HubSpot
American CRM with a free plan limited to two users, and marketing, sales and customer service tools as paid options.
A basic CRM (contacts, companies, sales stages, notes, reminders) can be built in a weekend with a simple database, and covers a small team's use. What makes HubSpot valuable are the forms and marketing emails with proven deliverability, automation and integrations. For sales follow-up, replaceable; for marketing automation, keep it.
What you lose
- Marketing email deliverability
- Campaign and follow-up automation
- Integrations with your other tools
- Ready-made reports
Existing alternatives to HubSpot
- DolibarrOpen source
Free management suite: customers, quotes, invoices, calendar and payment tracking, developed in France.
- ERPNextOpen source
Free ERP with CRM, quotes and invoicing; heavier to set up.
The prompt to build it yourself
Build me a simple CRM for a small sales team, without claiming to replace HubSpot or do marketing automation. Stack: Next.js, TypeScript, SQLite. Data at my place, secrets in .env, no telemetry. To do: - Contacts and companies: record, history of exchanges, notes and attachments. - Pipeline in columns (new, contacted, quote, won, lost), drag and drop, expected value and closing date. - Follow-up reminders by email (configurable SMTP) and a “to do today” view. - Contact form embeddable in my site: each submission creates a contact. - CSV import and export; several users with roles. - GDPR: consent noted on each contact, export and deletion of a contact on request. - Tests on the pipeline; README with the limits. Out of scope: bulk email campaigns, marketing automation, scoring, third-party integrations.
Frequently asked questions
- Can HubSpot be replaced by a custom-built tool?
- casevibecode verdict: Partly replaceable. A basic CRM (contacts, companies, sales stages, notes, reminders) can be built in a weekend with a simple database, and covers a small team's use. What makes HubSpot valuable are the forms and marketing emails with proven deliverability, automation and integrations. For sales follow-up, replaceable; for marketing automation, keep it.
- What is HubSpot used for?
- American CRM with a free plan limited to two users, and marketing, sales and customer service tools as paid options.
- What alternatives to HubSpot already exist?
- Dolibarr (open source), ERPNext (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
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