HubSpot and Pipedrive both keep your contacts and deals in one place. HubSpot covers sales, marketing and service in one platform. Pipedrive puts the sales pipeline at the center. For a small team, the right choice depends on what you do most each day.
The short verdict
Pick HubSpot if you want a free start, or you want sales and marketing tools in the same account.
Pick Pipedrive if your work is mostly moving deals through clear stages, and you are happy to pay from day one for a tool built around that.
Price, as of October 2026
All prices are in US dollars, from each vendor's own pages.
HubSpot
- Free: up to two users and 1,000 contacts, no end date (HubSpot CRM).
- Starter: normally $20 per seat per month, with a limited-time discount for new customers (Starter page).
- Professional: Core Seat $50, Sales Seat $100 per seat per month, with required onboarding (product catalog).
Pipedrive (pricing page), per seat per month, billed yearly:
- Lite: $14
- Growth: $39
- Premium: $59
- Ultimate: $79
Pipedrive says yearly billing saves up to 42% compared with monthly billing. Every plan has a 14-day free trial.
For a team of three at list price, HubSpot Starter is $60 a month. Pipedrive Lite is $42 a month billed yearly, and Growth is $117.
What the free plan or trial covers
HubSpot's free CRM includes contact and deal management, email tracking, templates, meeting scheduling, live chat and quotes. Its limits are two users, 1,000 contacts and HubSpot branding on emails, forms and meeting links. There is a full list in HubSpot free CRM limitations.
Pipedrive has no free plan. The 14-day trial gives full access, and you can invite your team to it.
Email and follow-ups
This is where the plans differ most for a small team.
- Pipedrive Lite covers leads, deals, contacts, calendar and pipeline management. Full email sync with Gmail or Outlook, open and click tracking, and automated follow-up sequences start on Growth.
- HubSpot includes email tracking and templates on the free plan. Starter adds email sync and more automation.
- Email campaigns: HubSpot's free email tool sends up to 2,000 emails a month (email page). Pipedrive sells a Campaigns add-on, starting from $13.33.
If you plan to send newsletters as well as sales emails, HubSpot puts both in one place. If you only send one-to-one sales emails, Pipedrive Growth covers that.
Setup effort
Both tools can be set up by one person for a simple sales process. The difference is scope.
Pipedrive is mostly about the pipeline, so there are fewer areas to configure. HubSpot has marketing, sales and service tools, so there is more to choose and more to ignore. On HubSpot Professional and Enterprise, onboarding is required. Pipedrive says implementation is free on plans that cost over $400 a year.
What grows with you
HubSpot grows into Professional and Enterprise, with more automation, reporting and permissions. The cost per seat rises a lot at Professional, so check which features you need there.
Pipedrive grows from Lite to Ultimate. Premium adds lead capture and routing, contracts with e-signatures, and more custom fields and permissions. Ultimate adds account security rules, data enrichment and a sandbox account.
How to decide
- Want to start for free: HubSpot.
- Need sales and marketing email in one tool: HubSpot.
- Sell through clear deal stages and want the pipeline at the center: Pipedrive.
- Want automated follow-up sequences at a mid price: compare Pipedrive Growth with HubSpot Starter.
- Not sure: run both trials on the same ten live deals for one week.
Whichever you choose
The CRM reminds you when a deal needs a follow-up. What you write is still up to you. Keep your follow-ups short and specific, as in the follow-up email after no response guide, and prepare your first calls with discovery call questions.