Freshsales vs HubSpot Sales Hub
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
Both sides assessedFreshsales compared with HubSpot Sales Hub
Freshsales includes phone, email sequences, and AI scoring at a fraction of Sales Hub Professional's $90 seat, with far more generous free and entry tiers, which makes it the stronger fit for small teams that want telephony built in rather than integrated. Sales Hub is deeper on the workflow builder, cross-object custom reporting, and forecasting, and the Freshworks suite has no answer to HubSpot's marketing side for closed-loop attribution. Price-sensitive teams that need calling in the CRM should shortlist Freshsales; teams whose binding constraint is reporting should pay for Professional.
HubSpot Sales Hub compared with Freshsales
Freshsales bundles built-in phone, email sequences, and AI scoring at a fraction of Sales Hub Professional's seat price, and its free and entry tiers are far more generous, which makes it a strong fit for small teams who want telephony included rather than integrated. Sales Hub's workflow builder, custom report builder, and forecasting are deeper, and the Freshworks suite does not match HubSpot's marketing side for attribution. Price-sensitive teams that need calling in the CRM should shortlist Freshsales; teams whose reporting requirements are the binding constraint should pay for Professional.
Choose Freshsales if
Small and mid-sized sales teams that make a lot of calls and want telephony, SMS, WhatsApp, and chat inside the CRM without stitching together a dialer, particularly companies already using Freshdesk or Freshservice.
Choose HubSpot Sales Hub if
Sales teams of roughly 10 to 200 people who need sequences, branching automation, custom reporting, and forecasting in one system, and whose marketing runs on HubSpot already, so the closed-loop attribution justifies $90 per seat per month plus a $1,500 onboarding fee.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Freshsales | HubSpot Sales Hub |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $0 for up to 3 users, then $9 per user per month on annual billing (Growth) | $7 per seat per month on annual billing for Starter, rising to $90 for Professional (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Per-user subscription across a free 3-user plan and three paid plans, billed monthly or annually, with Freddy AI agent sessions metered, phone credits purchased separately, and branded documents sold as a per-user add-on. | Per-seat subscription layered on the free HubSpot CRM. Sales Hub seats carry the sales tooling, Core Seats give shared CRM edit access to other staff, view-only seats are free, AI usage is metered in HubSpot Credits, and Professional and Enterprise carry mandatory one-time onboarding fees. |
| Free plan | Forever-free plan for up to 3 users covering contact, account, and deal management, the mobile app, and chat, email, and phone support, without workflows, sequences, or reporting depth. | No free Sales Hub tier. The free HubSpot CRM sits underneath it at $0 for up to two users and includes contacts, companies, deals, tickets, email and calendar sync, meeting links, forms, and live chat, but no sequences at volume and no multi-step workflow automation. |
| Free trial | 21 days with full product access, no credit card required | 14-day trials of paid tiers; in practice the permanent free CRM underneath Sales Hub is the normal evaluation path |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized sales teams that make a lot of calls and want telephony, SMS, WhatsApp, and chat inside the CRM without stitching together a dialer, particularly companies already using Freshdesk or Freshservice. | Sales teams of roughly 10 to 200 people who need sequences, branching automation, custom reporting, and forecasting in one system, and whose marketing runs on HubSpot already, so the closed-loop attribution justifies $90 per seat per month plus a $1,500 onboarding fee. |
| Setup time | A usable instance in a few hours: import records, connect a mailbox, buy a phone number, set pipeline stages. Sequences, scoring, territories, and reporting on the Pro plan add roughly a week of part-time configuration. | Two to four weeks to a working Professional configuration, and four to eight weeks to a good one with lifecycle stages, workflow enrolment logic, lead routing, custom reports, and forecasting in place. The required onboarding fee exists precisely because this is a project rather than a signup. |
| Learning curve | Low for reps. The interface is uncluttered and communication actions are where you expect them. Administration is moderate, with the workflow and assignment builders being the only places that require real thought. | Low for reps, who mostly work from the mailbox extension and the prospecting workspace. Moderate to high for administrators: lifecycle stages, workflow enrolment logic, association labels, and permission structures interact in ways that are easy to get wrong and slow to surface. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook integrations | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook extensions, Chrome extension |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA support on eligible plans | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, ISO 27001, HIPAA support on eligible higher-tier subscriptions |
| Founded | 2010 | 2006 |
| Headquarters | San Mateo, California, United States, with major operations in Chennai, India | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Ownership | Public company (NASDAQ: FRSH) | Public company (NYSE: HUBS) |
Strengths and limitations
Freshsales
Strengths
- Native telephony, SMS, and WhatsApp inside the CRM record, with automatic logging, which removes an entire class of integration pain for phone-heavy teams.
- Clean, modern interface that reps adopt easily, noticeably lighter than Zoho's and comparable to Pipedrive's.
- A real forever-free plan for three users plus a 21-day full-product trial, so evaluation costs nothing.
- Strong unified customer record combining email, calls, chat, and web activity on a single timeline.
Limitations
- The $9 entry plan is significantly hollowed out: no sequences, no multiple pipelines, no scoring, no custom reports, which makes the headline price misleading.
- Custom modules are locked to the $59 Enterprise plan, four times the price at which Zoho ships the same idea.
- Freddy AI is metered by session, so AI-forward teams face a variable and easily underestimated cost.
- The Freshworks Marketplace is much smaller than HubSpot's or Pipedrive's ecosystems, so niche integrations often mean Zapier or custom API work.
HubSpot Sales Hub
Strengths
- The workflow builder and custom report builder are genuinely excellent and materially deeper than Pipedrive, Capsule, or Freshsales at any tier.
- One shared record across marketing, sales, and service delivers closed-loop attribution that stitched-together stacks rarely achieve without an integration programme.
- Free unlimited view-only seats let the whole company read pipeline without licence sprawl, which almost no competitor offers.
- AI credit consumption is published per action (100 credits per agent-recommended outreach, 50 per resolved conversation, 10 per smart-properties run), so the metered cost is modellable rather than opaque.
Limitations
- The Starter to Professional step is a thirteen-fold per-seat increase plus $1,500 before anyone logs in, with sequences at volume, workflow automation, custom reporting, and forecasting all on the far side of it.
- Onboarding fees are disclosed in a footnote rather than the headline price, so quoted year-one cost routinely surprises buyers who modelled seats only.
- AI is metered rather than included, and a Professional seat's 3,000 credits covers only about thirty agent-recommended outreaches a month at the published rate.
- Custom object types are Enterprise-only at $150 per seat per month, a data-model capability Zoho CRM and Attio both provide far lower down.
Pricing compared
Freshsales
Per-user subscription across a free 3-user plan and three paid plans, billed monthly or annually, with Freddy AI agent sessions metered, phone credits purchased separately, and branded documents sold as a per-user add-on.
- Free$0
- Growth$9
- Pro$39
- Enterprise$59
At the Pro tier, Freshsales is priced identically to Pipedrive Growth and roughly 70 percent above Zoho Professional, and the thing it gives you that neither does is genuinely native telephony, SMS, and WhatsApp with automatic logging. If your team makes calls all day, that bundling is worth real money and removes a dialer subscription. If your deals move by email and meetings, you are paying a communications premium you will not use, and Zoho gives more configuration for $23 while Pipedrive gives a better pipeline interface for the same $39. The free plan and $9 tier are best understood as acquisition pricing rather than as viable long-term homes for a sales team.
HubSpot Sales Hub
Per-seat subscription layered on the free HubSpot CRM. Sales Hub seats carry the sales tooling, Core Seats give shared CRM edit access to other staff, view-only seats are free, AI usage is metered in HubSpot Credits, and Professional and Enterprise carry mandatory one-time onboarding fees.
- Starter$7
- Professional$90
- Enterprise$150
Starter at $7 a seat is fine value for what it is, which is cosmetic. Professional at $90 a seat is the number that matters, and as pure sales software it loses on price to almost everything: Pipedrive Growth does sequences, automation, and forecasting at $39, Zoho Professional at $23. Add the $1,500 onboarding fee and a ten-seat team is $12,300 in year one against roughly $2,760 for Zoho. The defensible case is never the sales features alone; it is that marketing, sales, and service share one record, which turns attribution from an integration project into a default. If your marketing already runs on HubSpot, Professional is the cheapest route to closed-loop reporting. If it does not, you are paying a platform premium for pipeline software and should price the alternatives properly first.
Editorial verdict on each
Freshsales
Freshsales is a good, clean CRM whose real differentiator is communication: native calling, SMS, and WhatsApp on the record, logged automatically, without a dialer subscription or a fragile integration. Judge it at Pro, $39 per user per month, because the $9 Growth plan lacks sequences, multiple pipelines, and custom reports and will not carry a sales process. At that price it competes squarely with Pipedrive on interface and loses to Zoho on configurability, so the deciding question is simple: if your reps spend their day on the phone, Freshsales earns its price and removes a tool from the stack. If they do not, buy the cheaper or the better-designed alternative and skip the telephony you were never going to use.
Read the full Freshsales profileHubSpot Sales Hub
Sales Hub is excellent software with a pricing structure designed to be crossed rather than shopped. The free CRM underneath it is the best no-cost starting point in the category, Starter at $7 a seat is cosmetic, and everything a working sales team actually needs sits at Professional for $90 a seat plus $1,500 before anyone logs in. Judged as pipeline software that is poor value: Zoho Professional does the same job for a quarter of it and Pipedrive Growth for under half. The purchase is defensible on exactly one argument, and it is a strong one when it applies: sales, marketing, and service sharing a single record turns attribution from an integration project into a default. If your marketing already runs on HubSpot, pay it and budget the onboarding fee honestly. If it does not, price Zoho and Pipedrive properly before you sign, because you are otherwise buying a platform premium for pipeline software.
Read the full HubSpot Sales Hub profileFreshsales profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; HubSpot Sales Hub last reviewed 2026-09-07. 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 Freshsales and HubSpot Sales Hub?
Freshsales includes phone, email sequences, and AI scoring at a fraction of Sales Hub Professional's $90 seat, with far more generous free and entry tiers, which makes it the stronger fit for small teams that want telephony built in rather than integrated. Sales Hub is deeper on the workflow builder, cross-object custom reporting, and forecasting, and the Freshworks suite has no answer to HubSpot's marketing side for closed-loop attribution. Price-sensitive teams that need calling in the CRM should shortlist Freshsales; teams whose binding constraint is reporting should pay for Professional.
Is Freshsales or HubSpot Sales Hub cheaper?
Freshsales starts at $0 for up to 3 users, then $9 per user per month on annual billing (Growth). HubSpot Sales Hub starts at $7 per seat per month on annual billing for Starter, rising to $90 for Professional (free plan available). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Freshsales pricing model: Per-user subscription across a free 3-user plan and three paid plans, billed monthly or annually, with Freddy AI agent sessions metered, phone credits purchased separately, and branded documents sold as a per-user add-on. HubSpot Sales Hub pricing model: Per-seat subscription layered on the free HubSpot CRM.
Does Freshsales or HubSpot Sales Hub have a free plan?
Freshsales has a free plan. Forever-free plan for up to 3 users covering contact, account, and deal management, the mobile app, and chat, email, and phone support, without workflows, sequences, or reporting depth. Trial terms: 21 days with full product access, no credit card required. HubSpot Sales Hub has a free plan. No free Sales Hub tier. Trial terms: 14-day trials of paid tiers; in practice the permanent free CRM underneath Sales Hub is the normal evaluation path.
Who should choose Freshsales?
Small and mid-sized sales teams that make a lot of calls and want telephony, SMS, WhatsApp, and chat inside the CRM without stitching together a dialer, particularly companies already using Freshdesk or Freshservice.
Who should choose HubSpot Sales Hub?
Sales teams of roughly 10 to 200 people who need sequences, branching automation, custom reporting, and forecasting in one system, and whose marketing runs on HubSpot already, so the closed-loop attribution justifies $90 per seat per month plus a $1,500 onboarding fee.
What are the best alternatives to Freshsales and HubSpot Sales Hub?
SaaSTracker profiles 23 products in Sales CRM. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to HubSpot CRM (Category Leader), Zoho CRM (Best Value), Attio (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
