10 best HubSpot alternatives that won’t break the bank in 2025

Let’s be real: HubSpot is a beast. It’s a massive platform that can do almost anything you want, from managing customer lists to orchestrating huge marketing campaigns. But that all-in-one power is a double-edged sword. It often means you’re paying a premium for a buffet of features when you only really need the steak.

The minute you need serious capabilities, like real automation or detailed reporting, the price jumps dramatically and you’re looking at a rigid, expensive annual contract. For a lot of businesses, it’s just too much. If you’ve ever felt that sticker shock, this guide is for you. We’re digging into 10 powerful and affordable HubSpot alternatives built for specific needs, whether you’re focused on sales, marketing, or AI-powered customer support.

What are HubSpot alternatives?

When you hear "HubSpot alternatives," your mind probably jumps to another all-in-one platform that just costs less. But that’s not always the smartest way to think about it. The best alternatives are often specialized tools that solve a specific problem better and more affordably than a jack-of-all-trades suite.

Think of it this way: instead of one bloated platform, you get a sharp sales CRM that helps your team close deals faster, or an AI tool that completely overhauls your customer support. This approach lets you build a tech stack with best-in-class tools that strengthen what you already have, rather than forcing you to rip everything out and start over.

How we chose the best HubSpot alternatives

To cut through the marketing noise, we got picky. We judged each tool on a few practical criteria to build a list you can actually trust. Here’s what we looked for:

• Core functionality: Does it absolutely nail its main job? Whether it’s sales, marketing, or support, the tool has to be excellent at what it says it does.

• Pricing: Is it affordable and transparent? We searched for options that give you real value without the shocking price tags of HubSpot’s upper tiers.

• Ease of use & integration: Can your team get the hang of it without weeks of training? And does it connect easily with the other tools you already love?

• AI & automation: What kind of smarts does it have under the hood? We prioritized tools that use AI and automation to make your team more efficient.

Comparison of the top 10 HubSpot alternatives

Here’s a quick side-by-side look at our top picks.

Tool	Best For	Starting Price (Annual)	Free Plan Available?
eesel AI	AI Customer Support Automation	$239/month	No, but has simulation
ActiveCampaign	Email & Marketing Automation	$19/month	No, 14-day trial
Zoho CRM	All-in-One Suite for SMBs	$14/user/month	Yes
Pipedrive	Sales Pipeline Management	$14.90/user/month	No, 14-day trial
Freshsales	Integrated Sales & Marketing	$9/user/month	Yes
EngageBay	Free All-in-One Alternative	$12.74/user/month	Yes
Brevo	Transactional Emails & Chat	$39/month	Yes
Omnisend	E-commerce Marketing	$16/month	Yes
Salesforce	Enterprise-Grade CRM	$25/user/month	No, 30-day trial
Zendesk	Dedicated Customer Service	$55/agent/month (Suite Team)	No, 14-day trial

The 10 best HubSpot alternatives for 2025

Alright, let’s get into the details of what makes each of these platforms a worthy contender.

1. eesel AI

If you’re fed up with the price and clunkiness of HubSpot’s Service Hub, you need to look at eesel AI. Instead of making you move your entire operation, eesel AI is an intelligent layer that plugs right into your existing help desk, whether it’s Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Intercom. It learns from the knowledge you already have and starts working immediately.

To get any decent support automation from HubSpot, you have to shell out for their Professional plan, which starts at a staggering $890/month. eesel AI gives you more advanced, specialized AI automation for a fraction of that price, and you get to keep the tools and workflows your team is already comfortable with. It’s about making your current setup smarter, not replacing it.

Pros:

• Its AI Agent handles frontline support by answering questions, tagging tickets, and even closing conversations automatically.

• It trains on your company’s actual knowledge from past tickets, Confluence pages, and Google Docs, so its replies are accurate and specific to your business.

• The AI Copilot helps human agents by drafting instant replies, which makes responding to customers faster and onboarding new hires much less painful.

• Setup is a breeze with one-click integrations for over 100 tools. You can be up and running in minutes.

Cons:

• It’s a specialized AI platform for support, not an all-in-one CRM.

• It works best for teams that already have a help desk and some form of knowledge base for it to learn from.

Pricing:

The Team plan starts at $239/month (billed annually) and covers up to 1,000 AI interactions.

With eesel AI, you stop paying for a bloated suite of tools you don’t use. You invest in a targeted solution that directly cuts support costs and makes customers happier, tackling two of the biggest hurdles for any growing business.

2. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is the go-to for businesses that need serious email marketing and automation power. Its visual, drag-and-drop workflow builder is way more flexible than what HubSpot offers on its lower-priced plans. It’s perfect if you want to build complex, behavior-driven campaigns that actually nurture leads.

Pros: It has powerful automation features, great data integrations for e-commerce, and solid contact scoring to identify your hottest leads.

Cons: It can be a bit tricky for total beginners to master, and its CRM features aren’t as deep as HubSpot’s dedicated Sales Hub.

Pricing: The Marketing Lite plan starts at just $19/month.

3. Zoho CRM: The best of the all-in-one HubSpot alternatives for SMBs

Zoho has a whole universe of business apps, with its CRM sitting right at the center. It’s one of the best all-in-one HubSpot alternatives for small and medium-sized businesses that want a lot of functionality without the enterprise price tag.

Pros: It’s very affordable, you can customize it to your heart’s content, and it even has an AI sales assistant named Zia that offers predictions and tips.

Cons: The interface can feel a bit dated compared to HubSpot’s slick design, and wrangling all the different Zoho apps to work together perfectly can be a project.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $14/user/month (billed annually). There’s also a pretty generous free plan for up to 3 users.

4. Pipedrive

Pipedrive was built by salespeople, for salespeople, and you can feel it. The whole tool is designed around a visual sales pipeline, making it super intuitive to track deals and see what you need to do next. It cuts out the marketing clutter to focus on one thing: helping your team sell more.

Pros: It has a clean, simple interface, a laser focus on tracking deals, and affordable pricing for each user.

Cons: The marketing features are almost non-existent, and you have to buy an add-on for any real email automation.

Pricing: Plans start at $14.90/user/month when billed annually.

5. Freshsales

Part of the Freshworks ecosystem, Freshsales offers a single platform for sales and marketing teams to work together. It includes a built-in phone and SMS, AI-powered lead scoring, and dashboards you can customize to get a clear view of the entire customer journey.

Pros: It comes with AI-powered contact scoring, visual sales pipelines, and a solid free plan to get you started.

Cons: The reporting on the free plan is pretty basic, and it doesn’t have the sheer depth of features you’d find in HubSpot’s top-tier plans.

Pricing: A free plan is available, with paid plans starting at a budget-friendly $9/user/month (billed annually).

6. EngageBay

People often call EngageBay the most affordable HubSpot clone, and for good reason. Its features directly mirror HubSpot’s Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs, but at a price that small businesses can actually stomach. It’s a true all-in-one if you’re on a really tight budget.

Pros: It’s a comprehensive platform that includes a helpdesk and live chat, even on its free plan.

Cons: The interface isn’t as slick or modern as HubSpot’s, and the free plan caps you at just 250 contacts.

Pricing: A free plan is available. Paid plans start at $12.74/user/month when you pay for two years upfront.

7. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo really excels where many CRMs fall short: transactional messages. It’s a fantastic pick for businesses that need rock-solid email and SMS campaigns for things like order confirmations and password resets, along with a simple CRM and live chat tools.

Pros: It offers a great free plan with unlimited contacts, a strong transactional email service, and a single inbox for all your customer conversations.

Cons: The CRM part is much simpler than what HubSpot offers for managing sales deals and pipelines.

Pricing: A free plan is available. Paid plans start at $39/month for 20,000 emails.

8. Omnisend

Omnisend is built from the ground up for e-commerce. It integrates deeply with platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, and all its features are designed to help online stores drive sales. We’re talking pre-built automations for abandoned carts, product pickers to drop into emails, and integrated SMS marketing.

Pros: It’s perfectly tailored for e-commerce, has an easy-to-use editor, and includes omnichannel marketing features right out of the box.

Cons: It’s a marketing tool, not a full CRM, so it’s not the right fit for businesses that don’t sell products online.

Pricing: A free plan is available for up to 500 emails per month. Paid plans start at $16/month.

9. Salesforce

In the world of CRM, Salesforce is the 800-pound gorilla and HubSpot’s biggest rival for large companies. It offers unmatched customization, scalability, and advanced features for big organizations with complex sales and service operations.

Pros: It’s endlessly customizable, has incredibly powerful reporting and analytics, and offers a massive library of third-party apps on its AppExchange.

Cons: It is very expensive, notoriously difficult to learn, and generally way too much for a small business to handle.

Pricing: Plans start at $25/user/month, but that price climbs fast as you add more features and different "clouds."

10. Zendesk

For customer service, Zendesk is the gold standard. While HubSpot has its Service Hub, Zendesk provides a more powerful and specialized solution for managing tickets, building a help center, and analyzing support performance. Its agent workspace is fine-tuned for efficiency.

Pros: It’s a mature and powerful help desk platform with advanced reporting and a user-friendly interface for support agents.

Cons: It can get pricey, and its sales CRM (Zendesk Sell) is a separate product that doesn’t feel as tightly integrated. Its built-in AI is also less specialized than dedicated tools.

Pro tip: Zendesk is fantastic at managing support tickets. You can make it even better by adding an AI layer like eesel AI’s solution for AI customer service to automatically handle common questions. This frees up your agents to focus on the tricky issues that actually need a human touch.

Pricing: The Suite Team plan starts at $55/agent/month (billed annually).

How to choose from the best HubSpot alternatives for your business

The "best" HubSpot alternative depends entirely on what you need most. Don’t get distracted by a long list of features you’ll never touch. Instead, focus on the one area that will make the biggest difference for your business right now.

• For sales-driven teams: If your life revolves around pipelines and closing deals, a sales-first CRM like Pipedrive or Freshsales is your best bet. They’re built for speed and clarity.

• For marketing-focused teams: If you need to create sophisticated email sequences and automate your campaigns, go with ActiveCampaign. If you run an e-commerce store, Omnisend is the obvious choice.

• For support-focused teams: If your biggest headaches are a flood of tickets and rising support costs, a specialized AI tool is the smartest move you can make. An AI platform like eesel AI plugs right into your help desk to automate responses and workflows, delivering a huge return without forcing you to change everything.

Ditch the bloat, embrace automation with eesel AI

You don’t need an expensive, all-in-one platform to solve your biggest business problems. The smartest HubSpot alternatives are the focused tools that do one thing incredibly well, giving you better results for a fraction of the cost.

If scaling your customer support without growing your payroll is your top priority, it’s time to see what real AI automation can do. eesel AI offers a powerful, easy-to-implement solution that works with the tools you already know and love.

Start a free trial or book a demo to see for yourself how much you can automate.