HubSpot CRM vs monday 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.
Still shortlisting? Browse the best in Sales CRM for every option we track, with award winners called out.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentmonday CRM compared with HubSpot CRM
HubSpot gives you a free CRM and a marketing platform on top, with the automation a real team needs sitting in Sales Hub Professional at $90 a seat plus onboarding. monday CRM has better no-code customization and much lower entry pricing but no marketing engine of comparable depth. Marketing-led companies should price HubSpot first; process-led companies get more per dollar from monday.
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.
Choose monday CRM if
Small and mid-sized teams of three to about forty people who want one system for sales and the work that follows a closed deal, who have someone willing to design boards and automations, and who value a workspace they can reshape over a CRM that tells them how to sell.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | HubSpot CRM | monday CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| Starting price | $0 for up to 2 users | $12 per seat per month on annual billing (Basic CRM), three seats minimum (free plan available) |
| 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. | Per-seat subscription across four tiers with a three-seat minimum, contact caps and automation action allowances that step up by tier, and metered AI credits on top. |
| 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. No multi-step workflow automation and no sequences at working volume. | The free monday.com plan (up to 2 seats, 3 boards) exists on the work-management product but is not a usable CRM tier; the CRM product starts at Basic. |
| Free trial | Not applicable: the free plan is permanent and is itself the evaluation path for the paid tiers above it | 14 days on paid plans, no credit card required |
| Best for | 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. | Small and mid-sized teams of three to about forty people who want one system for sales and the work that follows a closed deal, who have someone willing to design boards and automations, and who value a workspace they can reshape over a CRM that tells them how to sell. |
| Setup time | 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. | A working pipeline in an hour from the CRM template. A properly designed workspace with connected boards, required fields, automations, and dashboards is a one to two week part-time project, and it is real design work rather than configuration. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Low for users, moderate for whoever owns the build. Reps understand boards immediately. The person designing connect-board relations, mirror columns, and multi-step automations is doing something closer to light database design. |
| Platforms | Web app, iOS, Android, Gmail and Outlook extensions, Chrome extension | Web, macOS and Windows desktop apps, iOS, Android |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA support on eligible higher-tier subscriptions | SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27018, GDPR, HIPAA available on higher tiers |
| Founded | 2006 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Ownership | Public company (NYSE: HUBS) | Publicly traded (Nasdaq: MNDY) |
Strengths and limitations
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.
monday CRM
Strengths
- The no-code data model is the most flexible in this price band: boards, typed columns, and board relations let a small business model an unusual process without a developer.
- One subscription covers sales and the post-sale work, which is a genuine consolidation win for agencies and service businesses.
- The interface is unusually approachable for people coming off spreadsheets, and adoption tends to be high because nothing about it feels like enterprise software.
- Dashboards aggregate across boards properly, so a manager gets pipeline coverage, velocity, and forecast without exports.
Limitations
- The three-seat minimum makes it a poor fit for solo operators and two-person businesses, and seats are sold in blocks rather than singly.
- Contact caps are aggressive at the lower tiers: 1,000 on Basic and 10,000 on Standard means database growth, not headcount, drives your upgrade.
- 250 custom automations a month on Standard, and none on Basic, is a small allowance once stage-change automations are running across a real pipeline.
- No native dialer, so telephony means a third-party integration and a second bill.
Pricing compared
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.
monday CRM
Per-seat subscription across four tiers with a three-seat minimum, contact caps and automation action allowances that step up by tier, and metered AI credits on top.
- Basic CRM$12
- Standard CRM$17
- Pro CRM$28
- Ultimate CRMCustom quote
Judged as a CRM alone, monday is not cheap: Standard at $17 a seat with a three-seat floor costs more than Bigin, Flowlu, or OnePageCRM and gives you fewer sales-specific mechanics than Pipedrive at $39. Judged as a work platform that happens to run your pipeline, it is good value, because the same subscription covers delivery, onboarding, and internal process work that would otherwise be a second tool. The decision therefore is not really about CRM features. If sales is all you need, cheaper and sharper options exist. If you want one system for the deal and everything the deal creates, monday earns its price, provided you accept metered automations and AI credits sitting on top of the seat cost.
Editorial verdict on each
HubSpot 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 profilemonday CRM
monday CRM is the right answer to a specific question: what if the CRM and the work that follows a closed deal lived in the same place, on a schema you designed yourself? For agencies, service businesses, and operations-led small companies, that consolidation is worth real money, and the interface is approachable enough that adoption is rarely the problem. Buy it if you have someone who will own the board design and you need more than a pipeline. Do not buy it if you are a solo founder (the three-seat minimum punishes you), if you need native calling, or if you want a CRM that already knows how selling works. And model the contact caps and automation allowances before you sign, because those, not the seat price, are what decides which tier you actually end up on.
Read the full monday CRM profileHubSpot CRM profile last reviewed 2026-09-27; monday CRM last reviewed 2026-09-26. 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 HubSpot CRM and monday CRM?
HubSpot gives you a free CRM and a marketing platform on top, with the automation a real team needs sitting in Sales Hub Professional at $90 a seat plus onboarding. monday CRM has better no-code customization and much lower entry pricing but no marketing engine of comparable depth. Marketing-led companies should price HubSpot first; process-led companies get more per dollar from monday.
Is HubSpot CRM or monday CRM cheaper?
HubSpot CRM starts at $0 for up to 2 users. monday CRM starts at $12 per seat per month on annual billing (Basic CRM), three seats minimum (free plan available). The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. 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. monday CRM pricing model: Per-seat subscription across four tiers with a three-seat minimum, contact caps and automation action allowances that step up by tier, and metered AI credits on top.
Does HubSpot CRM or monday CRM have a free plan?
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. monday CRM has a free plan. The free monday.com plan (up to 2 seats, 3 boards) exists on the work-management product but is not a usable CRM tier; the CRM product starts at Basic. Trial terms: 14 days on paid plans, no credit card required.
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.
Who should choose monday CRM?
Small and mid-sized teams of three to about forty people who want one system for sales and the work that follows a closed deal, who have someone willing to design boards and automations, and who value a workspace they can reshape over a CRM that tells them how to sell.
What are the best alternatives to HubSpot CRM and monday 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.
