HubSpot alternative for solo developers: when a big CRM is more than you need
HubSpot is excellent for sales and marketing teams. A one-person software business needs something different: clients, deals, invoices and support in one place. How to decide, and what to look for instead.
4 min read
HubSpot is one of the best-known CRMs for good reason. It has a generous free tier, a polished interface and a huge ecosystem. If you are building a sales and marketing team, it is a strong choice.
But many solo developers sign up for it, import their contacts, and drift away within a month. Not because it is bad, but because it was built for a different job.
What HubSpot does well
- A capable free CRM. At the time of writing, HubSpot's pricing page lists its free CRM at $0 for up to two users, with no credit card required.
- Marketing tools. Forms, email marketing, landing pages and campaign tracking are where HubSpot is strongest.
- Sales tools for teams. Pipelines, sequences, meeting scheduling and reporting built for people whose job is selling.
- Integrations. A large marketplace of apps that connect to it.
Where it fits a solo developer less well
A one-person software business does not need to run campaigns or manage a sales team. It needs to remember clients, win the occasional project, send invoices, answer support and keep the code shipping. HubSpot covers the first two very well; the rest lives elsewhere.
- Paid tiers are priced per seat. At the time of writing, HubSpot lists its Starter Customer Platform from $7 per seat per month billed annually, or $10 month to month. Check the current page before deciding; prices change.
- Payments and invoicing come with paid tiers. HubSpot's own FAQ lists payments among the features Starter adds beyond the free CRM.
- Your code, support and servers are somewhere else. The CRM knows about the deal, but not about the bug the client reported or the hours you spent fixing it.
- It is built for selling. Lead scoring, sequences and forecasts are great for a sales team and mostly noise for one developer.
What a solo developer should look for instead
Write your list before you look at any tool:
- Contacts, companies and deals, with a simple pipeline.
- A timeline per client that includes emails, invoices, payments and support tickets, not just sales activity.
- Invoicing in the same place, with a payment link on each invoice.
- Time and expenses, so billable work ends up on invoices.
- Support tied to the client record.
- Follow-up views: who to contact this week, and who has gone quiet.
- CSV import, so you can bring your contacts across from wherever they are now.
- A price that does not grow with seats you will never add.
Our longer guide to what a solo developer's CRM should track goes through each of these.
Side by side
| Need | HubSpot (free / Starter) | NabuOne |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts, companies, deals | Yes | Yes |
| Marketing email and forms | Yes, a core strength | No |
| Invoices with a payment link | With paid tiers | Yes, Stripe pay links |
| Time and expense tracking | Not a core feature | Yes |
| Support inbox tied to the client | Service tools are a separate hub | Yes |
| Coding agents and project boards | No | Yes |
| Built for | Sales and marketing teams | One person running a software business |
When to stay with HubSpot
Stay with it if marketing is a big part of your business: newsletters, landing pages, lead forms and campaigns. Stay with it if you plan to hire salespeople soon. Its free tier is a fine contact list, and you can always pair it with a separate invoicing tool.
When to look elsewhere
Look elsewhere if most of your work is building software for clients or selling your own apps, and the CRM is mainly a memory for clients, deals and money. In that case you want the CRM to sit next to your invoices, support and code.
That is what we built NabuOne for: a CRM that shares its records with Invoices, Support, Revenue and Code, in one desktop app, with your coding agents running inside it. Contacts, companies and invoices import from CSV, which HubSpot exports. See pricing for the current plans.
The short version
HubSpot is a great CRM for teams that sell and market. A solo developer usually needs a smaller CRM that knows about invoices, support and code too. Decide based on how much marketing you do, and whether you want one app for the whole job. For the bigger picture, read how to run a software business on your own.
