HubSpot CRM vs Salesforce Essentials vs Pipedrive for a UK B2B Company with 10 to 50 Staff — Real Costs in GBP

For a UK B2B company with 10 to 50 staff, the entry price of a CRM tells you almost nothing about what you will actually pay. HubSpot CRM starts free but reaches £16 per seat per month at Starter — and the features that B2B sales teams need sit behind the £85 per seat Professional tier. Salesforce killed Essentials in 2023 and replaced it with Starter Suite at £20 per user per month, rising to £80 for Pro Suite. Pipedrive starts at roughly £12 per seat per month on its Lite plan (billed annually in USD and converted). After 12 months, add-ons, onboarding and the features you cannot do without, a 20-user deployment costs between £2,900 and £20,400 per year depending on which platform and tier you choose. This is not a features list. It is a cost-of-ownership breakdown in pounds, tested against what UK B2B sales teams with 10 to 50 staff actually need to close deals.

What Each Platform Actually Costs in GBP

HubSpot offers a free CRM with unlimited users but limited pipeline tools. The Starter tier costs £16 per seat per month billed annually and adds email tracking, meeting scheduling and simple automation. For custom reporting, advanced automation and multiple pipelines, you need Sales Hub Professional at £85 per seat per month — plus a mandatory onboarding fee starting at £1,200. That turns a 20-user deployment into £20,400 per year at Professional before you add marketing contacts or API access.

Salesforce retired its Essentials product in 2023. The replacement is Starter Suite at £20 per user per month, which bundles sales, service and email outreach in one package. Pro Suite at £80 per user per month adds customisation, advanced automation and Salesforce Flow. A 20-user Starter deployment costs £4,800 per year. Pro Suite hits £19,200 per year — and that is before Premier Support (an extra 20 to 30 per cent of your licence fees) or any AppExchange add-ons.

Pipedrive prices in USD but charges UK customers through Stripe in their local currency. The Lite plan works out at roughly £12 per seat per month billed annually. Growth, the tier where pipeline automation and email sync become usable, sits at roughly £31 per seat per month. Premium at roughly £51 per seat per month adds AI-powered features and project management. A 20-user Growth deployment costs approximately £7,440 per year.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Puts on the Landing Page

HubSpot's mandatory onboarding fees catch new buyers off guard. Sales Hub Professional requires a £1,200 one-time fee. Enterprise requires £2,800. Marketing Hub Professional charges £1,200 and Enterprise charges £5,600. If you bundle hubs, each one carries its own onboarding cost. Marketing contact overages run at roughly £200 per month for every 5,000 contacts beyond your included allowance. The API add-on for integrations costs roughly £400 per month. Annual renewal uplifts of around 5 per cent are standard.

Salesforce hidden costs are structural. Premier Support — which nearly every organisation ends up needing because the standard support is email-only with a two-day response time — adds 20 to 30 per cent to your net licence fees. Data storage overages cost roughly £100 per month per 500MB. AppExchange apps for document signing, enrichment or quoting typically add £5 to £50 per user per month. Sandbox environments for testing cost 25 to 30 per cent of your production licence. Annual renewal uplifts run at 5 to 7 per cent.

Pipedrive's add-ons are less aggressive but still meaningful. LeadBooster (chatbots and web forms) costs roughly £26 per month. Web Visitors tracking runs between £39 and £239 per month depending on volume. Campaigns for email marketing starts at roughly £13 per month. None of these are included in any plan tier.

Where Each CRM Wins for UK B2B Teams

HubSpot wins on marketing connectivity. If your sales team works closely with a marketing function running inbound campaigns, HubSpot's unified platform removes the gap between lead generation and pipeline. The free CRM is genuinely useful for a team testing the waters. The email template builder, meeting scheduler and deal pipeline are polished enough for a B2B team to run on for months before paying anything. The Starter tier at £16 per seat per month is the cheapest paid entry point of the three for a team that needs email tracking and basic automation.

Salesforce wins on scalability and enterprise readiness. If your company plans to grow past 50 staff or needs to integrate with complex systems — ERP, custom billing, multi-currency — Salesforce's architecture handles it. The AppExchange marketplace has over 7,000 apps. The reporting engine at Pro Suite and above is the deepest of the three. For companies selling into enterprise clients who expect their suppliers to be on Salesforce, the platform carries commercial credibility that matters in procurement.

Pipedrive wins on sales execution for small teams. The activity-based selling model — where the CRM tracks what your salespeople do, not just where deals sit — suits B2B teams that live or die by outbound calls, emails and meetings. The interface is the fastest of the three to learn. Setup takes days, not weeks. For a 10 to 20 person B2B company where the founder or sales director needs to see pipeline health without training, Pipedrive is the clearest path to value.

Where Each CRM Falls Short

HubSpot's free tier lacks custom reporting, multiple pipelines and predictive lead scoring. For a B2B company with a serious sales process, the free CRM is a trial, not a solution. The jump from Starter at £16 to Professional at £85 per seat per month is the steepest price cliff of the three. Marketing Hub pricing escalates fast once contact volumes grow, and the mandatory onboarding fees make switching tiers an event rather than a smooth upgrade.

Salesforce Starter Suite is deliberately limited. You cannot customise page layouts, build approval workflows or use the full automation engine. The interface has a steeper learning curve than HubSpot or Pipedrive, and the time to first value is measured in weeks rather than days. A study found that Salesforce rollout takes 2 to 12 months depending on complexity, compared to 3 to 5 days for HubSpot and 1 to 2 weeks for Pipedrive. For a 15-person UK company, hiring a Salesforce administrator or paying a consultant is a realistic ongoing cost.

Pipedrive lacks native marketing tools. There is no landing page builder, no social media management and no content management system. Email marketing is an add-on. Customer service tools are absent entirely. If your B2B operation needs a single platform for sales and marketing, Pipedrive requires third-party integrations that add cost and complexity. Reporting at the lower tiers is basic compared to HubSpot or Salesforce.

Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership for 20 UK Users

These figures include licence fees, typical add-ons and one-time costs. VAT is excluded as it is reclaimable for the vast majority of B2B companies.

HubSpot Free CRM: £0 per year, £0 over three years. Limited to basic pipeline, no automation, no custom reports. Suitable for a team of under 10 trialling a CRM for the first time.

HubSpot Starter (20 users): £3,840 per year, £11,520 over three years. Adds email tracking, meeting scheduling and simple automation. No custom reporting.

HubSpot Professional (20 users): £20,400 per year plus £1,200 onboarding, roughly £62,400 over three years. Full automation, custom reporting, multiple pipelines.

Salesforce Starter Suite (20 users): £4,800 per year, £14,400 over three years. Basic CRM with email and service bundled. Limited customisation.

Salesforce Pro Suite (20 users): £19,200 per year plus Premier Support at roughly £4,600 per year, roughly £71,400 over three years. Full customisation, advanced automation, Salesforce Flow.

Pipedrive Growth (20 users): approximately £7,440 per year, £22,320 over three years. Pipeline automation, email sync, basic reporting.

Pipedrive Premium (20 users): approximately £12,240 per year, £36,720 over three years. AI features, project management, advanced reporting.

The UK-Specific Factors That Change the Calculation

Pipedrive bills in USD, which means your costs fluctuate with the pound-dollar exchange rate. At the time of writing, the rate sits at roughly 1 GBP = 1.26 USD. A 10 per cent swing in the exchange rate changes a 20-user Pipedrive Growth deployment by roughly £600 to £700 per year. HubSpot and Salesforce both price their UK products in GBP, removing currency risk entirely.

All three platforms store data outside the UK by default. HubSpot uses AWS in the EU (Frankfurt and Ireland). Salesforce offers a UK data centre option for Enterprise tier and above. Pipedrive stores data in the US and EU. For UK B2B companies handling personal data under UK GDPR, data residency matters. If your clients or contracts require UK-only data processing, Salesforce Enterprise is the only option among the three — and it starts at £140 per user per month.

Making Tax Digital does not directly affect CRM choice, but connectivity with UK accounting software does. HubSpot integrates natively with Xero and QuickBooks. Salesforce requires AppExchange connectors for Xero (typically £10 to £30 per user per month). Pipedrive integrates with Xero through Zapier or a native connector at no extra cost. If your sales team raises quotes that flow into invoices, the CRM-to-accounting link matters more than the CRM's headline price.

A Decision Framework for UK B2B Companies

Choose HubSpot if your sales and marketing teams need to work from the same platform, you run inbound campaigns, and you can commit to Professional tier pricing. The free CRM is a genuine starting point, but plan your budget for the £85 per seat jump when you outgrow it.

Choose Salesforce if you are growing past 50 staff, sell into enterprise procurement, need deep customisation or require UK data residency. Budget for Premier Support and a certified deployment partner. Do not start on Starter Suite expecting it to scale without a tier change.

Choose Pipedrive if you are a sales-led B2B company with 10 to 30 staff, your priority is pipeline visibility and deal tracking, and you do not need integrated marketing tools. Accept the USD billing risk and plan integrations for accounting and marketing separately.

If none of these fit, Zoho CRM offers a full-featured alternative from £12 per user per month billed in GBP with UK data hosting. It lacks the app marketplace depth of Salesforce and the marketing tools of HubSpot but covers sales, marketing and support in a single platform at a price point that undercuts all three.

What Nobody Tells You About Switching Later

CRM migrations cost between £5,000 and £50,000 depending on data volume, customisation and connector complexity. The cost is not the data export — it is rebuilding workflows, retraining staff and re-integrating the tools your team depends on. The average CRM contract length for UK SMBs is 2.7 years, and switching costs increase with every month of accumulated customisation. Choose for where your company will be in three years, not where it is today. The cheapest CRM that forces a migration in 18 months is the costliest CRM you will ever buy.