What HubSpot gives a team of five
In short
HubSpot gives a small team a working CRM quickly: contacts, companies, deals on a board, email logged against each record and reports, with a free edition to try it on. For a team whose sales process looks like most sales processes, that is hard to beat.
HubSpot's catalog says its free tools come as a single free edition with up to two free users. A team of five in which everyone edits records will outgrow that quickly, and the next step is a Starter plan, which the catalog prices by the seat each month.
On a paid plan every user is assigned a seat. Seats that can only view are free and unlimited, so an owner who just reads the reports does not add to the bill, while each person who updates a deal or sends email from the CRM needs a paid seat.
The product also brings things a five-person business would never build for itself, such as a mobile app and a marketplace of connections to other tools, and the vendor keeps the whole thing running.
Where the bill and the fit change
In short
The Starter bill for five seats is modest. What changes the sum is a feature that only exists in a Professional edition, where the catalog shows a higher price by the seat or, on some products, a monthly price with a few seats included and a required onboarding fee.
Read the catalog for the feature you actually need before you count seats. Its Professional editions of the sales and service products are priced by the seat at a higher step than Starter, and its Marketing Hub Professional starts at a monthly price with three core seats included and a one-time onboarding fee the catalog calls required.
The other change is fit. HubSpot is built around contacts, companies, deals and tickets. A business whose real unit of work is something else, such as a job with site visits or an order with a kitchen date, ends up renaming fields and keeping a spreadsheet beside the CRM for the parts that have no place in it.
None of that is a flaw in the product. It is a sign that the team is paying for a general tool and then paying again, in time, to bend it.
When a custom CRM is the better buy
In short
A custom CRM is the better buy when the work your team does every day has no natural home in a sales CRM, or when the subscription for the edition you need costs more over three years than a build and its upkeep would.
The smallest custom CRM we build is a focused tool: one workflow, a few roles and the reports you check every week. Several workflows with roles, email and text messages make a larger build, and the written plan for a project sets its price after a short call.
To compare the two fairly, take the monthly price of the HubSpot edition you would really need, multiply it by the seats that edit, and carry it across three years with any onboarding fee added. Set that beside a build price, hosting at cost on your own account and a support retainer. For five people on Starter, HubSpot wins that sum easily. For five people who need a Professional feature and still keep a spreadsheet, it is often close.
| HubSpot | A custom CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| To start | A free edition for two users, then a plan by the seat | A build price, set in a written plan |
| What a new person costs | A paid seat if they edit; nothing if they only view | Nothing |
| The shape of the records | Contacts, companies, deals and tickets, with custom fields | Whatever your work is made of |
| Upkeep | The vendor's | Hosting at cost, plus a support retainer if you want one |
| If you move on | Your records export to a file; the software stays | The code and the database are yours |
Swipe sideways to see every column
What this means for a small business
In short
Start on HubSpot, free or Starter, unless you already know your work does not fit a sales CRM. Give it three months, write down every workaround, and let that list decide whether a custom tool is worth a price.
A team that is new to CRMs learns what it needs by using one, and HubSpot's free edition is a cheap place to learn. The records you build up there are not trapped: its knowledge base says records such as contacts and deals can be exported on all products and plans, by a user with export permissions.
When the list of workarounds is long, bring it to whoever would build the replacement. A good written plan for a custom CRM is mostly that list turned into screens, with the export from the old tool as the first import into the new one.