Put HubSpot and Zoho CRM on a feature table and they look like twins. Both have deals, pipelines, automation, forecasting and AI. The useful difference is how each one bills you, and it decides what a team of 3 or 5 pays in year one.
HubSpot vs Zoho comes down to how each one charges. HubSpot is cheap to start and puts forecasting and follow-up sequences on Professional at $90 per seat with required onboarding. Zoho CRM includes most features from $14 per user with a limit on each, so it costs less and takes more setup.
HubSpot vs Zoho At A Glance
| HubSpot | Zoho CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Sales and marketing working from one database | Teams that want a lot of CRM for a low seat price and have someone to set it up |
| Free plan | 2 users, 1,000 contacts | 3 users, 5,000 records, one pipeline |
| Cheapest paid seat, billed annually | $7 on a new-customer offer, or $20 billed monthly | $14 |
| Where sales forecasting starts | Professional, $90 per seat | Standard, $14 per user |
| Where automated follow-up sequences start | Professional, $90 per seat | Standard, $14 per user |
| Onboarding | A required purchase on Professional and Enterprise | Optional, with a setup service at $200 an hour |
| What the vendor meters | The plan you are on, plus AI credits | A limit on nearly every feature |
HubSpot is one database for sales, marketing and service, and you pay for the wiring between those teams. Zoho CRM is closer to a box of parts, where nearly everything is included and somebody on your team has to put it together.
HubSpot vs Zoho Pricing Per Seat
HubSpot and Zoho both lead with the annual rate. That is the price per person per month when you pay for 12 months up front, and both go up if you pay month to month.
HubSpot pricing per seat
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Users | HubSpot Credits included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 2 | None |
| Starter | $7/seat/month on a new-customer offer | $20/seat/month | Up to 10 | Included |
| Professional | $90/seat/month | $100/seat/month | More than 10 allowed | Included |
| Enterprise | $150/seat/month | Not offered | More than 10 allowed | Included |
Starter is $20 per seat billed monthly. New customers are shown $7 per seat on annual billing as a limited-time offer.
Zoho CRM pricing per user
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 for up to 3 users | $0 for up to 3 users |
| Standard | $14/user/month | $20/user/month |
| Professional | $23/user/month | $35/user/month |
| Enterprise | $40/user/month | $50/user/month |
| Ultimate | $52/user/month | $65/user/month |
Zoho’s paid plans come with a 15-day free trial and no credit card.
What HubSpot And Zoho CRM Each Charge You For
HubSpot is a toll bridge and Zoho is a street of parking meters. With HubSpot you drive free for a long way and then pay one big toll to cross. With Zoho you can park almost anywhere from day one, and every spot has its own meter.
HubSpot charges for the jump to Professional
HubSpot’s free plan is real. It covers contacts, companies, deals, a connected Gmail or Outlook inbox and a meeting booking link for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts.
Starter lifts the cap to 10 users and adds calling, multiple currencies, AI meeting notes and simple automations you set up from a record. The 11th person moves the whole team to Professional.
The things a sales team usually upgrades for are all one step higher. HubSpot’s own comparison table puts forecasting across pipelines, automated follow-up sequences, custom reports and what it calls advanced automation on Professional.
There is nothing between the two plans. Going from $20 to $100 per seat billed monthly is 5 times more for every person on the team on the day one of them needs a forecast.
Then comes onboarding. HubSpot’s pricing FAQ says “Professional or Enterprise plans are required to purchase onboarding”, and Starter plans are not.
The fee is a one-time $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional and $3,500 for Sales Hub Enterprise.
AI is metered on top. Each paid plan includes a monthly batch of HubSpot Credits that does not roll over, and extra credits cost $10 per 1,000.
Zoho CRM charges by the count
Zoho does the opposite. Forecasting, email integration, cadences (Zoho’s name for follow-up sequences), workflow rules and several pipelines are all on Standard at $14.
What changes as you go up is the number next to each feature. A module is Zoho’s word for a record type, such as Deals or Contacts.
| Limit | Standard, $14 | Professional, $23 | Enterprise, $40 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom fields per module | 10 | 155 | 300 |
| Sales pipelines | 5 | 10 | 20 |
| Mass emails per day, whole company | 250 | 500 | 1,000 |
| Records stored | 100,000 | About 5 million | About 5 million |
| Blueprint (step-by-step process rules) | Not included | 3 | 50 |
| Zia AI assistant and agents | Not included | Included | Included |
| Approval process and sandbox | Not included | Not included | Included |
Zoho’s comparison table puts Ask Zia and Zia agents on Professional and up.
How many custom fields are on your deal record right now? If you cannot say without opening it, you will find out on the day Zoho Standard tells you the 11th one needs Professional.
The meter is cheap, though. Standard to Professional is $9 more per user, and Professional to Enterprise is $17 more.
The Zoho cost that is not on the price list
Zoho’s subscription is cheap and the setup is where you pay. Layouts, modules, rules and fields all have to be designed by someone, and in a small team that someone is usually the founder.
You can do it yourself for nothing but your hours.
If you want it built for you, Zoho sells an optional setup service called Jumpstart at $200 an hour with a 10-hour minimum.
I saw what skipped setup costs at Fenixtal, my outbound agency, across 1,250+ sales calls booked for 50+ B2B clients. The marketing agencies among them that paid for a CRM and never opened it had the same story whatever the tool was. Setting it up was a job with no name on it, and client work always came first.
What 3 And 5 Seats Cost In Year One
Here is what HubSpot and Zoho CRM cost for 3 and 5 seats on annual billing, except the one Starter row marked monthly. Year two repeats the seat rows, while the onboarding row is year one only and the Starter offer may not repeat.
| Setup | 3 seats, year one | 5 seats, year one |
|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM Free | $0 | Does not fit |
| Zoho CRM Standard | $504 | $840 |
| HubSpot Starter, billed monthly at $20 | $720 | $1,200 |
| HubSpot Starter, on the $7 new-customer offer | $252 | $420 |
| Zoho CRM Professional | $828 | $1,380 |
| Zoho CRM Enterprise | $1,440 | $2,400 |
| HubSpot Professional, seats | $3,240 | $5,400 |
| HubSpot Professional onboarding, one time, year one only | $1,500 | $1,500 |
The cheapest paid row is HubSpot Starter while the offer lasts. If all you need is contacts, deals and a pipeline for up to 10 people, nothing in this table beats it today.
The real comparison is one step up, because that is where a sales team gets forecasting and follow-up sequences on HubSpot. At 5 seats HubSpot Professional is $5,400 in seats plus the $1,500 onboarding, so $6,900 in year one.
Zoho Professional is $1,380 for the same 5 people, and Zoho Standard already includes both features at $840. Even if you pay for the smallest optional Jumpstart job, which is 10 hours at $200, Zoho Professional comes to $3,380 against $6,900 at 5 seats.
At the plans with forecasting and follow-up sequences, Zoho costs less at both team sizes. What the table cannot show is the hours, and a CRM that nobody set up properly is the one that ends up unused.
HubSpot Or Zoho CRM: Which One To Choose
Choose HubSpot if:
- Marketing and sales will work from the same contact record
- You want a CRM that works on day one with no setup project
- You can live on Starter, or the Professional bill is small next to your revenue
Choose Zoho CRM if:
- Someone on your team will own the setup and keep it tidy
- You want forecasting and follow-up sequences without paying for a Professional plan
- Your process is unusual, or you already use other Zoho apps
Solo or 2 people with no budget
Start on HubSpot’s free plan if you want the easier screen, or Zoho’s free plan if a third person is coming. Zoho Free gives you 3 users but only one pipeline, 5,000 records and no email integration, forecasting or custom fields.
Zoho also has its own small-team CRM. Bigin Express is $7 per user per month on annual billing, and Zoho describes it as the pick for a first-timer moving off spreadsheets.
3 to 10 people, sales only
Zoho CRM Standard or Professional, if one of you will set it up. You get forecasting, cadences and several pipelines for $504 to $828 a year at 3 seats, against $3,240 plus onboarding for the HubSpot plan with the same kind of features.
If nobody will own the setup, take HubSpot Starter and accept that you have no forecast, or look at Bigin. I compared the same HubSpot plans against a sales-only tool in Pipedrive vs HubSpot.
Sales and marketing in one system
HubSpot, and it is the reason to pay for Professional. Zoho can do marketing through Zoho Campaigns and its other apps, but those are separate products you connect yourself.
Whether the price is worth it depends on how many tools it replaces, which I cover in is HubSpot worth it.
An unusual process, or the whole company on one vendor
Zoho. Custom modules, Blueprint and 300 custom fields per module on Enterprise will fit a process that HubSpot would need its Enterprise plan for. If finance and support are coming too, price Zoho One, the full suite at $37 per employee per month on annual billing when you license everyone.
When to stay on HubSpot
Switching CRMs costs weeks, so check this before you move anything. Stay if marketing and sales already share the database, or if you already paid for onboarding and your team uses sequences every week.
Stay too if you are 1 or 2 people under 1,000 contacts on the free plan, because you have not hit a wall yet.
When to stay on Zoho CRM
Stay if you use other Zoho apps with it, because a won deal that creates an invoice in Zoho Books is a real time saver. Stay if someone on your team owns the setup and enjoys it, or if Blueprint or inventory carries your process.
If you have already decided to leave one of them, the two shortlists are Zoho CRM alternatives and HubSpot alternatives for small business.
When Neither HubSpot Nor Zoho Fits A Small Team
Most people comparing HubSpot and Zoho need what those two sell, and one of the picks above is their answer. A few will have read the limits table and the onboarding rule and thought that none of it applies to them.
They are a B2B team of 1 to 10 who need open deals on one screen and a reminder when a deal has sat too long.
Fluid CRM is built for that team and for nobody else. It is one plan at $16 per seat per month or $144 per seat per year with every feature in it, so there is no plan to jump to and no limit to count.
Andy is a freelance web designer at Bear Sites. He wrote that Fluid CRM is for “those of us that got a Hubspot account and then got a huge headache and went back to pen and paper or Excel.”
A verified customer, a solopreneur, described what they were glad to leave behind as “all the gimmickies that you pay extra, study forever and never use.”
You get unlimited pipelines and custom fields, reminders with a daily digest, 8 in-app automations, lead capture forms, revenue forecasting and an API with 16 webhooks. It also connects to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, so an assistant can create and update deals for you.
Here is what Fluid CRM does not have:
- Lead scoring
- Nurture flows or any marketing automation
- Email sequences, or any way to send email from the CRM
- A dialer or SMS
- Landing pages
- Two-way inbox sync (emails are logged by BCC)
- Invoicing or project management
- A free plan
If any line on that list is something you use every week, or your team is bigger than 10, pick HubSpot or Zoho and do not look back.
The full head-to-heads are Fluid CRM vs HubSpot and Fluid CRM vs Zoho CRM.
HubSpot vs Zoho: Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, at every plan with comparable features. Zoho CRM Standard is $14 per user per month on annual billing and includes forecasting and follow-up sequences, which HubSpot puts on Professional at $90 per seat plus required onboarding. The one exception is HubSpot Starter, shown at $7 per seat on a limited-time offer.
Yes, on Professional and Enterprise. Onboarding is a required purchase on both plans, and Starter has none. The one-time fee is $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional and $3,500 for Sales Hub Enterprise.
Yes, for up to 3 users with no time limit. The free plan has one pipeline, 5,000 records and no email integration, forecasting, custom fields or mass email. Most sales teams move to Standard once they want their inbox connected.
Zoho CRM if someone on the team will set it up, because it gives a small sales team forecasting and automation for a fraction of the cost. HubSpot if you want it working on day one or if marketing will share the system. A B2B team of 1 to 10 that only needs a pipeline may not need either one.
HubSpot Or Zoho: How To Decide This Week
Pick Zoho CRM if you have someone to set it up and you want the most CRM for the money. Pick HubSpot if marketing and sales will share one system, or if you need it working today and can live on Starter.
If you are a small B2B team and both look like more than you will open every day, Fluid CRM is the pipeline on its own, and a week is long enough to tell.
Start your 7-day free trial here, no credit card required.