How to set up call recording for a small sales team in 2026 — without a $200/mo CRM

The default answer to “how do we record sales calls” is to buy a CRM that bundles it. HubSpot Sales Hub Professional (with calling) is $90/seat/month plus minutes. Salesforce Sales Cloud with Service Cloud Voice is north of $150/seat. For a 10-seat team that’s $900–$1,500 a month before you’ve recorded a single call.

You don’t need any of that. Here’s how to wire up call recording end-to-end for under $30/seat including SIP, with auto-linking to deals.

The stack

• A SIP trunk or VoIP provider for the actual phone numbers and minutes (Twilio, JustCall, Plivo, Telnyx, or your country’s equivalent — $5–$15/seat depending on volume)
• A free Windows softphone (MicroSIP) on each rep’s laptop
• A CRM with auto-linked recording (NerdCRM at $4/seat — disclosure: I build it; you’d otherwise need to bolt recording onto a different CRM)

Total: about $9–$20/seat/month plus per-minute SIP charges.

Why this works

Call recording is three problems pretending to be one:

1. Capture — actually getting the audio off the phone
2. Storage — putting it somewhere you can listen to later
3. Linking — connecting the recording to the right deal

Most of the value is in (3). If you solve (1) and (2) but skip (3), nobody listens to the recordings, and you’ve recreated WhatsApp.

Step 1 — Pick a SIP provider

Any SIP provider whose softphone integration writes to a local recording folder will work. Common picks:

• Twilio Programmable Voice — global, flexible, slightly higher cost
• JustCall — sales-focused, includes a basic CRM that you’d ignore
• Plivo — cheap, good in Asia
• Telnyx — cheap, good in US/EU
• A local VoIP provider — often cheapest if you’re outside the US

Get SIP credentials (server, username, password) — you’ll paste them into MicroSIP.

Step 2 — Install MicroSIP on each rep’s machine

MicroSIP is a free Windows softphone — install it, paste in SIP credentials from your provider, place a test call. Set the recording folder under Menu → Settings → Audio.

If you’re a Mac shop, you’ll either use the SIP provider’s own softphone or look at Linphone. Today the auto-link agent is Windows-only.

Step 3 — Pick a CRM that does the linking

This is where most teams get stuck. Options:

• NerdCRM ($4/seat) — auto-links recordings by phone number out of the box. Disclosure: I build it.
• Bigin + a third-party recorder — needs glue code; recordings live in a separate tool, links don’t auto-form
• HubSpot Sales Hub Professional — bundles calling, but $90/seat
• A spreadsheet — what most small teams actually do today

If you’re already on Bigin and not ready to switch, you can write a small webhook from your SIP provider to your CRM and attach recordings via the API. It’s a few hundred lines of code. NerdCRM ships this out of the box because it’s the same problem we built around for ourselves.

Step 4 — Wire up the recorder

For NerdCRM specifically: download the recorder agent (Settings → Integrations → Recorder agent), point it at your MicroSIP recording folder, paste your org’s recorder token. Done. Each new recording is uploaded direct-to-S3 via a presigned URL and attached to the matching deal.

For other CRMs: write a script that watches the recording folder, parses MicroSIP’s filename for the dialed number, and POSTs to your CRM’s API to create an attachment on the matching contact. Roughly 100–200 lines of Node or Python.

What you should expect to pay

Item	Per seat / month
SIP minutes (1000 min)	$5–$15
MicroSIP softphone	$0
CRM with auto-linked recording	$4 (NerdCRM)
Total	$9–$20/seat

Compare to HubSpot Sales Hub Professional (with calling): $90/seat plus minutes.

What this gets you

• A searchable archive of every sales call your team makes
• Onboarding material for new reps that’s actually real (your top reps’ calls, by stage)
• The ability to settle disputes by replaying the actual conversation
• Faster callback handling — reps catch up on the prior call in 90 seconds

If you run a phone-heavy team and you’re paying $90+/seat for a CRM you don’t fully use, this is the easiest cost cut in your stack. The live demo is seeded with a sample workspace; click around without signing up.