Bigin by Zoho CRM vs HubSpot CRM
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
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The short answer
Editorial assessmentBigin by Zoho CRM compared with HubSpot CRM
HubSpot's free CRM is more generous on contacts and gives a path into a real marketing platform, but the sales automation a team needs sits in Sales Hub Professional at $90 a seat plus an onboarding fee. Bigin is a fraction of that with native calling and WhatsApp but no marketing engine. Marketing-led businesses take HubSpot; sales-and-service small businesses take Bigin and add Zoho Campaigns if they need sends.
Choose Bigin by Zoho CRM if
Small businesses and teams of one to about twenty-five people who want a real CRM with native calling, WhatsApp, email, and automation for under $20 a seat, and who are comfortable living inside Zoho's conventions and possibly adopting more of its suite later.
Choose HubSpot CRM if
One and two-person businesses that want a genuinely capable CRM at no cost, and small companies that want a free system of record today with a credible upgrade path to one shared marketing, sales, and service platform later.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bigin by Zoho CRM | HubSpot CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $7 per user per month on annual billing (Express), or $0 for a single user (free plan available) | $0 for up to 2 users |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription across a free tier and three paid tiers, with records, custom fields, pipelines, automations, and AI credits all metered by plan. | Free forever for up to two users, with no credit card. The paid path is the separately priced Sales Hub subscription, sold per seat, plus Core Seats for staff who only need shared CRM access and free unlimited view-only seats. |
| Free plan | Free plan for one user with 500 records, a single pipeline, three automations, built-in telephony, standard dashboards, and mobile apps. | Free CRM for up to two users covering contacts, companies, deals, and tickets on one timeline, one deal pipeline, email and calendar sync, meeting links, forms, live chat, a shared conversations inbox, tasks, email tracking, standard dashboards, and the mobile apps, with HubSpot branding on public-facing assets and low caps on custom properties, templates, and documents. No multi-step workflow automation and no sequences at working volume. |
| Free trial | 15-day free trial on paid plans, no credit card required | Not applicable: the free plan is permanent and is itself the evaluation path for the paid tiers above it |
| Best for | Small businesses and teams of one to about twenty-five people who want a real CRM with native calling, WhatsApp, email, and automation for under $20 a seat, and who are comfortable living inside Zoho's conventions and possibly adopting more of its suite later. | One and two-person businesses that want a genuinely capable CRM at no cost, and small companies that want a free system of record today with a credible upgrade path to one shared marketing, sales, and service platform later. |
| Setup time | Under an hour to something usable. Import a CSV, pick a pipeline template, connect a mailbox, and the team can work. Adding telephony and WhatsApp channels is another hour of provider setup. | The free CRM is usable in under an hour: sign up, connect the mailbox, import a CSV. A Professional implementation with workflows, lifecycle stages, custom reports, and lead routing is a 4 to 8 week project, which is precisely why the mandatory onboarding fee exists. |
| Learning curve | Low by design, and lower than Zoho CRM by a wide margin. The vocabulary is Zoho's, so occasional terms feel unfamiliar, but there is no module builder or layout designer to get lost in because Bigin removed them. | Low for reps, who mostly work from the inbox extension and the prospecting workspace. Moderate to high for administrators, because lifecycle stages, workflow enrolment logic, association labels, and permission structures all interact and are easy to get wrong in ways that surface months later. |
| Platforms | Web, iOS, Android, Apple Watch, Mobile widgets | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook extensions, Chrome extension |
| Compliance | GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001, HIPAA available in parts of the Zoho estate | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA support on eligible higher-tier subscriptions |
| Founded | 1996 | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Chennai, India, with a US base in Austin, Texas | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Ownership | Privately held and bootstrapped; Zoho Corporation has never taken outside investment | Public company (NYSE: HUBS) |
Strengths and limitations
Bigin by Zoho CRM
Strengths
- Native telephony, WhatsApp, email, and social capture in a $7 seat, where nearly every competitor at that price pushes calling and messaging out to third-party tools.
- Automation is included from the entry tier rather than gated behind a $39 plan, which changes the effective price comparison against Pipedrive dramatically.
- Zia AI credits are bundled into the plan allowance instead of metered separately, making the bill predictable.
- One of the best mobile experiences in the category, with genuine feature parity, call logging, watch support, and widgets.
Limitations
- Custom fields are rationed at ten per module on Express, which is a hard ceiling for businesses that record a lot of structured detail.
- No custom objects or module builder at all; that capability was deliberately removed and only exists in Zoho CRM.
- Record caps of 50,000 and 100,000 on the lower tiers mean a data-heavy business is pushed up the ladder by volume rather than by need.
- Reporting is competent but shallow compared with Zoho CRM or Pipedrive: standard dashboards, limited custom analytics, and no serious forecasting engine.
HubSpot CRM
Strengths
- The strongest free tier in the category by a wide margin, usable indefinitely and complete enough to run a two-person company's sales.
- One shared record across marketing, sales, service, content, and commerce, which delivers closed-loop attribution that stitched-together stacks rarely achieve.
- Enormous ecosystem: over a thousand marketplace apps, a mature API, a certified partner network, and a hiring pool that already knows the product.
- The Professional workflow builder and custom report builder are genuinely excellent, and materially deeper than Pipedrive or Capsule at any tier.
Limitations
- The Starter to Professional gap is a cliff, not a step: $7 to $90 per seat plus a $1,500 onboarding fee, with sequences at volume, workflow automation, custom reporting, and forecasting all on the far side.
- The free plan is capped at two users, so the third hire forces a paid decision earlier than most buyers expect.
- Custom objects are Enterprise-only, so unusual data models are handled with custom properties until you are paying $150 a seat.
- AI credit metering adds a variable line item and makes total cost harder to forecast than flat per-seat competitors.
Pricing compared
Bigin by Zoho CRM
Per-user subscription across a free tier and three paid tiers, with records, custom fields, pipelines, automations, and AI credits all metered by plan.
- Free$0
- Express$7
- Premier$12
- Bigin 360$18
Express at $7 a seat is the best raw value in this directory's CRM category, and it is not a close contest. Native telephony, WhatsApp, mass email, thirty automations, payment links, and 50,000 records for a third of what Pipedrive charges before its automation tier even begins is a serious proposition. The honest caveat is that you are buying breadth within tight limits: ten custom fields per module and no custom objects means Bigin fits businesses whose data model is genuinely simple. If yours is, this is the cheapest complete CRM you can responsibly buy. If yours is not, the limits will chase you up the ladder and eventually into Zoho CRM proper, which is exactly what Zoho designed the ladder to do.
HubSpot CRM
Free forever for up to two users, with no credit card. The paid path is the separately priced Sales Hub subscription, sold per seat, plus Core Seats for staff who only need shared CRM access and free unlimited view-only seats.
- Free CRM$0
- Sales Hub Starter$7
- Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise$90 and $150
As a free product this is unbeatable and should be judged as one: two users, a real CRM, no expiry, and a public company behind it, for nothing. The value question only becomes hard at the upgrade, and it should be asked there rather than assumed. Starter at $7 a seat is worth it purely to remove branding. Professional at $90 a seat plus $1,500 of onboarding is a different order of decision, and one where Pipedrive Growth at $39 and Zoho CRM Professional at $23 do the pipeline job for a fraction. The honest summary is that the free tier is a gift and the paid ladder is a market-rate platform purchase, and the two deserve to be evaluated separately.
Editorial verdict on each
Bigin by Zoho CRM
Bigin is the best value CRM a small business can buy, and the reason is structural: Zoho already owned the infrastructure, so it could afford to build a cheap product properly rather than as a stripped-down lure. Native calling and WhatsApp at $7 a seat, automation from the entry tier, bundled AI credits, and a genuinely good mobile app add up to something most competitors cannot match without doubling the price. Buy it if your data model is simple, your conversations happen across channels, and you are comfortable in Zoho's world. Do not buy it if you need custom objects, hold more than 100,000 records on a budget, or want a big third-party marketplace. And model the metering before you sign: records, fields, pipelines, and automations are all counted, and those counts, not the feature list, are what will eventually move you up the ladder.
Read the full Bigin by Zoho CRM profileHubSpot CRM
Category LeaderTake it. HubSpot CRM is the best free CRM available and there is no catch worth worrying about at two users: contacts, deals, email sync, meeting links, forms, and live chat, permanently, with a NYSE-listed company behind it. Use it until a limit actually bites, and know in advance which one will, because it is almost always the third user or the first request for automated follow-up. What matters is that the upgrade is then a genuine decision rather than a formality. The paid step is Sales Hub at $90 per seat per month plus $1,500 of required onboarding for the tier that carries the automation, and at that price Pipedrive Growth and Zoho CRM Professional deserve a serious hearing. Start free without hesitation, then price the alternatives properly when the wall arrives.
Read the full HubSpot CRM profileBigin by Zoho CRM profile last reviewed 2026-09-26; HubSpot CRM last reviewed 2026-09-27. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
The best in Sales CRM
23 trackedSales CRMs are the system of record for pipeline: they store every contact, company, and deal, and structure the follow-up work that turns conversations into revenue.
The free CRM that defined the modern entry point, with the deepest ecosystem a small business can grow into.
The most capability per dollar in the category, if you are willing to configure it.
The AI-native CRM betting that agents will do the pipeline work, and shipping toward that bet faster than any incumbent.
A CRM that fills itself in from email, calendar, and phone signals, removing the data entry that kills small-team CRM adoption.
Setup under an hour with support staff importing your spreadsheet free, and non-technical users productive on day one make it the gentlest CRM here.
Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Bigin by Zoho CRM and HubSpot CRM?
HubSpot's free CRM is more generous on contacts and gives a path into a real marketing platform, but the sales automation a team needs sits in Sales Hub Professional at $90 a seat plus an onboarding fee. Bigin is a fraction of that with native calling and WhatsApp but no marketing engine. Marketing-led businesses take HubSpot; sales-and-service small businesses take Bigin and add Zoho Campaigns if they need sends.
Is Bigin by Zoho CRM or HubSpot CRM cheaper?
Bigin by Zoho CRM starts at $7 per user per month on annual billing (Express), or $0 for a single user (free plan available). HubSpot CRM starts at $0 for up to 2 users. The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Bigin by Zoho CRM pricing model: Per-user subscription across a free tier and three paid tiers, with records, custom fields, pipelines, automations, and AI credits all metered by plan. HubSpot CRM pricing model: Free forever for up to two users, with no credit card. The paid path is the separately priced Sales Hub subscription, sold per seat, plus Core Seats for staff who only need shared CRM access and free unlimited view-only seats.
Does Bigin by Zoho CRM or HubSpot CRM have a free plan?
Bigin by Zoho CRM has a free plan. Free plan for one user with 500 records, a single pipeline, three automations, built-in telephony, standard dashboards, and mobile apps. Trial terms: 15-day free trial on paid plans, no credit card required. HubSpot CRM has a free plan. Free CRM for up to two users covering contacts, companies, deals, and tickets on one timeline, one deal pipeline, email and calendar sync, meeting links, forms, live chat, a shared conversations inbox, tasks, email tracking, standard dashboards, and the mobile apps, with HubSpot branding on public-facing assets and low caps on custom properties, templates, and documents. Trial terms: Not applicable: the free plan is permanent and is itself the evaluation path for the paid tiers above it.
Who should choose Bigin by Zoho CRM?
Small businesses and teams of one to about twenty-five people who want a real CRM with native calling, WhatsApp, email, and automation for under $20 a seat, and who are comfortable living inside Zoho's conventions and possibly adopting more of its suite later.
Who should choose HubSpot CRM?
One and two-person businesses that want a genuinely capable CRM at no cost, and small companies that want a free system of record today with a credible upgrade path to one shared marketing, sales, and service platform later.
What are the best alternatives to Bigin by Zoho CRM and HubSpot CRM?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in Sales CRM. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Zoho CRM (Best Value), Attio (Momentum), Salesflare (Innovation). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
