HubSpot is a powerful CRM system that powers both large corporations and many small businesses. Its versatility makes it incredibly versatile – we use HubSpot daily at Verseo . Of course, the system's advanced version, which supports process automation, advanced reporting, and integration with thousands of external services, comes with a cost, depending on the packages selected and the scope of implementation.
In many cases, however, it is not a system that requires a full package right away - contrary to popular belief, HubSpot also provides a free version, which is perfect for familiarizing yourself with the system and crystallizing the entire vision of HS as the future technological flagship of the organization.
To use the free CRM and see what it's all about, simply fill out the form – we'll contact you and set up a free HubSpot account for you.
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HubSpot as a free CRM – possibilities
The free version won't let you fully develop your skills, but it's still a fully competent CRM system to start with. Let's go through HubSpot's key free features one by one.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
Contact management
HubSpot is, at its core, a CRM— a system that allows you to manage your contact database (Customer Relationship Management). The free version also fulfills this role, including the ability to add custom properties for both the company and the contact associated with the company. This allows you to tag both record types with selected data—for example, company size, industry, the contact's role in the purchasing process, company debtor designation, and more.
Importantly, the properties can be configured in various ways – in addition to simply tagging a contact/company/transaction/report with text, we can use the YES/NO properties, single and multiple choice lists, date fields, and numeric fields.
Email logging and tracking
The HubSpot Sales plugin also allows you to track communications using an external email client. Sent and received emails will be logged in HubSpot, even if the employee uses Gmail, Outlook, or another email service. Furthermore, if the email is opened, the sender will receive a notification in HubSpot . The free version of the system can generate up to 200 notifications per month.
Sales module
As a free CRM, HuSpot offers a single sales pipeline, or kanban board, that allows you to manage the customer acquisition process. Individual stages can be edited and customized to your company's specific needs.
What does this mean? First and foremost, it allows for easy oversight of the sales process – you can immediately see at what stage a given sale is, its value, and who is responsible for it.
What's more, when you click on a deal, HubSpot displays the entire history of how it moved between stages, as well as any notes the salesperson can enter into the system regarding the topic.
Reporting
Reporting is one of HubSpot's greatest superpowers – by embedding code on the website, using various integrations and designing processes, we can measure the effectiveness of marketing, sales and customer service across the board.
The free CRM is very limited in this regard – you can only use a few predefined reports with the option to change the timeframe. However, they are still very useful, detailing things like the number of contacts created in the last month, the number of contacts with which sales activities were initiated, and the number of transactions. It also includes a summary dashboard showing recent customer communications and the total number and amount of transactions in a given period.
Free CRM allows you to create 3 dashboards with reports.
Embedding HubSpot code on your website – traffic analysis
Embedding a custom JavaScript code on your company website allows you to integrate your website with your CRM. This is also possible in the free version, giving you access to tracking the number of page views, bounce rates, and other traffic analytics.
Landing Page
HubSpot lets you create entire websites, blogs, and landing pages. The free version offers the same editor as the advanced versions, though the scope of customization is quite limited. This means you can quickly build a page from various elements, add graphics, call-to-action (CTAs), forms, and videos, change its layout, and use pre-built templates or create a website from scratch.
A sample webinar landing page might look like the one below. The main drawback of the free version, however, is the indelible HubSpot branding in the footer of the page.
Hubspot as a free CRM – limitations
HubSpot Free's biggest shortcoming is undoubtedly the lack of automation, or workflows. This is a real game-changer, saving employees time and allowing them to do the most tedious, mechanical work . You also miss out on the ability to send mass emails (newsletters), email sequences, and another of HubSpot's great strengths – advanced reporting.
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HubSpot Free CRM FAQs
HubSpot is one of the world's most popular cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It provides a centralized location that allows companies to collect contact data, track sales processes (funnels), and manage core marketing communications from a single platform.
Yes. Unlike many other tools that only offer 14- or 30-day trials, HubSpot's basic CRM is 100% free forever (without a time limit). What's more, it allows you to add an unlimited number of users (employees).
The free version is very extensive and offers tools essential for the daily work of sales departments. These include:
- Contact management: Store up to 1 million contacts and companies.
- Sales Management (Pipeline): visual tracking of transactions (so-called deals) at various stages of the sales funnel.
- Email integration: seamless connection with Gmail and Outlook, allowing you to track email open rates.
- Conversion tools: free Live Chat for your website, contact forms, and a meeting scheduler.
This is an ideal solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), start-ups, and B2B companies that have previously managed their customer bases using spreadsheets (e.g., Excel). It allows for cost-free, professional streamlining of sales processes.
The primary reason companies eventually opt for paid packages (e.g., Sales Hub or Marketing Hub) is the need for scalability and automation. The free version lacks features such as:
- Advanced process automation (so-called Workflows).
- Extensive, custom reports and analytics.
- Complex email sequences.
- Additionally, free tools (e.g. forms or chat) have visible HubSpot branding (logo).
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- HubSpot CRM in the free version offers contact management with the ability to add custom properties (text, YES/NO, picklists, dates, numerics) to tag companies, contacts, deals and requests by industry, company size or role in the purchasing process.
- The HubSpot Sales plugin allows you to automatically log email communications from external email clients (Gmail, Outlook) and notify when messages are opened, with a limit of 200 notifications per month in the free version.
- The sales module offers one pipeline in the form of a kanban board with editable stages, which ensures easy supervision of the sales process, shows the value of the transaction, the person responsible and the history of transfers between stages with salesperson notes.
- Free CRM offers several predefined reports with the option to change the time range, showing the number of contacts created, sales activities, transactions and last communication, with the ability to create 3 reporting dashboards.
- Embedding a custom JavaScript code on your company website integrates it with CRM, allowing you to analyze traffic, check page views, bounce rate, and many other analyses also available in the free version.
- HubSpot lets you create landing pages using an editor with pre-made templates or from scratch, letting you add graphics, CTAs, forms, and videos, though the free version has limited customization options and non-removable HubSpot branding in the footer.
- The biggest limitation of the free HubSpot is the lack of automation (workflows), mass email sending (newsletters), email sequences and advanced reporting, which are only available in paid versions.
