Custom CRM vs HubSpot for UK SMEs: An Honest Comparison

We have a commercial interest in this question and we are going to answer it against that interest for about half of the businesses reading it. HubSpot is very good. The problem is that it is very good at one shape of business.

What HubSpot does well

If your business is a sales pipeline - leads come in, get qualified, become deals, close or do not - HubSpot is hard to beat. The free tier is genuinely useful. Email tracking, sequences, meeting links, forms and basic reporting work out of the box. The marketing tools are integrated rather than bolted on. There is a huge pool of people who already know how to use it, which matters when you hire.

For a business of that shape with fewer than ten users, we will tell you to use HubSpot and spend the money you would have given us on something else. That is not false modesty; it is the answer that gets you a working system by Friday.

Where it starts to hurt

Three things push businesses off HubSpot, usually in this order.

Price per seat, and the tier ladder

The free tier becomes Starter, Starter becomes Professional, and the feature you need is always one tier up. Professional Sales Hub is priced per seat with a minimum seat count, and the Professional tiers across hubs add up quickly. Twenty users on Professional across Sales and Marketing can run to £20,000 to £30,000 a year. That is not a criticism of HubSpot's pricing; it is simply the point where a custom build starts to pay back.

Your process is not a pipeline

Letting agents, recruitment firms, training providers, manufacturers with quotes that depend on specifications, membership organisations, anyone whose "deal" has a lifecycle after it closes - these businesses spend their time fighting the object model. Custom objects exist in HubSpot, but building a whole process out of them is awkward, and the reporting across them is limited.

The data you need is in three other systems

HubSpot integrates with a lot, but "integrates" often means "syncs contacts". If the system of record for jobs, stock, bookings or compliance is elsewhere, you end up with a CRM that knows the customer's name and nothing about what you actually did for them.

What a custom CRM changes

A custom CRM is built around the process you actually run. The screens match the job. The words on the buttons are your words. Reporting answers the questions your management meeting asks, not the ones a generic dashboard offers. There are no seats: the fortieth user costs the same as the first.

It also has real costs. It takes 8 to 16 weeks rather than an afternoon. You need someone internally who owns it. Changes need a developer rather than a settings page. And you are trusting a supplier to build it well - which is why you should insist on owning the code and hosting.

The cost crossover

Take the honest annual HubSpot cost for the tiers you actually need, multiplied by five years. Compare it with the build cost plus hosting and maintenance over the same period (the custom CRM cost guide has the bands). For a five-user business the SaaS wins comfortably. For twenty users on Professional tiers, the build usually pays back in year two or three. For fifty, it is rarely close.

Money is not the only axis. The stronger argument for building is that the CRM becomes the operating system of the business rather than a contact list next to it. The stronger argument for HubSpot is that you will be using it tomorrow.

A middle path that often works

Keep HubSpot for marketing and top-of-funnel, where it is excellent, and build the operational system - jobs, delivery, compliance, billing - that HubSpot was never designed for, with a two-way sync between them. This keeps the tools good at their jobs and avoids rebuilding email marketing, which nobody should do.

Five questions that settle it

1. Is your core process a sales pipeline? If yes, lean HubSpot.
2. How many seats will you need in two years? Under ten, HubSpot. Over twenty-five, build.
3. Do you maintain a spreadsheet that does what HubSpot will not? One is normal; three means the fit is wrong.
4. Does the system need to know what happened after the sale? If that lives elsewhere, consider building the operational side.
5. Who will own the system internally? If nobody, do not build anything yet.

Two businesses, two answers

A B2B software reseller with six salespeople, a marketing manager and a standard inbound funnel: leads from the website and events, qualification calls, demos, proposals, close. HubSpot fits this exactly. The Marketing Hub handles the website forms and nurture, the Sales Hub handles the pipeline, and the reporting answers the questions the sales director asks. We would not build anything for this business, and the seat cost at six users is modest.

A property lettings agency with eighteen staff across three branches: landlords, tenants, properties, viewings, applications, referencing, tenancies, inspections, maintenance, renewals. A "deal" here is a tenancy that lasts years and generates work throughout. HubSpot's objects can be bent into this and the branches will fight the bend daily. This business needs a system whose nouns are landlord, property and tenancy, and it is worth building one - the custom CRM pays back in year two against Professional seats for eighteen people, and pays back faster in staff time.

Migration, if you do move

HubSpot exports cleanly, which is one of its virtues. Contacts, companies, deals and activity history come out as CSV; email threads are the awkward part. A migration plan should map every HubSpot property to a field in the new system, decide what happens to closed-lost deals older than two years (usually archive), and run twice: once as a rehearsal, once for real on a weekend. Budget two to three weeks and expect to keep HubSpot read-only for a quarter afterwards.

What you lose by building, honestly

HubSpot's marketing tooling, which is excellent and which you should not rebuild. The knowledge base and community. The constant stream of new features you did not ask for, some of which you would have liked. The ability to hire someone who already knows the system. Against that, you gain a system that fits, no seat ladder, and ownership. It is a real trade, and for a pipeline business it is often the wrong one.

If your answers point at a build, or at the middle path, tell us what the process looks like. If they point at HubSpot, you already have your answer, and it did not cost you anything.

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