HubSpot Alternatives: The 14 Best Options for 2025

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard how great HubSpot is. They’re a big player in the industry, and everybody knows that.

Their total annual revenue is expected to cross $2.5 billion in 2024. So, yes, you can say they’re pretty good at their job of acquiring customers.

But here’s the thing  ―  HubSpot is not your only option when it comes to marketing automation and CRM software. There are many HubSpot alternatives available to you in 2025, some of them much cheaper.

In this post, we’ll explore some of HubSpot’s competitors and share why you should choose them for your business. 

Ready? Let’s go.

Note: This post was updated in October 2024 to reflect the new prices and features of products.

What is HubSpot ― a little background

HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform. It’s a full-fledged, all-in-one tool: a powerful customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, sales, content management, and customer service platform. Many marketers regard it as a centralized hub for managing end-to-end sales and marketing operations. 

“HubSpot is most basically known as a CRM tool to capture and organize customer information. However, HubSpot can do so much more than that with the workflow, reports, and property options. Our company is very diverse in the customers we work with and how they function. The use of automation allows the groups to incorporate automation capabilities into their process to help them get back to the important things.”

Founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at MIT in 2006, HubSpot was born to support customers as an alternative to intrusive marketing and sales tactics. It tracks all sales and marketing activities.

“The HubSpot tools are all integrated, easy to use, and intuitive. Access controls are robust, and we can produce high-quality marketing campaigns that deliver results using a wide range of digital channels. Reporting is a key strength, with the flexibility we need to produce in-depth funnels, sales analytics, and performance benchmarks that help teams make effective decisions.”

HubSpot offers a wide range of features for businesses in various industries. Its robust marketing and sales tools can help attract new leads, close more deals, and increase customer loyalty. 

The 2 biggest use cases of HubSpot

The HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Marketing Hub make the platform a highly sought-after option today.

So let’s take a look at each use case closely. 

As a marketing automation tool

Every marketer is probably guilty of multitasking at least once in their career, like preparing a new email campaign while participating in social media marketing. 

HubSpot can automate some of these tasks. It can manage contacts for you while you’re busy drafting the email copy and Instagram post. That’s right — HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales automation platform. When used effectively, it will improve your lead generation and lead conversion efforts.

As a CRM

If you’re looking for a CRM, you’ve surely come across HubSpot. It’s one of the most popular CRM platforms today.

What sets HubSpot apart from other CRMs is its robustness in inbound marketing. With HubSpot, you can convert visitors to your website into leads and then nurture them as customers. Its advanced software lets you track and analyze sales activity, collect lead data as a unified source of truth, execute inbound and outbound sales campaigns, among other things.

However, HubSpot isn’t without its drawbacks. To see the whole picture, we have to compare its pluses and minuses.

HubSpot: Pros and Cons

While HubSpot can be a valuable business tool, it’s not right for everyone. Here are some pros and cons to consider before signing up for HubSpot.

Please note that this comparison is for HubSpot in general, and it’s not based on their individual “hubs” or plan.

HubSpot’s strong points

1. Setting up is a breeze  ―  it’s easy to deploy and set up.
2. Its user interface (UI) is clean and easy to navigate. Especially compared to some enterprise solutions like Salesforce.
3. HubSpot integrates with a wide variety of other software (like Encharge, for example). This means you can create a complete sales and marketing stack using HubSpot as the core.
4. Their mobile app is well-designed and user-friendly.
5. You can try out the HubSpot free CRM plan before you commit to a paid plan. In the free plan, you can add up to 1,000,000 contacts, which is already plenty for most businesses that are just starting out. Learn more about the HubSpot pricing.

HubSpot’s shortcomings

1. You need to overcome a steep learning curve if you want to harness its full power.
2. While HubSpot’s free plans offer a great way to get started with inbound marketing, things can quickly get pricey once you move up to a paid plan. Unfortunately, some features are restricted or unavailable based on your subscription plan.
3. In HubSpot’s free and starter plans, you can’t set up email sequences.
4. The free plan only allows you to send only 2,000 emails per month.
5. Free plan comes with HubSpot branding on emails and forms.
6. Marketing automation workflows are only available in Professional plans and above.
7. They require additional fees for onboarding.
8. HubSpot lacks form customization with partial HTML/CSS/JS coding. To personalize forms to your brand, you need to have technical knowledge.
9. Unless you’re on the  Enterprise plan, you won’t be allowed to send behavior emails or segment contacts based on what people do in your product. There are no behavioral event triggers and reporting for that, which are both important for companies with SaaS and mobile apps.
10. The paid plans below Enterprise are generally not geared toward the business needs of digital products (SaaS and mobile apps). This is expected as HubSpot’s primary audience is SMBs, offline businesses, and marketing agencies. Features such as API calls are only available on Enterprise.
11. You won’t have access to social marketing features unless you’re in the higher-paid plans (Professional and Enterprise).

So let’s see which alternatives to HubSpot address those shortcomings.

7 HubSpot alternatives when you’re looking for marketing automation software

1. Encharge – Best for SaaS startups and scaling businesses

Encharge automates several marketing tasks. It’s like an extension of your marketing team that can send behavior-based emails, score leads, or does powerful segmentation for you. 

What’s better about Encharge

Anyone starting out in marketing automation needs a good platform like Encharge. It’s ideal for startups or any business in the digital space, especially subscription-based software like SaaS. 

One major reason why Encharge is a good alternative to HubSpot as marketing automation is its support for user events ― activities that people do or don’t do in your app. So, that’s the ability to send action-based emails and target the right group of audiences. You can also get this on HubSpot, but you must prepare $38,400 for the Enterprise annual bill.

Here are a few other reasons why you should go with Encharge:

• Have all your campaigns and marketing automation together in one place.
• Easier to build automated workflows. 
• Focused on SaaS and digital businesses. Encharge is all the more better-suited for you if you run a SaaS business. 
• Much more affordable pricing, starting at just $159 per month for all features.

Encharge vs. Hubspot 

Below, we will compare Encharge and HubSpot’s professional plans for their marketing and sales hub. The professional tier includes the core features necessary if you’re starting with marketing automation. 

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

All the plans include the essential features for marketing automation that would be otherwise limited in HubSpot, like unlimited emails and broadcasts.

What sets Encharge apart is the drag-and-drop flow builder functionality that lets you visualize and automate the whole user flow. Here are a few workflows that you can build:

• Onboarding flow
• Trial conversion sequence
• Lead nurturing flow

A HubSpot deal-focused automation flow in Encharge:

You’d also enjoy the following integrations available for all plans and 50+ others:

• Zapier so you can connect Encharge to 1,500+ apps
• Segment to create advanced behavior-based marketing automation flows that convert, guide, and delight customers
• Stripe for automatic billing new customers, upgraders or downgraders, and canceling customers
• Calendly so you can sync your meetings with Encharge thus accelerate your sales process
• CRM such as HubSpot CRM and Salesforce to automate deal stages of your Encharge leads. Yes, you can integrate HubSpot with Encharge, so if you are already using the free HubSpot CRM suite, you don’t have to abandon HubSpot. Encharge’s marketing automation features play nicely with the HubSpot CRM. In fact, in Nov 2022 we launched a brand new integration that supports a two-way sync between HubSpot and Encharge. Make sure to check it out.

Further reading: HubSpot Marketing Hub: Features and comparison with Mailchimp and Encharge

2. ActiveCampaign – Best for info-product marketers and content creators

ActiveCampaign is an old player in the field. They boast a wide set of features from newsletters and automations to forms and landing pages.

What’s better about ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is much cheaper than HubSpot’s marketing hub. It combines affordable pricing with a wide range of integrations with third-party tools for webinars, landing pages, websites, and so on. ActiveCampaign is an excellent option for content creators and solo creators looking for power on a limited budget.

Also, one could argue that ActiveCampaign’s standard reporting/metrics features are more robust than those of HubSpot. However, HubSpot offers much more flexibility if you dive deeper into the reporting part.

You could also visualize the automation better as ActiveCampaign lets you see your entire customer lifecycle in the automations map — a unique feature for ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign’s Pro Plan vs. HubSpot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations

The price goes up as your contact volume increases. Also, note that they don’t have a free plan, but you can get a 14-day free trial to try the tool out. 

What sets ActiveCampaign apart?

Automation maps allow you to view how your customer journey looks for flows like onboarding and welcome email series. 

ActiveCmpaign integrates with hundreds of tools. Here are some of their native integrations:

• Calendly
• EventBrite
• Google Sheets
• Salesforce
• Shopify

3. GetResponse – Best for new marketers

GetResponse’s interface is simple and clear, with clear steps and tutorials. Their 24/7 chat support is extremely helpful if you’re new to marketing.

What’s better about GetResponse

GetResponse is one of the easiest autoresponders on the market, which makes its email marketing feature a good choice. It’s also a complete digital marketing platform that lets you set up specific processes using the workflow editor. However, do not expect advanced features (like triggered emails, for instance) or anything super fancy here.

GetResponse Marketing Automation plan vs. Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

Pricing depends on your number of contacts.

Some of their app integrations includes:

4. Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) – Best for sales automation

Keap is the software for marketing and sales. It can help you centralize the tasks around your sales activities.

The sales pipeline and the automation features that come along with Keap are a great way to simplify the sales process.

What’s better about Keap

Business success depends on automation. And that’s where Keap beats HubSpot. You can create advanced automation and workflows and reuse them endlessly to capture and follow up (or close) leads. So that’s automating daily, repetitive tasks that free up the sales team’s time so they can focus on converting more leads instead. 

In a nutshell, Keap automates your business sales processes.

Keap vs Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc

Keap’s pricing is simple. They offer one plan with all of the features:

The starting plan includes 1,500 contacts and 2 users. Additional users cost $39 each. Their automated workflow usually goes like this:

• Marketing automation gets you new leads, nurtures old leads, upsells to existing customers, and establishes long-term relationships.
• Sales automation is all about closing deals.

Integration with Keap is easy. Through Keap’s Zapier integration, you can connect to over 4,000 apps, so your third-party apps can be synced to create more automation.

5. Brevo (previously Sendinblue) – Best for straightforward email marketing

Brevo is a marketing automation platform that works best as an email marketing tool. You can easily integrate this into any third-party service to capture the email addresses of potential customers via a simple subscription form. 

What’s better about Brevo 

Simple and easy email marketing on the free plan that allows you to purchase email credits, so you can send additional emails if you reach your plan’s limit.

Brevo Business vs. Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

With Brevo’s Free Plan you can do simple email marketing and set up basic automation workflows for up to 2000 contacts. Unlimited marketing automation is included in the Business plan.

Some of the workflows you can set up are

• Onboarding workflows
• Automatically send birthday messages with coupon codes
• Track customers’ purchases

Here are some of the third-party apps ready for integration:

• Outfunnel
• Optinmonster
• Google Analytics
• Zapier
• WordPress

6. Ontraport – Best for small organizations

Communicating with prospects in many different ways is critical, especially to small business owners. Ontraport lets you engage with your customers from different channels. That’s everything in this single software, without enterprise pricing.

What’s better about Ontraport

Okay, it’s not news to know that Hubspot costs more if you like your marketing and sales together. Unfortunately, that’s something small entrepreneurs can’t afford. Ontraport is your one-stop shop for all things business-related. 

It automates tasks that would otherwise require hiring tech developers and designers. Its team takes pride in unmatched reporting and best-in-class email deliverability.

Ontraport vs. Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc

All Ontraport plans have marketing automation features. But its basic plan is limited to only 1000 contacts.

And here are some prebuilt marketing automation workflows to get you started in no time:

• Lead follow-ups
• Customer feedback collection
• Webinar promotions

You can explore some of their integrations like:

• Zapier
• Shopify
• Zoom
• Google Calendar
• LeadSync

7. Intercom – Best for conversational customer experience

Intercom is a popular choice for communicating with customers. It’s an advanced tool businesses use to connect with their users. And because you can chat in real time, you give the user a great customer experience. Also, since 2023 they have been heavily AI-driven as their homepage and feature pages attest.

What’s better about Intercom

Intercom is a tool with many features. It’s a marketing automation tool that was also built as a customer communications platform.

You can communicate with the customer in real time without going through long emails. And its note feature lets you easily communicate with your colleagues.

Intercom Advanced vs. Hubspot 

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

Two factors that affect Intercom’s pricing:

1. Seats that’ll give teammates access to different tools in Intercom.
2. Usage – for email, Whatsapp messages, and text messages/phone calls
   

Once you’re on their paid plans, you can create any flow for a personalized experience to fit your customers’ needs.

Some of their integrations include:

• WhatsApp
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Zendesk Support
• Marketo

7 HubSpot alternatives when you’re looking for CRM

HubSpot’s CRM works as a free core that you can enhance with the HUbSpot paid plans. The following comparisons include features of the free CRM plus those from the Sales hub. 

1. Zoho CRM – Best for non-tech businesses

With Zoho CRM, importing data to manage clients is easy. The interface is so simple that even without technical knowledge, you can get it up and running. Also, one of the biggest selling points of its CRM is its freedom for customization.

What’s better about Zoho CRM

One key difference between HubSpot and Zoho CRM is the learning curve. Though HubSpot’s CRM solution is said to be 100% free (but limited!), if you want to make the most of it, you’ve got to give time to learn the software.

Zoho’s free version has automation, workflows, and other features a sales team needs. Also, if by chance you ever need any help, Zoho CRM has an AI sales assistant called Zia who answers voice commands (think Siri or Alexa).

Zoho CRM vs Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

You can set up automated workflows in all of their plans, but workflow reporting is limited to the Enterprise plan only.

Zoho’s integrations include:

• Slack
• Zapier
• Zendesk
• Trello
• Amazon Seller Central

2. Salesforce – Best for companies with larger contact lists

Perhaps the most popular CRM is Salesforce, having a market share of 23.8%. If you’re an enterprise with a large number of accounts, consider that you may have found your match with this platform.

What’s better about Salesforce

When it comes to reporting, Salesforce’s CRM is more advanced than HubSpot’s.

Salesforce’s dashboard lets you see your entire pipeline plus your estimated revenue amount and source  ―  a definite plus if you own numerous customers. Reports and dashboards are configurable, and advanced reporting features include cross-reports filters to let you manage to merge multiple reports.

Salesforce vs. Hubspot

Pricing structure, Flows, Integrations, etc.
On their pricing page, the enterprise plan includes the best features and the most customizable CRM option for sales.

And here are the integrations available:

• Gmail
• Outlook
• If you use software that doesn’t have built-in integration with Salesforce, you can buy licenses for MuleSoft, use their integration partner, or use AppExchange apps.

3. Sage CRM – Best for account management

Sage CRM allows you to keep track of your database so you can bill your customers faster. Their integration into the accounting system lets sales and accounting see each other’s info.

What’s better about Sage CRM

Sage CRM gives you the tools to manage your customers’ relationships and track your claims. It even has a dedicated solution for accountants and bookkeepers.

Some features that help automate sales include order processing, creation of customer invoices, revenue reporting, lead management, and sales forecasts.

Sage CRM vs Hubspot

4. Pipedrive – Best for Pipeline Management

Simple. Pipedrive was built by and for salespeople. So, yes, it’s obvious that if you’re a sales-focused business, this is a perfect choice. 

What’s better about Pipedrive

Although HubSpot offers a Sales hub that works best for the sales team, the sales pipeline feature is limited. And that’s for all its tiers. This is where Pipedrive beats them. They offer unlimited pipeline management solutions that will help the team to visualize the customer’s journey and their results. 

Managing your sales activities, tracking the progress of sales leads, and reviewing your sales numbers are all possible with Pipedrive CRM. Also, you can configure email campaigns for deal management and then analyze actionable insights. 

Pipedrive vs. Hubspot 

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

Pipedrive doesn’t have a free plan, but it offers a free 14-day trial.

They also offer add-ons to upgrade your plan further. Currently, they have 4 options available:

• LeadBooster add-on
• Web Visitors add-on
• Campaigns add-on
• Smart Docs add-on

The Pipedrive’s app marketplace gives you access to hundreds of integrations such as:

• QuickBooks
• Slack
• Zapier
• PandaDoc
• Calendly

5. Kustomer – Best for managing high support volume

Kustomer did a great job replacing “tickets” with conversation. It’s a better approach that shows customers are people, not just tickets. Now, if you’re dealing with a high volume of support conversations, you’ll love that they’re focused on the customer, so you have a full view of the situation every time.

What’s better about Kustomer?

Got support tickets? Kustomer beats HubSpot here because of their thorough reporting.

You get the timeline view that pretty much sums up how a customer interacted with your brand. You can easily set up chatbots and FAQ pages to manage high support volumes. And it’s integrated with social media, voice calls, and Calendly so you can get everything in one place. This makes the support team’s job easier. 

Kustomer vs. Hubspot 

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

Kustomer’s has only 2 plans — Enterprise and Ultimate:

But you may choose to add an AI-sales team member for customer service with Kustomer IQ.

Here are apps you can connect with the CRM:

• Twilio
• Aircall
• Twitter
• Zapier
• Jira

6. Salesflare – Best for B2B SMB

Small or solo business? Salesflare is the CRM that’ll complete your team. It integrates with most apps you use, so it’s almost self-serve. Plus, it’s account-centric. New members can see a prospect’s business account’s history by going into their account.

What’s better about Salesflare

You get it. Salesflare is for small businesses, so they have affordable pricing. They even have an early-stage program for young startups. Adding contacts and tracking communications with accounts is easy after it’s synchronized with an email address. Using the sales pipeline function is intuitive, and you can quickly see where everything is in the funnel. 

Salesflare vs. Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

This is Salesflare’s pricing guarantee from their pricing page:

• Simple, predictable pricing without hidden add-ons or limits
• Only pay for what you use with fair, pro-rata billing
• Try 100% of the functionality without entering a credit card

Here are some tools to try with Salesflare:

• Leadinfo
• SyncPenguin
• Google sheets
• Quickbooks online
• Google calendar

7. Freshsales – Best for the smarketing (sales and marketing) teams

Freshsales is one of the products by Freshworks. Its CRM is divided into 2: one for just the sales team and another for both sales and marketing. As expected, the latter gives you a 360-degree view of your customers.

What’s better about Freshsales

Here’s the thing, HubSpot has separate hubs for the marketing and sales team. If you want to bundle them, you’ll have to pay an additional fee. Freshsales, on the other hand, has a single product for the smarketing team. 

You can interact with your customers and target them accordingly. Use it to manage users, do automation marketing, and notify your sales team of what’s due for follow-up or closing  ―  all in one place.

Freshsales vs Hubspot

Pricing, Flows, Integrations, etc.

Freshsales has a free version limited to 100 contacts only. It has the very basic features you’ll need for contact and account management.

And here are a few integrations from the Freshworks marketplace.

• Zoom
• Freshdesk Support Desk
• ActiveDEMAND Marketing Automation
• Typeform
• MailChimp

Choosing the best HubSpot alternative

There are a lot of HubSpot alternatives out there. So, how do you choose the best one for your company? Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What features are you looking for?  
• What’s your budget?
• What kind of customer support do you want to receive?

Answer these questions, and you’ll find the right HubSpot alternative for your business.

If you’re looking for an affordable HubSpot alternative for marketing automation, we recommend giving Encharge a try. 

With our automation tools and features, you can take your marketing beyond email to build conversion-focused customer journeys.

Plus, our team’s always up for answering any questions or troubleshooting (count free migration from HubSpot to Encharge.io) you may need along the way. 
Sound good? Start your free trial today.

Read next: HubSpot lifecycle stages – what are they and how to automate them