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If you want a CRM that costs $0, as of October 2026 the vendor pricing pages I loaded show real free plans at HubSpot (2 users, 1,000 contacts), Zoho CRM (3 users), Capsule (2 users, 250 contacts) and Bitrix24. Pipedrive, monday CRM and Less Annoying CRM are trial-only on the pages I checked. I wrote this at Ecommerce Paradise for store owners who sell higher-ticket products and need to track quote requests, follow-ups and repeat buyers without adding another monthly bill.
Every figure below comes from each vendor’s own pricing page. Where a page did not show a number, I say so instead of guessing. Plans change, so treat this as a snapshot and confirm on the vendor page before you migrate anything.
Free CRM Plans Compared: Limits at a Glance
This table is the quick answer. “Free plan” means a plan you can stay on with no time limit. “Trial only” means the page lists a trial and no permanent free tier.
| CRM | Free plan? | Users | Contacts / records | What the page says is gated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Yes | Up to 2 | 1,000 contacts, plus 1,000 records across other standard objects | Sales automation workflows, pipelines and calling are listed as paid on the pricing page; HubSpot branding on forms and emails |
| Zoho CRM | Yes | 3 | Record limit not shown on the pages I loaded | 10 custom email templates, 5,000 API calls a day, data export up to 10 times |
| Capsule | Yes | Up to 2 | 250 contacts | 5 custom fields and 1 sales pipeline on free; multiple pipelines and workflow automations start on Growth |
| Bitrix24 | Yes | Page conflicts: card says 1 to 2, FAQ says unlimited | No contact or deal cap stated | Telephony and Market apps are paid; email integration and sales pipelines start on the paid Basic plan; sales automation is listed from Professional |
| Freshsales | Mentioned only in page metadata | Not shown | Not shown | Pricing section lists Growth, Pro and Enterprise; 21-day trial |
| Pipedrive | No, trial only | Per seat | Not stated | 14-day trial, no card required; Lite is $14 per seat per month billed annually |
| monday CRM | No, trial only | Minimum 3 on CRM plans | Basic: 1,000 active contacts and deals | 14-day trial; the free plan on monday.com covers work management, not CRM |
| Less Annoying CRM | No, trial only | Per user | Suggested to stay under 50,000 contacts and companies | One plan at $15 per user per month; 30-day trial |
The pattern to notice: the free plans cap users, not just features. If you plan to add a closer, a virtual assistant and a bookkeeper who all need to see deals, you will probably hit the user limit before you hit any feature limit.
What “Free CRM” Really Means for a Store Owner
A CRM is the place where you record who contacted you, what they asked about, what you quoted and when you said you would follow up. For a store that sells a $200 item, you can get away with email and a spreadsheet. For the stores I teach about, the higher-ticket kind covered in what high-ticket dropshipping is, a buyer often asks questions before paying a few thousand dollars, and the sale can depend on whether you replied on day two or day nine.
That is the case for a CRM, even a free one. The case against paying for one early is simple: at the start you have a handful of open conversations, and a plan with 2 users and a few hundred contacts covers that. Software is also a business expense you will want to record properly, which ties into the setup choices in business formation for high-ticket dropshipping.
HubSpot: The Most Generous Free Tier on Paper
HubSpot’s pricing page lists a free plan with up to 2 users, 1,000 contacts and 1,000 records across the other standard objects, with no credit card required. It also lists 2,000 marketing email sends per calendar month with HubSpot branding, 1 blog, up to 30 landing pages and 10 dashboards. The HubSpot product page describes free contact management, deal tracking, tasks, email tracking, live chat and a form builder.
The limits show up in the details. The pricing page I loaded puts sales automation workflows and calling minutes in the paid column, and branding stays on your forms, meeting links and emails until you pay. The two HubSpot pages I loaded also disagree slightly: the product page lists deal pipelines as a free feature, while the pricing page lists pipelines as paid. Create a test pipeline in a free account before you rely on it.
Starter pricing is shown as $7 per seat per month with a “save up to 65%” promotion for new customers, and the page says the promotion is limited-time, so I would not plan a budget around it. If you want the full tier breakdown, I wrote it up in HubSpot pricing explained. You can start with HubSpot’s free CRM here.
Best fit: a solo seller or a two-person team who wants email tracking, a clean contact timeline and room to grow into a bigger system.
Zoho CRM: Free for 3 Users
Zoho’s pricing page describes its free edition as “forever free, for 3 users.” The listed free features include contact management, follow-up reminders, workflow automation, up to 10 custom email templates, tasks, meetings and calls, free data import, standard reports, 5,000 API calls a day and mobile apps. Data export is limited to 10 times.
The pages I loaded did not show a record limit or storage limit for the free edition, and they did not show dollar prices for the Standard, Professional or Enterprise editions, only a price calculator. The one price shown was Zoho CRM Plus, starting at $20 per user per month. If that matters to your decision, check the calculator on Zoho’s page for the current numbers. I cover the editions in more detail in Zoho CRM pricing explained. The trial options are in a separate post on Zoho free trial lengths and prices.
Three users is the headline. That is one more than HubSpot and Capsule, which matters when you have a founder, a closer and a support person. You can look at Zoho CRM here.
Best fit: a small team that wants automation on the free tier and does not mind a busier interface.
Capsule: Simple, With a Tight Contact Cap
Capsule’s pricing page lists a free plan for a maximum of 2 users with 250 contacts, 5 custom fields and 1 sales pipeline. It includes custom sales milestones, custom task categories and a mail connection through Gmail or Outlook. Paid plans are Starter (30,000 contacts), Growth (60,000 contacts, multiple pipelines, workflow automations), Advanced (120,000 contacts) and Ultimate, with a 14-day trial and no card required on the first three.
The page I loaded did not show dollar prices for the paid plans, only that annual billing saves up to 18%, so check the live page. I have a full Capsule CRM review. Plans and hidden costs are covered in the Capsule pricing guide.
The plan details above come from Capsule’s own pricing page.
Best fit: someone who wants a calm, small-footprint CRM and whose contact list is short, such as a store that works from a few hundred quote requests a year.
Bitrix24: Free, But the Page Contradicts Itself
Bitrix24 markets a free plan with 5 GB of storage, basic CRM (deals and contacts), tasks with Kanban and Gantt views, shared calendars, and chat and video calls. The pricing card says “100% free for 1 to 2 users,” while the FAQ on the same page says you can add an unlimited number of users. The page does not explain the difference, so test it during signup.
The page states no contact or deal cap for the free plan. It lists telephony and Bitrix24 Market apps as paid-only, and email integration and sales pipelines show up from the paid Basic plan, while sales automation is listed from the Professional plan. Paid plans are priced per organization, not per seat: Basic is 5 users for $49 a month billed annually ($69 if billed monthly), Standard is 50 users for $99 annual ($144 monthly), and Professional is 100 users for $199 annual ($289 monthly). That flat pricing is the reason Bitrix24 can be cheaper for a bigger team, and I go through the trade-offs in my Bitrix24 review. The vendor’s own pricing is at bitrix24.com.
Best fit: a team that also wants tasks, chat and a project board in the same tool, and can tolerate a steeper learning curve.
Freshsales: Free Plan Mentioned, Limits Not Shown
This is the one where I have to be careful. The Freshworks pricing page’s meta description says Freshsales has a free plan, but the visible pricing section lists only Growth at $9 per user per month, Pro at $39 and Enterprise at $59 (all billed annually), plus a 21-day free trial with the full CRM. The page did not show what a free plan includes, how many users it allows or any contact limits, and I did not find “free forever” wording on it.
My conclusion is limited to what the page shows: I cannot tell you the limits of a Freshsales free plan from the page I loaded. If you are considering it, open the signup flow on the Freshworks pricing page and read the plan card before you commit contacts to it.
Best fit: teams that expect to pay anyway and like the low $9 entry price on Growth.
Pipedrive: No Free Plan, But a Clean Trial
Pipedrive’s pricing page lists no free plan. Each plan has a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. Prices are per seat per month billed annually: Lite $14, Growth $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79. The page did not show monthly-billing prices.
Lite lists lead, calendar and pipeline management, AI-powered report creation, a real-time sales feed and 500+ integrations. Growth adds full email sync with tracking, automations and nurturing sequences, forecast reports and a meeting scheduler. In plain terms, if you want email sync and automation, you are on the $39 plan, not the $14 one. I compare it with similar tools in Pipedrive alternatives. You can also try Pipedrive’s 14-day trial here.
Best fit: a sales-led seller who lives in a pipeline view and is happy to pay once the trial proves it.
monday CRM: Free Plan Exists, But Not for CRM
This one confuses people. monday.com has a free plan, but it is for work management: up to 2 seats, up to 3 boards and 3 docs. The CRM pricing page lists no free tier. It offers a 14-day trial, and plans start at 3 users.
The CRM plans listed were Basic at $12 per seat per month (1 workspace, 1,000 active contacts and deals, 5 columns per board), Standard at $17 (10,000 active contacts and deals, 250 automations a month), Pro at $28 (100,000, 25,000 automations) and Ultimate by quote. The page also showed higher struck-through figures of $18, $25 and $41 next to those prices, and the page contradicts itself on them: the billing toggle says yearly saves 33%, which matches those figures, but the FAQ says yearly saves 18% and that monthly plans are not discounted. Because I cannot tell which is right from the page, I am not quoting a monthly price, so check the checkout screen. My longer take is in the monday CRM review. For plan detail, see the monday CRM pricing guide.
You can see monday CRM here. The figures above come from the vendor’s own pricing page.
Best fit: a team already using monday for projects that wants CRM in the same place.
Less Annoying CRM: No Free Plan, One Flat Price
Less Annoying CRM’s pricing page shows no free plan. It lists one plan at $15 per user per month, plus tax, with everything included, a 30-day trial with no payment details needed, and 25 GB of file storage per user. There is no strict contact cap, though the page suggests keeping total contacts and companies below 50,000.
I include it because the “free” label is not always the cheapest long-term path. Two users on this plan cost $30 a month, or $360 a year, with no feature tiers to climb. You can compare plans on their pricing page.
Best fit: a small team that wants to stop thinking about plan tiers and will pay a flat fee for that.
Who Each Free Plan Fits
Solo high-ticket seller
If it is just you, HubSpot or Capsule is where I would start. Both cap you at 2 users, which does not matter when you are the only one in the account. HubSpot gives you 1,000 contacts and a lot of free tooling. Capsule gives you 250 contacts, which is enough for the quote requests of a store that sells a few dozen big orders a quarter and keeps a short list of repeat buyers. This is opinion, not a rule: pick the one whose screen you will actually open each morning.
Small team of 2 to 3
Zoho CRM is the one with 3 users on the free edition, which is why it is the obvious pick for a founder plus two helpers. Bitrix24 is the other candidate, but test the user limit first, since the page states two different numbers.
Team that expects to pay within six months
Do not burn weeks migrating twice. If you already know you will want email sync and automation, start a trial on Pipedrive Growth, Freshsales Growth or Less Annoying CRM, and treat the free tiers as the fallback. A paid plan for 3 people at $9 per user is $27 a month. At $39 per user it is $117 a month, or $1,404 a year. Those are the numbers worth comparing against the hours you save.
Cost When You Outgrow the Free Plan: Worked Examples
These are examples with stated assumptions, using list prices from the pages above as of October 2026 and ignoring tax, discounts and add-ons.
| Scenario | Plan and assumption | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-person store, Pipedrive Lite | 2 seats x $14, billed annually | $28 | $336 |
| 3-person team, Pipedrive Growth | 3 seats x $39, billed annually | $117 | $1,404 |
| 3-person team, monday CRM Basic | 3 seats x $12 (minimum 3 seats) | $36 | $432 |
| 3-person team, Freshsales Growth | 3 seats x $9, billed annually | $27 | $324 |
| 2-person store, Less Annoying CRM | 2 users x $15 | $30 | $360 |
| 5-person team, Bitrix24 Basic | Flat $49 per organization, billed annually | $49 | $588 |
The check: $14 x 2 = $28, and $28 x 12 = $336. $39 x 3 = $117, and $117 x 12 = $1,404. $12 x 3 = $36, and $36 x 12 = $432. $9 x 3 = $27, and $27 x 12 = $324. $15 x 2 = $30, and $30 x 12 = $360. $49 x 12 = $588. The Bitrix24 number looks cheap per head ($49 across 5 users is $9.80 each), but only if you will use the tasks and chat that come bundled.
When to Upgrade From a Free CRM
Here are the signals I would watch for. None of them is a hard rule.
- You hit the user cap. HubSpot, Capsule and the Bitrix24 card all point at 2 users, Zoho at 3. Sharing a login to get around it is a bad idea, because you lose the record of who said what.
- You hit the contact cap. Capsule’s 250 contacts and HubSpot’s 1,000 are real ceilings. If you import every email subscriber into the CRM, you will reach them fast, so keep the CRM for people in an active conversation.
- You need follow-up automation. Reminders are free on most plans. Sequences that send a second and third email on their own usually sit on a paid tier.
- You want a second pipeline. Capsule’s free plan has 1 pipeline, and multiple pipelines start on Growth. A store that runs separate flows for quotes, wholesale and returns will want more than one.
- You need your branding. HubSpot’s free forms and emails carry its branding, which matters when a $2,000 buyer expects a professional-looking reply.
Migration Tips: Moving In and Out of a Free CRM
The biggest risk with a free CRM is the move, not the price. A few habits make it painless.
- Keep your own spreadsheet of contacts. Export to CSV every month. Zoho’s free edition limits data export to 10 times, so do not waste exports on test runs.
- Use standard fields. Name, email, phone, company, deal value and stage move cleanly between systems. Custom fields are where imports break. Capsule allows only 5 on its free plan anyway.
- Record where each lead came from. A simple “source” field (ad, organic, supplier referral) is worth more than a dozen custom fields, and it carries over to any tool.
- Log supplier contacts separately from buyers. If you are sourcing products, keep that list in its own place. My guide to finding suppliers for high-ticket dropshipping explains what to track for each supplier, and those notes do not belong in a buyer pipeline.
- Test the import with 20 records first. Check that notes, deal stages and dates land in the right place before you move the full list.
- Do not cancel the old tool the day you switch. Run both for two weeks, then export a final backup.
Picking a CRM Around Your Niche
The longer your sales cycle, the more a CRM earns its keep. Niches with higher prices and more questions, such as furniture, mobility gear, fitness equipment or outdoor products, produce long email threads and repeated follow-ups. If you are still deciding what to sell, my high-ticket niches list shows which categories tend to need that kind of hand-holding. A store selling impulse-priced items can usually skip the CRM and use its email tool.
My Bottom Line
If you want the cheapest workable start, open a free HubSpot account if you are working alone or with one partner, and Zoho CRM if you have three people. Keep Capsule in mind if you prefer a quieter screen. Treat Pipedrive, monday CRM and Less Annoying CRM as paid tools with trials, because that is how their pages present them. Treat Freshsales as unconfirmed until you read the plan card at signup.
For comparisons that go beyond free plans, I have a roundup of the best CRM software for small business. A more focused piece covers the best CRM for high-ticket sales.
FAQ
What is the best free CRM in 2026?
It depends on team size. As of October 2026, HubSpot’s pricing page lists a free plan for up to 2 users with 1,000 contacts, and Zoho’s lists a free edition for 3 users. For a solo seller I would try HubSpot first, and for three people I would try Zoho.
Does Pipedrive have a free plan?
Not on the pricing page I loaded. It lists a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, then paid plans starting at $14 per seat per month billed annually for Lite.
Is monday CRM free?
The CRM pricing page lists no free plan, only a 14-day trial and a Basic plan at $12 per seat per month with a 3-user minimum. monday.com does have a free plan, but it covers work management for up to 2 seats, not CRM.
Do free CRMs have contact limits?
Some do. HubSpot lists 1,000 contacts and Capsule lists 250. Zoho and Bitrix24 did not show a contact limit on the pages I loaded, so check the plan card at signup.
Can I move from a free CRM to a paid one later?
Yes, and the easiest path is to export your contacts and deals to CSV and import them into the new tool using standard fields. Test with a small batch first, and keep the old account active for a couple of weeks.
Related Articles
If you are still comparing tools and costs, these posts go deeper on the CRMs and pricing covered above.
- 6 Best CRM Software for High-Ticket Ecommerce Businesses in 2026
- 7 Best Simple CRM Software for Small Businesses in 2026
- HubSpot Alternatives: 7 CRM and Marketing Platforms Compared for 2026
- Best Salesforce Alternatives in 2026: 5 CRMs Compared by Price, Free Plans and Fit
- monday.com Alternatives: 5 Tools Compared for Store Owners (2026)
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and world traveler from Seattle, Washington, and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
He maintains homes in Seattle and Bali, spends most of the year overseas, and usually returns to Seattle for about a month each summer.
