WordPress CRM Plugin Alternative: A Kanban Sales Pipeline

A lightweight pipeline for sites that already collect leads and orders.

Who this is for

Freelancers, small agencies and shops that get leads through a WordPress site and need a simple way to follow them up. KanbanWP is a board for tracking deals, not a full WordPress CRM plugin with contact databases and email sequences. If you need contact databases, email sequences and forecasting, use a dedicated CRM. If you need to see who needs a reply today, a board is often enough.

The Sales template

Create a board from the Sales template and you get these stages:

  1. Lead
  2. Contacted
  3. Proposal
  4. Negotiation
  5. Won
  6. Lost

Labels for Hot, Warm and Cold are included so you can mark how likely a deal is.

Sales cards in the list view

Getting leads onto the board

  • Forms. Any form plugin can create a card by firing the kanbanwp_form_submission action with a title, description, board and optional stage. The name and email are added to the card description. Contact Form 7 is shown as an example in the forms guide.
  • WooCommerce. In Settings, Integrations, pick a board and stage for new orders. Each new order creates a card with the order total, items and a link back to the order. You can do the same for newly published products. See WooCommerce.
  • CSV import for an existing list of prospects. Columns can include title, description, stage, priority, assignee, due date and labels.
  • REST API and MCP if you want to create cards from your own scripts or an AI agent.

Working the pipeline

  • Put the next follow-up date in the due date, and use the calendar and My Tasks views to see what is due.
  • Use a checklist for your proposal steps, and attachments for the proposal itself.
  • Use custom fields for deal value or source. See custom fields.
  • Use comments with @mentions to hand a lead to a colleague.
  • Send new-card and stage-change events to your own systems with webhooks, or to a team channel through Slack and Discord.
  • Check the reports screen for workload per person and average cycle time.

A few habits that help

  • Keep Won and Lost as the last stages so the board shows outcomes at a glance.
  • Set a WIP limit on Proposal so proposals actually get sent.
  • Review Contacted every morning. Cards that sit there longest need attention first.

Install KanbanWP, then see all features. Want AI to draft follow-ups and summaries from your pipeline? See AI project management. Compare board tools in best free kanban board software in 2027.