Buyer guide
A startup CRM decision is really two decisions: what to use now, when there are forty conversations and no process, and what you will not have to leave in eighteen months. This guide compares ten of them on current pricing, says which have a free tier worth having, and covers what to set up first.
With one founder and thirty conversations, a spreadsheet and an inbox genuinely work, and anyone selling you otherwise is selling you something. The moment it stops working is specific and recognisable: a second person starts selling, or a conversation goes quiet for six weeks and nobody notices until it is dead.
That moment tends to arrive before anyone plans for it, which is why the practical advice is to pick something free or cheap early, use it badly, and let the real requirements reveal themselves. Choosing the perfect CRM at seed stage is a way of not selling.
HubSpot free is the strongest of them and it is not a trap in the usual sense: contacts, deals, email tracking, and meeting scheduling are genuinely usable for a small team. The trap is the step off it. Sales Hub Professional is a large jump and carries a five-seat minimum, so a four-person team pays for five, and by then two years of history are in there.
Capsule and Bigin both have free plans capped at two users, which is real for a founding team and runs out at exactly the moment the third seller starts. Twenty is open source, which is a genuinely different kind of free: no seat cliff, and someone has to run it or pay for the cloud version.
The question to ask of any free tier is not what it includes. It is what the next tier costs at the seat count you expect in a year.
The most common startup CRM failure is configuring an eight-stage pipeline with required fields for a team that has closed four deals. Nobody knows what the stages are yet, because the sales motion has not been discovered, and enforcing a guess makes the CRM feel like paperwork on day one.
Start with three stages you can define in a sentence each, one owner per deal, and a next step with a date. Add stages when a real pattern shows up, which usually takes twenty or thirty closed deals.
Every free plan ends. Price the plan you will be on in a year at the seat count you expect, including any minimum.
Founders do not log activity. If email and calendar do not sync into records, the CRM will be empty within a month.
If setup takes a week, it will not happen. An afternoon is the realistic budget at this stage.
You will change CRM at least once. Check the export before you import, not after.
Every row on the same billing basis, at the same seat count, from each vendor own professional-band plan. Use the CRM cost calculator to price them at your own seat count.
| Best for | Free | Pro / seat | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bigin by Zoho CRM Express | Cheapest paid step up | $7 | $7 | $56 | |
Twenty Pro | Open source | $9 | $9 | $72 | |
Complete $49.17 base, 2 seats included | Founder-led B2B sales | $24.17 | $24.17 | $194 | |
Capsule Growth | Small, calm, free for two | $14 | $28 | $224 | |
Attio Plus | Technical founders | $29 | $29 | $232 | |
Freshsales Pro | Outbound from day one | $9 | $39 | $312 | |
folk Premium | Fundraising and network selling | $24 | $48 | $384 | |
Pipedrive Professional | A pipeline in an afternoon | $14 | $49 | $392 | |
Salesflare Pro | Nobody will log anything | $29 | $49 | $392 | |
HubSpot Professional | The strongest free tier | $7 | $90 | $720 |
8 users, USD, list price, pricing checked 31 August 2026. A vendor with no published price for that plan shows “Not published” rather than a price from a cheaper plan.
What each one is, the stage of startup it fits, what it costs to start, and the drawback. Cheapest first, all priced on the same basis.
Zoho lightweight CRM for small teams, with a free tier and a low paid price.
Fits: cost-sensitive teams who want a real CRM without the Zoho configuration project.
The drawback: deliberately limited, and growing into full Zoho later is its own migration.
An open-source CRM you can self-host, with a modern interface and an active project behind it.
Fits: technical teams who want no seat cliff and are willing to run it.
The drawback: younger than everything else here, and self-hosting is a job someone has to keep doing.
Our product. Captures email, meetings, and LinkedIn on its own, ranks who needs attention, and keeps the client after the deal closes.
Fits: founder-led teams with no time to maintain a CRM and no admin to do it for them.
The drawback: no free tier beyond the trial, and a smaller app marketplace than the platform vendors.
A simple CRM with contacts, a pipeline, and projects, free for two users.
Fits: a founding pair who want a shared address book with a pipeline attached.
The drawback: thin automation and reporting as the team grows past a handful.
A data-model CRM where you define the objects and the automations, with a modern interface and a real API.
Fits: technical teams with an unusual motion who want the CRM to match it exactly.
The drawback: it ships blank, and somebody has to own the design after the person who built it moves on.
Freshworks CRM with built-in phone, email, and lead scoring.
Fits: startups doing real outbound volume early.
The drawback: the automation worth having sits in the upper plans.
A contact-first CRM with a LinkedIn extension and shared lists, light on pipeline machinery.
Fits: founders whose pipeline is really a network, including the fundraise.
The drawback: shallow deals and reporting once a real sales team exists.
A focused deal pipeline with almost nothing to configure and a large app marketplace.
Fits: a startup with two or three sellers who need everyone on the same board this week.
The drawback: no free tier, and nothing after the deal closes.
A CRM that builds records from email and calendar traffic without anyone typing.
Fits: founder-led teams where CRM hygiene is never going to happen.
The drawback: built for small teams. Permissions and reporting thin out above about ten people.
A platform with a genuinely usable free CRM tier, marketing and service alongside it, and the largest app marketplace in the category.
Fits: nearly every pre-seed and seed team, on the free plan, for as long as it lasts.
The drawback: the step to Sales Hub Professional is steep and carries a five-seat minimum. Plan for it before you have three years of history in there.
Required fields. They make the CRM feel like an obstacle in the exact period when the habit is being formed, and a record that is half filled in is better than a deal nobody logged.
A lifetime deal on a tool you have not used. The discount is real and so is the switching cost eighteen months later, and at this stage you do not know what you need.
Custom objects before product-market fit. The data model you design now describes a business you have not built yet.
Bigin by Zoho CRM, Twenty, Lumenbase, Capsule, Attio, Freshsales, folk, Pipedrive, Salesflare, HubSpot, and other names are trademarks of their respective owners. Lumenbase is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by them. Prices describe the vendors as of 31 August 2026; products, pricing, and features change and vary by plan, so verify on each vendor's pricing page before deciding.
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