Orbit

Orbit is a CRM that keeps every deal moving. When a customer replies, Orbit puts that deal in your NOW queue and tells you why, so you always know who to follow up with next. It is free and open source under the MIT licence, and you run it yourself.

What you work with

• NOW is your list of deals that need you, highest score first. Each one shows why it is there: a customer reply, a delivery problem, or a score that just moved up a band.
• Each deal’s page shows its stage, owner, value and score, the customer activity behind the score, the suggested next action, and every message you have sent.
• Customer records hold your contacts, companies and deals, with your own fields. You can bring contacts and companies in from a CSV file and merge duplicates.
• Your contact form is a simple landing page you write and publish from Orbit. Each enquiry becomes a contact with the enquiry on its timeline.
• Collaborators sign in with their own email address. You choose what each one can see and change.
• Reports count what is in your records, and Notifications tell you when a deal needs you or a message could not be delivered.

How a score works

A score is what customers did, added up. A booked meeting adds 45, a reply 40, a form 25, a chat 20, and smaller things like a page view add a little. An unsubscribe or a bounced email takes points away. Older activity counts for less and stops counting after 30 days. Your own notes never change a score.

Scores run from 0 to 100. A score of 70 or more is high and 40 or more is medium. Open any deal to see what each piece of activity added.

You approve every email

Orbit sends nothing to a customer on its own. You review the exact message, the recipient and the subject, then approve it. If anything changes after you looked, such as a new reply from the customer, Orbit asks you to look again.

When a customer replies, Orbit cancels any follow-up you scheduled for that person. Messages you send outside the recipient’s working hours wait for your confirmation of their local time.

Run it on your computer

Orbit needs Node 22.20.0 and pnpm 10.12.4. From a copy of the code, run:

rer install
rer setup --owner-email EMAIL
rer dev

setup makes you the owner. dev starts Orbit and prints its address and a link to a local outbox: open the outbox and follow the newest sign-in link. No email is sent from your computer. Your first sign-in asks for your business name, time zone, currency and pipeline stages, and then you are in.

Stop it with rer dev --stop or Ctrl-C. Your data stays on your computer between runs.

Where to go next

1. Local command reference covers every local command, including reset, export and import.
2. Operations shows how to deploy Orbit for your team and keep a backup.
3. Signals and customer mail connects your email and other tools, so replies and activity reach your deals.
4. Updating and recovery explains how to update a deployed Orbit safely, with a backup first.