Free CRM, cap by cap — what each one stops letting you do

A free CRM is not a trial, and it is not a trick; it is a plan with a wall somewhere. Every product below will let you keep your customer list in it indefinitely without paying, and every one of them has picked a different place to stop you: the number of people who can log in, the number of contacts you can store, or the number of records in total. Knowing which wall is nearest to you is the whole decision, so this page prints each one exactly as the vendor's page states it.

The free plans, and what each one caps

Which free CRM is right for which business

If more than one person needs to log in, the list shortens immediately. Zoho CRM's free edition states three users, which is the only stated seat count here that covers a small team rather than a founder and a helper; EngageBay's free plan publishes no seat number at all and caps contacts instead. HubSpot's pricing page describes its free tools as free for up to two users with no credit card required, and Capsule's free plan states a maximum of two users. Bigin's free plan states a single user, so it is a solo tool by design.

If storage is the constraint instead, the order reverses. Capsule stops at 250 contacts and EngageBay at 250; Bigin's free plan states 500 records, which counts contacts, companies and deals together rather than contacts alone. Neither Zoho CRM's nor HubSpot's free tier states a record or contact ceiling on the pricing page we read, which is not the same as having none — it means the number is not published where a buyer can see it.

What "free forever" actually means here

None of these plans expire, and none of them ask for a card to start. What they do instead is remove a specific thing you will want later. HubSpot's free tier allows up to three canned snippets, up to three email templates per account and a maximum of one personal meetings link, and stamps HubSpot branding on the things your customers see. Zoho CRM's free edition allows data export up to ten times. Capsule's free plan offers one sales pipeline and five custom fields.

None of that is unreasonable for a product that costs nothing. It does mean that "free" is a starting position rather than a destination for most businesses, and the honest question when you pick one is not "is this enough today" but "what does it cost on the day it stops being enough".

The price of the first step up

A free plan's real cost is the plan behind it, because moving your customer list to a different vendor is the one job nobody wants twice. Read on 24 September 2026, the first paid rung looks like this: Bigin's Express is $7 per user per month billed yearly and $9 billed monthly; Zoho CRM's Standard is $14 billed annually and $20 billed monthly; Capsule's Starter is $18 per user per month on the annual term, which lifts the 250-contact ceiling to 30,000; EngageBay's Basic is $13.79 per user per month on the yearly term with 500 contacts.

HubSpot's step is the one to look at hardest before you commit a business to its free tools. Starter Customer Platform is advertised from $7 per seat per month under a limited-time offer for new customers, with $20 per seat per month shown struck through; but the tier above it, Sales Hub Professional, is $90 per seat per month and carries a stated required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500. If there is any chance your business needs Professional features within a year or two, price that step now rather than after the migration.

Free CRMs we did not include, and why

Salesforce has no free tier for small businesses and runs no publisher programme, so it appears on this site as an editorial reference point and never as a link. Pipedrive, Freshsales and Less Annoying CRM have no free plan at all: Pipedrive offers a 14-day trial, Freshsales shows no free plan on its pricing page, and Less Annoying CRM offers a 30-day trial and then charges one flat $15 per user per month. A trial is a demonstration, not a free CRM, so none of the three belongs on this page.

We also left out CRMs whose free plans we could not read at source. That is a rule rather than an omission: if a vendor's pricing page does not display a number to us, this site writes "not published" instead of copying a figure from a comparison blog.

Getting off a free plan without losing the list

Every CRM here can export your contacts, and the time to find out how is the week you start, not the week you leave. Two things are worth doing on day one. First, export once from the free plan and keep the file, so you know what the export actually contains — several CRMs export contacts and companies happily and leave notes, tasks or pipeline history behind. Second, note the limit on exports: Zoho CRM's free edition states data export up to ten times, which is plenty for a business that plans and awkward for one that improvises.

If you are already past the free tier in your head and want the paid comparison, the ranked small-business CRM list prices eight of them per seat with the billing term attached. If you are not sure a CRM is the right shape of tool at all, the case for keeping a spreadsheet sets out the three moments when it stops working.