Best HubSpot alternatives for small businesses

Short answer: For a service business that needs clients, projects, hours and client portals in one place, pick Teamo. For a sales pipeline that costs less than HubSpot Professional, pick Pipedrive, or Freshsales for a full sales feature set at a low price. For a free start, Zoho CRM. For sales plus forms and landing pages on a small budget, Nutshell. For a simple contact manager, Capsule.

Should you leave HubSpot at all?

Stay on HubSpot if you use its marketing side: email campaigns, forms, landing pages and marketing automation, all on the same contact records as your sales pipeline. Few tools here match that combination. HubSpot's free CRM is free for up to 2 users (HubSpot Starter pricing), so if the free tools cover your work, there is nothing to switch away from.

Leave, or at least price the alternatives, if one of these is true:

• You are about to move from Sales Hub Starter to Professional for one or two features.
• Your marketing contact count is pushing you into a higher contact tier.
• You pay for seats for people who only need to update a few records.
• You are a service business that tracks projects, hours or client deliverables in a second tool, because HubSpot has no time tracking, and projects are a basic built-in object with no hours attached.

Why do small businesses leave HubSpot?

These are the costs that come up when a small business prices its next HubSpot plan. Prices below are HubSpot's in USD, from its Sales Hub pricing page and its product and services catalog, checked on 9 November 2026.

The jump from Starter to Professional. Sales Hub Starter lists at $20 a seat a month. Sales Hub Professional costs $100 a seat billed monthly, $90 billed yearly, plus a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. For 5 people billed yearly, that is $100 a month on Starter and $450 a month on Professional, before onboarding. The pricing page currently offers new customers lower Starter prices ($7 a seat billed yearly, $10 monthly), and HubSpot says these discounts are for new customers only, so check what your renewal will cost.

Features that start on Professional. In Sales Hub, Starter has up to 50 workflows "with restricted triggers and actions" and Professional has up to 300 fully customizable ones. Professional also raises pipelines from 15 to 100, and adds forecasting, sequences and phone support. In Marketing Hub, omni-channel marketing automation (workflows across email, ads, social and chat) is not on Starter at all. Custom objects, for tracking things like projects or subscriptions as their own records, are Enterprise only.

Marketing contact pricing. Marketing Hub Starter includes 1,000 marketing contacts, and each extra 1,000 costs $50 a month from 1,001 to 3,000 contacts. Marketing Hub Professional includes 3 seats and 2,000 marketing contacts, then $250 a month for each extra 5,000, plus a required $3,000 onboarding fee. If you go over your contact tier, HubSpot bills you at once, and the tier can't be lowered until your contract renewal date.

Seats. Everyone who needs to edit in HubSpot takes a paid seat. On Sales Hub Professional, HubSpot's product catalog lists a sales seat at $100 a month and a core seat, without the sales tools, at $50.

Which HubSpot alternatives are worth comparing?

Disclosure: I co-founded Teamo, one of the tools below, and Opsters, the agency Teamo was built out of.

Prices are per user a month in USD, billed yearly, from each vendor's own pricing page on 9 November 2026, except Pipedrive's higher plans, which vary by region and are left out. Several vendors set prices by country, so check the page in your currency.

Also worth a look: Attio for custom data models, and Productive for agencies tracking margins.

The chart shows each tool's cheapest plan with workflow automation, and for Teamo the Pro plan made for teams, billed yearly, times 5 seats, times 12 months. For HubSpot it shows Professional, the plan with fully customizable workflows, including the $1,500 onboarding fee; Starter has up to 50 restricted workflows at $1,200 for 5 seats at list price. Zoho CRM and Bigin include automations on their free plans and are left out because their paid prices vary by country, and Pipedrive because its prices vary by region.

Teamo

Teamo is client and project software for service businesses: the CRM, projects, time tracking, client portals and automations in one organization, with an AI assistant, Amo, that sets it up and answers questions about your records.

What a service business gets in one place:

• Clients with the work under them. A client record can hold groups for its contacts, deals, projects and tasks, so opening a client shows what was sold and what is being delivered.
• Hours on the client. One-click timers on a client, a task or a step under it, with billable defaults and timesheets.
• Client portals. A live page per client showing the data you choose, with request forms that arrive as records. Your logo and colors on the portal are on every plan, and clients open it by a private link without taking a seat.
• Automations on every plan. For example: when a deal is won, create the onboarding tasks under the client and notify the project lead.
• Client email in the CRM. The Inbox add-on ($12 per connected account a month) brings Gmail or Outlook, WhatsApp and LinkedIn messages into Teamo, links a thread to the client when the sender matches, and imports the last 12 months of email.
• A setup built from your description. At sign-up you describe your business, and Amo builds the modules, columns and views for it.

For a team, Pro costs $20 a seat a month billed yearly (€18), or $25 monthly (€22), with a 3-seat minimum. It includes 5 units with 10 modules each, 250,000 rows, 250 AI credits a seat and 20,000 automation runs a month. Starter, from $12 a seat billed yearly (€10), suits a solo or very small team, with up to 5 modules and 1,000 automation runs a month. Guests and portal visitors don't take a paid seat.

For the agency-specific comparison, see Best CRM for agencies.

Fits: an agency, consultancy or other service business that uses HubSpot as a contact list and runs projects, hours and client updates somewhere else. Limit: there is no free plan; the trial is 10 days on Max, with no card. Teamo doesn't take payments and has no built-in QuickBooks or Xero sync: you can connect them through the API yourself, or have a Teamo partner such as Opsters set it up.

Teamo Pro is $20 a seat a month billed yearly (€18). 10-day trial on Max, no card.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales CRM built around a visual pipeline: deals move across stages and each deal shows its next activity. Lite costs $14 a seat a month billed yearly, and workflow automation starts on Growth (Pipedrive help). Pipedrive shows prices by region, so check the page in your currency. There is a 14-day free trial.

Fits: a small sales team that wants a pipeline people actually keep up to date, with less setup than HubSpot. Limit: there is no free plan; email marketing (Campaigns) is a paid add-on, and lead capture (LeadBooster) is an add-on below Premium.

Zoho CRM and Bigin

Zoho CRM is a full CRM with a free edition for up to 3 users that includes workflow automation, reports and data import and export. Standard adds mass email, multiple sales pipelines, web forms, sales forecasting and custom modules. Bigin is Zoho's simpler pipeline CRM: free for 1 user with one pipeline, 500 records and 3 automations, and the Express plan raises that to 3 team pipelines, 50,000 records and 30 automations.

Fits: a team that wants to start free and keep growing with one vendor. Limit: Zoho CRM has a lot of settings, so plan time for setup. Customer portals start on Professional. Zoho prices both products by country, so check Zoho's pricing page in your currency.

Freshsales

Freshsales, from Freshworks, is a low-priced full sales CRM. Growth costs $9 a user a month billed yearly ($11 monthly) and includes a kanban pipeline, email, phone and chat, and basic workflows. Pro ($39 yearly, $47 monthly) adds sales sequences, contact scoring and territory management. Enterprise ($59 yearly, $71 monthly) adds custom modules, field-level permissions, forecasting insights and audit logs. There is a 21-day trial.

Fits: a price-sensitive sales team that wants HubSpot-style contact records and pipelines for less. Limit: the Freddy AI agent is an add-on at $49 per 100 sessions, and branded documents are $19 a user a month extra. Sequences start on Pro, as they start on Professional in HubSpot.

Nutshell

Nutshell is a sales CRM that includes a form builder and landing pages on every plan. Foundation costs $13 a user a month billed yearly ($19 monthly), and sales automation, 5 custom pipelines and advanced reporting start on Pro ($42 yearly, $49 monthly). Contacts and storage are unlimited on every plan.

Fits: a small business that uses HubSpot for sales and simple lead capture and wants both in one tool for less. Limit: sending email campaigns needs an add-on, from $5 a month depending on your number of contacts. Foundation allows 100 open leads, and automation needs Pro.

Capsule

Capsule is a simple CRM for contacts, sales pipelines and project boards. The free plan allows 2 users and 250 contacts. Starter ($18 a user a month billed yearly) adds 30,000 contacts, email templates and a shared mailbox. Growth ($36) adds workflow automations, multiple pipelines, email sync and team access controls.

Fits: a small team that mostly needs a tidy contact list and a pipeline, and finds HubSpot more than it uses. Limit: workflow automation starts on Growth, and email campaigns and marketing automation need Transpond, Capsule's separate marketing platform.

How do you move off HubSpot?

Export each object, rebuild the setup in the new tool, import, then cancel HubSpot before your renewal date. With an assistant doing the import, a small business can move its records in hours; rebuilding workflows, templates and reports takes longer, depending on how many you have.

1. Export your records. In HubSpot, open the "All" view of contacts, companies and deals and export with "All properties and associations on records". Use CSV: it is the only format that can include all associated records, and by default each association column holds up to 1,000 associated record IDs plus the record's name (HubSpot export guide).
2. Export activity history separately if you need it. Calls, notes and other activities are not part of a record export. HubSpot points to exporting an individual contact's data, activity reports or its API instead.
3. List what you will rebuild by hand. Workflows, sequences, email templates, forms and reports are settings, not records, so plan to set them up again in the new tool.
4. Import into the new tool and check ten records before importing the rest. The cleaning steps are the same as for a spreadsheet: How to move from a spreadsheet to a CRM.
5. Time the cancellation. HubSpot marketing contact tiers can't be lowered until your contract renewal date, so move before the renewal, not after it.

Moving into Teamo. Attach the HubSpot CSV or XLSX export in a chat with Amo and ask it to import it into your Clients module. Amo maps each HubSpot column to a Teamo column, shows how dates read and a few sample rows, and waits for your approval. It reads amounts with currency symbols and thousands separators as numbers, skips rows that fail and tells you why, and can undo the import. Numbers are read in US and UK format, so clean European amounts such as "1.234,56" first. Contacts and deals can go in as groups under each client, matched by the company name in the export; keep one company per row, because a row naming two companies can't be matched. Each file can hold up to 2,000 rows, so split a bigger contact export. You can also connect Claude or ChatGPT to Teamo over MCP and let them move the data (which CRMs have an MCP server).

How did we pick these tools?

We started from the reasons people give for leaving HubSpot and picked tools that solve at least one of them for a team of 1 to 20 people:

• A lower price for the same job, at the plan that includes workflow automation
• A free plan or a low first plan without a required onboarding fee
• Forms, landing pages or email marketing included or available, for teams that use HubSpot's marketing side
• For service businesses, projects, hours and client access in the same tool as the CRM

All prices were checked on each vendor's own pricing page on 9 November 2026, before tax, except Pipedrive's higher plans.

FAQ

Is there a free alternative to HubSpot? Yes. Zoho CRM is free for up to 3 users, Capsule for 2 users and 250 contacts, and Bigin for 1 user. HubSpot's own free CRM covers up to 2 users, so compare limits, not only the price.

What is the cheapest alternative to HubSpot? Freshsales Growth is the lowest-priced full sales plan here, at $9 a user a month billed yearly. Bigin's Express plan can cost less and is priced by country. For a 5-person team, Freshsales is $540 a year, against $1,200 on HubSpot Sales Hub Starter at list price ($420 at the current new-customer price).

Can I export my data from HubSpot? Yes. You can export contacts, companies, deals and other records with all their properties and associations as CSV or Excel files, and HubSpot emails you a download link. Activities such as calls and notes are exported separately.

How much more does HubSpot Professional cost than Starter? Sales Hub Professional costs $90 a seat a month billed yearly ($100 monthly) against $20 for Starter, plus a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. For 5 seats, the first year goes from $1,200 to $6,900 billed yearly ($7,500 billed monthly).

Which HubSpot alternative has email marketing built in? Zoho CRM includes mass email from Standard. Nutshell includes forms and landing pages on every plan, and sending email campaigns is an add-on from $5 a month. Pipedrive and Capsule sell email marketing as an add-on.