LF CRM for automation and individual email tracking?

I honestly don’t know if what I’m looking for exists. I’m currently using ActiveCampaign. I love their drag and drop email designer and customizable templates, and their automations are decent (occasionally confusing but I’m not doing anything super complex). The biggest issue I have is that there is no way to customize an email to a client while also using the templates and automations. They do have open-tracking of individually sent emails, but those emails are very limited in design and cannot be used to trigger anything. Visually, I have more features working directly in my gmail.

The sequence of events that create this need (in case I’m missing something). Potential Client fills out a form on my website. Their information is pulled from the form and automatically added to ActiveCampaign. Then, one of three things happens.

1. I add a tag to the client that adds them to my Welcome automation which sends them my welcome email, and then sends them through several other emails/automations/etc.

2. I send a personal email that declines them as a client. I have no good way of sending this email with my branding/formatting, so it’s just a plain black and white gmail email.

3. My biggest issue, I want to add them to my Welcome automation, but there is some question I need to ask or answer at the same time. For example, a client who requests ongoing service, which I can accept, but wants the service to start tomorrow, which I can’t do. So I basically just need to add a sentence or two to my Welcome email, but I can’t because that email is part of an automation. An individual email won’t have the same formatting, and won’t be able to trigger any further automation.

Is there any CRM that would be able to fill this need? Or some workaround I’m not seeing? I am new to all of this, so I’m not set on anything yet.

I am an extremely small business, less than 100 contacts, less then 25 emails per month, and price is a factor.