a rep who is on the phone all day that arithmetic moves a long way, and it moves further the busier the rep gets. For a rep who calls occasionally it does not, and Close is cheaper.
Neither shape is dishonest, and the difference worth naming is the invoice rather than the meter. With Close, minutes, numbers, transcription and AI credits are billed on top of the seat, so a busier month is a bigger invoice. Our pricing page states no usage charges on the published plans, so a busier month does not change the recurring bill. One shape is cheaper for light use; the other cannot surprise a budget holder. Do the arithmetic with your own expected minutes before you sign.
What surrounds the dialer
Close lists a power dialer from Growth and a predictive dialer from Scale, so this is not a comparison between dialing and not dialing. It is a comparison between a dialer and the infrastructure underneath one.
Every SAGARIS number is provisioned to your workspace and never shared with another customer, and each one is capped at fifty dials a day. Local presence matches the area being called, number health is monitored continuously, and carrier registration is tracked per number. That is the part that decides whether your calls are still getting answered next month, because on a shared pool one team's volume burns another team's reputation and no amount of dialing speed brings a flagged number back.
The other difference is what happens when the phone rings the other way. A SAGARIS AI receptionist answers real inbound calls, qualifies the caller, reads a connected calendar's free and busy time so it only ever offers a slot that is genuinely open, books the meeting, and warm-transfers to a person on request. Inbound AI voice is not a category on Close's pricing page.
Where Close is the better buy
If you are one person, Close sells you a real CRM with calling, email and SMS for $9 per user per month on annual billing (close.com/pricing, October 5, 2026). We have nothing at that price and we are not going to invent a reason why you should pay ours instead.
If you want to try before you talk to anybody, Close gives you fourteen days with no credit card and a thirty-day money-back guarantee, both published. Our equivalent is a live workflow run scheduled with a founder, which is more useful and more friction, and for some buyers that trade is the wrong way round.
If your stack depends on connectors, Close advertises an integration surface far wider than ours. Our own integration pages say exactly what we connect to and, just as plainly, what we do not: no Microsoft 365, no Calendly, no Pipedrive, no marketplace app in any automation tool. If one of those is load-bearing for you, that is a real reason to buy Close and you should not have to find it out during a trial.
Who should pick which
Close is the better fit if...
These are the cases where we would tell you so on a call, so they may as well be on the page.
- You are a solo operator or a team of two or three, and the $9 or $35 per user Close published on close.com/pricing on October 5, 2026 is the difference between buying software and not.
- Your reps make a handful of calls a day, so paying for the minutes you use costs less than a $499 seat with an included balance you will not spend.
- You need to self-serve: sign up, import, and be selling this afternoon without talking to anybody.
- A connector we do not have, Microsoft 365 and Pipedrive most often, is load-bearing in your stack today.
Choose SAGARIS if...
The trade runs the other way once the phone is the job rather than one of the channels.
- Your reps are on the phone all day, and you would rather the bill stayed at the seat price while heavy use draws down an included balance than watch minutes, transcription and credits accumulate on an invoice.
- You want number reputation you control: your own pools, never shared, a hard fifty-dial daily cap per number, local presence and registration tracked.
- You want inbound calls answered, qualified and booked by an AI receptionist rather than going to voicemail.
- You want the follow-up to happen without anybody remembering: the summary writes itself to the record, and the next email or text goes from the same system.
Close questions, answered plainly.
The questions buyers actually type when they compare the two. Where we do not know, we say so.
- MOST ASKED
If the phone is the job, yes. Both are a CRM with calling, email and SMS in one seat. SAGARIS adds parallel dialing on number pools you own, an inbound AI receptionist, and a $499 seat our pricing page says carries no usage charges on the published plans. If you are a solo operator or a light caller, Close is cheaper and we would say so.
Close publishes four plans per user per month, monthly or annual: Solo $19 or $9, Essentials $49 or $35, Growth $109 or $99, and Scale $149 or $139, read from its own pricing page on October 5, 2026. Calling is billed on usage on top of that: its page says calling and SMS usage is passed through at cost, at around $0.02 per minute, with phone numbers from about $1 per month.
On the seat, yes, at every tier. Whether it is cheaper in total depends on how much your reps talk. Close bills minutes, numbers, call transcription and AI credits on top of the seat, so its invoice grows with use. Our pricing page states no usage charges on the published plans, so the recurring bill is the seat. Do that arithmetic with your own expected minutes before you decide.
Yes. Its pricing page lists a power dialer from the Growth plan and a predictive dialer from Scale. The SAGARIS difference is not whether there is a dialer but what is underneath it: number pools provisioned to your workspace and never shared, a hard fifty-dials-per-day cap on each number, local presence matching and carrier registration tracked per number.
SAGARIS does. An AI receptionist answers real inbound calls, qualifies the caller, reads free and busy time on a connected calendar so it only offers a slot that is open, books the meeting and warm-transfers to a human on request. Inbound AI voice is not a category listed on Close's own pricing page.
Not in the same way, and Close is easier here. Close publishes a fourteen-day trial with no credit card and a thirty-day money-back guarantee. What we offer is a live workflow run on your own pipeline data with a founder on the call, which tells you more and costs you a scheduled hour.