Sambandh vs HubSpot vs Pipedrive: Honest CRM Comparison for Small Teams

Choosing a CRM for a small team means wading through marketing pages that all promise the same things: easy to use, powerful features, affordable pricing. The reality is that every CRM makes tradeoffs, and the right choice depends on what kind of team you are and what you actually need.

This is an honest comparison of three popular CRMs: HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Sambandh. We build Sambandh, so we obviously have a perspective, but we will be straightforward about where each tool shines and where it falls short. You can make your own call.

Three Different Philosophies

Before diving into features, it helps to understand the design philosophy behind each product. These philosophies shape every product decision and determine who each tool serves best.

HubSpot is an enterprise marketing and sales platform that offers a free CRM as a growth lever. The product is designed to funnel businesses from the free tier into increasingly expensive hubs (Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Operations Hub). HubSpot is extraordinarily feature-rich, but that richness comes with complexity and cost. The platform was built for marketing-led sales teams at mid-market and enterprise companies.

Pipedrive is a sales pipeline tool built by salespeople, for salespeople. It does one thing well: visual pipeline management. Everything in Pipedrive revolves around deals moving through stages. It is intentionally focused, which makes it fast to learn but limited if you need capabilities beyond sales tracking.

Sambandh is a hybrid personal and sales CRM built for indie founders, freelancers, and small teams. It combines personal relationship management (staying in touch, remembering context, maintaining your network) with sales pipeline features (deals, forecasting, campaigns). It was designed for people whose personal and professional networks overlap.

HubSpot: The Enterprise Funnel

Best For

Marketing-heavy teams with budget. If you are running inbound marketing campaigns, need multi-touch attribution, and have a team of 10 or more, HubSpot's depth is hard to beat. The ecosystem of integrations is massive, the documentation is thorough, and the platform can scale to enterprise workloads.

What You Get

HubSpot's free plan includes contact management (up to 1,000,000 contacts with limitations), one deal pipeline, email tracking, meeting scheduling, and live chat. It is a legitimate product, not just a demo.

The paid tiers unlock sequences, automation, custom reporting, forecasting, and much more. The feature list at the Professional and Enterprise levels is extensive.

Watch Out For

Cost escalation. The free plan is generous, but the jump from Starter ($20/user/mo) to Professional ($800/mo) is steep, with no middle ground. Add marketing contacts pricing, mandatory onboarding fees, and annual contracts, and the real cost for a small team can be several times the sticker price.

Mandatory bundles. Want email campaigns? That is the Marketing Hub, separate from the Sales Hub. Want a help desk? That is the Service Hub. Each hub has its own pricing, and the costs stack. HubSpot's "CRM Suite" bundles them together, but at prices that assume enterprise budgets.

Complexity. HubSpot's UI has grown with its feature set. Navigating between contacts, companies, deals, marketing tools, and settings involves a lot of menus. For small teams that want simplicity, the learning curve can be frustrating.

Pipedrive: The Sales-Only Tool

Best For

Pure sales teams who live in their pipeline and do not need marketing, personal CRM, or campaign features. If your entire workflow is "move deals through stages and close them," Pipedrive is a clean, focused tool for that job.

What You Get

Pipedrive's Essential plan ($14/user/mo) includes visual pipeline management, contact and deal management, email integration, and basic reporting. The Advanced plan ($29/user/mo) adds workflow automation and email scheduling. Higher tiers add more automation, reporting, and project management.

Watch Out For

No personal CRM. Pipedrive treats every contact as a potential deal. There is no concept of maintaining a personal network, tracking relationships for the sake of the relationship, or managing contacts who are not part of an active sales process.

Limited marketing features. Pipedrive added a Campaigns add-on, but it is a separate product with separate pricing. If you need to send email campaigns to your contact list, you will either pay extra or use a separate tool.

Per-user pricing adds up. At $14/user/mo for Essential, Pipedrive is affordable for a solo user. But for a five-person team, you are at $70/mo for basic features, and the more useful Advanced plan at $29/user runs $145/mo. API access requires the Professional plan at $49/user/mo.

Sales-only mindset. Pipedrive's features, UI, and workflow all assume you are running a sales process. If your work involves networking, community building, partnerships, or any relationship that does not fit neatly into a deal pipeline, the tool feels limiting.

Sambandh: The Hybrid Approach

Best For

Indie founders, freelancers, and small teams who need both personal relationship management and sales pipeline capabilities. If your professional network doubles as your personal network, and if you want one tool for all of it, Sambandh was designed for exactly that use case.

What You Get

Sambandh's free plan includes 50 contacts, one pipeline, and full access to core CRM features. The Pro plan ($19/mo) unlocks unlimited contacts, unlimited pipelines, email sync (Gmail and Outlook), campaigns with BYOK, lead scoring, and full reporting. The Teams plan ($49/seat/mo) adds team collaboration, role-based access, and priority support.

The Differentiator

Sambandh's core design decision is that personal and professional contacts live in the same system. You can track your entire network, set reminders to stay in touch with important people, and spin up a deal pipeline the moment a relationship becomes a business opportunity. The same contact can be a friend, a mentor, and a client without needing to exist in three different tools.

The other key differentiator is pricing. Features that HubSpot reserves for its $800/mo Professional tier (custom reports, lead scoring, campaigns) and features Pipedrive puts behind higher-tier plans (API access, advanced automation) are included in Sambandh Pro at $19/mo.

Watch Out For

Sambandh is a younger product than HubSpot or Pipedrive. The integration ecosystem is smaller. If you need deep integrations with dozens of marketing tools, HubSpot has a larger marketplace. If you need advanced sales automation like AI-powered email generation or call recording, Pipedrive and HubSpot have more mature offerings in those specific areas.

Sambandh also does not have a dedicated mobile app yet. The web app is responsive, but if native iOS or Android apps are a requirement, HubSpot and Pipedrive both have them.

Feature Comparison

Here is a side-by-side look at what each tool offers at price points relevant to small teams.

| Feature | HubSpot Free | Pipedrive Essential | Sambandh Pro | |---|---|---|---| | Price | $0 (limited) | $14/user/mo | $19/mo | | Contacts | 1M (with limitations) | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Email Sync | 1 inbox | 1 inbox | Unlimited (Gmail + Outlook) | | Pipelines | 1 | 1 | 5 | | Lead Scoring | No (paid add-on) | No (Advanced plan) | Yes | | Campaigns | No (Marketing Hub $800+) | No (paid add-on) | Yes (BYOK) | | Reports | Basic (5 dashboards) | Basic | Full | | API Access | Yes | Yes ($49+ plan) | Yes | | Personal CRM | No | No | Yes | | Mobile-Friendly | Yes | Yes | Yes (PWA-ready) |

Pricing at Different Scales

The comparison shifts depending on your team size. Here is what each option costs at common configurations.

Solo Founder

| CRM | Plan | Monthly Cost | |---|---|---| | HubSpot | Free | $0 (with limitations listed above) | | HubSpot | Starter | $20/mo | | Pipedrive | Essential | $14/mo | | Pipedrive | Advanced | $29/mo | | Sambandh | Pro | $19/mo |

At the solo level, all three are competitively priced. The difference is in what you get. Sambandh Pro at $19/mo includes lead scoring, campaigns, and unlimited pipelines. To get those features from HubSpot or Pipedrive, you are looking at significantly higher tiers.

3-Person Team

| CRM | Plan | Monthly Cost | |---|---|---| | HubSpot | Starter | $60/mo | | HubSpot | Professional | $800/mo | | Pipedrive | Essential | $42/mo | | Pipedrive | Advanced | $87/mo | | Sambandh | Teams | $147/mo |

At the three-person level, Pipedrive Essential is the cheapest but also the most limited. HubSpot Starter is affordable but still lacks custom reporting and lead scoring. HubSpot Professional is the most feature-complete but at $800/mo is hard to justify for a small team. Sambandh Teams at $147/mo sits in the middle on price while matching most of HubSpot Professional's feature set for small-team use cases.

5-Person Team

| CRM | Plan | Monthly Cost | |---|---|---| | HubSpot | Starter | $100/mo | | HubSpot | Professional | $1,000/mo (approx.) | | Pipedrive | Essential | $70/mo | | Pipedrive | Advanced | $145/mo | | Sambandh | Teams | $245/mo |

The pattern holds. Pipedrive stays cheaper but offers less. HubSpot Professional costs 4x more than Sambandh Teams. The question is whether the additional features in HubSpot Professional (advanced marketing automation, custom objects, predictive analytics) are worth the premium for your specific team.

The Verdict

There is no universally best CRM. There is the best CRM for your situation.

Choose HubSpot if you are a marketing-led organization with the budget for Professional or Enterprise tiers. HubSpot's depth in marketing automation, attribution, and content management is genuinely best-in-class if you can afford it and have the team to use it.

Choose Pipedrive if you are a pure sales team that needs a clean, focused pipeline tool and nothing else. Pipedrive does pipeline management well, and if that is all you need, it is efficient and affordable.

Choose Sambandh if you are an indie founder, freelancer, or small team that needs both personal relationship management and sales pipeline capabilities. If you want lead scoring, campaigns, and unlimited contacts without paying enterprise prices, Sambandh Pro at $19/mo is hard to beat. And if you value a fast, modern web app that works seamlessly across all your devices, Sambandh delivers.

Try Before You Decide

All three tools offer free tiers or trials. The best way to decide is to use each one with your actual data for a week.

Sambandh's free plan gives you 50 contacts and full access to core features. The 14-day Pro trial unlocks everything so you can test with your real workflow. Sign up at sambandh.io and import your contacts in minutes.

For detailed feature comparisons, visit sambandh.io/compare/hubspot and sambandh.io/compare/pipedrive.