Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in pounds sterling.
Almost everyone starts looking for a HubSpot alternative in the same month, and it is rarely the month they expected. HubSpot's free CRM is a genuine product rather than a trial, but it is capped on two things at once, users and contacts, and you hit whichever ceiling arrives first. A two-person team with a big mailing list is stopped by contacts. A five-person team with a small list is stopped by seats. Either way the next step is a per-seat bill. Below are five alternatives ranked on what they cost a UK business and what they genuinely replace, followed by a live calculator that prices each one at your own team size and contact count.
What are the best HubSpot alternatives?
The best alternatives to HubSpot in the United Kingdom are Freshsales, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, Capsule CRM and ActiveCampaign. Freshsales is the cheapest per seat and the only one here whose free plan places no limit on contacts. Zoho CRM pairs a strong free tier with an ecosystem of around forty business apps. Pipedrive is the sharpest tool for working deals. Capsule CRM is the UK-built option, hosted and supported in Britain. ActiveCampaign is where to go if marketing automation was the real reason you were on HubSpot. Plans and pricing checked July 2026
Where the free plan runs out
Our database records HubSpot's free tier as Yes (2 users, 1,000 contacts). Those are two separate ceilings, not one, and the moment either is crossed the answer is Starter at £18/seat/mo, which carries its own contact allowance of 25,000 (Starter).
Compare the free plans as we record them. Freshsales: Yes (3 users, unlimited contacts). Zoho CRM: Yes (3 users, 5,000 contacts). Capsule CRM: Yes (2 users, 250 contacts). Freshsales is the only one of the three that does not put a number on contacts, which matters because a contact list grows on its own while a headcount does not.
Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign have no free tier at all, so they are the wrong answer to "how do I keep paying nothing" and the right answer to "what should I pay for instead".
The two different bills a CRM can send you
Every CRM on this page charges on one of two things, and the distinction decides who overpays.
Seats. Freshsales at £9/user/mo, Zoho CRM at £12/user/mo, Pipedrive at £14/user/mo and Capsule CRM at £14/user all bill by the people using the software. All four list contacts as Unlimited or a very high allowance, so a growing database costs nothing extra.
Records. ActiveCampaign prices by contacts rather than users, at Per contact (from £13/mo), and while HubSpot charges per seat, your record count decides which plan you are permitted to buy. That is the mechanism people miss. You never add a user, the list grows anyway, and the platform reprices itself.
For a UK small business whose database grows faster than its payroll, which is most of them, a seat-priced CRM with uncapped contacts is structurally cheaper over three years, however the first month compares.
How we chose
We ranked on the five things that decide what a CRM actually costs a UK business: the published entry seat price in pounds, whether a seat minimum forces you to buy licences nobody uses, whether contacts are capped and can therefore push you up a tier, the tier at which workflow and marketing automation switch on, and where the data is hosted, because a US-only provider adds a transfer question under UK GDPR that a UK or EU host does not. Every figure on this page is read live from our pricing database rather than typed into the article, and the calculator below costs each option against your own seat count and contact list, including the plan caps that make a free plan stop being free.
We are independent, and commercial relationships play no part in this order. Our top pick, Freshsales, is not a partner of ours and earns us nothing. Four of the five picks below happen to be, and they are placed where the published rates and the feature tiers put them, not a rung higher.
UK GDPR and where the records actually sit
A CRM is a database of named living people, so hosting location is a live question rather than a technicality. Capsule CRM lists UK/EU hosting and support that is UK-based, the shortest answer on this page. Pipedrive and Zoho CRM both list EU hosting, Freshsales offers EU option, and HubSpot itself lists EU hosting, so leaving HubSpot need not mean sending your records further away.
Three CRMs commonly shortlisted against HubSpot do host in the United States: Copper at US hosting, Insightly at US hosting and Keap at US hosting. That is not disqualifying, it is paperwork: you need a transfer mechanism and a record of it. Whichever you choose you remain the data controller, and if you send marketing email from the CRM, PECR still requires consent for most electronic marketing to individuals.
The cheaper headline that is not cheaper
Two mechanisms make a low seat price misleading, and both are visible in the table on this page.
The first is a seat minimum. Monday CRM publishes a per-seat rate of £10/seat/mo, which reads cheaper than everything above it, then requires a minimum of 3 seats. A sole trader pays for three licences. Automation on its entry plan is listed as Standard+, so the plan you can afford is the plan that cannot automate. Every pick above lists its seat minimum as None, so a team of one pays for one.
The second is the contract. Copper, Insightly and Salesforce all list their term as Annual, so the exit is a year away. Keap adds an implementation charge of £1,121 one-time (Ignite Implementation Package) on top of a base fee of £224/mo (Ignite, includes 2 users and 1,500 contacts), which is why it does not appear in the picks despite genuinely strong automation. Every pick above lists its onboarding fee as None.
Other options worth knowing
Four more names come up in this search and none made the list, for stated reasons. Monday CRM is the highest-rated CRM we track in the United Kingdom and is the most customisable thing here, but the three-seat minimum and the automation tier make it a poor fit for the small teams leaving HubSpot. Salesforce is the right answer when you are outgrowing small-business software altogether rather than escaping a price, and it offers UK/EU hosting with an integration library of 5,000+. Keap bundles automation, email and a business phone line into one platform, but its entry cost is an order of magnitude above the picks. Copper is excellent if your business lives inside Google Workspace, though it is US-hosted and sold on an annual term.
If you want the head-to-head detail on the two most-compared products here, read our Pipedrive vs HubSpot comparison and the Pipedrive pricing guide.
The verdict
For most UK businesses leaving HubSpot, Freshsales is the answer: the lowest entry seat price we track, a free plan that carries more users than HubSpot's with no contact ceiling, a phone built into the product, and an EU hosting region for UK GDPR. If you expect to add more software over the next two years, Zoho CRM buys you the same free-plan headroom plus an ecosystem. Take Pipedrive if a sales team working deals is the whole job, Capsule CRM if UK hosting and a UK phone number on support matter, and ActiveCampaign if the marketing automation was always the point.
And if you use HubSpot's integration library heavily, want marketing bundled with the CRM, and still fit inside the free caps, staying is a perfectly rational decision. Use the calculator above to price each option at your real seat count and contact list before you move anything.