CRM Review
HubSpot review 2026: free CRM limits, Sales Hub pricing,
and who it actually suits
HubSpot's free CRM is the most generous starting point in the category, and its paid tiers are among the steepest. This review covers every limit on the free plan, what each Sales Hub tier really costs once onboarding fees and annual commitments are counted, and the point at which most small teams should stop and look elsewhere.
- Price from
- $0
for up to 2 users - Top tier
- $150
per seat/mo - Free plan
- Yes, 2 users,
1,000 contacts - Free trial
- 14 days
on paid tiers - Best for
- Teams that want
marketing and sales
in one place - Worst for
- Small teams that
need automation
or custom reports
on a budget
At a glance
- Pipeline and deal management
- This works well on every tier, including the free one. You get one pipeline free, 15 on Starter and 100 on Professional.
- Ease of use
- Ease of use is the most praised thing about HubSpot, mentioned in 1,430 G2 reviews. Another 447 reviews describe a learning curve once you move past the basics.
- Email and communication
- Email is a strength. Gmail and Outlook sync, templates and open tracking are on the free plan, with HubSpot branding until you pay. Sequences need Professional at $90 per seat.
- Automation
- There is no automation on the free plan and 50 restricted workflows on Starter. The real workflow builder starts at Professional.
- Pricing and value
- Free is good value for two people. The jump from Starter to Professional takes you from $15 to $90 per seat, plus a required $1,500 onboarding fee.
- Reporting
- Dashboards exist on every tier, but there is no custom report builder below Professional.
- Support
- Support is community forums on the free plan, email on Starter, and phone from Professional upwards.
How HubSpot is rated across
review sites
More than 20,000 people have reviewed HubSpot's CRM across G2, Capterra and TrustRadius, and the two app stores add close to 30,000 ratings on top of that. Here is the full picture.
Two honest notes on that table. Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice all belong to Gartner Digital Markets and draw on one shared review pool, so we list Capterra only rather than count the same reviews three times. And HubSpot is reviewed under several product names, so the G2 figure is for Sales Hub specifically, which is the product most buyers of a CRM are actually evaluating.
Those are strong numbers, and the mobile scores are the best of any CRM in this folder. This review is still going to be harder on HubSpot than the averages suggest, because review platforms mostly sample people who stayed. The criticism on this page comes from those same review corpora, with counts attached, and it clusters in two places: what happens to the price once you need more than the basics, and how much of the product sits behind the Professional tier.
Who HubSpot suits,
and who it does not
Get it if
Skip it if
Pros and cons
What works
What doesn't
What you get on
each plan
Prices are per seat per month on annual billing for Sales Hub, which is the paid product that sits on top of HubSpot's free CRM.
- Included
- Only higher up, or capped
- Not available, or paid extra
| Feature | Free $0 | Starter $15 | Professional $90 | Enterprise $150 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Users | 2 | Per seat | Per seat | Per seat |
| Contacts before you pay more | 1,000 | 1,000 marketing contacts | 2,000 marketing contacts | 10,000 marketing contacts |
| Deal pipelines | 1 | 15 | 100 | 350 |
| Two-way email sync | ||||
| HubSpot branding removed | ||||
| Email templates | 3 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Snippets | 3 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 |
| Workflows | 50, basic triggers only | 300 | 1,000 | |
| Sequences | 5,000 per account | 5,000 per account | ||
| Calling minutes per month | 500 per account | 3,000 | 12,000 | |
| Dashboards | 10 | 30 | 75 | 100 |
| Custom reports | 100 | 500 | ||
| Forecasting | ||||
| Playbooks | 5 | 5,000 | ||
| Lead scoring models | 5 | 10 | ||
| HubSpot Credits for AI agents | 500 | 3,000 | 5,000 | |
| Required onboarding fee | None | None | $1,500 | $3,500 |
| Support | Community | Email and phone | Email and phone | |
| Contract | None | Monthly or annual | Annual | Annual |
Every figure in that table comes from HubSpot's own Sales Hub pricing page and its Customer Platform pricing page, read on 20 October 2026. The marketing contact figures are the allowances bundled with the Starter, Professional and Enterprise Customer Platform, which is how most small teams buy HubSpot; Sales Hub bought alone does not include marketing contacts, and you pay for them in tiers on top of seats.
Two things worth knowing that the table cannot show. Professional and Enterprise seats are Sales Seats, while Starter uses Core Seats; the two are priced differently when mixed. And view-only seats are free on paid plans, which is a genuine saving if most of your company only needs to look.
Feature by feature
This is solid on every tier, including the free one. Deals sit on a drag-and-drop board, stages are customizable, and the contact, company and deal records are properly linked to each other, which is where cheaper CRMs often fall down. On G2, 571 reviews mention lead management as a strength, and the free plan's single pipeline is enough for a two-person team selling one thing.
The limits arrive when you sell more than one thing. The free plan has one pipeline, Starter has 15, and Professional has 100. That is more generous than it used to be, and it is one of the few places where HubSpot has loosened a cap rather than tightened one.
The weakness users report is reporting across pipelines rather than the pipelines themselves. One Capterra reviewer in June 2026 wrote that "reporting becomes cumbersome if you are doing multiple pipelines", and that complaint repeats across platforms. If you run several pipelines, test the cross-pipeline reports during your trial, because they are where Starter runs out.
Email is where HubSpot is most generous, and it is the main reason the free plan is worth having. Gmail and Outlook sync two ways on the free plan, so email is logged against the contact without anyone doing anything. Open tracking, a meeting scheduling link, live chat, and three templates and three snippets are all free too.
The catch on the free plan is branding. Every one-to-one email, every chat widget, and every meeting page carries HubSpot's name until you pay for Starter. For a two-person business that is tolerable; for anyone pitching clients, it is the thing that makes Starter feel compulsory.
The bigger catch is sequences. Automated follow-up chains, the feature most sales teams mean when they say they want a sales CRM, are not on free and not on Starter. They start at Professional, which is $90 per seat per month plus the onboarding fee. That is the single most important thing to understand about HubSpot's pricing before you commit, because it is a six-fold jump for one feature.
Telephony is built in but rationed. There are no calling minutes on the free plan, 500 a month pooled across the entire account on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, and 12,000 on Enterprise. A five-person Starter team gets 100 minutes each per month. Integration quality draws mixed comments: one G2 community post complains that the Outlook logging tool "only logs comms in the last 5 open deals attached to a client".
There is none on the free plan. Starter gives you 50 workflows, but HubSpot's own pricing page describes them as having "restricted triggers and actions", which in practice means tasks and notifications when a deal changes stage. The full workflow builder, with branching, delays and enrolment from almost any property, starts at Professional with 300 workflows, and Enterprise has 1,000.
When you reach Professional, the automation is among the best in the category, and it is the reason mid-sized companies stay. Users on Capterra describe integrated sales process automation as a highlight. The problem is simply where it starts. If automation is why you are buying a CRM, HubSpot's real entry price is $90 per seat, not $15.
Dashboards exist on every tier: 10 on free, 30 on Starter, 75 on Professional and 100 on Enterprise, each holding up to 50 reports. That sounds generous until you read the next line. The custom report builder is Professional and above, so on free and Starter you are choosing from HubSpot's templates rather than building your own.
Reporting is the most consistent criticism on TrustRadius, where reviewers describe it as "limited, especially advanced reporting". On G2, 319 reviews cite limited customization, and 500 cite missing features, and a good share of both are about reports. HubSpot reports what happened in a single pipeline clearly and struggles the moment you want to slice data across pipelines or objects without paying for Professional.
The mobile apps are the best of any CRM in this folder, and the numbers back that up. The iOS app has a 4.7 rating from about 16,000 ratings and was updated in October 2026. The Android app has a 4.6 rating from about 13,600 reviews, over 1 million downloads, and was last updated on 1 October 2026.
Users like it. A Google Play reviewer in July 2026 called it "a great CRM that's earned a permanent spot on my phone". The complaints are practical rather than structural: a Capterra reviewer in September 2026 noted that the "mobile app drains battery faster than I'd like when I'm at trade shows all day", and G2 users ask for more of the desktop feature set on the phone. If your reps work from phones, this is a point in HubSpot's favor.
HubSpot's AI is called Breeze, and it splits in two. Breeze Copilot, the assistant that drafts emails and summarises records, comes with paid seats. The autonomous agents, for prospecting, customer service and data, run on HubSpot Credits: 500 a month on Starter, 3,000 on Professional and 5,000 on Enterprise. Credits do not roll over, and extra credits cost $0.01 each. HubSpot publishes those allowances openly, which deserves credit, because several competitors do not.
Security is strong. HubSpot's trust centre lists SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, GDPR compliance under the EU Cloud Code of Conduct, CCPA, and an independent HIPAA attestation obtained in June 2025. The caveat is that sensitive data storage and the HIPAA business associate agreement are Enterprise-only features, so a clinic on Starter or Professional cannot store protected health information in HubSpot. HubSpot runs US and EU data centers, and the hosting region is chosen when the account is created, so decide before you sign up rather than after.
What HubSpot
really costs
| Plan | Annual, per seat/mo | Billed as | Monthly, per seat/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Nothing, for 2 users | $0 |
| Sales Hub Starter | $15 | $180 per seat/yr | $20 |
| Sales Hub Professional | $90 | $1,080 per seat/yr, plus $1,500 onboarding once | $100 |
| Sales Hub Enterprise | $150 | $1,800 per seat/yr, plus $3,500 onboarding once | Annual only |
HubSpot is currently advertising Starter at $7 per seat per month for new customers on an annual plan, which is a promotion rather than the list price. The $15 figure above is the standing annual rate, and it is the one your renewal will be based on. Professional and Enterprise require an annual commitment, even if you pay monthly, and onboarding fees are mandatory and non-refundable.
| Extra | From | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Hub Professional | $95 per seat/mo | Quotes, CPQ and quote approvals, which no longer ship inside Sales Hub |
| Marketing Hub Starter | $15 per seat/mo | Marketing email beyond the free 2,000 sends, forms and ads, with contacts billed in tiers on top |
| Core Seat | $45 per seat/mo | Edit access to the CRM for non-sales staff on a Professional or Enterprise account |
| Extra HubSpot Credits | $10 per 1,000 | Fuel for the Breeze AI agents once the monthly allowance runs out |
The one to watch is marketing contacts, because they scale with your list rather than your team. The Starter plan includes 1,000, and each additional block costs more each month. That is a line item that grows when your marketing works.
What will it cost you?
Set your team size and tick what you need.
We will show you which tier you actually land on, and what year one costs.
500 seats maximum for this calculator.
Starter
$15
per month
Professional
$90
per month
Professional, year one
$2,580
including $1,500 onboarding
Bigin Premier, same seats
$12
per month
With nothing ticked, Starter covers you at $15 a month. Worth knowing what you give up: no sequences, no custom reports, no forecasting, workflows limited to basic triggers, and email support only.
The arithmetic that changed how we think about HubSpot's pricing is this. Take a five-person sales team that wants automated follow-up sequences, which is most five-person sales teams. Starter cannot do it at any price. Professional does it at five seats at $90 per seat, which is $450 per month or $5,400 per year, plus the $1,500 onboarding fee. Year one costs $6,900. The same five seats on Bigin Premier cost $720 a year. HubSpot's free plan is the cheapest CRM in this folder, and its first plan with sequences is the most expensive, and there is nothing in between.
Worth knowing about the contract. HubSpot's Customer Terms of Service say "you may not cancel your subscription prior to the end of your Current Term" and "we will not provide any refunds of prepaid fees or unused Subscription Fees through the end of your Current Term". Subscriptions renew automatically, and at renewal HubSpot "may increase your Subscription Fees up to our then-current list price" with 30 days' notice. Turn auto-renewal off in Account and Billing before the term ends if you intend to leave.
What real users say
"The free version offers excellent value for small businesses and growing teams."
Capterra, marketing, August 2026
"The pricing jumps significantly once you need advanced features."
Capterra, CEO, real estate, January 2026
"Locking customers into unused seats for years is not customer success, it's customer captivity."
Capterra
"Reporting becomes cumbersome if you are doing multiple pipelines."
Capterra, founder, June 2026
"HubSpot CRM took a lot of training to get the team confident in using the new software."
Capterra, non-profit, September 2026
Worth being fair about the middle one. HubSpot's seat terms are published and standard for enterprise software, but not for a product that markets a free plan to two-person businesses; that gap is what the reviewer is reacting to. The honest summary is that HubSpot is easy to start and hard to leave, and you should know both before you sign.
Most praised, by review count on G2
Most criticized, by review count on G2
Missing and limited features together account for 972 reviews, more than three times the count for expense alone. Read those two together with the plan table above and the pattern is clear: the features are not missing from HubSpot, they are missing from the tier the reviewer is paying for.
How HubSpot compares
| CRM | Best for | From | G2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Teams that want marketing, sales and service in one place | Free, then $15/seat/mo | 4.4/5 |
| Bigin by Zoho CRM | Small teams needing email, sales, calling and task management features on a budget | $0, then $7 | 4.6/5 |
| Pipedrive | Deal-led sales teams who want a visual pipeline | $14/seat/mo | 4.3/5 |
| Salesforce Starter | Teams planning to grow into the Salesforce ecosystem | $25 | 4.5/5 |
Verdict
HubSpot is an excellent free CRM attached to an expensive paid one, with very little in between.
The free plan deserves its reputation. Two users get email sync, a pipeline, dashboards, a meeting link, and a million records, with no expiry date, and the mobile apps are the best in this folder. Fourteen thousand reviewers averaging 4.4 on G2 are not wrong about how easy it is to pick up.
The problem is the shape of what comes next. Starter at $15 removes the branding and adds basic triggers, but the things a growing sales team actually needs, which are sequences, real workflows, custom reports, and forecasting- all sit on Sales Hub Professional at $90 per seat, with a $1,500 onboarding fee and an annual commitment you cannot cancel. That is a six-fold jump for the first plan that behaves like a sales CRM, and it is the pattern behind 972 G2 reviews that cite missing or limited features.
So HubSpot is worth it if you are two people who want a free CRM, or a company with the budget for Professional that wants marketing, sales, and service in one database. It is hard to recommend to the small business in between, the one with three to ten people that needs automation and reporting now and cannot justify $6,900 in year one to get them.
Where Bigin wins
Why these small businesses picked Bigin
after trying HubSpot
★★★★★Robert G., who owns a construction company, tried to set up HubSpot first and gave up. In his February 2026 Capterra review, he wrote that "hubspot was way too complicated and seems it's just about charging huge money", and that Bigin "seems so simple to use and I am loving it".
Robert G.Owner, construction company
★★★★★
Girish V., CEO of an industrial automation company, switched to Bigin from HubSpot Sales Hub in June 2026, citing "price, features and functionality, and flexibility".
Girish V.CEO, industrial automation company
Reviews as published on Capterra. Read the reviews
Automation starts at $0.
Bigin's free plan includes three automations, Express has 30 at $7 per user per month, and Premier has 50 advanced workflows at $12. HubSpot's free plan has no automation at all, Starter's 50 workflows are restricted to basic triggers, and the real workflow builder costs $90 per seat.
No onboarding fee, and no lock-in.
Bigin has no setup fee on any plan, bills monthly or yearly at your choice, and offers a money-back guarantee of 30 days on monthly billing and 45 days on annual. HubSpot Professional carries a mandatory $1,500 onboarding fee, requires an annual commitment, and its terms rule out refunds and mid-contract cancellation.
Email and WhatsApp from $7.
Bigin Express includes Gmail, Outlook and Zoho Mail sync, WhatsApp Business integration, mass emails and templates at $7 per user per month, with no vendor branding on anything you send. HubSpot's free email carries HubSpot branding until you pay for Starter, and WhatsApp needs a Professional hub.
Calls work out of the box.
Every Bigin plan, including the free one, has built-in telephony and IVR, with more than 100 third-party telephony integrations on top. HubSpot's free plan has no calling minutes, and Starter pools 500 minutes a month across the whole account.
Users rate it higher.
Bigin scores 4.6 on G2 from 877 reviews and 4.7 on Capterra, against HubSpot's 4.4 and 4.5. On Capterra's sub-scores, Bigin leads on ease of use and on customer service, which is where a small team without an admin feels the difference.
The fastest way to check any of this is the product itself.
Bigin's free plan does not expire, and it imports your HubSpot contacts, companies, deals, and notes directly.
Frequently asked questions
The CRM is free for up to 2 users. Sales Hub Starter is $15 per seat per month on annual billing or $20 monthly, Professional is $90 per seat per month plus a $1,500 onboarding fee, and Enterprise is $150 per seat per month plus a $3,500 onboarding fee. Professional and Enterprise require an annual commitment.
Yes, for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts, with no time limit. You get email sync, one pipeline, 3 templates, 10 dashboards and a meeting link, and HubSpot's branding appears on every email, chat and meeting page you send.
HubSpot CRM is the free database and basic tools. Sales Hub is the paid sales product layered on top of it, sold as Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. When people compare HubSpot's price to other CRMs, Sales Hub is the product they should be comparing.
Yes, on every plan including free. Two-way email sync, open tracking, and templates work from the free tier, and HubSpot's branding is removed once you pay for Starter.
No. Automated email sequences start on Sales Hub Professional at $90 per seat per month. Starter includes templates, snippets, and basic deal-stage automation, but not sequences.
HubSpot obtained an independent HIPAA attestation in June 2025, but sensitive data storage and the business associate agreement are available only on Enterprise subscriptions. If you handle protected health information on Starter or Professional, HubSpot's own documentation says you should not store it there.
Open any object's list view and click Export, then choose CSV, XLS, or XLSX. Export works on every plan, including free, with associations included on CSV. Notes, logged emails, and calls are not part of a records export, so export activity separately.
Only on free and monthly Starter. Professional and Enterprise are annual commitments, and HubSpot's terms say you cannot cancel before the end of the current term and prepaid fees are not refunded. Turn off auto-renewal in Account and Billing before the term ends.
Companies that want marketing, sales, and service in one system and have the budget to reach Professional, typically 10 to 200 people. It also suits very small teams of 2 who can live inside the free plan.
By review volume on G2: missing features (500 reviews), limited features (472), a learning curve (447), limited customization (319), and expense (318). Most of the feature complaints are about what is gated to Professional rather than what HubSpot lacks.
For a team on Professional that uses the marketing and sales hubs together, yes. For a small sales team that needs automation and reporting, the jump from $15 to $90 per seat plus the onboarding fee makes the value case weak.
It depends on what pushed you away. If it was the Professional price and the contract, look at Bigin. If you want a visual pipeline above everything else, look at Pipedrive. If you plan to scale into a large ecosystem, look at Salesforce Starter. We review all three in this folder.