HubSpot vs Zoho CRM: Cost per Seat and per Year, Free Plans, Automation and Migration

Zoho vs HubSpot: who each one fits

• HubSpot fits a team that wants marketing and sales in one system and wants to start free, as long as it can budget $90 a seat plus a $1,500 onboarding fee once it needs Professional.
• Zoho CRM fits a team that wants automation and custom modules at a lower price per user and doesn't want to sign a yearly contract.

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 both vendors' pages in USD and re-checked every price and limit on 1 November 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 does HubSpot cost compare with Zoho CRM cost?

Zoho CRM costs less than HubSpot at every paid tier at list price. Per user a month, billed annually, Zoho CRM Standard is $14 against $20 for HubSpot Sales Hub Starter, Professional is $23 against $90, and Enterprise is $40 against $150. For five users over a year, that's $840 against $1,200 at entry level, and $1,380 against $6,900 at Professional once HubSpot's required $1,500 onboarding fee is added. The exception is HubSpot's Starter promo for new customers: $7 a seat billed annually, or $420 a year for five. We rechecked these prices on both vendors' US pricing pages, in USD, on 5 November 2026.

HubSpot's list price and its promo are in separate columns below, so you can see what's left when the promo ends. These are US prices in USD, before tax. Zoho's pricing page also shows prices in GBP and other currencies, and both vendors add local tax, such as UK VAT, on top. We didn't compare the GBP prices.

HubSpot's Sales Hub pricing page shows Starter at $7 a seat billed annually and $10 billed monthly, with $20 struck through and the note "Discounts available for new customers only." (https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales, rechecked 5 Nov 2026) HubSpot's Product & Services Catalog lists Sales Hub Starter at $20 per Core Seat a month. On its CRM page, HubSpot adds that the discount "has no set end date and can be discontinued at any time."

You'll often see "HubSpot starts at $15" in AI answers. That number comes from HubSpot's CRM product page (https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm, checked 1 Nov 2026), 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 is priced on Zoho's complete feature list and mentioned in the pricing FAQ, but it isn't on the pricing cards. Zoho adds local taxes on top: "Local taxes may apply."

If you add HubSpot Marketing Hub, it's a separate bill. HubSpot's catalog lists Marketing Hub Professional from $890 a month with 3 Core Seats included, plus a $3,000 required onboarding fee (https://legal.hubspot.com/hubspot-product-and-services-catalog, checked 1 Nov 2026). The catalog also says that with mixed tiers, all your Core Seats are priced at your highest subscription level. If you're weighing Marketing Hub against a separate email automation tool, see HubSpot vs ActiveCampaign.

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 by whoever does that work. 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 caps free accounts at 1,000 contacts. Zoho caps the whole free account at 5,000 records across all modules. HubSpot's CRM page also describes the free plan as having "no limits on customer data". The catalog's 1,000-contact cap 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 1 Nov 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 start on Standard, at 25,000 calls a day or 100 per user license a day, whichever is lower, and Professional raises the cap to 50,000 a day. Approval processes are Enterprise and up. These limits come from Zoho's complete feature list (https://www.zoho.com/crm/complete-feature-list.html), marked "Last updated on: May 12, 2026" and read on 1 Nov 2026. Zoho's old edition comparison page now redirects there. The same feature list puts "Cadences", automated multichannel follow-up sequences, on Standard, at 20 per module with up to 10 active.

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

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 pricing page lists custom modules on Standard (checked 1 Nov 2026). Its feature list allows 10 custom fields per module on Standard, 155 on Professional, 300 on Enterprise and 500 on Ultimate. HubSpot's catalog allows 1,000 custom properties per object on its paid editions, and custom objects only on Enterprise, with 10 object definitions and 1 million 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 1 Nov 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" on Enterprise.

What do onboarding and support really cost?

HubSpot charges for onboarding on its upper tiers. Zoho advertises free onboarding but doesn't say on its pricing page what it covers.

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 1 Nov 2026). The pages we read don't describe what the onboarding covers.

Zoho's pricing page leads with "Free Onboarding". Its support plans page (https://www.zoho.com/crm/support-plans.html, checked 1 Nov 2026) says Classic support is "available by default for paid editions". Premium support costs 20% of your subscription fee, and Enterprise support 25% of the annual fee, 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, whether that's your own admin or an outside implementer. 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 1 Nov 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 warns you for each module where more than 5,000 records are skipped, so you can discard the run or continue (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/data-administration/data-migration/articles/migrating-from-hubspot, checked 1 Nov 2026).

Before either move, list your custom fields: HubSpot needs a Data Hub subscription to carry custom field mappings in, and Zoho's API import leaves custom modules behind. Count tags if you use them heavily, because Zoho keeps only the first ten per record. Automations differ by direction. Zoho CRM to HubSpot: Smart Transfer maps Zoho "Workflow Rules" to HubSpot workflows and also creates a few workflows of its own to bridge the two data models. Blueprints aren't on its map (https://knowledge.hubspot.com/integrations/supported-apps-for-hubspot-smart-transfer, updated 10 Nov 2026). HubSpot to Zoho CRM: Zoho's migration page doesn't describe moving HubSpot workflows, so plan to rebuild those by hand.

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.

Zoho One vs HubSpot

Zoho One is a different purchase from Zoho CRM. It's Zoho's bundle of "50+ unified business apps" on one invoice, and its CRM comes with Zoho CRM's Enterprise-level features. Ultimate is an add-on (https://www.zoho.com/one/applications/faq.html, checked 1 Nov 2026).

Zoho One has two price models. All-employee pricing is $30 per employee a month billed annually, marked "First year only" next to a struck-through $37, or $45 billed monthly, and Zoho requires you to license "ALL employees on payroll". Flexible user pricing, for any number of users, is $67 a user billed annually and $105 billed monthly. The yearly view shows $67 next to a struck-through $90 and doesn't say how long that price lasts (https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/, rechecked 5 Nov 2026). Our check on 1 November recorded the all-employee yearly price as $37.

HubSpot sells its hubs one by one or as a Customer Platform bundle, and we didn't price the bundle here. For scale, Sales Hub Professional alone is $90 a seat billed annually. So Zoho One against HubSpot only makes sense if you want Zoho's other apps too. If you only need a CRM, compare Zoho CRM's editions with Sales Hub, as above.

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.

If the other name on your list is GoHighLevel rather than Zoho, see how HubSpot compares with GoHighLevel. GoHighLevel prices one account flat and bills texts, calls and email on top. Weighing HubSpot against a sales-only CRM instead? See how HubSpot compares with Pipedrive. Weighing HubSpot against an enterprise CRM? See how HubSpot compares with Salesforce. Choosing between Zoho CRM and Salesforce instead? See Salesforce vs Zoho: prices and contracts compared. Choosing between Zoho CRM and monday CRM? See Zoho vs Monday.com: prices and limits compared. If your shortlist is Zoho against a sales-only CRM, see Zoho CRM vs Pipedrive.

Not sure which CRM fits? Take the 6-question CRM picker.

• 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 1 Nov 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.

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