Your pipeline lives in a spreadsheet, deals stall because nobody owns the next step, and every quote of "per user, per month" hides a different catch. This guide compares the four CRMs small sales teams shortlist most — on the plan you would actually run, the yearly bill for a real team, and the exact limit that forces your next upgrade.
Lite, billed annually. The plan most small teams actually run — Growth, with email sync and automation — is $39/seat/mo billed annually. No free plan; 14-day trial.
Free CRM for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts. Starter lists at $20/seat/mo. Professional jumps to $90/seat/mo plus a one-time onboarding fee.
Essentials, billed annually — the first team plan. Workflows and the Power Dialer start on Growth at $99/user/mo billed annually. Calling and SMS are billed by usage on top.
Standard, billed annually — the tier most sales teams land on. Basic is $12/seat/mo but caps contacts and deals at 1,000. Minimum 3 seats; seats are sold in buckets.
| Pipedrive | HubSpot CRM | Close | monday CRM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Sales-led teams that live in the deal pipeline | Teams that want to start free and add marketing / service later | Outbound teams that call and email all day | Teams that want sales on visual boards, next to project work |
| Free option | No free plan — 14-day trial | Yes — up to 2 users, up to 1,000 contacts, no expiry | No free plan — 14-day trial, no card required | No free plan — 14-day trial |
| Entry paid price | Lite $14/seat/mo billed annually ($24 monthly) | Starter $20/seat/mo list price | Solo $9/user/mo billed annually (1 user only); Essentials $35 for teams | Basic $12/seat/mo billed annually ($18 monthly), 3-seat minimum |
| Plan most small teams actually need | Growth $39/seat/mo billed annually — first tier with email sync + automation | Starter for basics; sequences and forecasting sit on Professional at $90/seat/mo + $1,500 onboarding | Growth $99/user/mo billed annually — first tier with workflows, Power Dialer, bulk email | Standard $17 or Pro $28/seat/mo billed annually — email sequences only on Pro |
| Built-in calling | Via integrations / add-ons | Calling tools included, minutes vary by tier | Core feature — calling, SMS and email in one inbox (usage billed separately) | Via integrations |
| How AI is priced | AI features bundled into plans, no separate AI add-on published | Assistant included on all plans; autonomous agents draw on HubSpot Credits (500/mo on Starter, 3,000 on Professional; extra credits $10 per 1,000) | AI agent (Chloe) on all plans with per-user monthly AI credits; use inside workflows from Growth | AI features tied to higher tiers and credit allowances — check the plan page for current terms |
| Limits that bite | Lite has no automations; deal / lead caps rise per tier (2,500 per seat on Lite, 5,000 on Growth) | Free ends at 2 users or 1,000 contacts; marketing contacts and credits are metered separately | No workflows below Growth; Solo is capped at 1 user and 10,000 leads | Basic caps contacts + deals at 1,000; Standard automations cap at 250/month; seats sold in buckets of 3, 5, 10… |
| Trade-off to know | Lead capture (LeadBooster) and email campaigns are paid add-ons, not included | The jump from Starter to Professional is roughly 4.5× per seat, plus a mandatory onboarding fee | The headline $9 plan serves exactly one person; the automated-outreach plan costs about 2.8× the team entry plan — before call charges | A 4-person team pays for 5 seats, and a 6th hire moves you to the 10-seat bucket |
Prices checked November 2026. All prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors. Annual prices are per-seat monthly equivalents of a yearly subscription, not monthly payments. HubSpot frequently displays a discounted Starter price for new customers; the figures here use its $20 list price, because budgets should survive the renewal. Plans change — always confirm the current price, limits and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Per-seat prices flatter every vendor. The table below multiplies the published annual-billing rate by five seats and twelve months — using, for each product, the plan a small team would realistically run, not the cheapest tier on the page. Add-ons, calling usage and taxes are excluded, and each exclusion is noted.
| Setup (5 seats, annual billing) | Math | Yearly total |
|---|---|---|
| Pipedrive Growth — email sync + automation | $39 × 5 × 12 | $2,340/yr |
| Pipedrive Lite — pipeline tracking only, no automation | $14 × 5 × 12 | $840/yr |
| HubSpot Starter (list price) | $20 × 5 × 12 | $1,200/yr |
| HubSpot Professional (Sales Hub) — year 1, incl. onboarding | $90 × 5 × 12 + $1,500 | $6,900 in year 1 ($5,400 after) |
| Close Essentials — team plan, no workflows / dialer | $35 × 5 × 12 | $2,100/yr + call & SMS usage |
| Close Growth — workflows + Power Dialer | $99 × 5 × 12 | $5,940/yr + call & SMS usage |
| monday CRM Standard | $17 × 5 × 12 | $1,020/yr |
| monday CRM Pro — email sequences, 25,000 automations/mo | $28 × 5 × 12 | $1,680/yr |
Two readings matter more than the ranking. First, HubSpot's free plan cannot appear in this table at all: it stops at two users, so a five-person team is a paying team from day one. Second, the gap inside each product (Lite → Growth, Essentials → Growth, Starter → Professional) is larger than most gaps between products — the feature gate you hit in month three costs more than the choice you make on day one.
Pipedrive is a sales CRM built around one screen: the deal pipeline. Activities, follow-ups and deal stages are the product; marketing automation and service tooling are not, and lead capture (LeadBooster) and email campaigns are sold as add-ons. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial. Lite ($14/seat/mo billed annually, $24 monthly) covers lead, deal and contact management with no workflow automations. Growth ($39 annual / $49 monthly) is where most small teams land: full email sync and tracking, automations, sequences and forecasting. Premium ($59 / $79) adds lead routing and scoring, e-signatures and higher limits; Ultimate ($79 / $99) raises limits further and adds security controls.
HubSpot is a customer platform: the free CRM is the entry point to Sales, Marketing, Service and Content products that share one contact record. The free plan is real but small: up to 2 users and up to 1,000 contacts, with one pipeline, email tracking, forms, live chat and up to 2,000 marketing email sends a month carrying HubSpot branding — and no expiry date. A third person who needs to edit records, or contact number 1,001, ends the free era. Starter lists at $20/seat/mo (a lower promotional rate for new customers is often displayed) and adds multiple pipelines, simple automation and branding removal, with 500 HubSpot Credits a month. Professional (Sales Hub) is $90/seat/mo billed annually — where sequences, forecasting and deal scoring live — plus a mandatory one-time $1,500 onboarding fee, and 3,000 credits a month.
On AI, read the structure, not the headline. The Breeze Assistant (drafting, summarizing, Q&A inside the app) is included on every plan and consumes no credits. The autonomous agents are metered: they draw on the account's monthly HubSpot Credits — set by your highest tier, not summed across seats, resetting monthly with no rollover. Extra credits cost $10 per 1,000. A prospecting-agent lead recommendation costs 100 credits, so the Professional allowance of 3,000 credits covers about 30 such recommendations a month before you pay per use. Data enrichment, by contrast, is included with paid plans and does not consume credits.
Close puts the communication itself inside the CRM: built-in calling, SMS and email on the lead's record, rather than integrations bolted onto a pipeline board. There is no free plan; every tier has a 14-day trial. The advertised Solo plan ($9/user/mo billed annually, $19 monthly) is capped at exactly one user and 10,000 leads, with no workflows. Essentials ($35 / $49) is the team entry point — unlimited leads, shared inbox and tasks — but still no workflows, no Power Dialer and no bulk email. Those arrive on Growth ($99 / $109), along with the use of Close's AI agent Chloe inside workflows (Chloe itself is available on all plans, with a per-user monthly AI credit allowance). Scale ($139 / $149) adds the predictive dialer, live call coaching and role-based permissions. On every plan, calling minutes, SMS and phone numbers are billed by usage, on top of the seat price.
monday CRM is the sales layer of the monday.com work platform: pipelines as boards, with the same visual language your operations or delivery teams may already use for projects. There is no free CRM plan, only a 14-day trial, and paid plans start at 3 seats minimum. Basic ($12/seat/mo billed annually, $18 monthly) caps you at 1,000 contacts and deals combined, with no custom automations listed. Standard ($17 / $25) raises the cap to 10,000 contacts and deals and 250 automations a month. Pro ($28 / $41) moves to 100,000 contacts and deals, 25,000 automations a month, and is the first tier with email sequences and mass email. Ultimate is quote-based. One structural quirk matters more than any feature: seats are sold in buckets — 3, 5, 10, 15 and up — so a team of four pays for five seats, and the sixth hire moves the whole account to the 10-seat bucket.
Deals worked from a board → Pipedrive or monday CRM. Inbound leads plus marketing on the same record → HubSpot. A day spent calling and chasing replies → Close. The CRM should match the motion you already have, not the one a vendor's homepage imagines.
Find your feature gate before you sign: email sync and automation (Pipedrive Growth), sequences (HubSpot Professional, monday Pro), workflows and a dialer (Close Growth). Multiply that tier by your real seat count — and for monday, by the seat bucket above it.
HubSpot's free plan ends at 1,000 contacts, monday Basic at 1,000 contacts and deals, Close Solo at 10,000 leads for one user. A spreadsheet import can cross these lines on day one. Count rows first, then choose the tier — not the other way round.
All four offer a 14-day trial (HubSpot's free plan has no clock at all for two users). Load the same live deals into two finalists and work them for a week. The CRM your reps update without being chased is the right one — an unused CRM is the most expensive option on this page, whatever it costs.
At entry level they look similar: Pipedrive Lite is $14/seat/mo billed annually and HubSpot Starter lists at $20/seat/mo, with HubSpot free for up to two users. The difference appears at the feature gates. Pipedrive's automation tier (Growth) is $39/seat/mo; HubSpot's sequence-and-forecasting tier (Professional) is $90/seat/mo plus a $1,500 one-time onboarding fee. For five people, that's $2,340 a year against $6,900 in year one, on published prices checked in November 2026. If you never need HubSpot's Professional features, its Starter — or free plan — is the cheaper home; if you do need them, price that tier from the start.
Yes, with two hard edges: up to 2 users and up to 1,000 contacts, with no expiry date and no credit card required. It includes one deal pipeline, email tracking, forms and live chat, with HubSpot branding on customer-facing elements and up to 2,000 marketing email sends a month. Add a third person who edits records, or import contact number 1,001, and you need paid seats. It also includes the AI assistant but no HubSpot Credits, so the autonomous AI agents are effectively a paid-plan feature.
Because monday sells CRM seats in buckets — 3, 5, 10, 15 and upward — with a 3-seat minimum. Your bill is the bucket size at or above your headcount, times the per-seat price. Four people on Standard pay 5 × $17, the same $1,020 a year as a five-person team on annual billing; a sixth hire moves you to the 10-seat bucket and doubles the seat bill. Factor the bucket, not the headcount, into your budget.
It depends on the product. Close bills calling minutes, SMS and phone numbers by usage on every plan. Pipedrive sells lead capture (LeadBooster), email campaigns and projects as add-ons. HubSpot charges for three things at once as you grow — seats, marketing contact tiers, and AI credits beyond the monthly allowance ($10 per 1,000 credits) — plus one-time onboarding fees on Professional and Enterprise. monday CRM's extra cost is structural rather than metered: the seat bucket above your team size.
Published pricing can't answer that for you, but the usual signals are operational, not numerical: more than one person editing the same deal list, follow-ups that depend on someone remembering, and no single answer to "what's closing this month?" Any of the four tools above solves those problems; they differ in what they charge you as the team and the contact list grow, which is what this page compares.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published pricing, plan limits and documentation — based on publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. Where a judgment appears (for example, that a tier jump is steep), it is arithmetic on the published prices shown next to it, so you can check the math yourself. Prices and limits were checked in November 2026 and change often; confirm them on the vendor's site before you buy.