Leaving HubSpot pays in two situations. The first is when you’re paying for Starter and a free plan elsewhere still fits your whole team. Zoho CRM’s and Freshsales’s free plans both fit three people, so three seats of Starter, $60 a month at the regular price ($30 a month for new customers, for a limited time), can become nothing, less the hours to move. The second is when you’re paying Starter’s regular price and a plan elsewhere costs less at your size. For three people the lowest paid bill in this guide is Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $27 a month.
Leaving doesn’t pay while HubSpot’s free plan fits, and it pays less than it looks if you’d lose parts of the bundle you use. HubSpot gives no end date for its lower Starter price, so compare on the regular one.
What does HubSpot cost against the rest at your size?
Here’s every CRM in this guide at one, three, five, and ten people, each on the cheapest plan that fits. Each figure is the whole monthly bill for the team. HubSpot’s row shows its regular price first, with the lower new-customer price beside it.
| Tool | Total for 1 user | Total for 3 users | Total for 5 users | Total for 10 users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free Free plan | $60 a month at the regular price ($30 a month for new customers, for a limited time) Starter | $100 a month at the regular price ($50 a month for new customers, for a limited time) Starter | $200 a month at the regular price ($100 a month for new customers, for a limited time) Starter |
| Zoho CRM | Free Free plan | Free Free plan | $100 a month Zoho CRM Standard | $200 a month Zoho CRM Standard |
| Bigin (by Zoho) | Free Free plan | $27 a month Bigin Express | $45 a month Bigin Express | $90 a month Bigin Express |
| Pipedrive | $24 a month Lite | $72 a month Lite | $120 a month Lite | $240 a month Lite |
| Freshsales | Free Free plan | Free Free plan | $55 a month Growth | $110 a month Growth |
| Capsule | Free Free plan | $66 a month Starter | $110 a month Starter | $220 a month Starter |
| Less Annoying CRM | $15 a month Everything included | $45 a month Everything included | $75 a month Everything included | $150 a month Everything included |
HubSpot Starter: Regular price listed: $20 a month. Lower price shown: $10 a month, for new customers, for a limited time. No end date is stated for the lower price.
Read it against your own row. At one or two, HubSpot’s free plan fits, so there’s nothing to save. At three, Starter is $60 a month at the regular price ($30 a month for new customers, for a limited time), while two free plans elsewhere still fit and the lowest paid bill is Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $27 a month. At five, Starter is $100 a month at the regular price ($50 a month for new customers, for a limited time), and the lowest paid bill is Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $45 a month. At ten, it’s $200 a month at the regular price ($100 a month for new customers, for a limited time) against Bigin Express (by Zoho) at $90 a month.
The lower Starter price changes the picture while it lasts, so check the table’s figures against it if you have it. But HubSpot calls it a limited-time offer for new customers, with no end date. Plan your switch, or your decision to stay, on the regular price.
When does leaving not pay?
- HubSpot’s free plan still fits. At one or two people, within its caps, it costs nothing, and moving buys you nothing but work.
- You use the bundle. The Starter on HubSpot’s Sales pricing page includes its marketing, service, content, and data tools. If you send marketing email to your included marketing contacts, or use the service tools, a pipeline-only CRM won’t replace them, and a separate email tool costs money too.
- You’re mid-commitment. HubSpot Professional’s monthly billing reads “Commit annually”. Leaving mid-term doesn’t end the bill, so plan the move for your renewal.
- The saving is small next to the move. Our view: if the difference is a few dollars a month per person, the evenings spent exporting, importing, and retraining usually cost more than a year of the difference. Move for a free plan that fits, or for a clear saving, not for small change.
What would you give up?
On Starter you’re paying for more than a pipeline. HubSpot’s Starter adds calling, task queues, Notetaker, a prospecting agent, Agent Hub and Agent Builder, and removes HubSpot branding from your emails. Through the bundle, Starter also includes email marketing with 1,000 marketing contacts. That figure counts the people you can send marketing email to, not how many contacts you store.
Then there’s what you’ve built: your templates, any workflows, your pipeline stages, and the email history attached to each contact. Not all of that moves cleanly. Templates and workflows usually need rebuilding, and logged email often stays behind. List what you actually use before you decide. If the list is short, leaving is easy; if it’s long, the saving has to be worth the rebuild.
Plan the overlap month
Don’t switch off HubSpot the day you sign up somewhere else. Run both for one sales cycle: new leads go into the new tool, open deals finish where they started, and you cancel HubSpot once the last one closes or moves. That overlap costs the HubSpot bill for one more sales cycle, and it saves you the deal that falls through the gap. What switching CRMs costs walks through the export, the overlap, and how to count your own hours.
A worked example
Say you run a three-person PR agency on HubSpot Starter. You use the pipeline to track prospective clients, about eight saved pitch templates, and a list of some twelve hundred journalists and clients. You don’t send newsletters from HubSpot; you pitch one-to-one.
Your Starter bill is $60 a month at the regular price ($30 a month for new customers, for a limited time). Zoho CRM’s free edition fits three users, holds 10 templates, and stores 5,000 records (10 MB), notes included. Your eight templates fit, and twelve hundred contacts leave room for notes and new names. On those numbers, leaving makes the CRM bill nothing.
What you’d give up is real, though. Zoho CRM’s free edition can send your one-to-one pitches from each contact’s record, but without your mailbox connected it can’t track the replies, so those land in your inbox and you’d log the important ones by hand. You’d also lose HubSpot’s calling and task queues. If you want replies tied to each contact, connecting your mailbox is a paid step: the options at three are $27 a month on Bigin Express (by Zoho), a separate product, or $60 a month on Zoho CRM Standard. Either way, export everything first, rebuild the eight templates, and run both tools until your open pitches close.
Our view
Leave HubSpot when the numbers are clear: a free plan that fits your whole team, or a regular Starter bill well above what you’d pay elsewhere for the features you use. Stay when you’re inside the free plan, when you use the bundle’s email marketing or service tools, or when you’re partway through a yearly commitment. What staying gives up, at three or more, is paying per seat for a bundle and a promotional price that can stop. What leaving gives up is the time to move and whatever you’ve built. Count both before you decide.
Your next step
This week, write down two lists: what you use in HubSpot every month, and what you’d need in a new tool on day one. If you’re three people and the second list is a pipeline, reminders, and a handful of templates, try one of the two free plans that fit three alongside HubSpot: start Zoho CRM’s free plan or start Freshsales’s. Import a copy of your contacts, rebuild your most-used template, and keep HubSpot running until your open deals close. If your first list includes email marketing, price a separate email tool before you decide, since that’s a cost you’d be adding.