HubSpot and Salesforce sit at opposite ends of the CRM market. HubSpot leads with a genuinely free tier and a £7/seat entry point; Salesforce starts at £20/user/month and climbs to £440 at the top. But the sticker price only tells part of the story once you factor in HubSpot’s mandatory onboarding fees and Salesforce’s annual-only pricing above its entry tier.
This guide compares both platforms on the figures that actually change your bill: per-seat pricing at every published tier, what a 5-person team pays in year one, and where each platform’s feature set pulls ahead. If you are still deciding what a CRM even needs to do, start with what is a CRM? first.
Every figure below comes from each provider’s live UK pricing page, verified against ExpertSure’s fact database. Where a fee is mandatory but easy to miss, such as HubSpot’s onboarding charge, we flag it before you compare headline seat prices alone.
- HubSpot’s cheapest paid tier is £7/seat/month - Starter, billed annually (£18 monthly), well under Salesforce’s £20/user Starter Suite.
- HubSpot Professional carries a mandatory £1,310 onboarding fee - a one-off charge on top of the £77/seat monthly rate, not included in the headline price.
- Salesforce tops out at £440/user/month - Agentforce 1 Sales, the most expensive tier either platform publishes.
- HubSpot is free for up to 2 users, no time limit - Salesforce’s nearest equivalent is a 30-day free trial, not a permanent free tier.
- A 5-seat team on HubSpot Professional pays £5,930 in year one - versus £4,800/year on Salesforce Enterprise, once the onboarding fee is counted.
HubSpot vs Salesforce: At a Glance
HubSpot and Salesforce solve the same problem from opposite directions. HubSpot is built to be usable for free from day one and stays affordable until Professional, where a £1,310 onboarding fee changes the maths. Salesforce has no permanent free tier, starts at £20/user/month, and scales into genuinely enterprise-grade pricing at £140-£440/user/month for teams that need deep customisation, AI agents and forecasting Salesforce’s own tools can’t match on a lighter platform.
| HubSpot | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes, up to 2 users, no time limit | No permanent free tier (30-day trial only) |
| Cheapest paid tier | Starter, £7/seat/month (annual) | Starter Suite, £20/user/month |
| Mid tier | Professional, £77/seat/month + £1,310 onboarding | Pro Suite, £80/user/month (annual) |
| Top tier | Enterprise, £135/seat/month + £3,050 onboarding | Agentforce 1 Sales, £440/user/month |
| Billing flexibility | Monthly or annual at every tier | Monthly only on Starter Suite; annual only above it |
| Best for | SMBs wanting a connected marketing + sales + service stack | Teams needing deep customisation and AI at scale |
How Do HubSpot and Salesforce Compare on Price?
HubSpot wins on entry-level price and Salesforce wins on billing transparency at its lowest tier. HubSpot Starter costs £7/seat/month billed annually (£18 monthly), against Salesforce Starter Suite at a flat £20/user/month whether you pay monthly or annually. The real divergence starts at the middle tier, where HubSpot Professional adds a one-off £1,310 onboarding fee that Salesforce’s Pro Suite does not charge. Full per-tier figures for eight platforms, not just these two, are in our CRM software costs guide.
HubSpot Pricing
HubSpot’s four tiers scale from free to £135/seat/month, but the two lower tiers understate the true cost of the two higher ones.
| Tier | Price (Annual) | Price (Monthly) | One-Off Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | £0/mo (2 users) | £0/mo | None |
| Starter | £7/seat/month | £18/seat/month | None |
| Professional | £77/seat/month | £85/seat/month | £1,310 onboarding |
| Enterprise | £135/seat/month | Custom quote | £3,050 onboarding |
The free tier covers 1,000 contacts, one deal pipeline and basic email, chat and scheduling tools, but every one of them carries HubSpot branding until you upgrade. Starter removes the branding and adds 5,000 email templates, two pipelines and 500 minutes of calling for £7/seat/month.
Professional is where the real cost jump lands. Alongside forecasting, a sales workspace, 15 pipelines and lead scoring, HubSpot charges a mandatory £1,310 onboarding fee that does not appear anywhere in the £77 headline price. Enterprise repeats the pattern at £3,050. Neither fee is optional, and reviewers on Trustpilot (1.7/5 across 1,133 reviews, checked July 2026) cite exactly this as a recurring complaint, alongside difficulty cancelling annual contracts. HubSpot scores considerably higher on G2 and Capterra, so treat the Trustpilot figure as one signal among several, not the full picture. For the tier-by-tier feature breakdown and a defensible score, see our HubSpot pricing page.
Salesforce Pricing
Salesforce publishes six tiers, and only the entry tier confirms a monthly-billing rate.
| Tier | Price | Billing |
|---|---|---|
| Free Suite | £0/user/month | Heavily feature-limited |
| Starter Suite | £20/user/month | Monthly or annual, same rate |
| Pro Suite | £80/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
| Enterprise | £140/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
| Unlimited | £280/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
| Agentforce 1 Sales | £440/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
Starter Suite is Salesforce’s only tier priced the same whether you pay monthly or annually, at £20/user/month, and it covers lead, account and opportunity management with built-in sales flows. From Pro Suite upward, Salesforce’s pricing page shows only the annual-billing rate; whether a higher month-to-month price exists for those tiers is unconfirmed and worth asking a sales rep before you budget.
Pro Suite also carries a currency-mixed add-on that is easy to miss: Web Services API access costs an extra $25 USD/user/month, on top of the £80 GBP seat price. Every edition includes a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. For the full feature breakdown, read our Salesforce review.
What Does 5 Seats Actually Cost?
Headline per-seat prices flatter HubSpot at the entry tier and understate Salesforce’s annual-only tiers. For a 5-person team, HubSpot Starter costs £35/month with no hidden fee, while HubSpot Professional’s £385/month seat cost is joined by a £1,310 one-off in year one, for a first-year total of £5,930. Salesforce’s equivalent mid tier, Pro Suite, costs £400/month with no onboarding fee, or £4,800/year flat.
| Platform / Tier | Monthly (5 seats) | Year 1 Total |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Starter | 5 × £7 = £35/month | £420/year |
| HubSpot Professional | 5 × £77 = £385/month | £5,930 (incl. £1,310 onboarding) |
| Salesforce Starter Suite | 5 × £20 = £100/month | £1,200/year |
| Salesforce Pro Suite | 5 × £80 = £400/month | £4,800/year |
| Salesforce Enterprise | 5 × £140 = £700/month | £8,400/year |
At the entry tier, HubSpot is unambiguously cheaper: £420/year against Salesforce’s £1,200/year for a 5-seat team. But once you need Professional-level forecasting and automation, the gap narrows sharply once the onboarding fee lands, and Salesforce’s Pro Suite becomes the cheaper mid-tier option on an ongoing annual basis. From year two onward, with no repeat onboarding charge, HubSpot Professional settles at £4,620/year, marginally under Salesforce Pro Suite’s £4,800/year.
How Do the Features Compare?
HubSpot’s advantage is breadth across marketing, service and content tools built on one shared record; Salesforce’s advantage is depth in sales-specific customisation once you reach Enterprise and above. Both platforms gate their strongest automation, forecasting and AI capability behind their mid and top tiers rather than the entry price.
HubSpot Professional adds conversation intelligence, a dedicated sales workspace, 15 deal pipelines, up to 300 workflows and lead scoring, plus its “Breeze” AI agents for prospecting, customer service and data enrichment, billed separately in HubSpot Credits at £8.10 per 1,000. Enterprise raises pipeline count to 100, workflow count to 1,000 and adds deal splits, journey analytics and pipeline approvals.
Salesforce’s equivalent jump runs through Pro Suite (customisation, quoting, forecasting, AgentExchange), Enterprise (advanced pipeline management, deal insights, conversation intelligence, Agentforce AI as an add-on) and Unlimited, which bundles predictive AI, a Premier Success Plan and a full sandbox. Agentforce 1 Sales, the £440/user/month top tier, includes unmetered Agentforce AI, Salesforce Maps, Tableau Next and Slack Enterprise+, a level of bundled capability HubSpot does not offer at any price. If sales-only functionality matters more than the wider platform either offers, our best sales CRM comparison ranks seven tools on that basis specifically.
Which Is Easier to Use?
HubSpot is the more approachable platform to set up without external help, which is exactly why the free and Starter tiers exist as a genuine standalone option rather than a stripped-down trial. Most small teams can get a working pipeline live within a day, without a consultant.
Salesforce’s flexibility comes at the cost of a steeper setup curve, and its own pricing structure reflects that: Pro Suite and above assume an annual commitment and, at the higher tiers, typically involve a sales conversation rather than a self-serve checkout. HubSpot’s mandatory onboarding fees at Professional and Enterprise exist for a similar reason, admitting that genuine configuration work is needed once you move past the basics, but bundling it as a fixed cost rather than optional consultancy.
Who Should Pick HubSpot?
HubSpot suits SMBs that want to start free and grow into one connected platform covering marketing, sales, service and content, rather than bolting a separate tool onto each function. The free tier’s 2-user cap and Starter’s £7/seat price make it the cheaper starting point for very small teams, and our best CRM for small business guide covers where it fits against lighter alternatives.
It is the wrong choice if you plan to jump straight to Professional without budgeting the £1,310 onboarding fee, or if you are put off by Trustpilot’s recurring complaints about upselling and contract lock-in, both worth weighing against its stronger G2 and Capterra scores.
Who Should Pick Salesforce?
Salesforce suits teams that expect to outgrow a lighter CRM: complex pipelines, deep customisation needs, and a willingness to commit to annual billing above the entry tier in exchange for genuinely enterprise-grade forecasting and AI. Starter Suite at £20/user/month is a reasonable way to trial the ecosystem before committing further up the tier ladder.
It is the wrong choice for a small team on a tight budget, since there is no permanent free tier and the jump from Starter Suite to Pro Suite is a 4x price increase (£20 to £80/user/month) with automation and forecasting locked behind it.
Is There a Cheaper Alternative to Both?
Pipedrive sits between HubSpot and Salesforce on price and complexity, without either HubSpot’s onboarding fees or Salesforce’s annual-only mid tiers. Its four tiers run £14 to £79/seat/month, all confirmed ex-VAT on annual billing, with a 14-day full-access trial rather than a permanent free option.
Pipedrive Lite starts at £14/seat/month with pipeline management, AI-powered reporting and 500+ integrations, well under Salesforce’s £20 Starter Suite and priced closer to HubSpot Starter. Growth adds full email sync and automation at £39, and Premium, its “Most Popular” tier, adds LeadBooster lead generation and e-signature contracts at £59, a fraction of HubSpot Professional’s £77-plus-onboarding cost. There is no permanent free tier, so teams that specifically want £0/month should stay with HubSpot’s free plan instead.
For a closer look at how Pipedrive stacks up against Salesforce specifically, including a full tier-by-tier breakdown, see Salesforce vs Pipedrive, and for Pipedrive’s full feature set read our Pipedrive review.
Final Word: HubSpot or Salesforce?
Choose HubSpot if you are a small team that wants to start free, wants one platform across marketing and sales, and can budget for the £1,310 onboarding fee the day you move to Professional. Choose Salesforce if you expect real growth and complexity, are comfortable with annual billing above the entry tier, and need customisation depth HubSpot’s stack doesn’t match.
Neither is the cheapest way to run a small sales team long-term. Pipedrive’s £14-£79/seat range covers most of the same ground for less, without an onboarding fee or an annual-only mid tier. Whichever direction you lean, compare it against the full field in our CRM software guides before committing to an annual contract.
