Best HubSpot Alternatives for SaaS in 2026

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

Why SaaS teams leave HubSpot

The usual trigger is a gap between what the email needs to know and what the plan lets it see. On HubSpot's Marketing Hub table, Starter is $7 a month and limits email automation to 10 automated actions. Its segments are capped at 50 active and 1,000 static, and the segmentation criteria are limited to form submission data, contact property information and marketing email activity. Product usage is not in that list. The common workaround is to push usage into contact properties, which holds up until a journey needs the history of what someone did rather than a current value.

Professional is $800 a month, and it is where automation stops being limited: email automation becomes unlimited actions, with omni-channel automation of up to 300 workflows for 10 teams. Custom events and workflows that use behavioral events appear in the Enterprise column, at $3,600 a month, with 500 event definitions and 30 million completions a month. So a SaaS that wants a journey to fire on an in-app milestone and stop when an invoice is paid walks into a tier priced for a much larger marketing organization.

Send limits add a second lever. HubSpot caps email at a multiple of the marketing contact tier: 2,000 sends a month on Free with HubSpot branding, then 5x the tier on Starter, 10x on Professional and 20x on Enterprise. ActiveCampaign's pricing page states 10x, 12x or 15x its contact limit depending on the plan. Customer.io Essentials includes 1,000,000 emails a month from the first 5,000 profiles. For products that send many transactional-style messages to a modest list, the HubSpot multiple is the constraint that bites.

None of this makes HubSpot a poor product. Its free tools cover contacts, companies and deals, Professional adds lead scoring with up to 5 scores and Enterprise raises that to 50, and a sales-assisted motion benefits from one record shared by marketing and sales. The case for leaving is narrower: your growth comes from self-serve signups, the events that matter live in your application, and you are paying for suite breadth nobody uses.

The alternatives, one at a time

1. Customer.io: the closest answer to "events, not properties"

Customer.io reads Essentials at $100 a month for 5,000 profiles, $145 for 10,000, $235 for 20,000 and $325 for 30,000, billed monthly, with 1,000,000 emails included and transactional email in every plan. Premium starts at $1,000 a month billed yearly, and a company that has raised under $10M can claim a year free through its Startup Program. Its pages list a visual workflow builder, email, push, in-app messaging and WhatsApp.

Set against HubSpot Professional's $800 starting price, 10,000 profiles at $145 is $655 a month less, or $7,860 a year, and it is the plan where journeys react to your own events. The gaps are the ones you would expect: its pages describe messaging rather than deals or sales sequences, and managed deliverability is marked not included on Essentials. The HubSpot vs Customer.io comparison goes through the two head to head.

2. ActiveCampaign: automation plus CRM without the suite

On its pricing page, ActiveCampaign starts at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts on Starter, $49 on Plus, $79 on Pro and $145 on Enterprise, billed annually. Move the contact selector and the picture changes: at 5,000 contacts the same four plans read $79, $145, $205 and $375; at 10,000 they read $149, $189, $375 and $589. Starter allows one user and five actions per automation, Plus adds standard segmentation and landing pages, and Pro adds advanced segmentation and three users.

It is the sensible landing spot for a sales-assisted SaaS that wants a CRM and branching automation but not HubSpot's tier structure. One oddity worth knowing: at 25,000 contacts the selector shows Starter at $391 and Plus at $389, so Starter stops being the cheap option. Before you commit, work out how your product events will reach it, since the integrations its page names are Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Gmail, Outlook and Zapier. See ActiveCampaign alternatives for where teams go next.

3. Userlist: when the account is the unit

Userlist charges $149 a month for Basic up to 10,000 users and $10 per extra 1,000, with Professional at $349 and $12 per extra 1,000. Its slider reads $229 at 18,000 users and $369 at 32,000. Every plan includes five times your tracked users in messages with a 500,000 floor, and extra messages cost $1 per 1,000. Basic includes marketing and lifecycle email, in-app messages and segments for users and companies; Professional adds A/B split tests, conversion goals and advanced workflow features.

That makes it a fit for B2B products where "the customer" is a workspace with a champion, an admin and several users, which HubSpot models as companies and contacts bolted together. Its pages describe lifecycle messaging and segments, not deals or a pipeline, so decide where sales lives first.

4. Encharge: visual flows with Stripe and Chargebee connections

Encharge prices Growth at $99 a month for 2,000 subscribers ($79 billed yearly), $179 for 5,000, $249 for 10,000 and $389 for 25,000. Premium reads $159, $269, $399 and $649 at the same stops, and adds HubSpot, Salesforce and transactional email to the feature list. Overage is $100 for every 100,000 emails. The integrations list names HubSpot, Salesforce, Segment, Stripe and Chargebee.

The HubSpot, Salesforce and Stripe entries are why it works as a half-move: leave marketing automation, keep the CRM. At 10,000 subscribers Growth is $249 against Customer.io's $145, so you pay for the visual builder and the billing connectors, not for volume. The Encharge vs Customer.io page lays out that choice.

5. Loops: the shortest path to a working onboarding sequence

Loops is free for unlimited contacts with 4,000 sends in a rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts and a small footer, then $48 at 4,788 subscribers, $99 at 9,998, $198 at 24,339 and $249 at 49,989. Transactional sending is included on paid plans and there is no seat fee. Where HubSpot's Professional table is about teams, workflows and approvals, Loops is about getting a welcome series live in an afternoon.

The cost is ceiling height. Its pages describe email flows, not a CRM, so a company with several marketers and an approval chain should check the team features before moving. Pair it with HubSpot's free tools if sales needs a contact record. Our Loops alternatives page covers what comes after.

6. Brevo: the budget all-in-one

Brevo has a free plan of 300 emails a day and storage for up to 100,000 contacts, Starter from $9 a month and Standard from $18, both starting at 5,000 emails a month, with automation and A/B testing named on Standard. Professional starts at $499. A Sales Essentials package costs $31 a month, and each extra marketing seat on Standard is $9, with up to 3 users included.

For a small team that mostly sends newsletters and a few automated flows it is the cheapest route off HubSpot Starter's limits. Its pricing is volume-based, so a list that sends rarely stays inexpensive. For event-driven lifecycle it is less direct than Customer.io or Userlist.

7. Pipedrive: for the CRM half, not the email half

Pipedrive charges per seat, billed annually: Lite $14, Growth $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79 per seat per month. Its page says automations start on Growth, including sequences of personalized emails and follow-ups to nurture deals. Five salespeople on Growth cost 5 x $39 = $195 a month.

Choose it if the thing you want out of HubSpot is the pipeline, and pair it with a lifecycle tool for product email. As a replacement for marketing automation it is thin, because those sequences nurture deals rather than a user base.

8. Salesforce Account Engagement: the heavyweight B2B route

The Salesforce page lists Growth+ at $1,250 per org per month, Plus+ at $2,750, Advanced+ at $4,400 and Premium+ at $15,000, with 10,000 contacts included on the first three, 50 to 150 automation rules, and add-ons such as a $500 dedicated IP and $400 dynamic content. It is built for companies already running Salesforce CRM, and it starts above HubSpot Professional, so it is a move for sales-led enterprise teams, not a way to save money.

What it costs at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 contacts

HubSpot's table publishes starting prices only, so there is no HubSpot figure at these list sizes below; its own contact selector sets the rest. The other rows come from each vendor's selector or slider on the dates linked above, and billing terms differ: ActiveCampaign is billed annually, Encharge and Customer.io monthly.

Two patterns stand out. First, the product-event tools (Loops, Customer.io, Userlist and Encharge) land between $99 and $249 at 10,000 contacts, against an $800 starting price for HubSpot Professional, so the comparison is about capability rather than a few dollars. Second, the spread between plans widens with list size: ActiveCampaign Pro is $205 at 5,000 contacts but $629 at 25,000, so whichever tool you pick, price it at the list size you expect in twelve months, not the one you have today.

Seats are the cost the table cannot show. HubSpot's capture lists up to 2 users on Free and up to 10 on Starter, with extra seats on Professional billed per seat. Pipedrive bills per seat on every plan. Customer.io, Loops and Userlist do not price by seat on the pages above, so a growing marketing team does not move their bill.

Which one for which team

• Self-serve SaaS, engineers can send events: Customer.io at $145 for 10,000 profiles. It is also the choice if you expect WhatsApp, push or in-app messaging later.
• Sales-assisted SaaS that needs a CRM and automation: ActiveCampaign Plus at $189 for 10,000 contacts, or Pro at $375 once you need advanced segmentation and three users.
• B2B product where the buyer and the users differ: Userlist, from $149, so one account's onboarding does not fire six times.
• A marketer owns the flows and wants drag-and-drop with Stripe: Encharge Growth, $249 at 10,000 subscribers.
• A founder writes the emails and nothing else matters: Loops, free at the start and $99 at 9,998 subscribers.
• Mostly newsletters and a few automations on a tight budget: Brevo Starter from $9 or Standard from $18.
• Pipeline is the part you value: keep HubSpot's free tools or move to Pipedrive, and use a lifecycle tool for product email.

Migrating off HubSpot

The risky part is not the email. It is the data HubSpot holds that three different teams read. Decide what leaves and what stays before exporting anything.

1. Choose what stays in HubSpot. The capture lists contacts, companies and deals under Free, with up to 2 users. If sales lives there, keep that and move only lifecycle email. That removes the hardest conversation from the project.
2. Export contacts with the fields email depends on. Lifecycle stage, owner, signup source, plan, and above all each contact's subscription status. Leave sales-only properties behind, and note which properties are written by integrations rather than people so they get an owner on the other side.
3. Count your lists and workflows. HubSpot's page sets segment limits by tier (50 active and 1,000 static on Starter, 1,200 and 1,200 on Professional, 2,000 and 2,000 on Enterprise) and up to 300 workflows on Professional. Static lists import once. Active lists must be rebuilt as rules against your own data, and workflows should be ranked by revenue so you rebuild the top five and retire the long tail.
4. Start sending events from your app. Signed up, completed setup, invited a teammate, payment failed. This is the point of leaving, and it is the work that takes longest. Decide on names before you build any journey.
5. Handle subscription types and consent. Map each HubSpot subscription type to a topic or list in the new tool and import unsubscribed and bounced contacts as suppressed. Do not rely on re-collecting consent. The cookie banner HubSpot provides is a separate tool; if you switch tracking off, replace it.
6. Re-authenticate the sending domain. HubSpot's Starter column lists connecting and authenticating a sending domain. Add the new vendor's DKIM, merge SPF, and keep HubSpot's records until the last send has moved.
7. Run both for one send cycle. Send new signups through the new tool while existing contacts stay in HubSpot, then reconcile unsubscribes on cutover day. That gap is where complaints come from.
8. Mind the contract. The capture shows annual billing selected, so find your renewal date and cancel before it. Downgrade to the free tools instead of deleting the account if sales still uses the CRM.

Our pick

For a product-led SaaS the best pick is Customer.io: $145 for 10,000 profiles reaches the behavior-triggered journeys that HubSpot reserves for its $3,600 tier, and transactional email is included. The runner-up is ActiveCampaign for teams that cannot drop the CRM, at $189 for 10,000 contacts on Plus. Userlist takes the third spot when the account, not the person, is the customer. Keep HubSpot where sales-and-marketing coordination is the real bottleneck.

Related reading: HubSpot vs Customer.io, email platforms for product-led SaaS, sales-led SaaS and migrating between email platforms.