Finding the best HubSpot alternatives in 2025: A practical guide

HubSpot is a giant in the marketing and CRM world, and for good reason. It has a tool for just about everything. But if you're reading this, you’ve probably started to feel the friction. For a lot of growing companies, the all-in-one dream is starting to clash with reality.

Many teams are getting frustrated with the high costs, confusing feature bundles, and a feeling of being locked in. It’s a common story: you end up paying for a massive system but only use a small slice of it. This has become even more obvious as HubSpot rolls out its own AI tools, pushing users deeper into an expensive, closed-off platform.

This guide isn't just another list of replacements. We're going to dig into why so many businesses are searching for HubSpot alternatives. More importantly, we'll explore a more modern way to think about your tools: building a flexible, powerful tech stack that does exactly what you need, without the eye-watering price tag.

What is HubSpot and why consider HubSpot alternatives?

So, what's the deal with HubSpot? At its core, it’s an all-in-one customer platform. It bundles a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system with dedicated "Hubs" for marketing, sales, customer service, content, and operations. It was built around the idea of inbound marketing, aiming to be the single source of truth for everything customer-related.

Its biggest selling point is its sheer scope. You can manage your sales pipeline, launch email campaigns, handle support tickets, and even build your website, all under one roof. For companies that want one vendor to handle it all, it's a pretty compelling offer. HubSpot’s free CRM is also a popular foot in the door, giving startups a place to get organized.

But this all-in-one approach has a flip side. The platform can get complicated fast, and as you grow, the features you actually need are often hidden behind expensive upgrades and long-term contracts. This is the main reason teams start looking for more flexible and affordable HubSpot alternatives.

The real cost of HubSpot: Why businesses seek alternatives

One of the most common complaints you'll hear from HubSpot users isn't about the price on the website, it's about all the other costs that sneak up on you over time. The "free" tools are great at getting you in the door, but once your needs grow, you find that key features are locked behind some serious paywalls.

Beyond the sticker price: Hidden costs and forced upgrades

The pricing can be a real maze. Plans are often bundled, so you might have to pay for a dozen features you don't use just to get the one you really need. On top of the monthly subscription, you can run into:

• Mandatory Onboarding Fees: If you sign up for a Professional or Enterprise plan, you have to pay a one-time onboarding fee that can run into the thousands.

• Contact Tier Pricing: As your contact list grows (which is the goal, right?), so does your bill. You essentially get penalized for successful marketing.

• Paid Add-ons: Need better reporting or tools to manage your ads? That’ll often be an extra monthly charge.

A perfect example is what happened with the free "HubSpot Insights" feature, which used to automatically pull in company data. It was replaced by "Breeze," a paid AI feature. As you can see in their own community forums, this change left a lot of long-time users feeling like they were being forced to pay for something they once got for free.

This is a classic move in a closed ecosystem. Instead of letting you plug in the best tools for the job, HubSpot wants to be your only tool, and you pay a premium for it. A more modern approach is to pick specialized tools that are great at one thing and connect them. For example, instead of getting locked into HubSpot's AI, a tool like eesel AI can connect directly to your existing help desk. It offers powerful support automation with transparent pricing that never charges you per resolution.

Finding the right features with HubSpot alternatives (without the feature bloat)

The other big issue with an all-in-one platform is that it often feels like "one-size-fits-none." You're left with a system that does a dozen things okay, but doesn't really excel at the one or two functions that matter most to your business.

Paying for what you don't use: How HubSpot alternatives can help

Lots of businesses realize they’re only using 20-30% of what HubSpot offers while paying for the full 100%. At the same time, the features they do use might not be as good as dedicated tools. For instance, a common gripe is that HubSpot's email and landing page templates feel a bit basic compared to what you'd get from a specialized marketing platform.

This is becoming even clearer with the rise of AI. To use HubSpot's AI assistant, Breeze, you have to be all-in on their platform. If your support team uses a different help desk like Zendesk or Intercom, you're out of luck. This puts you in a tough spot: either move your entire support operation over to HubSpot or miss out on AI automation.

But what if you didn't have to make that choice?

Instead of being tied to a single platform's AI, you could add a flexible AI layer that works with the tools you already use and like. That's exactly what eesel AI was built for. It connects to over 100 sources, including your past help desk tickets, knowledge bases in Confluence or Google Docs, and even your internal Slack conversations. It learns from your company's actual data to give highly accurate answers. You get a powerful, specialized AI engine without having to ditch your current CRM or help desk.

An infographic showing how HubSpot alternatives like eesel AI can integrate with multiple knowledge sources to provide flexible support automation.:

Plus, you can see how well it will work before you commit. eesel AI’s simulation mode runs on thousands of your past tickets to show you exactly how it would have performed, giving you a clear picture of your potential automation rate and return on investment before you even go live.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation dashboard, a feature that makes it one of the powerful HubSpot alternatives for support teams.:

How to evaluate HubSpot alternatives

When you start exploring HubSpot alternatives, the goal shouldn't just be to find another all-in-one platform that does the same thing. A smarter way to go about it is to figure out your most important needs and find the best tools out there to solve them. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Key criteria for your search

1. Integrate or replace? Do you really need to tear everything out and start over? Or can you just improve the tools you already have? A "best-of-breed" approach, where you connect specialized tools, usually gives you more power and flexibility than one giant platform.

2. Customization and control: How much say do you have over how things work? Platforms like HubSpot can be pretty rigid. Look for solutions that let you build your own automation rules, customize the AI's tone, and decide exactly what gets automated and what doesn't.

3. Ease of setup: How long does it take to start seeing results? The best modern tools are self-serve. You should be able to sign up, connect your accounts, and get started in minutes without having to sit through a sales call or hire a developer.

4. Pricing model: Is the pricing easy to understand and predictable? Steer clear of models that punish you for growing or that hide costs in confusing tiers and surprise add-ons.

When you look at it this way, a solution like eesel AI really stands out as a smart move for your support team. It’s a good example of this modern approach:

• It integrates, not replaces: It works with your existing help desk and knowledge sources.

• It gives you full control: A completely customizable workflow engine means you automate things your way.

• It's truly self-serve: You can be up and running in minutes.

• Its pricing is transparent: There are no per-resolution fees, just simple monthly or annual plans.

This lets you get all the benefits of powerful AI support automation without the headache and expense of moving your whole company to a new platform.

HubSpot pricing explained: Why businesses seek alternatives

To really see why so many teams are looking for alternatives, let's just look at the numbers. While HubSpot does have a free CRM and some starter plans, the price jump to get professional-grade tools is pretty steep. Here’s a quick look at the Marketing Hub plans, which are what you'd need for any serious automation.

• Starter: This plan begins at around $20/month, but it's missing key automation and reporting features.

• Professional: Starts at $800/month (when billed annually at $9,600/year). This plan includes 2,000 marketing contacts and has a mandatory $3,000 one-time onboarding fee.

• Enterprise: Starts at $3,600/month (billed annually at $43,200/year). You get 10,000 marketing contacts and have to pay a $7,000 one-time onboarding fee.

The cost goes up quickly as you add more contacts, and these prices don't even include the Sales or Service Hubs, which you'll probably need to get a complete setup. This model makes it tough for growing businesses to get enterprise-level tools without an enterprise-level budget.

Feature	Marketing Hub Professional	Marketing Hub Enterprise
Starting Price (Annual)	$800 /month	$3,600 /month
Required Onboarding	$3,000	$7,000
Marketing Contacts	2,000 included	10,000 included
Omni-channel Automation	Yes	Yes (with advanced features)
Custom Reporting	Up to 100 reports	Up to 500 reports
Teams	Up to 10 teams	Up to 300 teams

Build a smarter stack, don't just find a replacement

So, what's the big takeaway here? Moving on from HubSpot doesn't mean you have to find another single platform that tries to do everything. Often, the best HubSpot alternatives aren't one-to-one replacements at all. They're a thoughtful collection of specialized, integrated tools that give you more power and flexibility for less money.

By unbundling your tech stack, you get to pick the best CRM for your sales team, the best tool for your marketers, and the best AI for your support crew. This approach frees you from being locked into one vendor's roadmap and lets you scale each part of your business in a way that makes sense for you.

Get powerful AI without the platform lock-in

If the idea of adding powerful AI to your customer support without ripping out your current setup sounds interesting, you should see what eesel AI can do. It integrates with the tools you already use to provide autonomous agents, agent assistance, and smart triage.

Start a free trial today and simulate your automation potential in minutes.