HubSpot
Ranked 3 of 4 CRM software by recommenders
Recommended for CRM workflows and data cleanup, and as a base for custom tooling. The most common caveat is that it is expensive and complex.
Recommended for CRM workflows and data cleanup, and as a base for custom tooling. The most common caveat is that it is expensive and complex.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 36%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Expensive compared with alternatives
“Sure almost anything will be better and cheaper that hubspot.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “AI agents are starting to eat SaaS” “they often felt too complex, restrictive, or expensive as teams grow”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “customermates.com – AI-first, Open-source, self-hostable CRM” “HubSpot was too expensive”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Munin – open-source headless HubSpot alternative” Complex and hard to use
“they often felt too complex, restrictive, or expensive as teams grow”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “customermates.com – AI-first, Open-source, self-hostable CRM” “especially because hubspot is terribly not easy”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: A personal CRM for events, meetups, IRL” “Hubspot is surprisingly horrible”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “We Got This Wrong. and We Are Fixing It”
Other CRM software people recommend
The three most recommended other CRM software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce | 34 | 121 | 22% | 9 | — | — |
| DenchClaw | 10 | 9 | 53% | 1 | — | — |
| HubSpotThis page | 9 | 16 | 36% | 6 | — | — |
| Twenty CRM | 6 | 8 | 43% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
24 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I've taken a sledge hammer to many of the SAAS tools we use in our business”
“I was a bit surprised by this, given the relative ease of making it more secure.”
“making UI updates designed to force, trick, or confuse me into using their tool”
“ai >>> sales people or hubspot”
“for anyone who's had the misfortune of using HubSpot, surely they met exactly the expected standard”
“Hubspot is surprisingly horrible”
“ToS missteps notwithstanding, it's a bit more than your data surfaced back to you.”
“These are the HubSpot leads, data mined from your own HubSpot account.”
“HubSpot was too expensive”
“found the most value there in entity linking, data cleanup and general data processing”
“Hubspot (who I don't like either but they're better than SF)”
“seed a fully functional test environment in Hubspot with all functionality leveraged”
“Systems like quickbooks, hubspot, payment processors all have tiers”
“This is content marketing from Hubspot. I dont need to hear opinions on how to live my life from a billion dollar company.”
“especially because hubspot is terribly not easy”
“they often felt too complex, restrictive, or expensive as teams grow”
“every single HubSpot tab I have uses 300-400MB which is ridiculous”
“They should both be blacklisted yet most of their email goes into the inbox.”
“someone at hubspot sunset their v1 api a few weeks too early”
“No need for Hubspot when you have google sheets + AI-made plugin for this.”
“Sure almost anything will be better and cheaper that hubspot.”
“to make me happy to have Hubspot is a feat”
“HubSpot handles the broader CRM workflows”
“Now that is a good use for ai.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.