HubSpot vs Zoho CRM: Prices, Free Plans, Automation and Migration Compared

HubSpot vs Zoho CRM at a glance

Every row below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, product catalog or help center. We read HubSpot's pages in a US browser, in USD, and re-checked every price on 26 September 2026. We didn't use review sites, AI answers or either vendor's page about the other as sources.

For HubSpot we compare Sales Hub, because this is a sales CRM comparison. HubSpot prices each hub separately, so Marketing Hub or Service Hub would be extra.

How much do HubSpot and Zoho CRM cost?

On annual billing, Zoho CRM costs less than HubSpot's list price at every paid tier, and the gap grows once you add HubSpot's onboarding fees. The exception is HubSpot's entry promo, which only new customers get. HubSpot's list price and its promo are in separate columns below, so you can see what's left when the promo ends.

HubSpot calls the promo "special Starter pricing" and says: "New customers only. Select offers available for a limited time." (https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/crm, checked 26 Sep 2026) The $20 list price comes from HubSpot's Product & Services Catalog.

You'll often see "HubSpot starts at $15" in AI answers. That number comes from HubSpot's CRM product page, where it carries the footnote "Discount available for new customers only". It isn't the Sales Hub price, so we don't use it.

Zoho's US pricing page shows four editions: Free, Standard, Professional and Enterprise. Ultimate appears on Zoho's edition comparison page and in the pricing FAQ, but not on the US pricing cards. Zoho adds local taxes on top: "Local taxes may apply."

If you add HubSpot Marketing Hub, it's a separate bill. Marketing Hub Professional starts at $800 a month with 3 seats included and a $3,000 onboarding fee (https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/marketing, checked 25 Sep 2026). HubSpot's catalog also says that with mixed tiers, all your Core Seats are priced at your highest subscription level.

Is HubSpot or Zoho cheaper for a 5-person team?

At entry level, HubSpot's promo is cheaper for a new customer. At Professional, Zoho CRM costs a fifth of HubSpot in year one.

Licenses are one line of the budget. Setting the CRM up, moving your data in and training the team are priced separately, and our own ranges are in what a CRM implementation costs. HubSpot doesn't give an end date for its promo, so plan the second year at the $20 list price if you want a safe number.

Here is our arithmetic from the prices above, not a vendor quote: five users, twelve months, before tax.

• Zoho CRM Standard, billed annually: 5 × $14 × 12 = $840 a year. Billed monthly: $1,200.
• HubSpot Sales Hub Starter at list price: 5 × $20 × 12 = $1,200 a year. At the new-customer promo: $420 billed annually, $600 billed monthly.
• Zoho CRM Professional, billed annually: 5 × $23 × 12 = $1,380 a year.
• HubSpot Sales Hub Professional, billed annually: 5 × $90 × 12 = $5,400, plus the $1,500 onboarding fee, so $6,900 in year one.

Which free CRM is better: HubSpot Free or Zoho CRM Free?

Zoho CRM Free gives you more to work with: one more user, more email templates and workflow rules. HubSpot Free's advantage is the way up. You upgrade the same account, and HubSpot's CRM page says: "No disruption, no data migration."

The contact limits count different things. HubSpot's catalog allows up to 1,000 contacts plus up to 1 million records in its other standard objects. Zoho caps the whole free account at 5,000 records. HubSpot's CRM product FAQ also describes the free plan as having "no limits on customer data". The catalog shows that isn't literally true, so we go by the catalog.

Which has better automation, HubSpot or Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM puts automation lower in the price list. HubSpot's automation goes further on its top tiers, and each tier has a hard workflow count.

HubSpot Sales Hub Starter allows "up to 50 workflows with restricted triggers and actions". Professional allows "up to 300 fully customizable workflows", and Enterprise up to 1,000, "with the ability to trigger sequences" (https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales, checked 26 Sep 2026). The free plan has no sales workflows.

Zoho includes workflow rules on every edition, Free included. Blueprints, Zoho's guided step-by-step processes, start on Professional with 3 active, then 50 on Enterprise and 100 on Ultimate. Webhooks also start on Professional, at 50,000 calls a day or 100 per user license a day, whichever is lower. Approval processes are Enterprise and up. These limits come from Zoho's edition comparison page (https://www.zoho.com/crm/comparison.html), which is dated June 4, 2022. Zoho's current pricing page lists "Cadences", automated multichannel follow-up sequences, on Standard.

Our reading: for a small team, compare Professional with Professional. That's where HubSpot's workflows become fully customizable and where Zoho adds Blueprints and webhooks.

Customization, reporting and AI: where each one stops

Zoho CRM gives you more customization per dollar. HubSpot's biggest customization feature, custom objects, is Enterprise only.

Customization. Zoho's current pricing page lists custom modules on Standard (checked 26 Sep 2026). Its 2022 comparison table says Enterprise, so go by the pricing page and confirm in a trial. The comparison table allows 10 custom fields per module on Standard, 155 on Professional, 300 on Enterprise and 500 on Ultimate. HubSpot allows 1,000 custom properties per object on Professional and Enterprise, and custom objects only on Enterprise: "Up to 10 object definitions and 1,000,000 total custom object records."

Reporting. HubSpot gives 10 dashboards on Free, 30 on Starter, 75 on Professional and 100 on Enterprise. Custom reports start on Professional, up to 100, and Enterprise allows up to 500. Forecasting starts on Professional. Zoho lists sales forecasting on Standard and unlimited reports on Professional (pricing page, checked 26 Sep 2026).

AI. HubSpot includes monthly HubSpot Credits for AI features: 500 on Starter, 3,000 on Professional and 5,000 on Enterprise. HubSpot's catalog says unused credits don't roll over. Agent Builder starts on Starter. Zoho's pricing page lists "AI agents" on Professional and "Extended AI capabilities" from its assistant Zia on Enterprise. Zoho's 2022 comparison table puts every Zia feature on Enterprise, so go by the pricing page here too.

What do onboarding and support really cost?

HubSpot charges for onboarding on its upper tiers. Zoho gives onboarding for free, but it isn't implementation.

HubSpot's pricing page says the Professional price "does not include the required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $1,500", and Enterprise onboarding is $3,500 (https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales, checked 26 Sep 2026). The pages we read don't describe what the onboarding covers.

Zoho's pricing page leads with "Free Onboarding". Its support-plans FAQ refers to "the free four sessions with your onboarding specialist" and says the specialist "will not implement Zoho CRM for you" (https://www.zoho.com/crm/support-plans.html). Paid Zoho plans get email, phone and chat support by default. Premium support costs 20% of your subscription, and Enterprise support 25%, with a minimum of 50 user licenses.

HubSpot support depends on tier and seat. Free gets the knowledge base and community, Starter adds chat and email, and Professional and Enterprise add phone. In accounts created on or after March 5, 2024, a user needs an assigned Core, Sales or Service seat to reach chat, email or phone support. HubSpot says phone support is English only (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/help-and-resources/get-help-with-hubspot).

So on either platform, someone still has to map your pipeline, move the data and build the automations. That's the work we do. We compare HubSpot, Monday.com, Zoho and Pipedrive against how your team actually sells, then set up the one that fits. If you handle patient data, the plan question changes; see which CRMs sign a HIPAA BAA.

Can you move from Zoho CRM to HubSpot, or back?

Yes, both ways, with each vendor's own tool. Neither vendor lists a migration fee on the pages we read.

Zoho CRM to HubSpot: HubSpot's Smart Transfer lists Zoho CRM as a source and is available on all HubSpot plans. The transfer is one-way into HubSpot, only Super Admins can run it, and "You must have a Data Hub subscription to transfer custom field mappings" (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/integrations/transfer-data-from-other-apps-using-hubspot-smart-transfer, checked 25 Sep 2026).

HubSpot to Zoho CRM: Zoho imports through the API, using a HubSpot private app token. "You can undo or rerun the migration only 3 times." Zoho doesn't support custom modules in API migrations, moves only the first ten tags per record, and pauses the migration if more than 5,000 records in a module are skipped (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/data-administration/data-migration/articles/migrating-from-hubspot).

Zoho's HubSpot comparison page also advertises: "Looking to switch? Get 6 months for free." We didn't find the terms of that offer on the page.

The vendor tools move records. They don't check that deal history, owners and custom fields came across correctly. We wrote up what breaks in a CRM migration after moving 9,000+ contacts out of HubSpot.

When to choose HubSpot, and when to choose Zoho CRM

Pick Zoho CRM if price and flexibility matter most. Pick HubSpot if you want marketing and sales on one platform and can budget for it.

• Choose Zoho CRM if your budget is tight but you need more than the basics. Professional is $23 per user a month billed annually, with no onboarding fee.
• Choose Zoho CRM if you can't commit to a year. Zoho says "You are not bound by any contracts or commitments." HubSpot Professional requires an annual commitment even when you pay monthly.
• Choose Zoho CRM if you need custom modules and fields without an enterprise plan. Zoho's pricing page lists custom modules on Standard; HubSpot's custom objects are Enterprise only.
• Choose HubSpot if marketing will run in the same system. Marketing, Sales and Service Hubs share one CRM, but each is a separate subscription.
• Choose HubSpot if you want to start free and grow in place. HubSpot says an upgrade from the free account means "no data migration".

What the vendors' own comparison pages get wrong

Both vendors publish pages comparing themselves to the other, and we don't use either as a source about the rival. Zoho's page about HubSpot (https://www.zoho.com/crm/alternatives/hubspot-vs-zoho-crm-comparison.html) makes three claims that HubSpot's own pages contradict (checked 25 Sep 2026). HubSpot's page about Zoho leans on G2 ratings and internal HubSpot research, which we can't check, so we leave it out too.

• Zoho's page says HubSpot is "free for unlimited users" and "does allow you to manage unlimited contacts". HubSpot's pricing page says its free plan is "Free for up to 2 users", and its catalog says up to 1,000 contacts.
• Zoho's page says "The basic Starter edition of HubSpot Sales Hub starts at $50 for two users when billed monthly." HubSpot's catalog prices Sales Hub Starter per seat, at $20 a month.
• Zoho's page says HubSpot workflows "are only available in the Professional edition and above". HubSpot's pricing page lists "Up to 50 workflows with restricted triggers and actions" on Sales Hub Starter.

Related services

Frequently asked questions