HubSpot and Salesforce sit at opposite ends of the CRM market. HubSpot leads with a free tier and a limited-time £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 onboarding fees on higher tiers and Salesforce publishing only annual rates 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.
Prices below come from each provider’s UK pricing page as checked in October 2026; where we could not confirm a figure, such as HubSpot’s monthly rates and onboarding fees, we say so. Where a fee is easy to miss, such as HubSpot’s onboarding charge, we flag it before you compare headline seat prices alone.
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- HubSpot’s cheapest paid tier is £7/seat/month - Starter, billed annually, shown as a limited-time 65% off offer and currently under Salesforce’s £20/user Starter Suite.
- HubSpot has charged a one-off onboarding fee on Professional - on top of the £81/seat/month annual-billing rate and not included in the headline price; confirm the amount at checkout.
- Salesforce tops out at £440/user/month - Max, 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 usable permanent free tier.
- A 5-seat team on HubSpot Professional pays £4,860/year in seats alone - versus £4,800/year on Salesforce Pro Suite, before any HubSpot onboarding fee.
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 one-off onboarding fee changes the maths. Salesforce has no usable permanent free tier, starts at £20/user/month, and scales to £156-£440/user/month at Core and above for teams that need deep customisation, AI agents and forecasting.
| HubSpot | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes, up to 2 users, no time limit | No usable permanent free tier (30-day trial; a heavily limited Free Suite is listed at £0) |
| Cheapest paid tier | Starter, £7/seat/month (annual, limited-time offer) | Starter Suite, £20/user/month |
| Mid tier | Professional, £81/seat/month + onboarding fee | Pro Suite, £80/user/month (annual) |
| Top tier | Enterprise, £155/seat/month + onboarding fee | Max, £440/user/month |
| Billing flexibility | Monthly and annual rates shown side by side (we have not re-checked the monthly rates) | Starter Suite: monthly or annual at the same rate; above it, only annual rates are published |
| 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 while its limited-time 65% off offer lasts, against Salesforce Starter Suite at a flat £20/user/month whether you pay monthly or annually. The difference starts at the middle tier, where HubSpot Professional adds a one-off 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 £155/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 (limited-time offer) | Not shown; confirm at checkout | None |
| Professional | £81/seat/month | Not shown; confirm at checkout | Charged in the past; confirm at checkout |
| Enterprise | £155/seat/month | Not shown; confirm at checkout | Charged in the past; confirm at checkout |
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 while the limited-time offer lasts.
Professional is where the cost jumps. Alongside forecasting, a sales workspace, 15 pipelines and lead scoring, HubSpot has charged a one-off onboarding fee that does not appear in the £81 headline price, and Enterprise has carried one too. We could not see either amount on HubSpot’s pricing page in October 2026, so confirm them at checkout. Reviewers on Trustpilot (1.5/5 across 1,173 reviews, checked October 2026) cite unflagged fees 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) |
| Core | £156/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
| Advanced | £316/user/month | Annual (only rate published) |
| Max | £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.
API access on Pro Suite may cost extra (we could not confirm a UK price), so check with Salesforce before you rely on integrations. 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 higher tiers. For a 5-person team, HubSpot Starter costs £35/month with no hidden fee (at the limited-time Starter price), while HubSpot Professional’s £405/month seat cost (£4,860 a year) is joined by a one-off onboarding fee in year one. 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 (limited-time offer) | £420/year |
| HubSpot Professional | 5 × £81 = £405/month | £4,860/year, plus any onboarding fee |
| Salesforce Starter Suite | 5 × £20 = £100/month | £1,200/year |
| Salesforce Pro Suite | 5 × £80 = £400/month | £4,800/year |
| Salesforce Core | 5 × £156 = £780/month | £9,360/year |
At the entry tier, HubSpot is cheaper while its limited-time Starter offer lasts: £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 any onboarding fee lands, and Salesforce’s Pro Suite becomes the cheaper mid-tier option, both in year one and on an ongoing annual basis. From year two onward, with no repeat onboarding charge, HubSpot Professional settles at £4,860/year, marginally above 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 Core 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, which run on HubSpot Credits (10,000 a month included on Professional, extra 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), Core (advanced pipeline management, deal insights, conversation intelligence, Agentforce AI as an add-on) and Advanced, which bundles predictive AI, a Premier Success Plan and a full sandbox. Max, the £440/user/month top tier, includes Agentforce for Sales (2.75M Flex Credits per org per year, so metered), Salesforce Maps, Tableau Next and Slack Enterprise+, a bundle with no direct equivalent on HubSpot’s published sales plans. 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, and its free and Starter tiers work as standalone options rather than stripped-down trials.
Salesforce’s flexibility comes at the cost of a steeper setup curve, and its own pricing structure reflects that: Pro Suite and above are priced on annual contracts, and Salesforce’s pricing page does not publish a monthly rate for them. HubSpot has charged a fixed one-off onboarding fee at Professional and Enterprise rather than selling configuration as optional consultancy, though we could not confirm the current amounts.
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 limited-time £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 for an 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.
HubSpot
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 usable 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.
Salesforce
Is There a Cheaper Alternative to Both?
Pipedrive sits between HubSpot and Salesforce on price and complexity, without HubSpot’s onboarding fees or a Salesforce-style mid tier that publishes only an annual rate. 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, below Salesforce’s £20 Starter Suite but above HubSpot Starter’s limited-time £7. 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, below HubSpot Professional’s £81 before any onboarding fee. 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 an 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 a mid tier that publishes only an annual rate. Whichever direction you lean, compare it against the full field in our CRM software guides before committing to an annual contract.
