Capsule CRM vs HubSpot Free for UK Small Business: Which CRM Is Actually Worth It?
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Two CRMs That Are Not Quite What They Appear
Search for Capsule CRM vs HubSpot Free and you will be told the same thing everywhere: HubSpot’s free plan is enormously generous, Capsule’s is a token trial, and the choice comes down to whether you can afford to pay anything at all.
That framing is built on two numbers that are no longer right. HubSpot’s free CRM does not give you unlimited users, and it does not hold a million contacts. It gives you two users and 1,000 contacts, which is the same seat limit as Capsule’s free plan.
Once you fix that, the comparison becomes a genuinely close one, and the deciding factors turn out to be different from the ones usually offered.
Both Free Tiers Cap at Two Users
HubSpot’s own pricing and product pages state it plainly: the free CRM is free for up to two users, with 1,000 contacts and no expiry date.
Capsule’s free plan is two users and 250 contacts, also with no expiry.
So on seats they are identical. On contacts HubSpot gives you four times as much, which is a real advantage but a different order of thing from the figures usually quoted.
| Capsule Free | HubSpot Free | |
|---|---|---|
| Users | 2 | 2 |
| Contacts | 250 | 1,000 |
| Time limit | None | None |
| Pipelines | 1 | 1 basic deals pipeline |
| Custom fields | 5 | Limited |
Why the Million-Contact Figure Is Everywhere
Because it used to be true. HubSpot’s free CRM historically offered unlimited users and a very large contact ceiling, and that is the version that got written about for years. HubSpot moved to seat-based pricing and the free tier was reduced accordingly.
A note of caution on the contact number: HubSpot has long distinguished between contacts you simply store and marketing contacts you can actually email, and the large historic figures generally referred to storage. The current pages say 1,000 contacts for free accounts, so that is what this article uses, but check the limits inside your own portal before planning around either number.
The practical takeaway: if you have a four-person team and were choosing HubSpot because it is free for everyone, that reason has gone.
Capsule CRM vs HubSpot Free: The Real Numbers
Neither free tier is a team product, so the comparison that matters is what the first paid step costs and buys.
| Capsule Starter | Capsule Growth | HubSpot Starter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | £14 per user/month annually, £17 monthly | £27 per user/month annually, £32 monthly | Around £18 per seat list, often around £7 promotionally |
| Billing model | Per user | Per user | Per seat |
| Contacts | 30,000 | 60,000 | Tiered, with marketing contact limits |
| Multiple pipelines | No | Yes | Yes |
| Workflow automation | No | Yes | Basic sequences |
| Reporting | Basic | Advanced reporting and dashboards | Improved dashboards |
| AI features | Pipeline generator | Enrichment, summaries, meeting prep (beta) | Varies by hub |
Two things in that table correct the comparison most people are working from.
Where Capsule’s Features Actually Sit
The Pipeline Tier Matters More Than It Sounds
You will read that Capsule Starter gives you multiple sales pipelines. It does not. Multiple sales pipelines and project boards are a Growth feature, at £27 per user, and the free plan is limited to one pipeline.
This is the single most consequential correction in the comparison, because “multiple pipelines at £14” is the basis of the usual verdict that Capsule beats HubSpot’s free tier on pipeline management at a low price. If you sell more than one type of service and want them tracked separately, Capsule costs £27 a user, not £14.
Confusingly, the error also runs the other way in some guides, which place multiple pipelines at Advanced. Advanced raises the allowance to 50 pipelines and 50 project boards. The answer is Growth, as covered in our Capsule CRM pricing guide.
Reporting Is Also a Tier Higher Than Advertised
Capsule Starter includes basic reporting. Advanced sales reporting and reporting dashboards arrive at Growth, alongside the automation and the AI enrichment features.
So the claim that Capsule’s entry paid tier out-reports HubSpot’s free tier needs qualifying. Starter’s reporting is modest. Growth’s is genuinely good, and Growth is roughly double the price.
What HubSpot Starter Actually Costs
HubSpot Starter is priced per seat, not as a flat monthly fee, which is the other assumption worth correcting. The common framing of “Capsule charges per user, HubSpot doesn’t” is wrong at every paid tier.
Sterling pricing sits at roughly £18 per seat at list, frequently discounted to around £7 per seat promotionally. HubSpot’s US-facing pages show the same two-figure structure in dollars, at $20 and $7.
A caveat on currency, and it mirrors something we found with Capsule: HubSpot’s pricing pages display US dollars by default when viewed from outside the UK, and we could not see a visible currency selector. UK visitors are shown sterling. Check the figure on the page as it appears to you before budgeting.
The Price Comparison, Honestly
Put the corrected numbers together and the confident conclusion that Capsule is cheaper does not survive contact with the entry tiers.
For a two-person business:
- Capsule Starter: £28 a month, with one pipeline and basic reporting
- Capsule Growth: £54 a month, with multiple pipelines, automation, dashboards and AI
- HubSpot Starter at list: around £36 a month
- HubSpot Starter on promotional pricing: around £14 a month
At promotional pricing HubSpot Starter undercuts Capsule Starter. At list it sits between Capsule’s two tiers. Nobody comparing these two honestly can say one is simply cheaper.
What you can say is that Capsule’s pricing is predictable. The figures above are the figures, the top self-serve tier is £42, and the ceiling is visible from the start. HubSpot’s promotional pricing is the beginning of a path, which brings us to the part of the usual argument that does hold up.
The Upgrade Cliff Is Real, It Is Just Further Up
The standard warning about HubSpot — that costs escalate sharply — is true, but it is not true at Starter. Starter is competitively priced and genuinely useful.
The escalation happens at the step above. Moving from Starter to Professional, in any hub, is a large jump rather than an increment, and it is where small businesses that grew into HubSpot’s marketing automation find themselves spending several hundred pounds a month. Marketing contact tiers add their own escalator on top, since the billable figure rises as your emailable list grows.
Capsule has no equivalent step. The range runs £14, £27, £42, then a sales conversation for Ultimate. Whether that is an advantage depends entirely on whether you will ever want what Professional does.
UK-Specific Considerations
Accounting Integrations
This is Capsule’s clearest practical edge for a UK small business. It integrates directly with Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and Sage, which covers almost every bookkeeping setup you will encounter here, and the integrations are straightforward to switch on.
HubSpot’s App Marketplace is vastly larger and includes Xero and QuickBooks, but the UK-specific tools are less well served and setup tends to involve more work.
Making Tax Digital
Neither is accounting software and neither touches MTD. Worth being precise about the deadline, because it is no longer in the future: MTD for Income Tax has applied since 6 April 2026 to sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000, with the threshold dropping to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028.
Your CRM has no role in that. Your bookkeeping software does. What a CRM integration buys you is seeing invoices and payment history against a contact record, which is convenience rather than compliance.
Email Marketing
Capsule does not include it. Campaigns run through Transpond by Capsule, a separate paid subscription, not a bundled feature. Budget for it as an extra line if you intend to send newsletters, and see our Transpond versus Brevo comparison for whether it is the right choice against the alternatives.
HubSpot does include marketing email in its free tools, with low send limits, and this is a fair point in its favour for a business that wants one system. The constraint is the marketing contact tier, which is what the pricing escalates on.
Whichever you choose, sending marketing email to CRM contacts is governed by PECR and UK GDPR rather than by what the software permits. Our guide to GDPR rules for email marketing covers the soft opt-in conditions and the corporate subscriber distinction, which is where imported contact lists cause trouble.
Who Should Choose Which
Capsule, if: you want predictable costs with a visible ceiling, you run UK accounting software and want clean integration, your focus is relationships and a sales pipeline rather than multi-channel marketing, and you want to be productive the same afternoon. Budget Growth at £27 rather than Starter if you need more than one pipeline or real reporting.
HubSpot, if: you expect to grow into marketing automation and want one platform for sales, marketing and service, you value the much larger integration marketplace, or the promotional Starter pricing makes the entry genuinely cheap and you are comfortable watching the Professional step approach.
Either free tier, if: you are testing. Both cap at two users, so neither is a way to equip a team for nothing. HubSpot’s 1,000 contacts will last longer than Capsule’s 250.
If you are coming off a spreadsheet, the subscription is rarely the expensive part. Getting clean data across is, and our guide to migrating from spreadsheets to a CRM covers the field mapping and date formatting that cause most of the grief. For a different pairing, our Capsule versus Freshworks and Pipedrive versus Zoho CRM comparisons cover the same ground with other contenders.
FAQ
How many users does HubSpot’s free CRM allow?
Two. HubSpot’s own pages state the free CRM is free for up to two users with 1,000 contacts. The widely repeated claim of unlimited free users predates HubSpot’s move to seat-based pricing.
Is HubSpot Free more generous than Capsule Free?
On contacts, yes: 1,000 against 250. On seats they are identical at two. The difference is real but much smaller than usually presented.
Which Capsule plan do I need for more than one sales pipeline?
Growth, at £27 per user per month on annual billing. Starter does not include multiple pipelines, and Advanced at £42 simply raises the allowance to 50.
Is Capsule cheaper than HubSpot?
Not straightforwardly. HubSpot Starter on promotional pricing undercuts Capsule Starter; at list price it sits between Capsule’s Starter and Growth tiers. Capsule’s advantage is predictability and a visible ceiling rather than a lower entry price.
Is Capsule a UK company?
Yes, it is built by a Manchester-based company and has been running since 2009, and it bills UK customers in pounds once you set the currency selector to UK and Europe.
Does either handle Making Tax Digital?
No. Neither is accounting software. Capsule integrates with Xero, FreeAgent, QuickBooks and Sage, all of which handle MTD, but the integration is for visibility rather than filing.
What happens to my data if I downgrade?
Both providers retain data while restricting access to the limits of the tier you move to, and paid features and automations stop working. The detail varies and matters if you hold a lot of contacts, so check the current terms with the provider before committing.
Capsule CRM vs HubSpot Free: The Bottom Line
The usual version of this comparison rests on HubSpot’s free tier being far more generous than it currently is. Both free plans cap at two users. HubSpot gives 1,000 contacts against Capsule’s 250, and neither is a way to run a team without paying.
At the first paid step the two are genuinely close, and the entry prices do not separate them: HubSpot Starter is per seat at roughly £18 list or £7 on promotion, Capsule Starter is £14 a user, and Capsule Growth is £27.
So choose on shape rather than price. Capsule gives you a visible ceiling, clean UK accounting integrations and a tool you will understand in an afternoon, with the caveat that multiple pipelines and real reporting live at £27 rather than £14. HubSpot gives you a platform you can grow into, with the Professional step waiting further up the road.
Pricing and features correct at time of writing. Plans and capabilities are subject to change — always confirm current details on the provider’s website before purchasing.