HubSpot alternatives: what to use depending on which hub you are replacing

Why teams leave HubSpot

The first reason is the shape of the Marketing Hub ladder. HubSpot's page lists Free tools, then Starter at $7 a month, Professional at $800 a month and Enterprise at $3,600 a month. Moving from Starter to Professional adds $793 a month, which is $9,516 over a year, and Professional to Enterprise adds $2,800 a month, or $33,600 a year. The Professional price alone is $800 x 12 = $9,600 a year before any contact-based or seat-based increase.

The reason the step is hard to avoid is automation limits. The feature table gives Free one automated action, Starter up to 10 automated actions, and Professional unlimited actions plus omni-channel marketing automation with up to 300 workflows for 10 teams. Enterprise raises that to up to 1,000 workflows for 300 teams with behavioral events and predictive lead scoring. A team that has outgrown 10 actions in Starter has no published step between $7 and $800.

The second reason is onboarding. On the Sales Hub and Service Hub pages, HubSpot says the price shown "does not include the required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $1,500" and, for Enterprise, an onboarding fee of $3,500. Five Sales Hub Professional seats at $90 each are $450 a month, so the first year is $5,400 + $1,500 = $6,900. The Sales Hub Starter and Professional cards also show a second, higher figure ($20 and $100 per seat) under another billing option, so ask which one applies before you budget.

What the alternatives cost against the HubSpot ladder

ActiveCampaign's contact selector gives Starter $149, Plus $189, Pro $375 and Enterprise $589 a month at 10,000 contacts (billed annually). Its Pro price is $800 - $375 = $425 a month below HubSpot Professional's starting price, which is $5,100 a year, but the plans are not identical: ActiveCampaign Pro includes 3 users and advanced segmentation, and HubSpot's Professional adds omni-channel workflows. At 25,000 contacts ActiveCampaign is $391, $389, $629 and $879 across its four plans.

Brevo prices email by monthly volume instead of contacts: Standard is $97 a month at 50,000 emails and $139 at 100,000 on monthly billing, against $800 for HubSpot Professional's starting price. Keap's single platform is $299 at 1,500 contacts, $539 at 10,000 and $719 at 25,000, billed monthly with two users included. Account Engagement lists Growth+ at $1,250 a month, Plus+ $2,750, Advanced+ $4,400 and Premium+ $15,000, all per org and billed annually.

What to keep HubSpot for

HubSpot's value is one contact record under marketing, sales and service. Sales Hub Professional lists forecasting, conversation intelligence and sequences (up to 500 email sends per user per day, 1,000 on Enterprise), and Service Hub Professional lists a help desk, knowledge base, customer portal and feedback surveys. If your reps use sequences and your marketers use workflows against the same properties, replacing one hub with a separate vendor means keeping a sync running between two systems.

Stay on HubSpot if you are on the Free tools (Sales and Service are free for up to 2 users, no credit card), if you are well inside Starter's 10 automated actions, or if you use the omni-channel workflows of Professional. The case to leave is narrower than it looks: a team paying $800 a month mostly for email automation and a CRM is the team that can get $5,100 a year back from ActiveCampaign Pro at 10,000 contacts, if Pro's feature list covers its workflows, or $703 a month ($8,436 a year) from Brevo Standard at 50,000 emails.

HubSpot and its alternatives, list prices on 7 Oct 2026

Read on 7 Oct 2026 from HubSpot's Marketing, Sales and Service pages, ActiveCampaign, Brevo, Keap, Pipedrive, Help Scout and Salesforce. Units differ (per org, per seat, per contact tier), so rows compare the job, not identical bundles.

Six HubSpot alternatives, by the job you are replacing

1. ActiveCampaign: marketing automation with a CRM, priced by contacts

ActiveCampaign lists four plans starting at $15 (Starter), $49 (Plus), $79 (Pro) and $145 (Enterprise) a month at 1,000 contacts, billed annually. At 10,000 contacts the selector gives $149, $189, $375 and $589, and at 50,000 contacts Plus is $609, Pro $969 and Enterprise $1,169, with Starter not offered above 25,000. Plan limits include 1 user and 5 actions per automation on Starter, 3 users on Pro and 5 users on Enterprise, and email sends are capped at 10x the contact limit on Starter and Plus.

Product difference: ActiveCampaign puts automation on every plan and gates advanced segmentation to Pro and premium segmentation to Enterprise, whereas HubSpot's automation limit climbs with the hub tier. Its DPA is published as a template.

Trade-off: Contact-based pricing climbs quickly on a big list, and Starter caps automations at 5 actions each.

2. Brevo: email and automation priced by sends, with a free plan

Brevo's Free plan is "300 daily email sends" with storage for up to 100,000 contacts, and 2,000 contacts in marketing automation. Starter starts at $9 a month and Standard at $18 for 5,000 emails; the Standard plan adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports. On monthly billing, Standard is $35 at 10,000 emails, $97 at 50,000 and $139 at 100,000. Professional starts at $499 a month for 150,000 to 10 million sends and up to 2 million contacts with 10 user seats.

It also lists sales tools: Sales Essentials costs $31 a month and Sales Advanced $64 a month (Professional and Enterprise plans only). Brevo's privacy policy has a section on whether it transfers personal data outside the European Economic Area, which belongs in a data-protection review.

Trade-off: The CRM side is sold as separate Sales packages ($31 and $64 a month), not as part of the email plan price.

3. Keap: small teams that want CRM, automation and payments in one plan

Keap sells a single platform with "all features in one plan": CRM, automation, email and text, pipeline, landing pages and payments. It starts at $299 a month at 1,500 contacts and 2 users, then $335 at 2,500, $449 at 5,000, $539 at 10,000 and $719 at 25,000, billed monthly. Additional users are $39 a month each.

Two terms matter for a HubSpot leaver: implementation services are required and their price is not listed on the pricing page, and annual contracts carry a $299 early termination fee. The page lists data import and migration services in the implementation scope.

Trade-off: The implementation package is mandatory and unpriced on the page, so the first-year cost is not knowable from it.

4. Pipedrive: replacing Sales Hub with a per-seat pipeline CRM

Pipedrive's plans are $14 (Lite), $39 (Growth), $59 (Premium) and $79 (Ultimate) per seat per month billed annually, which is $168, $468, $708 and $948 per seat per year. Automations and nurturing email sequences start on Growth, Premium adds lead routing, custom scoring and contracts with e-signatures, and Ultimate adds a sandbox account. A 14-day trial needs no card.

For five seats on Growth, that is $195 a month or $2,340 a year, against $6,900 in the first year for five Sales Hub Professional seats ($5,400 + $1,500 onboarding). Pipedrive lists 500+ integrations, including Zapier and Zoom.

Trade-off: It has no free plan and no marketing hub, so email campaigns and landing pages need a second tool.

5. Help Scout: replacing Service Hub with a shared inbox

Help Scout's Free plan includes 5 users, 1 inbox and 1 Docs site. Standard is $25 per user a month (multiple inboxes, live chat and SMS, multiple knowledge bases), Plus is $45 (internal teams, grouping conversations by company), and Pro is $75 (unlimited workflows and SLA policies, SSO/SAML). AI Answers is $0.75 per resolution, and a trial gives 15 days of all features.

For five agents on Plus, that is $225 a month or $2,700 a year, against $5,400 plus $1,500 onboarding for five Service Hub Professional seats at $90.

Trade-off: It is a support tool without CRM or marketing, so customer data is no longer on one HubSpot record.

6. Salesforce Account Engagement: B2B marketing automation when Salesforce is your CRM

Salesforce lists Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) at $1,250 for Growth+, $2,750 for Plus+, $4,400 for Advanced+ and $15,000 for Premium+, per org per month billed annually. Its newer Marketing Cloud Next is listed at $1,500 (Growth) and $3,250 (Advanced) per org per month, with multi-channel journeys, forms and landing pages on Growth.

On list price, Plus+ at $2,750 sits between HubSpot Professional's $800 and Enterprise's $3,600, and Growth+ at $1,250 is $450 a month above Professional.

Trade-off: The entry price is above HubSpot Professional's, and the product comes from the same vendor as the Salesforce CRM, so that integration is the reason to choose it.

Leaving HubSpot: export, rebuild automation, then switch sending

The export steps follow HubSpot's export records article, read on 7 Oct 2026, together with the importer notes on Close's and Pipedrive's pricing and help pages.

1. Find out who holds export permission first, because HubSpot says "Export permissions are required to export records". Export contacts, companies and deals separately and choose "All properties and associations on records" so the links between them survive; by default only the properties and associations in the current view are included.
2. Prefer CSV. HubSpot says CSV exports have no column limit, while XLS stops at 256 columns and XLSX at 16,384. You can run up to 300 exports in a rolling 24 hours and three at a time, a CSV over 2MB arrives zipped, and the download link emailed to you expires after 30 days.
3. Document what an export does not carry. The article covers records and their property values and associations, not your workflows, email templates, forms or lead-scoring rules, so screenshot each automation and list its trigger, delay and action before you rebuild it. If you are leaving Sales Hub, note which sequences are active and how many enrolled contacts each has.
4. Use the destination's importer where one exists. Close's pricing page says it includes built-in importers for HubSpot, Pipedrive and HighLevel, and Pipedrive's help center describes importing from another CRM through a partner (Import2) available to global admins, with 24 hours suggested for the transfer. Create users and pipelines first, or imported records will be owned by whoever started the import.
5. Prepare sending. Re-create your sending-domain authentication and unsubscribe handling in the new tool before the first campaign, import suppressed and unsubscribed contacts so they are not mailed again, and keep HubSpot forms and tracking code live until the new ones are published.
6. Run both for one billing cycle. Keep the HubSpot subscription at the lowest tier you can until the last automation is rebuilt and tested, then downgrade or cancel, and keep your CSV exports as the record of properties, deal history and consent.

Which one to pick

• Stay on HubSpot if you use Professional's omni-channel workflows, run sales, marketing and service from one record, or are on the Free tools (up to 2 users for Sales and Service).
• Switch to ActiveCampaign if email automation is the job and you want a CRM in the same plan: $375 a month for Pro at 10,000 contacts versus HubSpot Professional from $800.
• Pick Brevo if you send more email than you have contacts to nurture, and a free plan or $97 a month at 50,000 emails fits your budget.
• Pick Keap if you want one platform with payments and are prepared to buy the required implementation package.
• Pick Pipedrive to replace Sales Hub alone ($39 a seat for Growth), Help Scout to replace Service Hub alone, and Account Engagement only if Salesforce is your CRM.

Related reading: All alternatives pages, ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, HubSpot vs Keap, HubSpot vs Pardot, Marketing automation tools, SaaS marketing automation guide.