HubSpot CRM Review | What It Does, Pricing, Alternatives, My Verdict
CRM · TOOL REVIEW

HubSpot CRM

★★★★★★

The best free CRM available. Genuinely useful on its own, and the paid tiers are a separate decision.

CATEGORY
CRM
PRICE
Free / Paid
MY RATING
4.5 / 5
LINK TYPE
Affiliate
BEST FOR
Getting off a spreadsheet without paying anything

What it is

HubSpot CRM is the contact and deal management part of HubSpot's platform, and the free version is genuinely capable rather than a trial.

Contacts, companies, deals, activity history, email tracking and meeting scheduling are all included at no cost, with no time limit.

It is what I recommend to any business still tracking enquiries in a spreadsheet, which is a surprising number of them.

What it does

Contact and company records with full activity history: emails, calls, notes, meetings, all on the timeline.

Deal pipelines with stages you define, so you can see what is actually in progress rather than relying on memory.

Email tracking tells you when somebody opened your proposal, which changes when you follow up.

Meeting scheduling links, forms and live chat are included free, which for a small business removes two other subscriptions.

Who it's for

01Any business tracking enquiries in a spreadsheet.
02Consultants managing more than about twenty active prospects.
03Teams needing shared visibility of who spoke to whom.
04Businesses wanting a CRM with no budget.
05Companies who may later want marketing tools on the same records.

Features

Free contact and deal management
No time limit, no seat cost.
Activity timeline
Emails, calls, notes and meetings per contact.
Email tracking
Know when a proposal was opened.
Meeting scheduling
Booking links included.
Forms and live chat
Website capture included free.
Reporting dashboards
Basic pipeline reporting.

Pros and cons

PROS
Best free CRM by a wide margin.
No seat limits on the free tier.
Email tracking and scheduling included.
Scales into the paid platform if needed.
Polished and well documented.
CONS
Paid tiers escalate sharply in price.
Free tier branding on forms and chat.
Some limits designed to prompt upgrades.
Marketing features gated behind expensive tiers.
Can feel heavy for a two-person business.

Pricing

PLAN WHAT YOU GET WORTH IT FOR
Free Contacts, deals, email tracking, scheduling, forms. Most small businesses. Genuinely sufficient.
Sales Hub Starter Removes branding, adds sequences and more. Small sales teams.
Sales Hub Professional Automation, forecasting, advanced reporting. Growing sales functions.
Enterprise Permissions and controls at scale. Large organisations.

The free tier is genuinely free forever with no seat cost. The paid jumps are steep, so treat them as a separate decision entirely.

MY RECOMMENDED PLAN

The free tier. Add a cheap email platform such as MailerLite alongside, and only consider paid Sales Hub when sequences and forecasting become genuine needs.

Alternatives

Pipedrive
Better pure sales pipeline tool, paid only, cheaper than HubSpot's paid tiers.
Zoho CRM
Cheaper paid tiers with a broad suite, less polished.
A spreadsheet
Genuinely fine below about twenty active prospects.
Capsule CRM
Simple, cheap, good for small service businesses.

My verdict

HubSpot's free CRM is the best free business software I know. Contacts, deals, activity history, email tracking and scheduling, at no cost and with no seat limit, and it is properly built rather than crippled.

I have moved several clients off spreadsheets onto it in an afternoon, and the immediate benefit is not the features. It is that everybody can see what was said to whom, which prevents the enquiries that fall through gaps.

Treat the paid tiers as an entirely separate decision. The free CRM plus a cheap email platform covers what most small businesses actually do, at a fraction of Marketing Hub's cost.

Try HubSpot CRM →

Who should use it

01Any business tracking enquiries in a spreadsheet.
02Consultants with more than twenty active prospects.
03Teams needing shared contact visibility.
04Businesses wanting a capable CRM for nothing.

Who should avoid it

01Businesses of one or two with very few prospects.
02Teams that will not maintain the records.
03Companies needing deep sales automation cheaply, where Pipedrive is better.
04Anyone who will be pushed into expensive upgrades they do not need.

Affiliate disclosure

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes the price you pay. It also does not decide what appears on this page: I recommend tools with no affiliate programme just as readily, and leave off tools with generous ones when they do not deserve the space.

All recommended tools Last reviewed September 2026