Solar workflow depth
Can the product carry system details, proposal status, project milestones, and the delivery handoff without rebuilding the process in custom fields?
Quickest Solar CRM is our first pick for a small Solomon Islands installer whose immediate problem is slow quoting and follow up that nobody owns. That placement uses a disclosed proposal-first adoption lens and still requires a Solomon Islands proof step. OpenSolar is the clearest free design-first option, Pylon pairs design with an optional CRM, and Sunbase publishes wider solar operations. We compared seven tools against SBD documents, adviser-approved tax, Solomon Power connection stages, provincial logistics, off-grid and community systems, cyclone-rated design and handover.
Direct answer
Choose Quickest when proposal speed, lead ownership, field adoption and a free pilot are the first priorities. QuickEstimate owns Quickest and its published evidence is India-first, so Solomon Islands currency, tax, Solomon Power fields, provincial logistics, hosting and support all remain unverified until a demo proves them. OpenSolar is better when free solar design leads the purchase. Because grid coverage is concentrated around Honiara and a few provincial centres, off-grid design and service records usually matter more than interconnection features.
7 jobs, 7 picks
A useful shortlist starts with the sales or delivery bottleneck. Each winner below reflects a different buying priority, while the overall ranking rewards a CRM that a solar sales team can adopt quickly.
Small mobile sales teams
Free: 1 user and 10 proposals monthly. Pro: INR 6,999 per user yearly, minimum 3 users. 02Best free design-first optionOpenSolarStartups combining solar design, proposals and project CRM
OpenSolar says partners fund the model; review services and connected costs. 03Best compact design and CRM trialPylonTeams wanting solar and battery proposals with optional CRM
New users receive five Standard Project credits; confirm Solomon Islands commercial terms. 04Best broad solar operations candidateSunbaseEstablished teams evaluating a wider solar sales and project platform
Request Solomon Islands users, modules, implementation, integrations, support and renewal pricing. 05Best configurable general CRMZoho CRMTeams with an administrator and several sales or service lines
The reviewed global page publishes USD prices and adds local taxes. 06Best configurable operations suiteOdooBusinesses joining CRM with sales, inventory, field service and accounting
Confirm current plan, apps, users, hosting, implementation, localisation and customisation. 07Best for marketing-led acquisitionHubSpot CRMTeams prioritising forms, email, meetings and pipeline
Official page states up to 2 free users and 1,000 contacts; price all required hubs.How we evaluated
We saved English and Solomon Islands Pijin search attempts across Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave and Mojeek, then traced one record from an enquiry through site visit, load assessment, quotation, deposit, design, electrical work, any Solomon Power application, procurement, inter-island shipping, installation, commissioning, invoicing, handover and service. Ranking rewards focused sales adoption first, then solar design, operational breadth, field usability, finance fit and configurable CRM depth. Solomon Islands facts come from Solomon Power and the Inland Revenue Division, which were the official sources that responded when we checked on the reviewed date.
Can the product carry system details, proposal status, project milestones, and the delivery handoff without rebuilding the process in custom fields?
Can managers route leads, track activity, automate follow-up, forecast revenue, and see why an opportunity stalled?
Can a rep move from site information to a credible customer proposal, and how much specialist solar design happens inside the platform?
Does the workflow support the language, currency, tax, communications, documents, and handoffs common in Solomon Islands?
What setup, migration, training, administration, and extra software does the apparent subscription require?
At-a-glance matrix
The table separates CRM depth from proposal, design, and operations coverage. Confirm plan limits and country availability in writing before signing.
Local billing check: confirm SBD pricing, tax treatment, contract currency, and payment fees in writing.
| Platform | Best for | Public price | Solar proposals | Design | Project operations | CRM depth | Free access |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Quickest Solar CRM | Small mobile sales teams | Free plan; Pro in INR | Focused branded proposals | Solomon Islands inputs unverified | Lead stages and follow up | Focused solar sales CRM | 1 user, 10 proposals monthly |
| 2OpenSolar | Startups combining solar design, proposals and project CRM | Free core platform | Interactive and PDF proposals | Native solar and storage design | Project CRM, tasks, schedules and files | Solar project CRM | Core platform described as free |
| 3Pylon | Teams wanting solar and battery proposals with optional CRM | Dollar pricing shown; confirm currency | Web and PDF proposals | Solar and battery design | Optional solar CRM and integrations | Solar CRM available | Five Standard Project credits |
| 4Sunbase | Established teams evaluating a wider solar sales and project platform | Quote required | Solar proposal capabilities published | Connect or verify design scope | Sales and operational solar workflows | Broad solar CRM | Request demo and trial terms |
| 5Zoho CRM | Teams with an administrator and several sales or service lines | Free for 3 users; paid USD tiers | Configure CPQ or connect a proposal tool | Specialist solar tool required | Custom modules, workflow, reports, portals and APIs | Broad general CRM | Free edition for 3 users |
| 6Odoo | Businesses joining CRM with sales, inventory, field service and accounting | One app free; paid plans published | Sales quotations and signatures | Specialist solar design required | CRM, sales, inventory, accounting, field service and more | General CRM within modular ERP | One app free plan stated |
| 7HubSpot CRM | Teams prioritising forms, email, meetings and pipeline | Free CRM; paid hubs available | Connect or configure proposal software | Specialist solar tool required | Paid sales and service expansion | Broad customer platform | Up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts |
Pricing and capability labels were checked against official sources on Sep 7, 2026. Currency conversion is intentionally omitted where a vendor does not publish a local price.
Country research
Solomon Islands has had some of the highest electricity tariffs in the Pacific, which makes the commercial argument for solar unusually straightforward in Honiara and the provincial centres. The difficulty is everything after the signature. Provinces are separated by open water, shipping is infrequent, coverage drops away quickly outside town, and a customer in Malaita or Western Province may be several days from the nearest technician. A CRM that only makes quoting faster is solving the part of the business that was never the constraint.
Solomon Power generates and distributes electricity in Honiara and provincial centres and is the counterparty for connection and metering. Store the customer account, the tariff category taken from the actual bill, the province and centre, the meter type, the supply phase, the requested capacity, the application route, the reference, the inspection, the fees, the appointment, the activation and the completion evidence rather than a single pipeline stage.
Solomon Power: Solomon Power ↗The Inland Revenue Division administers tax in Solomon Islands. A local solar sale mixes imported equipment, shipping, structural work, design, installation, batteries, maintenance and finance, and duty and clearance timing affect both the price and the promised date. Configure tax per line, retain the tax source and effective date, and have an adviser approve deposits, staged invoices, variations, credit notes and import treatment.
Inland Revenue Division Solomon Islands: Inland Revenue Division ↗High electricity tariffs make the saving argument strong, which raises rather than lowers the documentation standard. Store the tariff reference, the customer category taken from the actual bill, the units, the fixed charges, the self-consumption assumption, the degradation assumption, the approver and the date. A strong case badly documented still becomes a dispute when the first bill after commissioning arrives.
Solomon Power: Solomon Power ↗Inter-island shipping belongs in the sales record. Store the destination province, the shipping route, the vessel schedule, the consignment cut-off, the handling agent, the expected arrival and any anticipated second shipment, then derive the customer commitment date from those fields. With infrequent sailings, a missed vessel can hold a provincial job for several weeks.
Inland Revenue Division Solomon Islands: Inland Revenue Division ↗Off-grid and community systems make up most demand outside the centres. Store the critical load list, the autonomy target, the depth of discharge assumption, the battery chemistry, the cycle warranty, the expected replacement date, the community or church contact and the maintenance commitment agreed. Those fields carry the promise, not a projected export credit that does not apply.
Solomon Power: Solomon Power ↗Customary land and community consent are part of delivery rather than a courtesy. Store the landholding group or community contact, the permission relied on, its reference and date, the local liaison, any commitments made about training, employment or maintenance, and who witnessed them. Those commitments outlive the installation and will be raised by people who remember them clearly.
Inland Revenue Division Solomon Islands: Inland Revenue Division ↗Cyclone exposure makes the mounting specification a compliance artefact. Store the wind loading assumption, the standard referenced, the mounting system and its certification, the fixing type and spacing, the roof or ground structure assessment, the approving engineer, the date and the installation photographs. After an event that record supports a claim and lets the company triage its installed base by province.
Solomon Power: Solomon Power ↗Connectivity outside Honiara is limited enough that offline field capture is a hard requirement. Test the field application on the network the crews actually use, in the provinces they actually work, and measure sync after a full day offline with a complete survey queued, then again after replacing the device. A lost survey costs another passage rather than another drive.
Inland Revenue Division Solomon Islands: Inland Revenue Division ↗Provincial service depends entirely on what is already there. Record the monitoring arrangement, credential holder, service interval, parts held in each province, the trained local contact, the technician who can attend, the transport required and the promised response time. A CRM that cannot answer whether the spare is already on the island will send someone on a two-day journey to find out.
Solomon Power: Solomon Power ↗Full reviews
Each review explains the useful workflow, the buyer who should shortlist it, and the country-specific question that a sales demo must answer.
Quickest is first for a narrow Honiara sales adoption goal, and offline capture is what it must prove.
Quickest centres the work a small team usually has to fix first: capture the enquiry, assign an owner, produce a branded proposal quickly and make the next follow up visible. A limited free plan allows an adoption pilot before a larger migration. QuickEstimate owns Quickest and publishes this ranking, so the position depends on the disclosed method rather than on independent market recognition.
No public evidence verifies SBD quoting with validity, local tax treatment, Solomon Power fields, province filtering, shipping scheduling, community consent records or offline resilience. Run the pilot on a provincial job rather than a Honiara rooftop, because that is where a proposal-first tool either earns its place or shows that it was built for a different geography.
Choose it if: Honiara quoting speed is the first bottleneck and the offline test passes. Choose another platform if: provincial logistics, community consent and off-grid service dominate.
OpenSolar is the strongest free design-first route here, and off-grid autonomy modelling is what to examine.
OpenSolar publishes design, proposals, table and Kanban project views, custom workflows, actions, schedules, documents, roles, permissions and an API. Because most provincial systems carry the whole load rather than offsetting a bill, judge it on autonomy, depth of discharge and cycle life rather than on the roof render.
Validate local imagery, irradiance, humidity and salt handling, off-grid autonomy, equipment libraries, SBD display, tax treatment, field connectivity and document output. Change a design after acceptance and trace price, stock, tax, payment, structural approval and handover. Review privacy terms, transfers, support coverage, partner presentation and a complete account export.
Choose it if: design and customer-facing proposals lead the purchase and capital is tight. Choose another platform if: shipping, community records and provincial stock dominate the requirement list.
Pylon suits a team selling off-grid and hybrid systems, with local operation still unverified.
Pylon documents solar and battery design, web and PDF proposals, design history, integrations and a solar CRM add-on. It says new users receive credits for five Standard Projects and teams can add unlimited users. Its battery orientation matches a market where the system usually carries the whole load.
Confirm the dollar currency, the payment method available to a local business, project rules, CRM cost, taxes and renewal. Test local locations, humidity, weather and production inputs, critical loads, autonomy targets, SBD display, offline use in a province, roles and support. Model several revisions because provincial scope frequently changes after a site visit.
Choose it if: off-grid and hybrid proposals dominate the pipeline. Choose another platform if: shipping, stock and community records dominate instead.
Sunbase publishes broad solar CRM scope, and funder reporting plus province scheduling is what to test.
Sunbase positions its CRM around solar lead management, sales, communication, proposals, workflow and operational visibility. For a contractor delivering clinic, school and donor-funded installations across provinces, producing a defensible project report matters as much as the sales pipeline.
Ask for comparable customer references and use a controlled demo from enquiry through survey, proposal, deposit, invoice, procurement, vessel shipping, installation, commissioning and a service call in another province. Verify SBD handling, milestone and document control, province filtering, scheduling, roles, audit history, privacy terms, support hours, the contract price and data export.
Choose it if: a contractor delivers programme and donor-funded work across provinces. Choose another platform if: a free design tool or a simpler proposal CRM meets the immediate need.
Zoho suits a business that needs province, consent and asset records in one configurable system.
Zoho CRM offers configurable modules, fields, pipelines, workflow, reports, mobile apps, portals and APIs. Custom objects are the reason to consider it here: a community consent record, an off-grid asset with a battery replacement date and a consignment with a vessel date can each be modelled properly rather than squeezed into a deal stage.
Build or connect load assessment, solar design, SBD quotations with validity, tax treatment, payment reconciliation, stock by province, shipping scheduling, Solomon Power stages, structural approvals, commissioning, assets, warranty and handover. Test mobile offline needs in a province, processor terms, transfers, retention, API limits, support and a complete export.
Choose it if: the company has an administrator and works across provinces. Choose another platform if: the team expects ready-made solar workflows with little configuration.
Odoo fits a contractor whose imported stock and provincial service have outgrown a sales tool.
Odoo combines CRM with quotations, sales, accounting, purchasing, inventory, projects, field service, helpdesk and other applications, including multi-warehouse stock and landed cost handling. For a business staging equipment through Honiara before it reaches a province, those modules address the constraint directly.
Verify a workable localisation and the accounting route with the responsible implementation partner. Test SBD, tax and duty, landed cost with shipping, stock by province, serial numbers, planned maintenance against installed assets, field service, approvals, Solomon Power and structural evidence, warranty and migration. Connect a specialist design tool and review hosting, backups, upgrades, exit and a restorable export.
Choose it if: shipping, provincial stock, maintenance and CRM should share one suite. Choose another platform if: the business wants a solar-specific proposal product with minimal implementation.
HubSpot handles Honiara business and donor relationships and leaves provincial delivery outside.
HubSpot's free CRM covers contacts, lead management, forms, email, meetings and pipeline for a small user group. Businesses, hotels and donor programme managers in Honiara are reachable by email and respond to structured follow up, which is where HubSpot's tooling genuinely helps.
Price and test the complete stack: messaging, solar design, SBD quotation with validity, tax treatment, payment reconciliation, stock by province, shipping scheduling, offline field delivery, structural evidence, off-grid service and reporting. Use controlled fields for the province, the tariff category, the autonomy target and the structural approval.
Choose it if: Honiara business and donor relationships drive the pipeline. Choose another platform if: provincial delivery and off-grid service are the real problems.
Buyer guide
Choose by the most expensive broken handoff, then test that handoff using real opportunities, real users, and the documents your customers actually receive.
Start with Quickest when slow quoting and unowned follow up are the visible failures on Honiara work. Use the free plan on real Solomon Islands opportunities, including one provincial off-grid system. Continue only if the vendor proves SBD quoting with validity, tax handling, Solomon Power stages, province fields, offline capture, privacy, support and export.
OpenSolar fits a team that needs solar design, proposals and project CRM before it can fund a wider stack, and no core licence fee removes a cross-border payment obstacle. Because most provincial systems are off grid, test the autonomy and battery modelling harder than the rooftop layout tools.
Pylon is worth testing when web and PDF proposals, solar and battery design and an optional solar CRM all appeal. Confirm the displayed currency, the payment method available locally, model inputs, off-grid autonomy modelling, revision economics, mobile use, permissions and support hours.
Sunbase targets broader solar sales and operational workflows, which suits a contractor delivering clinic, school and donor-funded installations across provinces. Ask for comparable references and test milestone tracking, funder-grade reporting, province-aware scheduling, shipping coordination, privacy, commissioning and export.
A configurable platform can model stock by province, shipping consignments, community consent records, off-grid asset registers and service agreements together. Odoo is stronger where multi-warehouse stock and planned maintenance dominate; Zoho is the more familiar CRM route with strong custom objects.
HubSpot fits a business whose first priority is forms, campaigns, email, meetings and pipeline visibility, which suits selling to businesses, hotels and donor programme managers in Honiara who are reachable by email. Budget the solar design, shipping, tax, structural evidence and service tools around it.
Run the same three opportunities in every shortlisted CRM: one ordinary lead, one revision-heavy project, and one deal that already failed. This removes demo theatre and exposes repeated entry, stale documents, weak mobile adoption, and missing local support.
Capture a real lead, assign it, create the proposal, schedule follow-up, record acceptance, and hand it to delivery.
Change the system, equipment, price, payment route, and installation date. Identify every stale record.
Use a duplicate, missed follow-up, rejected proposal, or delayed job and ask the CRM to show what happens next.
Produce a taxable sale with separate lines for imported equipment, shipping, structural work and services, plus a deposit, a staged invoice, a variation, a credit note, a refund and a warranty replacement in SBD. Store a validity period, the cost basis and the freight assumption, and block acceptance at a stale price without approval. Have an adviser confirm tax and duty treatment in writing.
Store the province on every record: the site, the stock location, the technician, the shipping route and the service history. Test filtering the installed base by province, dispatching a crew to Western Province and reporting margin per province. A system that treats the country as one territory will hide which provinces lose money on every job.
Store the destination province, the shipping route, the vessel schedule, the consignment cut-off, the handling agent, the expected arrival and any anticipated second shipment, and derive the commitment date from those fields. Test a missed vessel and confirm the schedule, the customer notification and the revised date all follow.
Capture the customer account, the tariff category from the actual bill, the province and centre, the meter type, the phase, the requested capacity, the application route, the reference, the inspection, the fees, the appointment, the activation and the completion evidence. Test a rejection and a resubmission.
Store the critical load list, the autonomy target, the depth of discharge assumption, the battery chemistry, the cycle warranty, the expected replacement date, the community or church contact and the maintenance commitment agreed. Test a system whose usage grows after installation and confirm the CRM can flag the sizing assumption that no longer holds.
Store the landholding group or community contact, the permission relied on, its reference and date, the local liaison, commitments made about training, employment or maintenance, and who witnessed them. Test retrieving those commitments three years later, because they will be raised long after the installation team has moved on.
Store the wind loading assumption, the standard referenced, the mounting system and its certification, the fixing type and spacing, the structure assessment, the approving engineer, the date, installation photographs and the insurance position. Test producing a triage list filtered by province within an hour of a warning.
Have a field user work on the real phone in a province where coverage disappears for a full day. Capture location with a lawful purpose, load inventory, photographs, hazards, access, design inputs, equipment and serial numbers, delivery, tests, signatures, defects and commissioning. Measure sync after a day offline and again after replacing the device.
Export the accepted scope, variations, the as-built design, the structural approval, installed equipment and serial numbers, photographs, test results, commissioning, Solomon Power evidence, invoices and payment status, warranties, manuals, monitoring access, training, signatures, open defects and the service contact, plus the province, parts held there and the trained local contact.
The real budget
Solomon Islands pricing is not a currency conversion exercise, and shipping plus provincial service usually cost more than the licence. Quickest publishes INR terms, OpenSolar describes its core platform as free, Pylon shows dollar prices whose billing currency should be confirmed, and Zoho publishes USD global tiers. Sunbase needs a quote for the relevant scope. Odoo and HubSpot vary by apps, seats, contacts and implementation. Ask for billing currency, the payment method available locally, taxes, bank charges, users, projects, storage, integrations, messaging, onboarding, support hours, renewal, exit and every product needed to reach a compliant invoice and a completed provincial installation.
Free: 1 user and 10 proposals monthly. Pro: INR 6,999 per user yearly, minimum 3 users.
OpenSolar says partners fund the model; review services and connected costs.
New users receive five Standard Project credits; confirm Solomon Islands commercial terms.
Request Solomon Islands users, modules, implementation, integrations, support and renewal pricing.
Quickest lists one free user with ten proposals monthly and Pro at INR 6,999 per user yearly with a three-user minimum. Solomon Islands commercial and tax terms are unverified.
OpenSolar states that its core platform is free because partners fund the model. Review partner choices, paid services, data use, support coverage and connected system costs.
Pylon offers five Standard Project credits to new users and states unlimited team users. Confirm the displayed currency, the payment method available locally, the CRM add-on and renewal.
Zoho's reviewed page offers three free users alongside paid USD tiers. HubSpot states up to two free users and 1,000 contacts. Neither free plan supplies a complete Solomon Islands solar operating stack.
Confirm that the business can make and renew a foreign currency subscription payment before migrating a team onto a platform, because access rather than price is often the binding constraint.
Compare the cost of one complete acceptance case rather than a feature checklist, and price one unnecessary provincial trip alongside it. A service visit that could have been diagnosed from stored data is the clearest avoidable cost in a country where a passage takes days.
Ask what happens when a crew spends several days out of coverage or a consignment misses a vessel. The commercial proposal should identify queued uploads, retry limits, conflict resolution, notification, data ownership and support escalation.
Our number-one pick
Quickest concentrates on lead ownership, a mobile proposal and the next follow up, which is a practical first adoption target for a small Honiara sales team.
Its free plan lets one person test ten monthly proposals before the company commits to migration, custom integration or additional seats.
First place stays conditional on proof. SBD handling with validity, tax treatment, Solomon Power evidence, province fields, shipping scheduling and offline resilience are not verified for Solomon Islands.
Your next move
Start with Quickest and the specialist closest to your largest local requirement. Use the same evidence and test deals for both.
Name the bottleneck. Pick lead response, proposal speed, design, payment, install handoff, or management visibility.
Choose two tools. Compare Quickest with the strongest specialist for that bottleneck.
Run the Three-Deal Proof. Score adoption, repeated entry, revision handling, support, and full annual cost.
Research record
These sources support the market, regulatory, product, and pricing statements on this page. Product terms can change after the checked date.
Common questions
Quickest is first under our proposal-first adoption lens for a small team, but QuickEstimate owns it and local capabilities are unverified. OpenSolar is the better free design-first option and models storage well, which matters because most provincial systems are off grid. Test offline capture and province fields before you judge any proposal feature.
Because electricity tariffs have been among the highest in the Pacific, so displaced cost is substantial rather than marginal. That raises the documentation standard: store the tariff reference, the customer category from the actual bill, the units, the fixed charges, the self-consumption and degradation assumptions, the approver and the date behind every figure you show a customer.
We found no verified public evidence for native SBD proposals or local tax and duty handling. Quickest's published evidence is India-first. Require a live taxable quotation with equipment and shipping lines and a validity period, plus a deposit, a staged invoice, a credit note, a refund and an accounting export during the demo.
From stored shipping data. Record the destination province, the shipping route, the vessel schedule, the consignment cut-off, the handling agent, the expected arrival and any anticipated second shipment, and derive the commitment date from those fields rather than from an estimate made in Honiara.
Store the customer account, the tariff category taken from the customer's own bill, the province and centre, the meter type, the phase, the requested capacity, the application route, the reference, the inspection, the fees, the appointment, the activation and the completion evidence. Test a rejection and a resubmission.
As its own record: the landholding group or community contact, the permission relied on, its reference and date, the local liaison, commitments made about training, employment or maintenance, and who witnessed them. Test retrieving those three years later, because they will be raised long after the installation team has left.
Offline field capture, measured honestly. Test the field application after a full day out of coverage with a complete survey queued, then repeat after replacing the device. A survey lost to a failed sync costs another passage, which is a far larger number than any difference in licence pricing between the shortlisted tools.
Quickest offers one user and ten proposals monthly. OpenSolar publishes a free core solar platform. Zoho offers three free users, and HubSpot states up to two users and 1,000 contacts. Before committing to a paid tier, confirm the business can reliably make the cross-border payment at renewal.
Include the accepted scope, variations, the as-built design, the structural approval, installed equipment and serial numbers, photographs, test results, commissioning, Solomon Power evidence, invoices, payment status, warranties, manuals, monitoring access, training, signatures, open defects and the service contact, plus the province, parts held there and the trained local contact.
Use the Three-Deal Proof and require every vendor to show the same lead, revision, document, and failed handoff.