HubSpot Alternatives for Small Business in 2026: 5 Picks
HubSpot alternatives for small business compared on seat cost, free limits and self-hosting: Zoho CRM, Twenty, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM and Freshsales.
•5 min read•CRM & Client Management
Verdict:For a team of up to 3, Zoho CRM's free plan is the easiest move. If you can run a small server, Twenty or EspoCRM remove per-seat fees; Freshsales is the hosted paid option with a clear $9 entry price.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Price | Platforms | Best for | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | Free for 3 users; paid prices not listed on the pricing page | Web browser | Teams of up to 3 who want a free hosted CRM with workflow automation | Docs only |
| Twenty | Self-host free; Cloud Pro $9/user/month billed yearly | Web browser, Self-hosted | Small teams that can run Docker and want unlimited seats | Docs only |
| EspoCRM | Self-host free; Cloud Basic $15/user/month, 3-user minimum | Web browser, Self-hosted | Teams that want a PHP CRM they can host on ordinary web hosting | Docs only |
| SuiteCRM | Free download, no per-user fees; managed hosting from £50/month | Web browser, Self-hosted | Teams that expect to grow past 5 users and want no seat charges | Docs only |
| Freshsales | Growth $9/user/month billed annually; 21-day trial | Web browser | Teams that want a hosted paid CRM with a low entry price per seat | Docs only |
Independent comparison. Paid placements are labelled separately; editorial links earn no affiliate commissions. Learn more.
Good fit if
- You have 1 to 10 people and want a predictable cost per seat
- You have outgrown HubSpot's free limits of 2 users and 1,000 contacts
- You mostly need contacts, deals and email logging rather than a full marketing suite
Not ideal if
- You depend on HubSpot's marketing automation, landing pages and live chat in one product
- You cannot spend any time on setup or server upkeep and want a managed migration
- You need a guaranteed one-click import from HubSpot, which none of these official pages promise
If you are a team of 1 to 10 leaving HubSpot, start with Zoho CRM when you have 3 people or fewer, because its free edition covers 3 users. Pick Twenty or EspoCRM if you can run a small server and want to stop paying per seat. Pick Freshsales if you want a hosted tool at $9 a seat. The deciding factor is how many people will log in, not how many contacts you hold.
What matters for a small business CRM
Readers asking this question usually care about five things: cost per seat as the team grows, free plan limits, whether email and marketing come built in, how much self-hosting work they are taking on, and whether the price can be budgeted at all.
According to HubSpot's CRM pricing page, the free CRM allows up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts with no time limit, and 2,000 email sends a month with HubSpot branding. Starter starts at $7 a month per seat, with a $20 figure shown beside it that the page does not explain. Professional and Enterprise are not priced there, so a growing team cannot budget the next step from that page.
A Hacker News thread from April 2024 shows how this plays out. A two-person sales team said the features they wanted sat in a tier that required five users, and they did not want to pay for three unused seats. They also wanted customizable quote templates and a simpler interface, and one commenter suggested a dedicated quoting tool instead of a full CRM. The details are in the thread. For the full list of options, see our broader page on all HubSpot alternatives.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a hosted CRM with a free edition. Zoho's pricing page calls it free forever for 3 users, and lists contact management, follow-up reminders, workflow automation, up to 10 custom email templates and an API limit of 5,000 calls a day.
That is one more user than HubSpot's free tier. Standard and Professional prices are not listed, so you cannot work out the cost of a fourth seat from it.
Who should not pick it: a team of 4 or more that needs a budget before signing up. Our Zoho CRM alternatives page covers the other direction.
Twenty
Twenty is an open-source CRM you can host yourself or use as a cloud service. According to Twenty's pricing page, seats are unlimited on every plan, Pro is $9 per user per month billed yearly, Organization is $19, and the open-source core is free to self-host. Cloud sign-up has a 30-day trial. The licence file is AGPL-3.0, with some files under a commercial Enterprise licence.
Self-hosting is not free of effort. Twenty's Docker guide asks for at least 2 GB of RAM, plus Docker and Docker Compose, and its setup configures Postgres and Redis connections. A GitHub issue opened in October 2026 describes a 2 GB server stalling for about 20 minutes during a burst of background jobs until the owner moved to 4 GB.
Who should not pick it: anyone without Docker experience or a spare server.
EspoCRM
EspoCRM is an open-source CRM written in PHP. Its pricing page lists Cloud Basic at $15 per user per month with a 3-user minimum, 100,000 records and 3 GB of storage per user, and Enterprise at $25 with a 5-user minimum. Basic and Enterprise are billed for 6 months or a year and include a 30-day trial.
The self-hosted download is free, and the repository is AGPL-3.0. According to EspoCRM's installation docs, it runs on hosts with PHP and MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, and you can install manually or with Docker. The same pricing page warns that if you move from cloud to your own server and want specific official extensions, you will need to buy them.
Who should not pick it: a one- or two-person team on the cloud plan, because of the 3-user minimum.
SuiteCRM
SuiteCRM is a long-running open-source CRM. On its pricing page, the download is free with no per-user fees, and you pay for your own infrastructure. The repository is AGPL-3.0. Managed hosting starts at £50 a month, and Standard Support is £1,200 for 10 hours, which the page says is required with managed hosting.
Because there is no seat charge, cost stays flat as headcount grows. The trade-off is that hosting and support, not licences, become the budget line.
Who should not pick it: a team that wants a polished hosted product with no support contract.
Freshsales
Freshsales is Freshworks' hosted sales CRM. Freshworks lists Growth at $9 per user per month, Pro at $39 and Enterprise at $59, all billed annually, with a 21-day trial. Monthly-billed prices are not listed there, and no free plan is clearly listed.
The Growth plan includes email templates, custom fields and basic workflows. That makes it the closest hosted match to HubSpot Starter on price, with published figures for three tiers instead of two.
Who should not pick it: someone who needs a free plan, since none is clearly listed.
Comparison
| Zoho CRM | Twenty | EspoCRM | SuiteCRM | Freshsales | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free option | Free for 3 users | Self-host free | Self-host free | Free download | 21-day trial |
| Hosted entry price | Not shown | $9/user/month (yearly) | $15/user/month, 3 users minimum | £50/month hosting | $9/user/month (annual) |
| Per-seat fees | Yes, on paid plans | Yes on cloud, no on self-host | Yes on cloud, no on self-host | None | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | No |
| Server work | None | Docker, 2 GB RAM or more | PHP and a database | PHP and a database | None |
How to choose
- Two or three people, no server. Zoho CRM's free edition covers up to 3 users. Keep Freshsales in mind once you outgrow it.
- A technical founder who wants unlimited seats. Twenty's cloud plan has unlimited seats and its core can be self-hosted. Give the server more than 2 GB.
- A small team on cheap web hosting. EspoCRM or SuiteCRM run on PHP stacks and charge nothing per seat when self-hosted.
If you only need a spreadsheet-like contact list, our free CRM and open-source CRM roundups cover the lighter options, and Pipedrive alternatives is worth a look if your reason for leaving is a different paid tool.
Limits of this review
Nothing was tested, so ease of use, import quality and deliverability are not compared. Pipedrive's pricing page returned an access error, so it is left out. HubSpot Professional and Enterprise prices are not on its CRM pricing page and are not stated. Zoho's paid prices are not listed on its pricing page. Importing HubSpot data was not checked.
FAQ
What is the best free HubSpot alternative for a small business?
Zoho CRM lists a free edition for 3 users, one more than HubSpot's free CRM, which allows 2 users and 1,000 contacts. If you can host a server, Twenty and EspoCRM have free self-hosted versions with no seat limit. Hosted free plans suit teams that do not want server upkeep.
Is there an open-source alternative to HubSpot?
Yes. Twenty is released under AGPL-3.0 with some files under a commercial licence, and EspoCRM and SuiteCRM are AGPL-3.0 as well. These options focus on contacts and deals, and the pages read do not list a marketing hub, landing pages or live chat, so plan on separate tools for email campaigns and web forms.
Can I self-host a HubSpot alternative on a small server?
Twenty's guide asks for at least 2 GB of RAM, plus Docker and Docker Compose. A user report from October 2026 describes a 2 GB server stalling under heavy background jobs, so give it more room. EspoCRM runs on PHP with MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL.
How much does HubSpot cost for a small team?
HubSpot's CRM pricing page lists Free for up to 2 users and Starter at $7 a month per seat, with a $20 figure shown beside it and not explained. The page lists no Professional or Enterprise prices, so check HubSpot directly before budgeting a larger team.
Which HubSpot alternative suits startups on a tight budget?
Twenty's Cloud Pro is $9 per user per month billed yearly with unlimited seats, and its open-source core is free to self-host. Freshsales Growth is $9 per user per month billed annually. Zoho CRM is free for 3 users. Pick by how many seats you need and whether you will host it yourself.
Do these CRMs replace HubSpot's marketing tools?
Not fully. HubSpot's free CRM includes email sends, landing pages and live chat, all with HubSpot branding. The alternatives here focus on contacts and deals. Pair them with a separate email tool if you send newsletters, rather than expecting one product to cover everything.
Related guides
More in CRM & Client Management
All CRM & Client Management alternatives →Sources
Kevin Fan
Kevin Fan is a SaaS founder. He runs Free Instead Of, which tracks free and open-source alternatives to paid software and checks each price and free-plan limit against the vendor's own pages.
Methodology
Pricing and product pages for HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Twenty, EspoCRM, SuiteCRM and Freshsales were read on 2026-10-27, along with Twenty's self-hosting guide and EspoCRM's installation docs. One Hacker News thread (April 2024) and one Twenty GitHub issue (October 2026) were read for user pain points. Competing roundups were read for context. Reddit was not used. No product was installed, signed up for or tested.