Zoho CRM and HubSpot both lead with generous free tiers and low entry prices, then diverge sharply as you climb. Zoho’s four paid tiers run a predictable £12 to £42/user/month; HubSpot starts cheaper at £7/seat/month but jumps to £77 at Professional, where a mandatory £1,310 onboarding fee lands on top of the headline price.
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 cost is mandatory but easy to miss, such as HubSpot’s onboarding charges or Zoho’s VAT-on-top pricing, we flag it before you compare headline seat prices alone.
- Zoho’s paid tiers run £12 to £42/user/month - Standard, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate, all billed annually with VAT added on top.
- HubSpot starts cheaper at £7/seat/month - but Professional jumps to £77/seat plus a mandatory £1,310 one-off onboarding fee.
- Zoho’s free tier covers 3 users, HubSpot’s covers 2 - both are genuinely free forever, with no time limit or card required.
- A 5-seat team pays £1,080/year on Zoho Professional - against £5,930 in year one on HubSpot Professional once onboarding is counted.
- Trustpilot rates Zoho 3.9/5 and HubSpot 1.7/5 - both profiles carry caveats, but HubSpot’s score is dragged down by onboarding-fee and contract complaints.
Zoho vs HubSpot: At a Glance
Zoho CRM and HubSpot answer the same question with opposite pricing philosophies. Zoho keeps every tier cheap and predictable, £12 to £42/user/month with no onboarding fees at any level, and trades away support quality to do it. HubSpot prices its entry tiers to feel free, then charges properly for the platform’s real depth: £77/seat at Professional plus £1,310 mandatory onboarding, rising to £135/seat and £3,050 onboarding at Enterprise. For a small team the totals diverge by thousands of pounds a year.
| Zoho CRM | HubSpot | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes, up to 3 users, no time limit | Yes, up to 2 users, no time limit |
| Cheapest paid tier | Standard, £12/user/month | Starter, £7/seat/month (annual) |
| Mid tier | Professional, £18/user/month | Professional, £77/seat/month + £1,310 onboarding |
| Top tier | Ultimate, £42/user/month | Enterprise, £135/seat/month + £3,050 onboarding |
| Monthly billing | Exists, but rate not published (annual “saves up to 34%”) | Published at every self-serve tier (Starter £18, Professional £85) |
| Best for | Cost-conscious SMBs wanting deep customisation cheaply | SMBs wanting one connected marketing + sales + service stack |
How Do Zoho and HubSpot Compare on Price?
HubSpot wins on entry price and Zoho wins everywhere above it. HubSpot Starter costs £7/seat/month billed annually against Zoho Standard’s £12, but the comparison flips hard at the middle tier: Zoho Professional costs £18/user/month while HubSpot Professional costs £77/seat/month plus a one-off £1,310 onboarding fee Zoho never charges. Even Zoho’s top Ultimate tier, at £42, is under a third of HubSpot Enterprise’s £135 seat price. Full per-tier figures for eight platforms are in our CRM software costs guide.
Zoho CRM Pricing
Zoho publishes five tiers, all with flat per-user pricing and no onboarding fees at any level.
| Tier | Price (Annual Billing) | Standout Additions |
|---|---|---|
| Free | £0/user/month (up to 3 users) | Contact management, workflow automation, 5,000 API calls/day |
| Standard | £12/user/month | Workflow and assignment rules, cadences, sales forecasting |
| Professional | £18/user/month | CPQ, AI email intelligence, Blueprint process automation, inventory management |
| Enterprise | £35/user/month | Zia AI assistant, territory management, journey orchestration, customer portals |
| Ultimate | £42/user/month | Enhanced limits, consulting and migration assistance, custom AI/ML (QuickML) |
Two caveats sit behind those clean numbers. First, every figure is the annually-billed rate, and Zoho doesn’t publish its higher pay-monthly price, only that annual billing “saves up to 34%”. Second, VAT and local taxes are added on top of every price shown, so a UK business should budget the gross figure, not the sticker price.
Zoho’s Trustpilot score of 3.9/5 from 6,015 reviews is among the better ratings in the CRM market, with recurring praise for ease of use and value. The recurring complaints are slow, unresponsive UK support and unexpectedly large price rises at renewal, worth getting your renewal rate confirmed in writing before committing multi-user budget. For the full tier-by-tier verdict, read our Zoho CRM review.
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, all carrying HubSpot branding until you pay. Starter removes the branding and adds 5,000 email templates, two pipelines and 500 calling minutes for £7/seat/month, which is genuinely the cheapest paid tier either platform offers.
Professional is where the real cost jump lands: alongside forecasting, 15 pipelines and lead scoring, HubSpot charges a mandatory £1,310 onboarding fee that appears nowhere in the £77 headline price, and Enterprise repeats the pattern at £3,050. Trustpilot reviewers (1.7/5 across 1,133 reviews) cite exactly this as a recurring complaint, alongside difficulty cancelling annual contracts, though HubSpot scores around 4.4/5 on G2 and Capterra, so the Trustpilot figure over-indexes on frustrated reviewers. Our HubSpot pricing page breaks down every tier and fee in detail.
What Does 5 Seats Actually Cost?
Headline per-seat prices flatter HubSpot at the entry tier and hide its mid-tier jump. For a 5-person team, HubSpot Starter costs £35/month against Zoho Standard’s £60/month. Move both teams to the middle tier and the gap inverts: Zoho Professional costs £90/month, or £1,080/year, while HubSpot Professional’s £385/month seat cost plus the £1,310 onboarding fee produces a first-year total of £5,930, more than five times Zoho’s bill.
| Platform / Tier | Monthly (5 seats) | Year 1 Total |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Starter | 5 × £7 = £35/month | £420/year |
| Zoho Standard | 5 × £12 = £60/month | £720/year |
| Zoho Professional | 5 × £18 = £90/month | £1,080/year |
| Zoho Enterprise | 5 × £35 = £175/month | £2,100/year |
| HubSpot Professional | 5 × £77 = £385/month | £5,930 (incl. £1,310 onboarding) |
Zoho’s figures exclude VAT, and its unpublished monthly-billing rate means the totals above assume annual commitment. Even with both caveats, the mid-tier gap is structural: from year two HubSpot Professional still costs £4,620/year against Zoho Professional’s £1,080. A team choosing HubSpot at Professional is paying for the wider platform, not just the CRM.
How Do the Features Compare?
Zoho’s advantage is how early its advanced features arrive: CPQ, AI email intelligence and Blueprint process automation land at £18, and the Zia AI assistant, territory management and customer portals at £35. HubSpot’s advantage is coherence across functions, marketing, sales, service and content tools sharing one record, with conversation intelligence, forecasting and lead scoring arriving at Professional. Both gate their strongest AI behind mid tiers, but Zoho charges a fraction of the price to reach it.
Zoho Professional at £18 bundles tools that are add-ons or upper-tier features elsewhere: configure-price-quote, inventory management with invoices and vendor records, a visual process builder and a native Google Ads integration. Enterprise at £35 adds Zia, journey orchestration and custom functions, which is where Zoho starts feeling like a platform rather than a sales tracker.
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, service and data enrichment, billed separately in HubSpot Credits at £8.10 per 1,000. Enterprise raises pipelines to 100 and workflows to 1,000, and adds deal splits and journey analytics. The honest comparison is that HubSpot’s tooling is more polished and more connected, and Zoho’s is dramatically cheaper for a comparable checklist.
Which Is Easier to Use?
HubSpot is the more approachable platform out of the box, which is precisely what its free and Starter tiers are designed to prove. Most small teams can get a working pipeline live within a day, and the mandatory onboarding fees at Professional and Enterprise are HubSpot’s own admission of where self-serve simplicity ends.
Zoho’s depth cuts the other way: the customisation that makes it powerful, custom functions, Blueprint, module-level control, gives it a busier interface and a longer setup curve. Zoho’s Ultimate tier bundles consulting and migration assistance for exactly this reason. A team without anyone technical should budget real setup time for Zoho that HubSpot’s lower tiers largely don’t need.
Who Should Pick Zoho CRM?
Zoho suits cost-conscious UK SMBs that want advanced CRM features, CPQ, process automation, AI assistance, without mid-market pricing, and businesses scaling seat counts where HubSpot’s per-seat jump would compound painfully. The 3-user free tier is also the more generous of the two for a founding team. Our best CRM for small business guide covers where it fits against lighter alternatives.
It is the wrong choice if responsive vendor support is non-negotiable, the recurring theme in Zoho’s complaints, or if your team needs marketing automation and content tools in the same platform, where HubSpot’s integrated Hubs are genuinely ahead.
Who Should Pick HubSpot?
HubSpot suits SMBs that want to start free and grow into one connected platform across marketing, sales, service and content, and teams that value polish and ease of adoption enough to pay a real premium for it at Professional. Started on the free tier, it costs nothing to find out whether the workflow fits.
It is the wrong choice if you plan to jump to Professional without budgeting the £1,310 onboarding fee, or if predictable per-seat scaling matters more than platform breadth, the gap between £18 and £77 mid tiers doesn’t close, and Trustpilot’s recurring complaints about upselling and contract lock-in are worth weighing against HubSpot’s stronger G2 and Capterra scores.
Is There a Middle Ground?
Pipedrive splits the difference for teams that find Zoho busy and HubSpot’s mid tier expensive. Its four tiers run £14 to £79/seat/month, all confirmed ex-VAT on annual billing, with published monthly rates (£24 to £99) that make month-to-month budgeting possible, something neither Zoho nor HubSpot’s Enterprise tier offers.
Pipedrive Lite starts at £14/seat/month with pipeline management, AI-powered reporting and 500+ integrations, and Premium, its most popular tier, adds LeadBooster lead generation and e-signatures at £59, well under HubSpot Professional’s £77-plus-onboarding. There’s no permanent free tier, so a team that specifically wants £0/month should stay with Zoho’s 3-user or HubSpot’s 2-user free plan. Our Pipedrive review has the full breakdown.
Final Word: Zoho or HubSpot?
Choose Zoho if total cost drives the decision: £12 to £42/user/month with no onboarding fees buys automation and AI depth that HubSpot charges multiples for, and the trade-off is slower support and a steeper setup curve. Choose HubSpot if you want the most polished free-to-paid on-ramp in the market and a genuinely connected marketing-sales-service platform, and can absorb £1,310 in onboarding the day you outgrow Starter.
If the decision is close, run both free tiers side by side for a fortnight, they cost nothing and expose the workflow differences faster than any comparison table. Then check the full field in our best CRM software UK guide and HubSpot vs Salesforce before committing to an annual contract.
