HubSpot alternatives for small teams: how to choose

Teams on HubSpot usually start looking around at one of two moments: when they need a feature that sits in a higher edition, or when the year’s total arrives as one number. This guide gives a team of 10 to 25 people a fair way to price the alternatives, a worked example and a way to move. Every vendor figure is a US list price before tax, linked to its source with the day it was read.

Why small teams look at other tools

Each reason below is printed on HubSpot’s own pages.

A feature you need sits in a higher edition. HubSpot’s phone menu, the greeting that says “press 1 for sales,” is available with Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional and Enterprise, according to HubSpot’s help article (read October 11, 2026). Five people on the Starter Customer Platform, which covers every Starter hub, pay $100 a month at list price; five Service Hub Professional seats are $450 a month paid yearly (both read October 11, 2026).

Professional comes with a one-time fee. The Service Hub pricing page shows a required $1,500 Professional onboarding, and HubSpot’s product and services catalog lists $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional (read October 11, 2026). Professional’s “pay monthly” price, $100 a seat, still comes with a yearly commitment.

Marketing contacts are priced in tiers. Marketing Hub Starter includes 1,000 marketing contacts, and the catalog prices 1,001 to 3,000 at $50 a month for each 1,000 (read October 11, 2026).

What a team gets at HubSpot. One CRM is shared by HubSpot’s marketing, sales and service hubs, each in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions. Sales Hub and Service Hub include browser calling, recorded and logged, on numbers HubSpot provides: 500 minutes a month for the account on Starter, and 3,000 with up to 3 numbers on Professional; Service Hub also holds the help desk and knowledge base (Service Hub pricing, read October 11, 2026).

How to compare fairly

A pricing page shows what one seat costs; you need what your team would pay in a year for the features it uses.

1. Price the same team everywhere. This guide prices five people who need a CRM with deals, support tickets with a knowledge base, browser calling with a phone menu and recording, and marketing email to about 2,000 people with a sign-up form.
2. Count every seat you would buy. Pipedrive, for one, charges for each seat “whether it’s assigned to a user or not” (its billing article, read October 10, 2026).
3. Compare yearly with yearly, and check whether a monthly price still means a yearly commitment.
4. Price the edition that has the feature. The phone menu is in Professional at HubSpot, Pro in Freshworks’ phone system and Suite Professional at Zendesk, and two-way email sync starts on Pipedrive’s Growth plan (each sourced in its section).
5. Add one-time fees, such as onboarding, to the first year.
6. Add usage: call minutes, numbers, recording and marketing contacts, after what a plan already includes.
7. Use list prices. HubSpot’s $7 Starter seat is a new-customer offer “for a limited time” on its Sales Hub pricing (read October 11, 2026), so compare at the $20 list price. For what you pay today, use your own invoice.

The alternatives small teams usually look at

Zoho: CRM, Desk, Voice and Campaigns

The same five people would buy Zoho CRM Standard at $14 a user, Zoho Desk Professional at $23 an agent, one Zoho Voice Standard license at $49 with a $1 number, and Zoho Campaigns Standard at $12.75 for up to 2,500 contacts: $247.75 a month paid yearly, or $352 paid monthly (read October 11, 2026). Desk Professional is the first edition with a phone channel and the first that Zoho Voice works inside, and one Voice Standard license covers up to 10 people taking calls in Zoho’s apps, with a multi-level phone menu. Our Zoho comparison prices Voice Basic seats instead.

Freshworks: Freshsales, Freshdesk and Freshcaller

Five people would buy Freshsales Suite Growth at $9 a user, with 500 marketing contacts and a built-in phone; the marketing contacts add-on, from $100 a month for 5,000; Freshdesk Growth at $19 an agent, with a knowledge base; and Freshcaller Pro at $39 an agent, the first plan where its plan comparison lists a phone menu. That is $435 a month paid yearly, or $505 paid monthly, plus numbers and minutes by use (read October 10, 2026).

Pipedrive: a sales CRM, with partners

Pipedrive’s pricing starts with Lite at $14 a seat a month paid yearly, two-way email sync starts on Growth at $39, and sign-up forms come in the LeadBooster add-on at $32.50 a month paid yearly (read October 10 and 11, 2026). Marketing email is the Campaigns add-on, $20 a month paid yearly for 2,000 subscribers by its price tiers (read October 10, 2026). For calls, its help center points to Marketplace apps such as CloudTalk and Aircall, and its blog names help desks to pair with it, Freshdesk among them (read October 10, 2026). Lite for five, both add-ons, Freshdesk Growth and CloudTalk Essential at $29 a user, CloudTalk’s first plan with a phone menu (read October 11, 2026), come to $362.50 a month paid yearly, or $493 paid monthly.

Zendesk: support first

Zendesk’s Suite Professional, at $115 an agent a month paid yearly or $149 monthly, includes tickets, a help center, an IVR phone tree and call recording, with numbers and minutes billed by use (read October 11, 2026). Zendesk is retiring its CRM, Sell, on August 31, 2027, and names Pipedrive as its partner for Sell customers (announced September 9, 2025; read October 11, 2026). Its pricing page showed no marketing email product on October 9, 2026, so this set takes the CRM and the email from Pipedrive (Lite, Campaigns and LeadBooster): $697.50 a month paid yearly for five, or $928 paid monthly.

ContactRoll

ContactRoll is one product for sales, support, calling and marketing email, with one record for each customer, so a call, a case and a deal sit on the same person. Calls go through your own Twilio account, and Twilio bills you for them, with no markup from us. Free is $0 for up to 3 people; Standard is $29 and Plus $59 per user a month paid yearly. Phone menus, owner-first ringing, warm transfer, automation flows and custom roles are on Plus, so five people on Plus would be $295 a month paid yearly, with room for 10,000 marketing contacts. Contacts come in from a CSV file, after a dry run that shows what would be added, updated and refused. See ContactRoll for sales and pricing, or start free, with no card.

The five-person totals side by side

Set, read in 2026	A month, paid yearly	A month, paid monthly
HubSpot, October 11, plus $1,500 once	$520	$570
Zoho, starting from Zoho Desk, October 11	$247.75	$352
Freshworks (Freshsales, Freshdesk), October 10	$435	$505
Pipedrive with Freshdesk and CloudTalk, October 10 and 11	$362.50	$493
Zendesk with Pipedrive, October 10 and 11	$697.50	$928
ContactRoll Plus	$295	$345

HubSpot’s set is five Service Hub Professional seats, one Marketing Hub Starter seat and 1,000 more marketing contacts. No total includes taxes or the call minutes and numbers billed by use.

A worked example: a seven-person kiln supplier

Saltmarrow Kiln Supply is a made-up business that sells and repairs electric kilns for schools, studios and home potters. Odile owns it and sells to schools, Bastian sells to studios, Corin and Jun answer support, Wren runs repairs, Pia handles orders and invoices, and Hollis writes the newsletter.

What they use HubSpot for:

• Contacts, companies and a pipeline of quotes.
• Support email as tickets, and a knowledge base of firing guides they send in replies.
• One number with a phone menu (1 for sales, 2 for support, 3 for repairs), answered in the browser and recorded: about 1,000 minutes in and 500 out a month.
• A monthly newsletter to 1,800 subscribers, with a sign-up form on the website.

The six who talk to customers each have a Service Hub Professional seat, which brought the phone menu and the knowledge base; Hollis has a Marketing Hub Starter seat. Six seats at $90, one at $20 and $50 for the second 1,000 marketing contacts make $610 a month paid yearly, or $7,320 a year. The $1,500 onboarding they paid when they moved up does not come back if they leave, so it does not count against staying.

Odile priced the same needs elsewhere: a CRM seat for all seven, help desk and phone seats for the six, and the list of 1,800.

Seven people, the same needs	A month, paid yearly	A year
HubSpot today: Service Hub Professional ×6, Marketing Hub Starter, more contacts	$610	$7,320
Zoho: CRM Standard ×7, Desk Professional ×6, Voice Standard, Campaigns	$298.75	$3,585
Freshworks: Suite Growth ×7, contacts add-on, Freshdesk Growth ×6, Freshcaller Pro ×6	$511	$6,132
Pipedrive Lite ×7 and add-ons, Freshdesk Growth ×6, CloudTalk Essential ×6	$438.50	$5,262
Zendesk Suite Professional ×6, Pipedrive Lite ×7 and add-ons	$840.50	$10,086
ContactRoll Plus ×7	$413	$4,956

Calls change the picture. HubSpot’s Professional includes 3,000 minutes a month for the account, so Saltmarrow’s 1,500 cost nothing more there, and CloudTalk’s plans include calls within the US and Canada under fair use (read October 11, 2026). Billed by use, the same month comes to about $32.50 at Zendesk’s rates and $27.15 at Twilio’s, which a ContactRoll customer pays to Twilio directly, each with every minute recorded and before taxes (read October 11, 2026). Moving costs something too: a few days of Pia’s time, and a trial of each tool.

The totals did not choose for Odile; they showed which tools were worth two weeks with the team’s own email and a score, as in how to choose a CRM for a small team.

How to move without losing anything

Check your renewal date first, since Professional seats commit you for a year.

1. Export everything you hold, from contacts and deals with their stages to tickets, notes and the marketing list with each person’s consent and unsubscribes, and open each file.
2. Clean one file of people: one row and one email address each, duplicates merged before the import.
3. Import 50 real contacts first, with a dry run if the new tool offers one, then bring in the rest.
4. Move the list with its consent. Unsubscribes come too, and anyone whose consent you cannot show is asked again; double opt-in explains how.
5. Forward your support address to the new tool, and keep the old inbox open for replies on their way.
6. Ask the new phone provider whether your main number can move, and how long it takes.
7. Run both for a week, and cancel the old subscription only when these checks pass:

• Every new support email opened a ticket or case, and replies landed on the same one.
• Each phone menu option rang the right people.
• Every open deal arrived with its stage, amount and close date.
• The marketing list has the count it left with, unsubscribes included.
• The new tool’s export runs, and you opened the file.

For more questions to ask before you sign, see the small-team CRM buying checklist.