Alternatives
HubSpot alternatives for B2B SaaS teams
For most B2B SaaS sales teams that are replacing HubSpot Sales Hub, Close is the alternative to shortlist first. Its Essentials plan lists at $35 per user per month billed annually, or $49 billed monthly, and that seat already includes calling, email, SMS, built-in forms and a centralized inbox. Pipedrive is the lower-cost option if you mainly need a deal pipeline, and Salesforce is the stronger choice when revenue operations and enterprise governance matter more than simplicity.
This guide is for founders, revenue leaders and RevOps owners at B2B software companies who are asking whether HubSpot still fits their stack. It covers the CRM and sales-engagement side of the decision. It also explains where HubSpot Marketing Hub and Service Hub are separate products with separate prices, because a move away from one hub does not automatically mean leaving the others.
What you are replacing before you shortlist
"HubSpot" usually means several products under one login. The sales CRM, the sales engagement tools, the marketing automation, the service desk and the content tools each have their own feature set, their own pricing and their own migration risk. A team that only uses the deal pipeline and a few email sequences has a very different project from a team that runs lifecycle emails, lead scoring, support tickets and a knowledge base from the same account.
Before you compare vendors, write down the HubSpot products you pay for today and the seats each one uses. Then mark which of these workflows would break on day one if they stopped working:
- Pipeline stages, deal amounts, close dates and forecast categories that finance reads each month.
- Sequences and reminders that reps depend on for outbound follow-up.
- Lifecycle rules, lead routing and assignment logic that decide who gets which account.
- Forms on landing pages, product trial sign-ups and demo requests that create contacts automatically.
- Ticket queues, customer portals and help-desk workflows if you use Service Hub.
- Dashboards and exported reports that board members or investors receive on a schedule.
The workflows you cannot lose set the minimum requirements. Everything else is a matter of cost and preference.
The short comparison
The table below compares the sales-CRM alternatives covered in this guide. Prices are list prices on each vendor's public pricing page as of 7 October 2026. Pricing changes, so open the linked page before you budget.
| Tool | Best for | Entry price (plan and billing) | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Sales-led B2B SaaS teams that call, email and text prospects from the CRM | Essentials: $35 per user per month billed annually, or $49 billed monthly. Solo: $9 per user per month billed annually, or $19 billed monthly | Automated workflows and the power dialer sit on higher plans (Growth from $99 billed annually). Calling and SMS usage is passed through at cost |
| Pipedrive | Pipeline-focused sales teams that want a simple deal view and light automation | Lite: $14 per user per month billed annually | Full email sync with tracking and nurturing sequences start at Growth ($39 per user per month billed annually) |
| Salesforce | Enterprise revenue teams that need deep customization, governance and APIs | Sales Cloud Core: $195 per user per month billed annually. Starter Suite (a multi-product suite): $25 per user per month billed monthly | Editions and add-ons stack quickly, and administration needs dedicated time |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Teams that already run HubSpot CRM and want to keep the same data model | Free for up to 2 users. Starter: $7 per seat per month. Professional: $90 per seat per month | Professional and Enterprise carry a required one-time onboarding fee, and credits and workflow limits apply by tier |
| Zoho CRM | Small and mid-sized businesses that want broad CRM coverage across departments | Pricing on request. Check the vendor's pricing page for current editions | Breadth means more configuration choices at setup. Confirm which edition includes the features you need |
| Freshsales | Growing teams that want an accessible CRM with engagement workflows | Pricing on request. Check the vendor's pricing page for current editions | Confirm which edition includes the sequencing, reporting and integration features you plan to use |
What each seat costs at realistic team sizes
Per-seat prices are easy to compare, but the monthly bill is what finance sees. The table below multiplies the list price by three realistic sales-team sizes: a three-person founding sales team, a ten-person mid-market team and a twenty-five-person growth team. Each cell shows the arithmetic, so you can check it against your own headcount.
| Tool and plan | 3 seats | 10 seats | 25 seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Essentials, billed annually | 3 × $35 = $105 per month | 10 × $35 = $350 per month | 25 × $35 = $875 per month |
| Close Essentials, billed monthly | 3 × $49 = $147 per month | 10 × $49 = $490 per month | 25 × $49 = $1,225 per month |
| Pipedrive Growth, billed annually | 3 × $39 = $117 per month | 10 × $39 = $390 per month | 25 × $39 = $975 per month |
| HubSpot Sales Hub Professional, monthly | 3 × $90 = $270 per month | 10 × $90 = $900 per month | 25 × $90 = $2,250 per month |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud Core, billed annually | 3 × $195 = $585 per month | 10 × $195 = $1,950 per month | 25 × $195 = $4,875 per month |
Three points change how to read this table. First, HubSpot Sales Hub is free for up to 2 users, so a team of three or more is always paying. Second, Close bills calling and SMS usage at cost on top of the seat price, so add a usage estimate if your reps dial heavily. Third, these figures are seat costs only. Onboarding fees, add-ons, implementation partners and internal admin time are separate lines in any real budget.
Decision table: which alternative fits which need
Use the table below as a first filter. Each row starts from one requirement and names the option that matches it most directly, with the reason.
| If you need | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Calling, email and SMS inside one seat from the start | Close | Essentials includes calling, SMS, email, forms and a centralized inbox. Usage is billed at cost on top |
| The lowest seat price for a plain deal pipeline | Pipedrive | Lite starts at $14 per user per month billed annually, and the pipeline and calendar tools are the core of the plan |
| Custom objects, complex approval chains and enterprise governance | Salesforce | Sales Cloud Core adds advanced pipeline management, forecasting, opportunity scoring and APIs |
| To keep the HubSpot data model and change as little as possible | HubSpot Sales Hub | Your records, associations and workflows stay in one place. The Professional tier adds forecasting, conversation intelligence and sequences |
| Broad CRM coverage on a limited budget | Zoho CRM | Its pricing is on request, so compare the edition that covers your modules against your current bill |
| An accessible CRM for a team that is still growing | Freshsales | Its pricing is on request. Confirm the sequencing and reporting tiers before you commit |
Close: the best starting point for sales-led B2B SaaS
Close is built around the daily work of a sales team that sells software subscriptions by phone and email. Its Essentials plan puts unlimited contacts and leads, team collaboration, built-in forms, email, calling and SMS, a centralized inbox and a task list into one seat. For a B2B SaaS company that runs outbound prospecting and inbound demo requests from the same team, this means fewer separate tools to connect and fewer places where a lead can get lost.
Close does well for teams whose reps spend most of the day in the CRM. The shared inbox keeps conversations attached to the account, so a rep who is out of office can be covered without digging through a personal mailbox. Built-in forms feed leads straight into the pipeline, which helps when product-led trial sign-ups need a sales follow-up.
Where Close falls short is in advanced automation and the power dialer. Automated workflows and the power dialer are part of the Growth and Scale plans, which list at $99 and $139 per user per month billed annually. Teams that need only manual sequencing may never need them. Teams that want the full automation layer should price Growth from the start rather than discovering the gap after migration. Calling and SMS usage is also passed through at cost, so high-volume dialing needs its own estimate.
Close also has a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and no ongoing free plan is listed. Solo is a useful choice for a single seller who wants the CRM without a team plan. You can review the full plan details on Close's pricing page.
Pipedrive: a pipeline-first CRM with a lower entry price
Pipedrive is organized around the deal pipeline. Its Lite plan at $14 per user per month billed annually includes lead, calendar and pipeline management, AI-assisted report creation and access to more than 500 integrations. For a sales team that already has marketing automation elsewhere and wants a clean deal view, that combination is often enough.
The plan ladder matters more here than with most tools. Full email sync with tracking and automations and nurturing sequences start at Growth, at $39 per user per month billed annually. Premium adds lead generation and routing, custom scoring, contracts and e-signatures at $59. Ultimate adds account security rules, alerts, a sandbox testing account and extended phone support at $79. Every plan in this ladder is priced billed annually.
Pipedrive's strength is also its limit for B2B SaaS teams with complex lifecycle motions. A company that needs to move a customer from trial to paid to expansion, with different owners at each stage, will be building that logic in automations and custom scoring. That is possible on Premium and Ultimate, but it is more configuration work than a team with a single pipeline needs. Check the plan that includes the automation and scoring you plan to use. Pipedrive's pricing page lists the full set of features for each tier.
Salesforce: deep customization for enterprise revenue teams
Salesforce is the choice when the CRM has to fit around an existing process rather than the other way round. Sales Cloud Core, at $195 per user per month billed annually, includes built-in AI, advanced pipeline management and forecasting, opportunity scoring and APIs. Editions above it add more AI, Slack integrations and the full AI suite, which push the seat price up from $395 to $550 per user per month billed annually.
For a B2B SaaS company with a revenue operations team, multiple product lines and territory rules, that depth is the reason to choose Salesforce. Custom objects, role-based access and data models built around accounts, subscriptions and renewals can be designed to match how the business actually operates. Salesforce also offers a free 30-day trial on Sales Cloud editions.
The cost of that depth is administration. Salesforce works best when someone owns the org, reviews permission sets and manages the change process. A small team without that person can end up paying for licenses it does not use, while the configuration sits half-finished. The Starter Suite, listed at $25 per user per month billed monthly, is a multi-product suite across sales, service, marketing and commerce. It is not the same as a Sales Cloud seat, so compare like with like when you check the Salesforce pricing page.
HubSpot Sales Hub: staying inside the ecosystem
Sometimes the best alternative is a different HubSpot product, or a different tier of the same one. If your team has a large contact database, years of activity history and reports that depend on HubSpot's data model, moving to a new CRM may cost more in lost history than it saves in seat fees. In that case HubSpot Sales Hub is a legitimate option to keep.
Sales Hub has a free tier for up to 2 users, a Starter plan at $7 per seat per month, and a Professional plan at $90 per seat per month. Professional adds forecasting, conversation intelligence and sequences, plus up to 300 customizable workflows and 3,000 HubSpot Credits. Enterprise, at $150 per seat per month, adds deal splits, deal journey analytics, Lead Form Routing, pipeline approvals for deals, a standard sandbox and up to 1,000 workflows that can trigger sequences. Professional and Enterprise carry a required one-time onboarding fee, which should be added to the first-year cost.
Staying with Sales Hub is a cost-control decision as much as a technical one. A team that stays should check whether it needs Professional for sequences or whether Starter and workflow discipline are enough. It should also review credit usage on the plan it selects. You can compare tiers on the HubSpot Sales Hub pricing page.
Zoho CRM and Freshsales
Zoho CRM and Freshsales are both credible options for teams that want a conventional CRM without enterprise-scale complexity. Zoho CRM is often shortlisted by small and mid-sized businesses that want a wide range of modules across sales, marketing and support. Freshsales is positioned as an accessible CRM with engagement workflows for growing teams. Neither vendor publishes a price in the information used for this page, so the prices are on request. Check the vendor's pricing page for the edition that includes the features you need, and request a quote if the list is unclear.
Because pricing is not published here, these two tools should be compared on a feature checklist rather than on seat price. Ask each vendor to confirm how its sequences, automation, reporting and integrations work for your exact workflow, then test that workflow with a representative group of accounts before you commit.
If you are replacing Marketing Hub or Service Hub
A move away from the sales CRM is not the same as a move away from marketing automation or the help desk. Each of these HubSpot products has its own price list, and they are often bought as separate line items.
HubSpot Marketing Hub lists a Starter plan at $7 per month, a Professional plan at $800 per month and an Enterprise plan at $3,600 per month. These are per-plan subscriptions with a per-seat model, so the Professional figure is the monthly price for that plan rather than a per-user rate. Check the Marketing Hub pricing page for the seat and contact limits included in each plan before you map your current subscription against an alternative.
HubSpot Service Hub has a free tier for up to 2 users. Professional is $100 per seat per month billed monthly, or $90 billed annually, and includes a help desk, a customer success workspace, a knowledge base, a customer portal and customer feedback surveys. Enterprise is $150 per seat per month billed annually and adds conditional SLAs, customer journey analytics and skill-based routing. Service Hub Professional and Enterprise both require a one-time onboarding fee. If your support queue is the main reason you run HubSpot, look at dedicated help-desk tools alongside sales CRMs, because a sales CRM rarely replaces a ticketing system without extra work. Details are on the Service Hub pricing page.
Where Segment fits, and where it does not
Twilio Segment is sometimes raised in CRM discussions, but it solves a different problem. Segment collects first-party customer data and routes it to other tools. Its Connections plan covers data collection, Reverse ETL, Functions and a public API. The Customer Data Platform plan adds identity-resolved profiles, AI-powered audiences and journey orchestration. Both plans are priced on request, and Segment's pricing page does not publish free-plan limits.
For a B2B SaaS company replacing HubSpot Sales Hub, Segment is not a substitute for a CRM. It can be part of the stack that feeds a CRM with product usage data, which is useful if your sales team needs to see trial activity or seat expansion. Treat it as an add-on decision, made after the CRM is chosen, not as one of the options in this page's table.
How to choose
A useful selection process for B2B SaaS teams has four steps. Start by listing the workflows that must not break, using the list from the first section. Then decide who owns the CRM day to day. If nobody on the team has time to configure permissions, pipelines and automation, a simpler tool is safer than a powerful one that sits half-built. Next, price the plan that includes your required features, not the cheapest plan on the page. Finally, run a short pilot with a real segment of accounts and reps before any migration.
Teams with a small number of sellers and a single pipeline should look first at Close or Pipedrive. Close fits when calling and email are part of the daily routine. Pipedrive fits when the pipeline is the main requirement and automation needs are modest. Teams with several departments, complex approval rules and an administrator on staff should price Salesforce and HubSpot Enterprise tiers in full, including onboarding and admin time. Teams that have a large and well-maintained HubSpot database should price staying as carefully as leaving.
Two questions often decide the choice. The first is how many people will need full edit rights versus read-only access, because permission models differ and can change cost. The second is whether reporting must match an existing finance or board view. If the answer is yes, export a sample of your current funnel report before you pick a tool, so you can check that the new system produces the same numbers.
Migration checklist
Migration is where most CRM projects lose time. The table below lists the steps in the order that usually works best. Each step names the common failure to watch for.
| Step | What to do | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Map pipeline stages | Write each HubSpot deal stage next to its new equivalent, with the exit criteria for each stage | Stages that look the same but mean different things to finance and sales |
| 2. Clean contacts and companies | Remove duplicates, fix ownership fields and standardize the lifecycle stage values before export | Bounced or unsubscribed contacts imported as active, which can harm deliverability |
| 3. Move activity history | Decide how much history to import: calls, emails, meetings and notes for open deals and recent accounts is usually enough | Attachments and large activity logs that slow the import without adding value |
| 4. Rebuild sequences and reminders | Recreate the outbound sequences reps use, with the same timing and suppression rules | Sequences that send to contacts who already replied or are in a different stage |
| 5. Rebuild routing and permissions | Recreate lead assignment, territory rules and role permissions, then test them with a sample account | Leads routed to inactive users or to a team that cannot see the account |
| 6. Run in parallel | Keep both systems live for one reporting cycle and compare pipeline totals | Two systems receiving new leads and creating duplicate records |
| 7. Cut over and archive | Switch the forms and integrations to the new CRM, then export a full archive of the old one | Forms still pointing at the old system, and contract terms that require a retained export |
Workflow notes for B2B SaaS pipelines
B2B SaaS pipelines have features that many generic CRM guides ignore. A single account may have several contacts, several subscriptions and a trial that converts to paid months later. Before you choose a tool, check how it models that structure. Some CRMs track accounts and deals cleanly but treat subscriptions as text fields. Others let you link billing records to the deal, which makes renewal and expansion reporting easier.
Trial and product-led motions need their own rules. If a trial sign-up creates a contact, the CRM should decide whether that contact belongs to an existing account, which owner receives the lead and when a sales task appears. Built-in forms, as in Close, can simplify that path. Otherwise the rule usually lives in an automation tool, and the handoff between the two systems needs a test before launch.
Renewal and expansion work benefits from a separate view of the existing customer base. Many teams keep new-business and account-management pipelines in the same CRM but give each a different owner, stage set and reporting view. Decide early whether your chosen tool can run both without forcing reps into a workaround.
Frequently asked questions
Is Close cheaper than HubSpot Sales Hub Professional?
On seat price, Close Essentials at $35 per user per month billed annually is lower than Sales Hub Professional at $90 per seat per month. The two products are structured differently, though. Close Essentials includes calling and SMS, while Sales Hub Professional includes forecasting, sequences and workflows on a different scale. Compare the features your team uses, not only the seat price.
Can a small team stay on HubSpot for free?
HubSpot Sales Hub has a free tier for up to 2 users, with no credit card required. Once a team has three or more people who need access, the free tier no longer covers the team, and the Starter plan at $7 per seat per month or a higher tier applies.
Does Pipedrive include email sync with tracking?
Full email sync with tracking starts at the Growth plan, listed at $39 per user per month billed annually. The Lite plan at $14 per user per month billed annually covers lead, calendar and pipeline management. If email sync is a requirement, price the Growth plan rather than Lite.
Are these prices final?
The prices on this page are list prices from each vendor's public pricing page as of 7 October 2026. Vendors change prices, editions and included features, and negotiated contracts can differ from list. Use the linked pricing page as the final reference before you budget, and ask the vendor to confirm the price in writing.
Which alternatives offer a free trial?
Close and Pipedrive each list a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and neither lists an ongoing free plan. Salesforce offers a free 30-day trial on Sales Cloud editions. HubSpot Sales Hub has an ongoing free tier for up to 2 users. Zoho CRM and Freshsales pricing is on request, so check their pricing pages for current trial terms.
Do I need a customer data platform such as Segment to replace HubSpot?
No, not for a CRM replacement. A CRM stores accounts, contacts, deals and activity. A customer data platform collects product and behavioral data and sends it to other tools. Many B2B SaaS teams use both, but the CRM choice should come first, and any data platform should be added only if a specific workflow needs it.
How long does a CRM migration usually take?
The duration depends on the number of users, the volume of history you import and how many automations you rebuild. A small team with a simple pipeline can move in a few weeks. Teams with complex sequences, routing rules and reporting dashboards should plan for a longer parallel run, so they can compare pipeline totals across two systems before cutting over.