Getting started

There are two options of getting started: Register at app.twenty.com and start right away on the devs instance or self-host Twenty on your own server. I did the ladder, so let's discuss how that. The basic steps I took were

point twenty.hyteck.de to a server
Install traefik on the server (I cheated, traefik was already installed)
Deploy this docker-compose.yml with this env file

Then visit the domain and set up the first user.

Features

Twenty offers an initial datamodel that you should be familiar from other CRMs. the standards objects are

Persons A individual person. You can attach notes, E-Mails, etc..
Companies The same for organizations. Organization websites must be unique
Opportunities The classic opportunity with customizable stages
Notes They can be attached to any of the objects above
Tasks Items to work on
Workflows Automations similar to Salesforce flows. E.g. you can create a task every time an Opportunity is created.

The basic datamodel can be extended in the GUI. Here is how my "Company" model looks like

You can add any of the following fields to an object.

Workflows

Workflows are Twenty's way of allowing users to build automations. You can start a Workflow when a Record is created, updated or deleted. In addition, they can be started manually, on a schedule and via Webhook (yeah!).

You can then add nodes that trigger actions. Available right now are

Creating, updating or deleting a record
Searching records
Sending E-Mails This is the only option to trigger e-mails so far
Code Serverless Javascript functions
Form The form will pop up on the user's screen when the workflow is launched from a manual trigger. For other types of triggers, it will be displayed in the Workflow run record page.
HTTP request Although possible via Code, this is a handy shortcut to trigger HTTP requests

What is currently completely missing are Foreach-loops and conditions. I can not say "If Opportunity stage is updated to X do Y else, do Z". Without this, Workflows are really limited in their power.

What already seems quite mature though is the code option. It allows to put in arbitrary code and output a result.

I did not try a lot, but I assume most basic Javascript works. I successfully built an http request that send data to a server.

If what you're doing is straightforward enough to not use loops and conditions or if oyu are okay with doing all of them in the Code node, you can do basically anything.

API

Twenty offers an extensive API that allows you to basically do everything. It's well documented and easy to use.

Here is an example of me, syncing Rescue Organizations from notfellchen.org to Twenty.

import requests

from fellchensammlung.models import RescueOrganization


def sync_rescue_org_to_twenty(rescue_org: RescueOrganization, base_url, token: str):
    if rescue_org.twenty_id:
        update = True
    else:
        update = False

    payload = {
        "eMails": {
            "primaryEmail": rescue_org.email,
            "additionalEmails": None
        },
        "domainName": {
            "primaryLinkLabel": rescue_org.website,
            "primaryLinkUrl": rescue_org.website,
            "additionalLinks": []
        },
        "name": rescue_org.name,
    }

    if rescue_org.location:
        payload["address"] = {
            "addressStreet1": f"{rescue_org.location.street} {rescue_org.location.housenumber}",
            "addressCity": rescue_org.location.city,
            "addressPostcode": rescue_org.location.postcode,
            "addressCountry": rescue_org.location.countrycode,
            "addressLat": rescue_org.location.latitude,
            "addressLng": rescue_org.location.longitude,
        }
    headers = {
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"
    }

    if update:
        url = f"{base_url}/rest/companies/{rescue_org.twenty_id}"
        response = requests.patch(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
        assert response.status_code == 200
    else:
        url = f"{base_url}/rest/companies"
        response = requests.post(url, json=payload, headers=headers)
        assert response.status_code == 201
        rescue_org.twenty_id = response.json()["data"]["createCompany"]["id"]
        rescue_org.save()

The Company, Business Model and Paid Features

The company behind Twenty is called "Twenty.com PBC" and mostly seems to consist of former AirBnB employees in Paris. The company is probably backed by Venture Capital. The current business model is to charge for using the company's instance of Twenty. It starts at 9$/user/month without enterprise features. SSO and support will cost you 19$/user/month.

Selfhosting is free but SSO is locked behind an enterprise badge with seemingly no way to pay for activating it. I suspect that in the future more features will become "Enterprise only" even when self-hosting. All contributors must agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA), therefore I believe they could change the License in the future, including switching away from Open Source.

Conclusion

Twenty is a really promising start of building a good CRM. The ease of customizing the datamodel, using the API and a solid beginning to Flows allows users to get a lot of value from it already. Flows need some more work to become as powerful as they should be and the E-Mail integration needs to get better.

Stating the obvious: This is not something that could ever replace Salesforce. But it doesn't have to! There are many organizations that would benefit a lot from a CRM like Twenty, they simply don't need, can't handle or don't want to pay for all the features other CRMs offer.

If Twenty continues to focus on small to medium companies and the right mix of standard features vs. custom development options I see a bright future for it. There are the usual problems of VC-backed OSS development, we shall see how it goes for them.

Addendum: Important Features

Here is a short list of features I missed and their place on the roadmap if they have one

Compose & Send E-Mails Planned Q4 2025
Foreach loops in Workflows Q3 2025
Conditions in Flows Q4 2025

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