Salesforce alternatives: five CRMs priced for 5, 10 and 25 sales seats

Why teams leave Salesforce

The ladder is steep and mostly billed annually. Starter Suite is "$25 user/month" and can be billed monthly or annually, but every edition above it is billed annually: Pro Suite $100, Core $195, Advanced $395 and Max $550 per user per month. Going from Starter Suite to Core multiplies the seat price by 7.8 (195 / 25), and Max is 22 times Starter (550 / 25). A rep who needs one Core feature costs $195 a month for all of them.

Features are also tied to editions. The page lists advanced pipeline management and forecasting, opportunity scoring, conversation intelligence and APIs on Core, Slack Business+ on Advanced, and the full AI suite, Agentforce for Sales and Slack Enterprise+ on Max, with Agentforce add-ons available to buy on the higher editions. APIs first appear on the Core line of the page, so a team that wants API access for an integration is looking at $195 a seat, which is $2,340 per seat per year.

Marketing sits outside the Sales edition prices. Salesforce lists Account Engagement from $1,250 a month and Marketing Cloud Next from $1,500 a month, both per org and billed annually, a different unit from the per-user Sales editions. A team that adds marketing therefore manages two pricing units, which is one reason some look at all-in-one tools such as HubSpot or Keap.

What Salesforce costs for 5, 10 and 25 seats a year

Starter Suite is 5 x $25 x 12 = $1,500, 10 x $25 x 12 = $3,000 and 25 x $25 x 12 = $7,500 a year. Pro Suite is $6,000, $12,000 and $30,000. Core is $11,700, $23,400 and $58,500 (seats x $195 x 12). Advanced at 10 seats is $47,400 and Max is $66,000. Salesforce offers a free 30-day trial of every Sales Cloud edition, and a Free Suite column is listed at $0 per user per month.

Against that: HubSpot Sales Professional is $90 a seat, so 5, 10 and 25 seats are $5,400, $10,800 and $27,000 a year plus the required $1,500 onboarding, which makes $6,900, $12,300 and $28,500 in year one. Pipedrive Growth at $39 is $2,340, $4,680 and $11,700. Close Growth at $99 on annual billing is $5,940, $11,880 and $29,700. The editions are not identical in content, so read the feature lists in the table before you compare totals.

What to keep Salesforce for

Salesforce's value is the top of the ladder, not the entry. If you need forecasting at Core level, opportunity scoring, conversation intelligence or Slack bundled into the seat, the alternatives list comparable items only on their higher plans: HubSpot lists forecasting and conversation intelligence on Professional, and Pipedrive lists forecast reports on Growth and a sandbox account on Ultimate at $79 a seat.

If a small team needs only the core CRM objects, Starter Suite at $25 a seat is the cheapest way to stay on the platform, and it can be billed monthly. Stay if you have heavy customization built on the platform, integrations that depend on its APIs, or an Account Engagement contract that you would otherwise have to replace as well. Leave when the Pro Suite or Core price is mostly paying for features your reps never open.

Yearly cost for 5, 10 and 25 seats, list prices on 7 Oct 2026

Read on 7 Oct 2026 from Salesforce, HubSpot Sales Hub, Pipedrive, Close, GoHighLevel and Keap. Yearly totals are seats x listed monthly price x 12 and exclude calling, SMS and add-on usage.

Five Salesforce alternatives and who each is for

1. HubSpot Sales Hub: a full CRM with marketing and service attached

HubSpot lists Free for up to 2 users, Starter "starts at $7/mo/seat", Professional "$90/mo/seat" and Enterprise "$150/mo/seat", with a second higher figure shown on the Starter and Professional cards for another billing option. Professional lists forecasting, conversation intelligence, sequences and up to 300 workflows; Enterprise adds deal splits, deal journey analytics, lead form routing, pipeline approvals for deals, a standard sandbox and up to 1,000 workflows that can trigger sequences. The required one-time onboarding is $1,500 for Professional and $3,500 for Enterprise.

Sequences are capped at 5,000 per account with up to 500 email sends per user per day on Professional and 1,000 on Enterprise, and LinkedIn actions need a Sales Navigator subscription.

Trade-off: At 10 seats it costs $12,300 in year one against $12,000 for Salesforce Pro Suite, so any saving is in packaging, not price.

2. Pipedrive: a pipeline CRM at a quarter of the seat price

Pipedrive's plans are Lite $14, Growth $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79 per seat per month billed annually ($168, $468, $708 and $948 per seat per year). Lite covers lead, calendar and pipeline management with AI-powered report creation; Growth adds full email sync with tracking, automations and nurturing sequences, subscriptions and forecast reports; Premium adds lead generation and routing, custom scoring, contracts and e-signatures; Ultimate adds account security rules, a sandbox and extended phone support.

At 10 seats on Growth it is $4,680 a year against $12,000 for Salesforce Pro Suite. The 14-day trial needs no credit card, and Pipedrive lists 500+ integrations including Zapier, Zoom and Lemlist.

Trade-off: No free plan, and no marketing or service product, so email campaigns and support live in other tools.

3. Close: inside sales teams that call and text from the CRM

Close lists Solo ($19 monthly, $9 on annual billing, 1 user and 10k leads, no workflows), Essentials ($49 or $35, unlimited contacts and leads with built-in forms, email, calling and SMS), Growth ($109 or $99, adding workflows, a power dialer, custom activities and bulk email) and Scale ($149 or $139, adding role-based permissions, lead visibility rules, a predictive dialer, unlimited call recording retention and live call coaching). AI credits per user per month rise from 500 on Solo to 2,000 on Scale.

Calling and SMS are usage-based: Close's page puts most outbound calls at $0.02 per minute and phone numbers from $1 per month, and the Call Assistant add-on is $50 a month per organization plus $.02 per minute. Monthly subscriptions can be upgraded, downgraded or cancelled at any time, and the trial lasts 14 days with no card.

Trade-off: Usage charges for calls and SMS sit on top of the seat price, and workflows start only on Growth.

4. GoHighLevel: agencies and teams that want unlimited users at a flat price

GoHighLevel prices by number of sub-accounts, not seats: Starter is $97 a month ($970 a year) for 3 sub-accounts, Unlimited is $297 for unlimited sub-accounts, and Agency Pro is $497 with SaaS Mode and advanced API access. Every plan includes "unlimited contacts, unlimited Users", so 25 seats on Starter is still $1,164 a year, against $30,000 for Salesforce Pro Suite.

Charges stack on top: "usage-based costs for telecommunications and AI services", phone numbers, SMS and email, and add-ons such as the Branded Client Portal App at $49 a month per sub-account and the white-label mobile app at $497 a month. The 14-day trial is free on any plan.

Trade-off: The product is built for agencies managing client sub-accounts, so a single internal sales team uses a subset of it and pays usage fees for messaging.

5. Keap: a small team that wants CRM, automation and payments in one plan

Keap sells one platform with all features: CRM, automation, email and text, pipeline, landing pages and payments. It starts at $299 a month for 1,500 contacts and 2 users billed monthly, rising to $449 at 5,000 contacts and $719 at 25,000, with additional users at $39 a month each. At 1,500 contacts, 5 seats are $299 + 3 x $39 = $416 a month ($4,992 a year), 10 seats are $299 + 8 x $39 = $611 ($7,332) and 25 seats are $299 + 23 x $39 = $1,196 ($14,352).

Keap requires implementation services whose price is not listed, and annual contracts carry a $299 early termination fee. The scope listed includes data import and migration services.

Trade-off: It is priced by contacts as well as users, so a big prospect database raises the bill even with few reps.

Leaving Salesforce: run the Data Export, map objects, then import

The export steps follow Salesforce's Data Export help article, and the import steps follow Pipedrive's Import2 article and Close's pricing page, all read on 7 Oct 2026.

1. Start the Data Export early. In Setup, search for Data Export and choose Export Now or Schedule Export. Salesforce says weekly export is available in Enterprise, Performance and Unlimited editions, monthly in all editions except Database.com, and in Professional and Developer editions backup files can only be generated every 29 days. There is no SLA, and a request can take longer than a week.
2. Pick the data deliberately. Salesforce recommends "Include all data" and creates a zip of CSV files, emailing the person who scheduled it. Formula fields and roll-up summary fields are always excluded, and Recycle Bin data is not included. Each zip is up to about 512 MB, so large orgs get several files.
3. Download inside the window. The zip files are deleted 48 hours after the email is sent (not counting weekends), and as soon as a new export is queued, so assign someone to download and store the files the day they arrive. The service is not supported in sandboxes; Data Loader can also export your data, which is useful for a final delta before cutover.
4. Import with the new tool's importer. Pipedrive's Import2 route is limited to global admins, suggests allowing 24 hours, and warns that if you have not set up users first, the data ends up belonging to whoever starts the import. A CSV import (Import data, then From a spreadsheet) is the alternative, and Close's page lists spreadsheet imports as well as built-in importers for HubSpot, Pipedrive and HighLevel.
5. Rebuild what an export does not carry. Flows, validation rules, reports and dashboards, and anything built with Apex or integrations that call Salesforce APIs (listed from Core) need re-creating or re-pointing in the new tool. Decide separately for Account Engagement or Marketing Cloud Next, which are priced per org rather than per seat.
6. Mind the contract. Every edition above Starter Suite is billed annually on Salesforce's page, so find the renewal date before you plan the cutover, run both systems for one cycle if you can, and keep the final export zip as your record.

Which one to pick

• Stay on Salesforce if you rely on Core-level forecasting, opportunity scoring and APIs, have deep customization, or use Starter Suite at $25 a seat for a small team.
• Switch to Pipedrive if you want a pipeline CRM and 10 seats on Growth at $4,680 a year is the number that matters.
• Pick HubSpot Sales Hub if you want marketing and service on the same record and accept $12,300 in year one for 10 seats on Professional.
• Pick Close if your reps live on calls and SMS, and budget for per-minute usage on top of $99 a seat on annual Growth.
• Pick GoHighLevel if you are an agency or want a flat monthly price with unlimited users, and Keap if one small team wants CRM, automation and payments together.

Related reading: All alternatives pages, HubSpot vs Marketo, HubSpot vs Pardot, HubSpot vs Keap, Tools for sales-led SaaS, Enterprise SaaS tool selection.