HubSpot alternatives
Seven CRMs a team actually considers when HubSpot's seat maths or its list policy stops working, priced from each vendor's own page.
Switch if you run cold outbound, which HubSpot's acceptable-use policy restricts, or if per-seat pricing at the second tier has outgrown what you use. Stay if marketing and sales share one funnel and you rely on the integration catalogue.
The short answer
- HubSpot Starter Customer Platform is $20 per seat per month billed annually, or $7 monthly, with a free tier for two users and 1,000 contacts. The entry price is not the problem; the jump to the tiers above it is.
- HubSpot's trust and safety guidelines prohibit emailing purchased, rented or borrowed lists. If cold outbound is your motion, this is a policy blocker rather than a feature gap, and no configuration fixes it.
- Almost every alternative here now ships an official MCP server, so an AI client can operate the CRM. The exceptions are the older-generation tools. Check the permission scopes rather than the checkbox.
How we compared these
Every price and limit below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checked in September 2026, not from a review site or a comparison directory. Where a vendor's own page does not state something, this page leaves it out. Two entries could not be priced at all: Pipedrive returns a 403 to automated requests on every pricing URL, and Zoho's page serves rupees rather than dollars. Both rows say so.
Evaluated from HubSpot's own documentation and pricing, September 2026. We have not run it in production. Read this page accordingly: the pricing, the policy wording and the tier gates are checkable facts from HubSpot's site, and there is no account of living inside the product day to day, because we do not have one.
The table compares what decides this choice in practice: what a seat costs, what the record ceiling is, whether cold outbound is permitted by policy, and whether an AI client can operate the system. Feature counts are left out; they reward breadth rather than fit.
HubSpot and its alternatives, compared
| HubSpot | Attio | folk | Close | Pipedrive | Zoho CRM | Monday CRM | SalesCrew | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid price | $20 per seat/mo annual, $7 monthly | $35 per seat/mo annual, $44 monthly | $24 per member/mo annual, $30 monthly | $9 per user/mo annual, $19 monthly | Not published to automated checks; pricing pages return 403 | Rupee pricing only on its own page; no dollar figure confirmable | $12 per seat/mo annual, $18 monthly, 3-seat minimum | $299/mo flat, unlimited seats |
| Free tier | Yes, 2 users and 1,000 contacts | Yes, 3 seats and 50,000 records | No. 2-week trial, no card | No. 14-day trial, no card | Not confirmable from its own site | Free edition, 3 users | No. 14-day trial, no card | No. 14-day trial, card required |
| Record or contact ceiling | Free tier 1,000 contacts; Starter limits not stated | Free 50,000, Plus 250,000, Pro 1 million | No stated cap; quotas on enrichment and messages | Solo caps at 10,000 leads | Not published to automated checks | Not confirmable in dollars | Basic 1,000 contacts and deals | Your own Postgres project. No vendor row cap |
| Cost of the eleventh user | Another full seat | Another seat; Plus caps at 10 | Another member | Another user | Another seat | Another user | Another seat | Nothing |
| Cold outbound permitted by policy | No, not on purchased, rented or borrowed lists | Not a sending tool; your sender's obligations apply | Not a sending tool at volume | Sends supported; the law is still yours | Not a cold-email tool | Not a cold-email tool | Not a cold-email tool | Yes. Suppression enforced at audience freeze and again at send |
| Official MCP server | Yes, read and write | Yes, hosted with OAuth | Yes, hosted with OAuth | Yes, three permission scopes | Yes, native since June 2026 | Yes, four servers | Yes, two servers | Yes. Every UI action has an MCP twin |
| Built-in outbound cadences | Sequences, within its list policy | No | Messaging quotas per member | Yes, with calling | Not confirmable | Yes | Limited on Basic; no automations | Yes, multi-step, on your own mailbox pool |
Figures checked on vendor pricing pages, September 2026.
The field, ranked for a team leaving HubSpot
1. Attio
The most credible modern replacement: $35 a seat annually, 250,000 records on Plus, a free tier with 50,000 records and three seats, and a hosted MCP server with OAuth. Best for: teams who want flexibility without an admin. Not for: teams over ten people on Plus, which caps there, or anyone needing marketing automation.
Read more2. Close
The cheapest serious CRM here at $9 a user annually, built around calling and email rather than around marketing. Its MCP server splits permissions three ways, which is the most careful scoping in this group. Best for: small sales teams who work the phone. Not for: marketing-led funnels.
Read more3. SalesCrew
One flat price with unlimited seats, one Postgres project you own, cold outbound allowed as a matter of product policy with suppression enforced at freeze and at send, and every action available to an AI client as an MCP tool behind an approval queue. Best for: teams whose outbound and pipeline should share a database. Not for: marketing-led teams who need a page builder, a mobile app or a long integration catalogue. New product, no third-party reviews, voice on the roadmap. Disclosure: SalesCrew is our product.
Read more4. folk
$24 a member annually with no seat cap and a two-week trial that does not ask for a card. Quotas sit on enrichment and messages rather than on records. Best for: relationship-led teams who want something light. Not for: high-volume sending, given the per-member message quotas.
Read more5. Pipedrive
The long-standing pipeline-first answer, now with a native MCP server in Claude's connector marketplace. We could not verify its pricing: its pages return 403 to automated requests, so check it yourself before comparing. Best for: deal-focused teams. Not for: marketing depth.
Read more6. Zoho CRM
The broadest suite at the lowest price point in the market, with four MCP servers and a free edition for three users. Its pricing page served rupees when we checked, so confirm your own currency. Best for: cost-driven teams wanting breadth. Not for: teams who found HubSpot too much product already.
Read more7. Monday CRM
$12 a seat annually with a three-seat minimum, so the real entry is $36 a month. Basic caps at 1,000 contacts and includes no automations. Best for: teams already living in Monday boards. Not for: anyone who will hit those caps quickly, which is most sales teams.
Read moreWhen to stay on HubSpot
Stay if marketing and sales share one funnel. HubSpot's real advantage is that forms, email, ads, attribution and the deal record were designed together, and that a marketer and a rep can look at the same contact and both understand what they are seeing. Assembling that from a CRM plus a marketing tool is a project, and the seams show for years.
Stay for the integration catalogue and the ecosystem. Whatever your other software is, something already connects to HubSpot, usually natively, usually maintained by someone else. Every alternative here has fewer connections, ours very much included, and most of them route through webhooks or an API rather than a maintained native app. If your stack is wide, that difference is a real cost.
Stay if the free tier still fits. Two users and 1,000 contacts costs nothing, and a great many teams shopping for alternatives are solving a problem they do not have yet. The honest trigger for leaving is a specific one: cold outbound that its policy prohibits, or a per-seat bill that has outgrown what you use. Absent one of those, the migration costs more than it returns.
Questions
- Is HubSpot's entry price really $20 a seat?
- Starter Customer Platform is listed at $20 per seat per month billed annually, and $7 per seat per month on the monthly-billed option, as of September 2026. There is also a free tier for two users with 1,000 contacts. What surprises teams is the gap to the next tier up, which is where most of the features people associate with HubSpot actually live.
- Can I run cold outbound in HubSpot?
- Not on purchased, rented or scraped lists. HubSpot's own trust and safety guidelines prohibit sending to those, separate from whatever the law in your jurisdiction requires. Teams doing genuine cold outbound generally send from a dedicated tool and sync the replies back. That constraint is a policy choice, not a technical limit.
- Does HubSpot have an MCP server?
- Yes. HubSpot publishes an official MCP server with read and write access to CRM data, plus a separate developer-focused server. Most of this category now ships one, so MCP support is no longer a differentiator on its own; what varies is how granular the permission scopes are and whether it is available on every tier.
- What actually makes people leave HubSpot?
- The seat maths at the second tier and above. The entry price is reasonable and the free tier is generous, so nobody leaves over $20. They leave when the team grows, the tier has to go up for one missing feature, and the two multiply into a number nobody budgeted for.