Open source alternatives to HubSpot

What HubSpot does

HubSpot is a hosted customer platform in which every tool shares one CRM database. The free HubSpot CRM, which does not expire, stores contacts and companies, tracks deals on pipeline boards, logs tasks and activities, and includes a shared inbox, ticketing, email tracking and templates, reporting dashboards and an importer for data from other CRMs. More than 2,000 apps in the HubSpot Marketplace connect it to other tools.

The paid products are organized as hubs: Marketing Hub for email, forms and automation, Sales Hub for additional selling tools, Service Hub for support teams, and Content, Data and Revenue hubs on top. Each comes in Starter, Professional and Enterprise tiers, and AI agents and automation run on HubSpot Credits.

Why people look for an alternative

• A layered pricing model. HubSpot sells access through Core, Sales, Service and Revenue seats, and Core seats are priced at the highest tier you subscribe to. AI and automation use HubSpot Credits, which reset monthly without carrying over, with pay-as-you-go charges if you exceed them.
• Contact-based marketing billing. Marketing Hub charges for marketing contacts, and monthly email send limits depend on the contact tier you buy.
• A changed model. Accounts created after 5 March 2024 are on the seat-based model; older accounts can stay on legacy seats until they migrate.
• Data location tied to sign-up. HubSpot hosts accounts on AWS in the United States, Canada, Australia or the EU (Germany). The data center is assigned from your IP address when you sign up, and only paid accounts can move; free accounts must upgrade first.
• Hosted only. There is no self-hosted edition, so contact records and email history always live on HubSpot’s infrastructure.

What to compare in an alternative

1. The hubs you really use. Many teams use only contacts, deals and a pipeline; others depend on marketing email, forms and nurturing, or on support tickets.
2. Marketing tools. Campaigns, target lists, web-to-lead forms and email tracking built in, or a separate email tool alongside the CRM.
3. Automation. Workflows and sequences, and whether they are part of the open source edition or a paid add-on.
4. Email and inbox. Two-way sync with Gmail or Microsoft 365, shared mailboxes and ticketing.
5. Migration. Export contacts, companies and deals to CSV and check the new system’s import mapping and duplicate handling; workflows and reports have to be rebuilt.
6. Hosting. Where the data will live, and how much work self-hosting adds.

Which one to choose

Three open source CRMs cover HubSpot’s mix of sales, marketing and service in one system. SuiteCRM is the broadest under a single AGPL license, with campaigns, target lists, events and surveys next to sales, cases, a knowledge base, reports and workflows. EspoCRM includes mass email campaigns, web-to-lead forms and support cases with a portal in its free core and runs on ordinary PHP hosting, but reports and workflows are paid extensions. Odoo pairs its CRM app with an Email Marketing app and with sales, invoicing and website apps on one database, though much of what Odoo sells is in the proprietary Enterprise edition.

If you mainly used HubSpot’s free CRM for contacts and deals, a sales-focused CRM such as Twenty or Frappe CRM may be enough, combined with a dedicated tool from our email marketing guide such as Mautic. The CRM guide compares every option.