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How much can the free HubSpot CRM hold before you need to pay?
Summary
The free CRM holds up to 1,000 contacts for up to two users, with no end date. Contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and tasks are all there on day one, so most teams outgrow the free plan because of structure, not volume. The usual trigger is needing a second deal pipeline, more than 10 dashboards, or a meeting link without HubSpot branding, all of which arrive with Starter. Custom objects, for records that aren't people, companies, or deals, require Enterprise.
Objects, records, and associations
HubSpot calls each kind of record an object. A contact is a person, deduplicated by email address. A company is an organization, deduplicated by domain. A deal tracks a sale, a ticket tracks a support request, and tasks, notes, and calls log the work around them. Individual entries are records, and links between them, which HubSpot calls associations, always run both ways. Open a contact and you see her company and her open deals; open the company and you can jump to everyone else who works there.
Deals come with a default pipeline of seven stages, starting at Appointment scheduled (20%) and ending at Closed won (100%) or Closed lost (0%).
Where free runs out
Free accounts get the default pipeline and zero custom ones. Starter allows 15 custom pipelines, counted across all object types. A company that wants new business and renewals on separate boards hits the wall immediately, because the second board is a custom pipeline.
Reporting is the other common trigger. Free allows 10 dashboards with 50 reports each; Starter raises that to 30. Free users also get one personal meeting link with HubSpot branding and 2,000 marketing emails a month, also branded. Starter removes the branding from both and allows 1,000 meeting links.
For two people, Starter paid annually costs $168 a year at the $7 new-customer promotional price, or $480 at the $20 base price. What happens to the bill when a third person joins is worked out in our piece on free plan limits.
What Professional and Enterprise change
Smart CRM is also sold on its own in two editions: Professional from $45 per seat per month and Enterprise from $75. Professional allows 100 custom pipelines and 100 custom reports, and it lets you label associations, so a contact can be tagged as the decision maker or the billing contact on a deal. The separate lead object, which tracks prospects through qualification, requires Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise.
Enterprise goes to 350 pipelines and 500 custom reports, and it is the only edition with custom objects, capped at 10 object definitions and 1,000,000 custom object records. A property manager tracking units, or a rental company tracking equipment, runs into that Enterprise requirement long before any contact limit.
Sources
- https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm
- https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/crm
- https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/smart-crm
- https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/understand-objects
- https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/set-up-and-customize-pipelines
- https://legal.hubspot.com/hubspot-product-and-services-catalog
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