folk vs HubSpot
 folk |  HubSpot | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 41/100 | 37/100 |
| Rank in category | #4 | #5 |
| Rated comments | 8 | 36 |
| Best for | Solo founders and small teams that want a simple, fast-to-set-up CRM; Users who want to connect their own AI assistant to the CRM | 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 advanced automation, website tracking or ad integrations; Anyone who needs full data export, including custom fields; Teams that need a mobile app | 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 | $24/member/mo | £7/seat/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Standard $24/member/mo billed annually ($30 monthly); Premium $48 annually ($60 monthly); Enterprise from $80/member/mo annually. 2-week free trial with premium features, no credit card; no priced free plan listed. | 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 discussion is thin: only eight non-promotional comments carry a real opinion. Those users like folk as a simple, quick-to-set-up CRM for solo founders and small teams, and one returned to it because it works with their own AI through MCP. The trade-offs they report are limited data export, a lack of advanced features that pushed one user to Pipedrive, and no mobile app. Promotion is heavy: about 40% of the comments that remained after filtering read as seeded or marketing, several repeating the same 'clean, simple, great for relationships' talking points, and many more were removed earlier as repeat promoters.
Users like
- Easy to use and quick to set up, described as much less complicated than other CRMs[1][2][3][4]
- Works with your own AI through MCP, which one user preferred over CRMs that charge for AI usage[1]
- Cheaper than Attio for a plan with email sequences, according to a user comparing the two ($40 vs $69 per user per month on annual billing)[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]