HubSpot, Pipedrive or a simpler CRM for a small business in the UK

You've got twenty minutes before the van, and the software wants a deal stage before it will show you who wrote in overnight. The enquiry is still a notification badge. Nobody has replied, as far as you can tell.

You'll judge three options by that morning, using only the pages they publish.

A CRM for a small business in the UK has one job before you lock the door: show you who needs a reply. The three options here are HubSpot's free CRM and its paid seats, Pipedrive, and a simpler CRM for an owner-run service firm. Every fact about HubSpot and Pipedrive comes from their own public pages, fetched in October 2026.

We've kept to what each company publishes, AdviserAlly included, and dated every price because pages change.

What you need when you are the whole team

Write down the jobs the tool must do in the next month. For a cleaner, an adviser, a tradesperson or a small agency, the list is usually short.

• Catch a website enquiry when you are busy, including out of hours.
• Keep the person's name, contact, question and your promise in one record.
• Show you, in the morning, who is waiting.
• Stay understandable without an IT department.
• Stay affordable when there is one user, or a handful.

A sales team chasing a long pipeline may want more: deal stages, forecasts, a large app marketplace, marketing campaigns. That's a fair want. It's a different morning.

If you buy for the other morning, you'll pay in time, and sometimes in seats, for screens you don't open. The feature grid with forty ticks is how a Tuesday disappears.

Two guides sit beside this one. What a super intelligent CRM does stays with the published description: it answers visitors and tells you who needs a reply. What to automate first helps you leave the personal conversations with a person. Read those if the grid below feels larger than your week.

Ten minutes: write down the one job you need done first, then check which of the three pages says it does it.

HubSpot, from its own page

The page fetched was HubSpot's free CRM product page. It presented prices in US dollars. HubSpot may show other currencies in other regions. Treat the figures as what that page stated at the time of writing (October 2026), and open the page again before you buy. The HubSpot comparison page sets out that match-up.

HubSpot says its free CRM is 100% free, with no expiration date, and that unlike a free trial it does not expire. The signup line says no credit card is required. In the questions on that page, HubSpot says you can use the free CRM tools at no cost, with up to two users and 1,000 contacts, and with no limits on customer data. The same answer says more advanced CRM features are in the premium editions.

The page lists these among the free features: contact management, deals, tasks and activities, pipeline management, a reporting dashboard, CRM import, a chatbot builder, live chat, email tracking, email templates, a meeting scheduler, a form builder, a shared inbox, and a mobile app for iOS and Android. It also says the free CRM connects to over 2,000 apps in the HubSpot Marketplace, and that setup is in the browser, with no download and no IT support.

Paid CRM editions on the same page were listed as:

• Starter, starts at $15 a month per seat, at the time of writing (October 2026). The asterisk says the discount is for new customers only, has no set end date, and can be discontinued at any time. HubSpot points readers to its pricing page for packaging and limits.
• Professional, starts at $50 a month per seat.
• Enterprise, starts at $75 a month per seat.

The page describes Starter as adding required fields, permission sets, multiple currencies and removal of HubSpot branding, on top of the free edition. Professional adds, among other items, an AI customer agent, duplicate management and custom reporting. Enterprise adds custom objects, team organisation, single sign-on and field-level permissions.

The page also includes customer quotes and performance figures. This comparison leaves those out. For a one-person firm, the limits to check on HubSpot's current pricing page are the two users and 1,000 contacts, and whether the $15 seat price still applies once you pass them.

Ten minutes: open HubSpot's page and write down the free-tier user cap and contact cap in your own note.

Pipedrive, from its own page

The page fetched was Pipedrive's features page. A separate request to Pipedrive's pricing URL did not return a readable public page, so no Pipedrive price is stated here. The Pipedrive comparison page sets out that match-up. If you need a number, read Pipedrive's pricing page yourself and note the date.

Pipedrive describes its CRM as built around activity-based selling. In its words, you cannot control results, and you can control the actions that close deals. The footer of the page calls Pipedrive a web-based sales CRM.

The page says Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial of its plans, and that there isn't a free version. Nearby, the trial signup says full access and no credit card is needed. Read those lines together: a trial you can start without a card, and no ongoing free plan, as the features page stated them in October 2026.

Products and features named on the page include pipeline management, lead management, sales automation, email sync and tracking, reporting and analytics, meeting intelligence, Pipedrive AI, projects, a mobile CRM app, email marketing, and security and permissions. The page says you can customise pipelines, track activities, and sync the CRM with over 500 tools. It names Google, Quickbooks, Asana, Slack and Kixie among them.

Two items are clearly marked as add-ons. LeadBooster is described as an add-on whose tools generate leads. Web Visitors is described as an add-on that shows which companies are visiting your site.

Smart Docs is named for shareable documents and templates. The page does not, in the sections reviewed, describe a website chatbot that answers in your own words. It does describe AI CRM features in general terms: saving time and making decisions with an AI-powered CRM.

That set matches a team whose day is deals and activities. A firm whose day is quotes, visits and call-backs can still use it if a pipeline is how they already work. If your current "pipeline" is a notebook with three columns, you already know which morning you have.

Ten minutes: read Pipedrive's features page and write "stated" or "not stated" next to website chat. Don't guess.

A simpler CRM, from the published description

AdviserAlly's own page is shorter, so we've only compared what it says.

The headline job is follow-up. It answers website visitors and tells you who needs a reply.

An AI chatbot on the website gets back to visitors at any hour, in the business's own words. A built-in AI assistant keeps track of every conversation so you know who to get back to next. It needs no IT department and is built for any owner-run business that wants more customers without more admin, from trades and cleaning companies to agencies, accountants, coaches and financial advisers.

At the time of writing (October 2026), the published price is plans from £25 a month. Saving leads into the CRM comes with the Solo plan. The Chatbot Edition can be tried free.

The published description does not list deal pipelines, a marketplace of thousands of apps, email open-tracking, quote documents, or a free tier with a 1,000-contact cap. Those absences are part of the choice. If your morning depends on a visual deal board, HubSpot's page and Pipedrive's page both describe one. If your morning depends on a reply to last night's website chat and a short list of who to call, the simpler description is aimed at that.

How the leads get into one list, whichever tool you choose, is set out in one place for every lead. A firm that also keeps a regulated advice file, such as a financial adviser, should read the sector guide A CRM for UK financial advisers: a sector guide before treating any of these tools as the suitability record. A cleaning firm has a similar split in the cleaning company quote guide. None of the three descriptions above is a Handbook retention system.

Ten minutes: hold the job you wrote down against each page, and cross off any tool that doesn't mention it.

The comparison

Figures are as stated on the pages named, in October 2026. "Not stated" means the fetched page did not say it. It does not mean the feature is absent from the product.

The sections above keep the longer lines. HubSpot's free CRM is 0 US dollars, with no credit card and no expiry, for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts. Paid seats on that page start at 15, 50 and 75 US dollars per seat per month, and the 15 dollar price is a new-customer offer that can be discontinued. Pipedrive's features page says there is no free version, the trial is 14 days with full access and no credit card, and it states neither a price nor a user cap.

Website chat is not stated there. Lead capture is the LeadBooster add-on. AdviserAlly states plans from £25 a month, with the Chatbot Edition free to try. It answers website visitors and says who needs a reply, and a deal pipeline is not in that description.

The numeric price lines, pulled out so the figures line up:

HubSpot's free CRM includes up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts. Starter is a new-customer offer and can be discontinued. Professional and Enterprise are starts-at prices. Pipedrive's features page states a 14-day trial and no free version.

AdviserAlly plans start at £25 a month, and the Chatbot Edition is free to try.

"Not stated" is doing a lot of work in that grid. It's the honest cell. Guessing a chatbot into Pipedrive's column would make the table neater and the choice worse.

Ten minutes: circle the row that matches the job you can't do this week, and ignore the rows that describe a team you don't have.

Choosing a CRM for a small business in the UK

Use three questions, in this order.

Will you update it? If the tool needs a stage, a deal value and a forecast before it is "used", and your real work is a name and a promise, you will leave it blank. Blank tools get abandoned.

The simpler description, and HubSpot's free contact list, can both hold a name and a promise. Pipedrive is frank that it is built around activities and deals. Choose it when that is the way you already sell.

Will it catch the out-of-hours enquiry? HubSpot's page lists a chatbot builder and live chat on the free CRM. AdviserAlly's chatbot answers in your own words, at any hour.

Pipedrive's features page, in the sections reviewed, points lead capture at an add-on rather than at a taught website chatbot. If overnight website replies are the reason you are shopping, weight the first and the third.

What will you pay when it is no longer a trial? HubSpot's free CRM is a real ongoing offer on the page fetched, inside two users and 1,000 contacts, with paid seats if you want the premium list. Pipedrive's page says the trial is 14 days and there is no free version, so budget for a paid plan once you have read the current price.

AdviserAlly states plans from £25 a month, with the Chatbot Edition free to try. Write the yearly figure, including extra seats, before you start a trial.

Then run one real week with ten genuine enquiries. On Friday, name who needs a reply without clicking around. If you can, the tool fits.

The better Friday is a name, not a tour of menus. You can say who needs a reply without clicking through a stage you never use.

Ten minutes: put ten real enquiries into the tool you're testing, or stop the test if you can't face typing them.

Customer details, whichever name is on the login

All three options will hold names, numbers and notes. GOV.UK's guide says you follow the data protection rules if you store customer details, you keep them secure, accurate and up to date, and you tell people who you are, how you'll use the details, and whether you share them. They can ask to see the information, to correct it, and to have it deleted. Moving off a spreadsheet doesn't move that duty.

One place helps only if you close the old copies. Say in the notice you already owe people if a supplier now stores the enquiry for you.

The old sheet will survive the move, quietly, in Downloads, still named final. Check the supplier's own security and privacy pages before you paste a client list in. This comparison doesn't rank those pages. It records the product facts above, and the GOV.UK duty on top of all of them.

Ten minutes: add one sentence to your privacy notice naming where new enquiries will be stored, once you've chosen.