5 best alternatives to HubSpot

When it comes to managing customer relationships, the right CRM can make all the difference. But what happens when your current platform no longer fits your needs? Whether it’s due to limited features, high costs, or compatibility issues, it might be time to explore other options. In this blog post, we'll explore the best CRM alternatives for businesses seeking a better alternative to HubSpot. HubSpot is a popular CRM, but with its steep prices, it can’t scale with you as your business grows. Let’s explore why you might consider switching and what alternatives you should consider.

Why look for alternatives to HubSpot

While HubSpot has its strengths, it may fall short in certain areas. Here are some reasons businesses search for alternatives to HubSpot.

• Cost concerns: Pricing can escalate as teams grow or as advanced features are needed.
• Limited customization: Some businesses require more flexibility to tailor the CRM to their workflows.
• Scalability issues: Growing businesses might outpace the platform’s capabilities.
• Integration gaps: The need for seamless connectivity with tools like email, analytics, or project management.

Key features to look for in a HubSpot alternative

Before diving into the options, it’s essential to know what makes a great CRM. Here are the key features to prioritize when searching for the best CRM alternatives:

1. Customizability: Ensure the CRM can adapt to your unique processes.
2. Pricing flexibility: Look for solutions that cater to small teams and enterprises alike.
3. Integration capabilities: You shouldn’t need to pay an additional cost to integrate with third party tools.
4. Customer support: Reliable assistance can be a game-changer when onboarding or troubleshooting.
5. Flexibility: Does the CRM system only support sales? What about marketing, recruitment, and other areas of the business?

Top alternatives to HubSpot

1. Zoho 

Best for: Sales-focused features

Zoho is a CRM system with a strong sales focus. It has journey orchestration, sales process management, and workflow automation features. There's also something for marketing teams, including event management and customer segmentation.

Key features of Zoho

• Sales automation: Automates sales tasks like lead management, deal tracking, and follow-up actions.
• Customizable dashboards and reports: Allows users to create and customize dashboards and reports for in-depth analytics.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates with email, phone, social media, and live chat to manage customer interactions.
• Lead and contact management: Manages customer information, tracks interactions, and segments contacts for targeted campaigns.
• Workflow automation: Automates routine tasks and processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.
• AI-powered sales assistant (Zia): Provides predictive analytics, task automation, and intelligent suggestions to enhance sales performance.

Zoho’s price and plans

Zoho offers a free plan limited to three users suitable for small businesses. After that, an annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $14 per user, per month.
• Professional: $23 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $40 per user, per month.
• Ultimate: $52 per user, per month.

2. Freshsales

Best for: Sales teams needing integrated communication features.

Freshsales is a CRM platform by Freshworks designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes with AI-powered tools and automation. It provides features like lead scoring, deal tracking, email and call management, and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and drive conversions. Freshsales also integrates communication and sales in one place, offering tools for personalized outreach and detailed insights to improve sales strategies.

Key features of Freshsales

• AI-powered insights: Freshsales leverages AI to provide recommendations, predict deal outcomes, and offer actionable insights to improve sales strategies.
• Lead scoring: Automatically prioritizes leads based on their engagement and likelihood to convert, helping sales teams focus on high-value opportunities.
• Deal tracking: Provides a visual sales pipeline to track deals through various stages and monitor progress in real time.
• Email and call management: Integrates email and phone communication, allowing users to manage interactions directly from the platform.
• Workflow automation: Automates repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or updating deal statuses, reducing manual work and improving efficiency.

Freshsales’ price and plans

Through Freshworks, Freshsales provides a few price plans, depending on the product you need. The following is an overview of their annual subscription.

• Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
• Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $59/user/month.

3. folk 

Best for: Teams that need an all-in-one CRM that requires a short implementation time.

folk is a multi-award-winning CRM platform celebrated for its simple, plug-and-play setup. Highly versatile and customizable, folk supports teams across sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. Designed to grow with your business, it’s ideal for solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams, and even large enterprises

Key features

1. Contact management: Seamlessly centralize all your contacts from social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and X, as well as multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
2. Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in Folk for easy access, and set reminders to ensure timely follow-ups.
3. Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads using a customizable sales pipeline dashboard, available in both Kanban board and list views.
4. Ease of use and customization: Customize pipelines, dashboards, automations, and email sequences to suit your sales cycle, pipeline management, or other business functions like recruitment and marketing.
5. Social media integration: Import contacts and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X with a single click using Folk’s Google Chrome extension.
6. Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Sync emails in full, allowing you to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
7. Contact enrichment: Automatically fill in missing contact details such as email addresses and social profiles using integrations with Apollo and Dropcontact.
8. Email sequences: Send personalized email sequences with follow-up reminders for leads who don’t respond. Includes AI integration to scale personalization efforts.

folk’s price and plans

folk offers a 14-day free trial, after which you can choose from affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual pricing options are as follows:

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starting at $80 per user, per month.

4. Monday CRM

Best for: Managing sales pipelines, tasks, and workflows.

Monday CRM is a sales focussed customer relationship management platform built by the team behind Monday.com, designed to help sales teams manage contacts, sales pipelines, and workflows.

Key features

• Contact management: Provides a central place to store and organize contact details, track communications, and maintain records of interactions with clients and leads.
• Deal management: Allows users to track the progress of deals across stages, helping teams monitor the sales pipeline and update deal statuses as they progress.
• Task management: Users can create tasks related to deals or contacts, assign them to team members, and track their completion to ensure follow-up actions are taken.
• Lead tracking: Features tools for capturing and managing leads, assigning them to team members, and tracking their progress through different stages of the sales funnel.
• Pipeline customization: Enables users to customize their sales pipelines to align with specific business processes, allowing different stages and workflows based on deal progression.

Monday CRM’s price and plans

Monday CRM offers both a monthly and annual subscription plan. All their plans depend on the size of your team and starts with a 3 seat option.

• Basic: Starts from $12 per seat, per month.
• Standard: Starts from $17 per seat, per month.
• Pro: Starts from $28 per seat, per month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

5. Salesforce

Best for: Large enterprises with complex workflows.

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability

Key features of Salesforce

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for the varied needs of large enterprises.
• Customization and scalability: Salesforce is highly customizable and scalable, allowing large organizations to tailor the platform to complex workflows and manage significant growth.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein offers AI-driven analytics and automation, providing insights that help large businesses optimize their strategies.
• Extensive integration capabilities: With Salesforce's AppExchange, large companies can integrate the platform with a wide range of third-party applications, ensuring seamless operation across different business systems.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Salesforce provides robust security measures and compliance features, critical for large organizations handling sensitive customer data.

Salesforce price and plans

Salesforce has a few price plans depending on the features you’re after, and size of your team. The following is their sales cloud plan. 

• Starter suite: $25/user/month.
• Pro suite: $80/user/month.
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month.
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month.

Conclusion

When exploring alternatives to HubSpot, platforms like Zoho, Freshsales, Monday CRM, and Salesforce each cater to different business needs. Zoho offers extensive customization, Freshsales focuses on AI-driven sales tools, Monday CRM provides workflow flexibility, and Salesforce delivers comprehensive functionality for larger organizations. This is why folk stands out as the ideal alternative, offering a user-friendly design, versatile customization, and scalability for teams of all sizes across functions like sales and recruitment. It provides the perfect balance of simplicity and powerful features to grow with your business. Try folk today, free.

Frequently Asked Questions about HubSpot alternatives

What should I look for in a HubSpot alternative?

Look for a platform that aligns with your business needs, offering features like contact management, sales pipeline tools, and email automation, while also being user-friendly and cost-effective. folk excels in providing all of these features with customizable workflows and scalability for teams of all sizes.

Why consider switching from HubSpot to another CRM?

Many businesses switch due to HubSpot’s complexity or pricing. folk offers a more affordable and straightforward alternative, with plug-and-play functionality and the ability to grow with your business.

Which HubSpot alternative is the easiest to use?

folk is designed with simplicity in mind, making it one of the easiest CRM platforms to set up and use, even for teams with minimal technical experience.

How does folk compare to HubSpot in terms of pricing?

folk provides transparent, affordable pricing plans starting at $20 per user, per month, with no hidden fees, making it a cost-effective alternative to HubSpot.