Alternative to HubSpot A system written around your process
CRM
What HubSpot is
HubSpot is a CRM and marketing automation platform made of Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Service Hub and CMS Hub. The free CRM brings companies in, but the serious functions need paid plans and those step up sharply. Its heaviest use is among technology companies and SaaS businesses working inbound.
Five limits of HubSpot
Not faults, boundaries - these are the places where clients most often run into the edge of the product.
Price steps up sharply with scale
Marketing Hub Professional starts at roughly €850 a month for 1,000 marketing contacts, and every additional 5,000 contacts adds around €210 a month. At 50,000 contacts the cost passes €2,800 a month.
The marketing contact limit
HubSpot separates marketing from non-marketing contacts. Passing the limit on the first kind raises the bill automatically, which makes the budget hard to plan ahead.
Custom objects are capped
Custom objects, available from Enterprise, are limited to 10 object types with at most 500,000 records each. They do not stand in for a real data model.
A fixed contact data model
The contact to company to deal structure is predefined. Complex relationships - consortia, buying groups, partnerships between companies - cannot be modelled.
Content is locked to the platform
Landing pages, blog and forms built in HubSpot CMS export badly, so a migration means rebuilding hundreds of pages by hand.
HubSpot against a system written from scratch
| Feature | HubSpot | Custom |
|---|---|---|
| Cost at 50,000 contacts | About €2,800 a month | A fixed cost, independent of contact count |
| Data model | Contact → company → deal, plus capped custom objects | Any relational model, no limits |
| Marketing automation | Extensive, but expensive on higher plans | No limit on workflows or contacts |
| Landing pages | Built-in builder, and locked to it | Your own pages, full control of the code |
| Reporting | Predefined plus custom from Professional | Any SQL query, wired to your BI |
| Integration with local tools | Limited outside the US ecosystem | Native to the tools your market uses |
| Multi-language content | CMS Hub, with limited localisation | Full support for several languages and markets |
| API and limits | 100,000 requests a day on OAuth | No API limits |
Total cost of ownership over three years
A subscription looks cheap by the month. After three years the bill often reads differently, so we add it all up.
| Item | HubSpot | Custom |
|---|---|---|
| Licence / hosting (year) | €11,000 | €840 |
| Build | €3,500 | €11,500 |
| Customisation and development (year) | €2,300 | €1,900 |
| Maintenance and support (year) | €840 | €1,700 |
| Total (3 years) | €18,000 | €16,000 |
Figures are quoted in euro, converted from Polish złoty at a fixed rate of 4.30 PLN to 1 EUR and rounded. Contracts are settled in either currency.
When moving pays off
Companies whose contact base has gone past 10,000 and whose HubSpot bill is stepping up with it. Beyond the price, three things usually come back: the data model, the reporting, and integration with the tools their own market runs on.
HubSpot costs more than €1,200 a month and grows with the contact base
You need a data model that goes beyond contact, company and deal
You want native integration with the business tools of your own market
Marketing automation needs scenarios HubSpot will not express
Landing pages and content have to be under your control, not the vendor's
Frequently asked questions
What does a HubSpot replacement cost?
A CRM with marketing automation built for you comes to €9,500-16,500. On a base of 50,000 contacts or more it pays back in six to twelve months, because the charge per marketing contact disappears.
Can a custom system replace HubSpot's marketing automation?
Yes. There are open-source automation engines - Mautic, Chatwoot - that integrate with a custom CRM, and an email and lead-scoring system can also simply be built.
How do we get the data and content out of HubSpot?
Contacts, companies and deals come out through the HubSpot API. The harder part is the landing pages and workflows, which have to be rebuilt. A typical migration runs four to eight weeks.
Need an alternative to HubSpot?
A few sentences about what it should do and who for is plenty. You get scope, a date and a price back within 24 hours.
Free consultationOther alternatives in this category
HubSpot integrations
Pipedrive + HubSpot
Data moves both ways between Pipedrive and HubSpot - during a migration, or when two teams sit on two different CRMs.
HubSpot + Slack
Sales and marketing activity from HubSpot shows up in Slack channels, so the team does not have to go and look for it.
HubSpot + Mailchimp
HubSpot holds the contact data, Mailchimp sends the campaigns, and there is one list rather than two.