HubSpot vs Pipedrive for a small sales team

A sales team of two to fifteen people that gets enquiries by web form and email, and has to decide between a free-to-start platform and a pipeline-first CRM. If you are still deciding whether you need a CRM at all, start with choosing a CRM for a small B2B service business.

• Do you need to start at zero cost? One of the two has a permanent free CRM for a small team; the other offers only a trial.
• How many people will have a seat? Both charge per seat, so every added seller multiplies the price.
• When does follow-up automation start? The plan that first includes it differs, and so do its limits.
• What is charged around the subscription? One-time onboarding fees, add-ons and credits are separate lines.
• How does it connect to your form and mailbox? Both work with the usual automation platforms, but the operations they expose differ.

• Pipedrive charges per seat on four plans (Lite, Growth, Premium, Ultimate). Its help page says you are charged per seat whether or not it is assigned to a user, and that annual billing is paid up front for the year. Prices exclude VAT. There is no free plan on the pricing page; the offer is a 14-day trial without a card.
• HubSpot offers a free CRM for up to two users. Paid Sales Hub plans are priced per seat: Starter at $7 on the annual option, with $20 shown beside it (the pricing page labelled the Starter price a limited-time offer when read on 26 October, so treat it as promotional), Professional at $90 (with $100 shown beside it), and Enterprise from $150, sold through sales. Professional and Enterprise carry required one-time onboarding fees of $1,500 and $3,500.

The HubSpot monthly column is the per-seat list price in HubSpot's catalog. The monthly USD price on HubSpot's own page could not be read for this comparison, so it is not stated to be the monthly option. Seat counts above are the number of people who work in the product; HubSpot's free CRM covers two.

Read the rows as arithmetic on the published prices, not as a quote: neither vendor guarantees that a displayed price holds for twelve months, and whether HubSpot's annual option commits you for a year was not confirmed for this comparison.

On Pipedrive, Lite has no automations in the limits table. Growth is the first plan with them: 50 automations and 5 sequences per company; Premium raises that to 150 and 25. HubSpot's pricing page lists simple automation and targeted email campaigns on Starter and advanced automation on Professional. The record and automation limits of HubSpot's plans were not read for this comparison, so check them on its plan details before you rely on one.

HubSpot looks for a matching value in the Email property, and a form submitted with an existing email adds the information to the existing contact. Pipedrive's help page says duplicates are identified by name together with a phone number, an email or an organisation. Both are listed in the official app directories of Zapier and Make; the operations each exposes are laid out in the lead follow-up guide.

• Your whole selling team is two people with modest volume and you want to pay nothing yet: Pipedrive lists no free plan, only a trial.
• You want marketing email campaigns in the same product: Pipedrive's automated campaigns need the Campaigns add-on.
• You want one price that includes everything: its add-ons are separate lines, and its pages name some plans differently, so confirm what your plan includes on the live pricing page.

• You need paid seats for many sellers on a tight budget: the lowest paid price is a limited-time offer, and Professional and Enterprise add required one-time onboarding fees.
• You only need a pipeline and simple follow-up and do not want a larger product family: HubSpot bundles sales, marketing and service features into one pricing table.
• You need one price that holds across currencies: Enterprise was shown from €175 on the European layout of the pricing page and from $150 on the US layout.

1. Write down the number of people who will edit records, and the two follow-up actions you cannot afford to forget.
2. Open Pipedrive's 14-day trial and HubSpot's free CRM, and import twenty of your own past enquiries into each.
3. Submit the same email twice and check what each does with the duplicate.
4. Read the billing line of the exact plan you would buy, and note any one-time fee.
5. Build the automatic part once you have chosen: form to CRM to email follow-up.

• Testing. No product was used for this comparison; it reads published pages.
• Other CRMs. ActiveCampaign is priced by contacts and is covered in the CRM guide.
• Tax and regional prices. Pipedrive says its prices exclude VAT; HubSpot's page does not say how tax is treated.
• Implementation cost. Setup, migration and training time are yours to estimate.