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Beyond HubSpot: the CRMs small sales teams turn to
When HubSpot's paid tiers get expensive, other CRMs cover the same daily sales work, with prices built in very different ways.
A small sales team needs a few things from its customer relationship app, or CRM, every day: a list of contacts and companies, a pipeline that shows where each deal stands, a record of the emails and calls, and reminders of what to do next. HubSpot is one well-known option; the eight below are for teams that find its paid tiers expensive.
Some keep things simple, some lean on AI and automation, and some start from email marketing and add sales tools on top. For each, the price as a team grows matters as much as the entry price. Prices are in US dollars, and HubSpot's own plans are not covered here.
Keeping it simple
Less Annoying CRM keeps to the basics. It tracks contacts, tasks and calendars and logs email, with unlimited pipelines and unlimited contacts and companies. It syncs with a Google or Outlook calendar and saves meetings to each contact's profile. There is one price, $15 per user a month plus any tax, with 25 GB of file storage per user, and a 30-day trial. The maker advises staying below 50,000 contacts and companies in total. It is built for small businesses and solo users.
Nimble is a CRM for managing relationships, leads and deals, aimed at solopreneurs and small teams. It runs email sequences, has pipelines and reports that can be customized, and offers search, automation, forecasting, templates and email tracking. Email, contacts and calendars sync automatically with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. The price is $24.90 per seat a month, billed annually, with 25,000 contact records and 2 GB of storage per seat, and there is a 14-day trial. Extras are priced separately: AI email marketing is a $15 a month upgrade for the whole company, credits come in blocks of 100 for an extra $10 a month, and web chat and web forms are free for 30 days and then $12 a month per team.
Copper suits teams that work in Google Workspace and Gmail. Users can add leads, track conversations, find files and manage tasks directly in Gmail and Google Calendar, and it syncs Gmail email, contacts and files. Its drag-and-drop pipelines come with AI flags and alerts, and it manages leads, deals, tasks and projects. The Basic plan starts at $23 per seat a month, paid annually, but has a limit of 2,500 contacts. Workflow automation, bulk email, reporting and integrations start with Professional at $59, and email series with Business at $99. There are iOS and Android apps and a 14-day trial.
Sales CRMs with AI and automation
Freshsales is a sales CRM for managing leads, contacts and deals, built for startups and small and medium businesses. Its Growth plan, from $9 per user a month billed annually, has kanban views with drag-and-drop cards, chat, email and phone, email templates, contact lifecycle stages, custom fields and basic workflows. Its AI, Freddy, can flag leads and deals and write emails. Contact scoring and deal insights need Pro at $39 per user a month, and forecasting insights need Enterprise at $59. The trial lasts 21 days, after which a team has to choose a plan and pay to carry on.
Salesmate CRM keeps contacts, companies, deals, pipelines, activities and conversations in one place. Its Basic plan, at $23 per user a month, is designed for startups and small and medium businesses that manage a pipeline across several channels. It includes deal pipeline management, full email sync, email templates and tracking, calendar sync, a meeting scheduler, a standard dashboard and reports, and web forms. Every plan includes iPhone, iPad and Android apps. Sequences and product and quote management need Pro at $39 per user a month, and the power dialer and voicemail drop need Business at $63. There is a 15-day trial.
Starting from email marketing
Three of the tools come at the job from the marketing side. ActiveCampaign is built around personalized email marketing and multi-step marketing automation, and it suits teams that run those campaigns. Its sales pipeline is an add-on: pipelines and sales engagement are sold as CRM add-ons, and standard CRM and e-commerce integrations come with the Plus plan. The Starter plan costs $15 a month billed annually, with five actions per automation. The user counts are low: one user on Starter and Plus, three on Pro and five on Enterprise. There is a 14-day trial.
EngageBay is a CRM for startups and growing businesses that combines sales and marketing. Its sales side covers deals, tasks, appointment scheduling, email tracking and email scheduling, and its marketing side covers email broadcasts and sequences. The free plan supports up to 15 users and includes the CRM, email marketing, autoresponders and landing pages, but only 250 contacts. The Basic plan, from $12.74 per user a month, raises that to 500 contacts, and marketing automation is on the Growth plan at $55.24.
Keap is a CRM and automation platform for small businesses. It has a sales pipeline for tracking leads through the funnel, broadcast and one-to-one emails, emails triggered by what a contact does, and syncing of one-to-one email with Gmail or Outlook. Pipeline automation sets up the next step at each stage. Keap is the most expensive tool here: it starts at $299 a month, billed monthly, and implementation services such as strategy consulting, data import, migration and done-for-you services are required. Text marketing broadcasts and automated texts are only available in the US, and usage over the text plan is charged at $0.015 per text and $0.01 per voice minute.
Where the costs climb
On entry price, most of these CRMs look cheap, from $9 per user a month for Freshsales to $23 to $24.90 for Copper, Salesmate and Nimble. The cost climbs in three ways. The first is per-user pricing: a five-person team pays five times the entry price on Freshsales, Less Annoying CRM, Copper, Nimble and Salesmate.
The second is the features held back for higher plans. Copper keeps workflow automation and reporting for Professional at $59. Freshsales keeps contact scoring and deal insights for Pro, and Salesmate keeps sequences for Pro, both at $39 per user a month. EngageBay keeps marketing automation for Growth.
The third is limits and add-ons: Copper's 2,500 contacts on Basic, EngageBay's 250 contacts on its free plan, ActiveCampaign's single user on Starter, and Nimble's paid extras. Less Annoying CRM is the exception: it lists one price, $15 per user a month. A team comparing these tools against HubSpot will get the clearest picture by pricing the plan that has the features it uses every day, for the number of people who will use it.
