Custom CRM vs HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive: which should you choose?
The short answer
Choose an off-the-shelf CRM if your sales process looks like most businesses' — people at companies moving through a pipeline. Pipedrive suits small teams that want a simple pipeline, HubSpot suits businesses that want marketing and sales in one place, and Salesforce suits larger organisations with the budget to configure it. Consider a custom CRM when your core records aren't really contacts and deals, when keeping data accurate is a manual job, or when you are paying for several tools plus workarounds to run one process.
The short version
Most businesses should start with an off-the-shelf CRM. They are cheap to begin with, quick to set up, well supported and good at the standard case. A custom CRM earns its place when your business is not the standard case — and you can usually tell, because your team is already working around the tool.
What the big three are good at
| Pipedrive | HubSpot | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Small sales teams that live in a pipeline | Businesses wanting marketing, sales and service together | Larger organisations with complex, configurable processes |
| Strength | Simple and fast to adopt | Broad suite, strong marketing tools | Almost anything can be configured |
| Watch out for | Limited beyond the sales pipeline | Key features sit in higher tiers; cost grows with contacts and seats | Usually needs an admin or consultant to set up and maintain |
| Pricing model | Per user, per month | Per seat and tier, plus marketing contacts | Per user, per month, by edition, plus add-ons |
All three are mature products. Check each vendor’s current pricing page rather than relying on numbers you have seen quoted — tiers and limits change often.
Where the real costs hide
The licence is rarely the whole bill. Before comparing, count:
- Seats as you grow. Per-user pricing is cheap at five people and noticeable at fifty.
- Tier jumps. The one feature you need is often in the next tier up, for everyone.
- Configuration. Salesforce in particular is a platform you configure, which usually means paying someone to do it.
- Workarounds. The spreadsheet that sits next to the CRM, the manual exports, the person who re-types data between systems — that is cost too, just on payroll instead of an invoice.
Three signals a custom CRM is worth considering
1. Your core records aren’t contacts and deals. If what you actually manage is schools, properties, vehicles, projects or members — with their own relationships and rules — every standard CRM forces you to bend that into “companies” and “deals”.
2. Keeping the data right is somebody’s job. If people spend hours checking and updating records by hand, a system designed around your data can do much of that automatically. That is what we built for Yeppe: a CRM whose contact data finds, checks and refreshes itself.
3. One process runs across three tools. If a single customer journey touches a CRM, a spreadsheet and a separate email or invoicing tool — and someone keeps them in sync — one system built around that journey can replace all three.
If none of these apply, stay off-the-shelf. If two or more do, it’s worth a conversation. Our guide should you build a custom CRM? goes deeper on the test.
The trade-offs of going custom
A custom CRM fits your process exactly, has no per-seat licence, and you own the code and data. In exchange you take on the cost of building it and keeping it running, and you depend on whoever maintains it. The sensible way to reduce that risk is to build the smallest useful version on your real data first, and judge it before committing further.
A middle path
You don’t always have to choose. Some businesses keep an off-the-shelf CRM for the standard parts and build a small custom tool for the one process it handles badly — then connect the two. It is often the cheapest way to fix the part that actually hurts.