Close vs HubSpot
 Close |  HubSpot | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 63/100 | 37/100 |
| Rank in category | #1 | #5 |
| Rated comments | 25 | 36 |
| Best for | Small sales teams and solo sellers doing high-volume cold calling; Teams that want calling, email, SMS and workflows inside the CRM; Founders who want a CRM they can pick up without a consultant | Teams that want marketing and sales on one database; Companies relying on many third-party integrations; Growing SMBs with someone who can own CRM setup |
| Skip it if | Teams that need marketing automation in the same tool; Teams that need flexible automation or deep lead-level reporting; Sellers who rely on three-way or conference calling | Very small teams that only need a simple sales pipeline; Budget-sensitive teams that will need Pro or Enterprise features; Companies with heavy custom-object models |
| Starting price | $9/user/mo | £7/seat/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Per user per month: Solo $9 annual / $19 monthly (1 user, 10k leads, no workflows), Essentials $35 / $49, Growth $99 / $109, Scale $139 / $149; custom plans via sales. Calling and SMS billed at cost. 14-day free trial with no credit card; no free plan; 30-day money-back guarantee. | The pricing page served to us was localized in GBP (US pricing may differ): free plan for up to 2 users; Starter £7/seat/mo billed annually (shown as a limited-time 65% discount, up to 10 users); Professional £81/seat/mo; Enterprise £155/seat/mo, all billed annually with a monthly option. Paid plans include monthly HubSpot Credits for AI features. |
Independent users mostly rate Close as a simple, fast, sales-first CRM that suits small outbound teams and solo sellers who live on the phone, with calling, email, SMS and workflows in one place. The trade-off is depth outside the calling workflow: users call it rigid, report automation flaws and missing calling features such as three-way calls, and say it is weak for marketing and lead-level reporting. About a third of the comments mentioning it were promotional, including roughly ten near-identical comments that name-drop Close while plugging a Reddit-monitoring tool, referral links, and agency or rival-CRM pitches, so those were set aside.
Users like
- Easy to pick up: users describe it as light, simple and fast, easier to onboard than HubSpot, with decent automation that does not overwhelm[1][2][3][4][5]
- Built for phone-heavy outbound: users cite the power dialer and smart views, cold callers hitting 250 to 350 dials a day, and running a BDR team's outbound from inside it[1][2][3][4]
- Calling, email, SMS and workflows sit in one place, which users say keeps reps productive and organized[1][2]
- Users call it good value for small teams and solo operators, saying a low-tier plan covers most of what they need[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Rigid, with automation flaws: one team of about ten calls it very rigid but good enough, and a solo user flags its automation weaknesses[1][2][3]
- Calling has gaps: one user found no three-way calling, another hit quirks with calling and stayed on Apollo[1][2]
- Reporting centres on caller activity and revenue rather than deeper lead analysis[1]
- Not strong on the marketing side, according to a user who otherwise rates it highly[1]
Independent users see HubSpot as the broadest all-rounder for small and mid-sized companies: sales and marketing data in one place, integrations with nearly everything, and easier to learn than Salesforce. The recurring complaint is cost. Repeated price rises, features locked behind Professional or Enterprise seats and a bill that jumps as teams grow are pushing long-time customers to ask what comes next, and several say it has become bloated and needs a dedicated owner to stay clean. About one in five remaining mentions were pitches for rival CRMs (Attio most often), HubSpot partners and add-on tools, even after the corpus filter removed well over a hundred promoter comments.
Users like
- Brings marketing and sales data together, and users who left or compared rate its marketing automation (such as nurture campaigns) above lighter sales CRMs like Pipedrive[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Integrates with almost everything; a 15-year user calls it about as good as it gets for integrations, and another says the Claude integration made the data far easier to work with[1][2][3]
- More intuitive and easier to customize than Salesforce, and the free tier is usable for basic tracking or learning a CRM[1][2][3]
- List price is negotiable: users report a 35% discount on a two-year commit for 50+ seats and other large discounts by pushing back[1][2]
Users complain about
- Expensive and getting more so: long-time customers cite repeated price increases, and several moved to tools costing about half as much[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Key features sit behind higher tiers and seat types, so the bill can jump sharply (one user says it triples) when a team needs Pro seats, Operations Hub or Enterprise-only scoring[1][2][3][4]
- Complex and increasingly bloated; small teams report abandoning it because it is too much to configure, and it gets messy without a dedicated owner[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Renewal and exit friction: a user says HubSpot quietly buried its own 'don't block the exit' pledge, and another says reps make you think you have no choice at renewal[1][2]