Pipedrive for a sales team that wants a simple, effective pipeline; HubSpot for an integrated marketing + sales view, at the cost of more complexity.
- Pipedrive: simple, fast to adopt, affordable.
- HubSpot: all-in-one (marketing, sales, service), powerful but heavier and pricier as you scale.
- The real criterion: who will use it daily, and for what.
The best CRM is the one your team actually uses. Under €2M in revenue, the question isn't "which is the most powerful", but "which will be adopted painlessly and fit how you sell".
Pipedrive: sales, simple
Built by and for salespeople. Visual pipeline, quick onboarding, clear automations, reasonable price. Ideal if your main need is tracking deals and following up at the right time, with no bloat.
Its limits: lighter marketing and customer service. Beyond a certain volume of content and campaigns, you feel the edges.
HubSpot: all-in-one
Marketing, sales and service in one ecosystem, with a generous free tier to start. Powerful when you want to connect forms, emails, sequences, reporting and pipeline.
Its limits: the bill climbs fast as you move up tiers, and the feature richness can become a burden if no one drives it.
An over-rich CRM no one maintains is worth less than a simple CRM the whole team fills in.
The deciding criterion
- Mainly want to structure sales? Pipedrive, often.
- Want to align marketing and sales and centralise everything? HubSpot, often.
- No one will have time to admin the tool? Take the simplest one.
What about custom?
For some trades (construction, very specific services), no generic CRM really fits. We then build a tool coded for the business: your stages, your records, your automations. Less friction, more billable time.
Frequently asked questions
Which CRM is cheaper?
Can I switch CRM later?
Do I need a custom CRM?
Want a site, or an ecosystem, truly built for this? 60 minutes, no strings, to talk it through.