HubSpot vs Pipedrive vs Custom CRM: An Honest Comparison for Growing Businesses

If you’re choosing a CRM for a growing business, you’ve probably narrowed it down to two main contenders: HubSpot and Pipedrive. They’re the most recommended, most reviewed, and most discussed options in the small-to-mid market.

But there’s a third option that rarely shows up in comparison articles — building a custom CRM. Not because it’s right for everyone, but because for a specific type of business, it solves problems that neither HubSpot nor Pipedrive can touch.

Here’s an honest comparison of all three. No affiliate links, no sponsor bias. Just what each tool does well, where it falls short, and when it makes sense for your business.

HubSpot: The Everything Platform

HubSpot started as a marketing tool and grew into a full CRM suite — sales, marketing, service, operations, and content management. It’s the Swiss Army knife approach: one platform that does everything, with varying degrees of depth.

What it does well:

• Free tier is genuinely useful. Contact management, deal tracking, email integration, basic reporting — all free for unlimited users. For a business making its first CRM move, this is hard to beat.
• Marketing integration is excellent. Email campaigns, landing pages, forms, social scheduling, and lead scoring all connect directly to the CRM. If inbound marketing is a significant channel, HubSpot is purpose-built for it.
• Reporting and dashboards are strong across all tiers, with drag-and-drop customisation.
• Ecosystem is massive. 1,500+ integrations, extensive documentation, active community, and plenty of consultants who specialise in HubSpot.

Where it falls short:

• Pricing escalates sharply. The free CRM is great. But the moment you need automation, custom reporting, or remove HubSpot branding, you’re on paid plans. Professional tier starts at roughly $1,300 AUD/month for the Sales Hub alone. Add Marketing Hub and you’re north of $2,500/month.
• Per-contact pricing on marketing tiers. HubSpot’s marketing plans charge based on the number of contacts you market to. At 10,000 contacts, you’re paying significantly more than at 1,000. This catches businesses off guard as their database grows.
• Customisation has boundaries. You can customise properties, pipelines, and workflows extensively. But you can’t change the fundamental data model. If your business needs a structure that doesn’t fit HubSpot’s objects (Contacts, Companies, Deals, Tickets), you’ll be forcing square pegs into round holes.
• Complexity grows with the platform. HubSpot’s power is also its weakness — there’s so much to configure that businesses either underuse it (paying for features they never set up) or over-configure it (creating a tangled mess of workflows that nobody fully understands).

Pipedrive: The Sales-Focused CRM

Pipedrive was built by salespeople, and it shows. The entire platform is organised around the pipeline — a visual, drag-and-drop view of where every deal sits in your sales process. It does one thing and does it well.

What it does well:

• Simplicity. Pipedrive is intuitive in a way that HubSpot isn’t. Your team can be productive within hours, not weeks. The learning curve is genuinely low, which directly impacts adoption.
• Pipeline management is best-in-class. The visual pipeline is fast, clear, and satisfying to use. Dragging a deal from one stage to the next feels natural. Activity-based selling (calls, emails, meetings) is built into the core workflow.
• Affordable at the base tier. Essential starts around $14 USD/user/month. Advanced is $39. Even Power tier at $64/user/month is significantly cheaper than HubSpot Professional.
• Focused feature set. Pipedrive doesn’t try to be a marketing platform, a service desk, or a CMS. It’s a sales CRM. That focus means fewer features but better execution of the features that exist.

Where it falls short:

• Marketing capabilities are basic. Pipedrive added Campaigns as an add-on, but it’s lightweight compared to HubSpot or standalone email marketing tools. If marketing automation is important, you’ll need a separate tool.
• Reporting is limited on lower tiers. Custom reports and advanced dashboards require the Professional tier ($49/user/month) or above. Basic reporting is functional but not deep.
• Customisation ceiling is lower. Custom fields, custom pipelines, and basic automation are available. But complex workflows, custom objects, and advanced logic hit walls faster than in HubSpot.
• Scaling challenges. Pipedrive is excellent for teams of 5-30. Above 50 users, the lack of advanced permissions, territory management, and enterprise features starts to pinch.

Pricing at Scale: The Numbers Nobody Shows You

Most comparison articles show the starting price. Here’s what it actually costs at a realistic team size — 20 users, with the features most growing businesses actually need.

Feature Level	HubSpot	Pipedrive	Custom
Basic CRM (20 users)	Free	$280/mo ($14/user)	N/A
With automation & reporting	~$1,300/mo (Professional)	$980/mo ($49/user)	N/A
With advanced customisation	~$2,200/mo (Enterprise)	$1,280/mo ($64/user)	N/A
Annual cost (mid-tier)	~$15,600	~$11,760	$3,600-$6,000 hosting
Year 1 total (incl. setup)	~$18,000	~$13,000	$45,000-$80,000
3-year total	~$50,000	~$37,000	$55,000-$92,000
5-year total	~$82,000	~$61,000	$60,000-$104,000

The pattern is clear: off-the-shelf is cheaper in years one and two. By year three, custom starts closing the gap. By year five — especially if you’re adding users — custom is often the cheaper option. And that’s before you factor in the cost of workarounds, add-ons, and integration tools that off-the-shelf platforms require.

Customisation Limits: Where It Gets Real

Both HubSpot and Pipedrive let you customise fields, pipeline stages, and basic automations. For standard sales workflows, that’s usually enough.

But here’s where off-the-shelf customisation hits the wall:

Complex quoting. If your quotes involve calculated pricing — material costs, labour rates, margin targets, quantity breaks — neither platform handles this natively. You’ll build quotes externally and enter the total manually.

Multi-entity relationships. If a single deal involves multiple contacts from multiple companies across multiple locations, the standard Contact-Company-Deal relationship model gets messy. Custom objects help in HubSpot (Enterprise tier), but Pipedrive doesn’t offer them at all.

Industry-specific workflows. Production scheduling, inventory allocation, compliance tracking, certification management — these don’t exist in generic CRMs. You can approximate them with custom fields and automations, but it always feels like a workaround.

Deep integration. Both platforms integrate with hundreds of tools via pre-built connectors. But if you need real-time data from your ERP, custom business logic during the sync, or bidirectional integration with a legacy system, you’re into custom middleware territory — which adds cost and complexity regardless of which CRM you choose.

When Each Option Makes Sense

Choose HubSpot when:

• Inbound marketing is a significant lead source and you want CRM and marketing in one platform
• You have budget for the Professional tier and want extensive automation
• Your sales process is standard and fits the Contact-Company-Deal model
• You value ecosystem size — integrations, consultants, documentation, community

Choose Pipedrive when:

• Your priority is sales pipeline management and activity tracking
• Your team values simplicity and fast adoption over feature depth
• You have 5-30 users and want a focused, affordable tool
• Marketing lives in a separate tool and you don’t need it integrated into the CRM

Choose custom when:

• Your workflow doesn’t fit standard CRM models — complex quoting, production tracking, multi-entity relationships
• You’ve outgrown off-the-shelf customisation and you’re spending more on workarounds than the CRM itself
• Your team is 20+ users and per-user licensing is becoming a major annual expense
• Integration with industry-specific or legacy systems is critical and middleware costs are mounting
• Your CRM needs to do things that aren’t CRM — scheduling, quoting, inventory, compliance — and running separate tools for each creates data silos

The Honest Recommendation

If you’re a small business (under 10 people) with a standard sales process, start with HubSpot Free or Pipedrive Essential. They’re excellent tools, they’ll serve you well, and the cost of entry is minimal.

If you’re a growing business (10-30 people) with increasing complexity, evaluate whether HubSpot Professional or Pipedrive Advanced handles your needs without excessive workarounds. If it does, stay there.

If you’re a business where the CRM is the centre of operations — not just sales tracking, but quoting, scheduling, fulfilment, and customer management — and you’re finding that off-the-shelf tools create as many problems as they solve, that’s when a custom build stops being a luxury and starts being a practical investment.

The best CRM isn’t the one with the most features or the lowest starting price. It’s the one your team actually uses, that fits your workflow without workarounds, and that costs less than the problem it’s solving. Sometimes that’s HubSpot. Sometimes that’s Pipedrive. And sometimes it’s something built specifically for you.