Do you really need a CRM?

The conclusion first. What makes a CRM (customer relationship management software: a tool that gathers customer and deal history in 1 place so it can be shared) necessary is less the number of customers than this: when several people update the same customer record, can you still keep the owner, the history and the next action unambiguous? Start with the symptoms rather than with a number.

Nobody can say who owns the account
The same customer appears twice
Follow-up dates disappear from the sheet
You cannot trace why something was changed

SaaS COMPASS model — the reading below is our own, not a vendor or industry standard. Every figure in this piece is an example for comparison, not a published limit.

Symptoms present	What to do
0–1	Stay on the spreadsheet. Tighten the input rules, the protected ranges and the owner column
2	Try a free CRM on 1 process only
3–4	A candidate for a CRM. Cost the migration and name the person who will own it before you buy

How far does a spreadsheet take you?

The table below is not from vendor sources. It is an illustrative scenario worked back from the ways things go wrong — 3 people, 5,000 records and 80 deals are not thresholds that any vendor or industry body publishes, and no vendor states them anywhere. Read the columns as a direction of travel, not as a line to cross.

Axis (editorial estimate, not vendor data)	Fine as is	Danger zone	Consider a CRM	How to read this line
Customers and contacts	Up to 1,000	1,000–5,000	Over 5,000	The count itself never becomes the limit. The limit is the point where you can no longer clear duplicates by eye
Deals running at the same time	Up to 30	30–80	Over 80	The test is whether all of them fit on 1 screen. Once you have to scroll to see the whole picture, missed follow-ups are only a matter of time
People touching the customer list	1–2	3–5	6 or more	This is the heart of it. From the 3rd person on, you can no longer track from memory who rewrote what, and when
Update frequency	1 batch a week	1 time in 1 day	Several times in 1 day	With 1 update a week, simultaneous editing barely happens. If it is opened several times a day, you have to design on the assumption that overwrites will occur

Moving 1 column to the right is not by itself a reason to buy. What matters is the combination: where "3 or more people touching it" overlaps with "updated several times in 1 day", the number of customers stops protecting you, and 200 would be enough for the 4 symptoms above to appear.

The moment a spreadsheet breaks

There are 4 ways it breaks. Two people fix the same row at the same time, and only the version saved later survives. A staff member leaves and the whole table disappears along with their personal drive. Files named "customer list_latest_revised" pile up and nobody can say for certain which one is live. And spreadsheet history records only that a cell changed, never why the discount was given.

How far can you get for free?

The free-plan ceilings at HubSpot, monday.com and Asana are compared side by side in Where the free plans stop. HubSpot’s free tier is roughly the same size as the "fine as is" zone above. A deal pipeline, the item in the table below, is a screen that lays out the path a deal travels — prospect → proposal → quote → won — as 1 flow. When you want to separate new business from existing customers, you add flows.

Item	Free-tier limit	How to read this number
Users	2 (up to two free users)	The moment you add the 3rd person you move to paid. That matches the tipping point in the table above
Contacts	1,000 (Up to 1,000 contacts in free accounts)	1,000 business cards. A company with several years of deal history is over the line from the start
Deal pipelines	1 (1 deal pipeline per account)	If you want to manage new business and existing customers as separate flows, the free tier cannot line them up
Custom properties	10 in total (10 custom properties in total)	Your own fields, such as "renewal month" or "acquisition channel". It is 10 across contacts, companies and deals combined
Price	$0, no expiry (100% free, with no expiration date)	As long as you stay within the limits, nothing is charged

Source: HubSpot product and services catalog (checked August 2026)

What happens once you pass 1,000 (whether you simply cannot add more, or you get charged) is something we could not find stated on the vendor’s own pages. If you are getting close, check with the vendor’s support team before you cross the line.

What actually leaves your account at signing

HubSpot’s Starter Customer Platform has a list price of $20 a month for 1 seat. The vendor’s page carries a discount for new customers: annual billing at $7 a month (1 year paid upfront at signing = $7 × 12 = $84 a year), and monthly billing at $10 a month with no annual commitment (New customers only. Offer available for a limited time.). How long the discount runs and what the price is at renewal are not stated, so the safe way to budget is to assume a return to the list price of $20 × 12 = $240 a year.

monday CRM has no free plan — only a 14-day trial (Get full access. No credit card required.) and purchases from 3 seats up. Basic on annual billing is $12 × 3 seats × 12 months = $432 a year, paid in full upfront at signing (US dollars, excluding tax); monthly billing is $18 × 3 seats = $54 a month with nothing upfront. Seats can only be bought as a group, so the 4th person takes you to $720 a year ($12 × 5 seats × 12 months), 1.67 times the 3-seat price (720 ÷ 432 = 1.666…).

The jump comes when people are added: monday CRM Basic seats and annual cost (annual billing, US dollars, excluding tax — Prices do not include tax.)

The formula is $12 × seats × 12 months. Seats are bought as a group, not 1 at a time: a minimum of 3, and 5 for a team of 4 (If you have a team of 4 for instance, you may choose the 5 seat option.). At 1 dollar = 150 yen, 3 seats means about 65,000 yen (432 × 150 = 64,800 yen) leaving the account in one go at signing. For reference, starting HubSpot Starter on the new-customer discount, annual billing, 1 seat, comes to $84 a year = about 13,000 yen (84 × 150 = 12,600 yen). Billing is in US dollars, and exchange rates move. Sources: monday CRM pricing page, monday.com support, HubSpot Starter pricing page (checked August 2026)

How much work is the migration?

Exporting (writing your current table out as a CSV or similar file) and importing both take minutes; where you get stuck is the columns. The conditions in monday CRM’s help are 10 MB or less, fewer than 50 columns and fewer than 8,000 rows, so for a table with more than 50 columns, cut the columns you do not need first and allow half a day to 1 day for cleaning up formats and inconsistent spellings.

What a CRM will not fix

Data that is never entered is not made visible by any CRM. If 1 salesperson never moves the deal stage (where a deal currently sits in the pipeline), their share stays blank and shows as "no deals", so the reports actively lie to you.

If the reason things are not updated is that entry is a chore, a tool can improve it; if the reason is that no one has decided entry is required, a CRM reproduces exactly the same state and you pay a monthly fee to look at an empty screen.

Stay on a spreadsheet, or bring in a CRM

Spreadsheet or CRM: the trigger is not the number of customers but the number of people editing the same sheet

Q1: Do 3 or more people update the customer list?

YesGo to Q2

NoGo to Q2 (with 1–2 people, a spreadsheet is enough for now even if Q2 is yes)

Q2: Is it updated several times in 1 day? (it breaks only when 3 or more people and updates several times in 1 day overlap)

Both yesGo to Q3

Only one of themStay on the spreadsheet. It will not break even with several thousand customers

Q3: Are the rules for entering deals (who writes what, and when) set down in a document?

NoSettle the rules first. Until they are settled, buying a CRM only lines up empty fields

YesGo to Q4

Q4: Are 1,000 contacts or fewer, 2 people or fewer touching it, and 1 pipeline enough?

YesHubSpot free tier ($0, no expiry). If that is enough, there is no need to pay

NoGo to Q5

Q5: Is the reason it stopped being enough "3 or more people", or "volume and pipelines"?

3 or more peoplemonday CRM Basic (from 3 seats; annual billing $12 × 3 seats × 12 months = $432 upfront at signing / monthly billing $18 × 3 seats = $54 a month. Both excluding tax)

Volume and pipelinesHubSpot Starter Customer Platform (for 1 seat, new-customer discount, annual billing $7 × 12 = $84 a year upfront / monthly billing $10 with nothing upfront. List price is $20 a month = $240 a year. We could not confirm a stated minimum seat count)

Q6: Can you pay the annual amount in one go at signing?

YesAnnual billing (HubSpot $84 a year / monday $432 a year)

NoMonthly billing (HubSpot $10 a month / monday $54 a month). It works out more expensive, but nothing is paid upfront

Currency is US dollars. monday excludes tax (Prices do not include tax. The price is determined by the user’s billing country.); for HubSpot we could not find the tax treatment stated. Sources: HubSpot Starter Customer Platform pricing page, HubSpot pricing page, monday CRM pricing page, monday.com pricing page (all checked August 2026)

Readers who do not need to buy

To name them plainly: a business with 1,000 customers or fewer, 30 deals or fewer, 1–2 people touching the list and updates about 1 time a week will find that a CRM removes almost no work and only adds another place to type into. If you sell on your own, what you are working against is your own memory rather than a table, so writing it out on 1 sheet works better first. If your problem right now is "the sales team will not enter anything", the cause is not the tool. If you only started looking because a client asked, using the free tier for six months before deciding is enough.

If you are unsure, try it in this order

Start by importing your current table into the HubSpot free tier as a CSV. It is $0 with no expiry, and if it fails, all you lose is the half day you spent cleaning up. Once you find that "2 people is not enough", go to monday CRM (from 3 seats, $432 a year); once you find that "volume and pipelines are not enough", go to HubSpot Starter (from $84 a year on the new-customer annual discount). If both are sufficient and it still feels cramped, the cause is not the tool but your entry rules.

Sources (all checked August 2026)

Items we could not find stated on the vendors’ own pages: how long the HubSpot Starter discount applies and the price at renewal, what happens when HubSpot contacts go past 1,000, the minimum seat count for HubSpot Starter, whether HubSpot prices exclude or include tax, the maximum number of dropdown options in HubSpot, any limit on the number of sheets in monday CRM, and the date format and maximum number of status options for monday CRM imports (for imports into monday.com boards there is separate documentation stating ISO format (e.g. 2021-10-23) and that more than 40 status labels causes a failure).

← Back to the comparison

What changed on this page

editorial basis6 September 2026 When a spreadsheet stops being enough — the 3 people / 5,000 records / 80 deals thresholds
a spreadsheet only breaks when 3 or more people touch it → the lead is written from the symptoms; the numeric table stays, marked as an illustrative scenario reasoned backwards from how the failures happen

Every recorded change to this site is in the change log.