"We manage our clients in Excel, but we keep losing track." We hear this sentence every week from SMEs in French-speaking Switzerland. The good news: in 2026, the free versions of HubSpot, Brevo, Notion or Zoho are more than enough to structure a serious sales follow-up, provided you know their real limitations. The less good news: those limits are carefully placed to make you pay exactly when you are most dependent on the tool. Here is an honest comparison, with the thresholds in CHF where each solution becomes paid, and our recommendation based on your team size.
Why a CRM, Even a Free One, Changes Everything
A CRM centralises your contacts, your opportunities and the history of every interaction. In practical terms, for a Geneva-based service SME receiving 20 enquiries per month, a well-maintained CRM prevents forgotten follow-ups: if just 2 additional quotes per month convert thanks to better tracking, at an average mandate of CHF 1,500, that represents CHF 36,000 in recovered annual revenue, without spending one more franc on acquisition.
Spreadsheets reach their limits as soon as two people work on the same clients: duplicates, conflicting versions, no overview of the pipeline. A free CRM solves all three problems from day one.
HubSpot Free: The Most Complete, but a Funnel Towards Paid Plans
What the Free Version Includes
- Unlimited contacts (up to one million) with a complete interaction history;
- One visual sales pipeline with customisable stages;
- Web forms, live chat and a shared inbox;
- Email marketing up to 2,000 sends per month;
- Gmail and Outlook integrations to log emails automatically.
The Real Limitations
- A single pipeline: impossible to separate sales, partnerships and renewals;
- Almost no automation: no follow-up sequences, no workflows;
- HubSpot branding forced onto your forms, emails and pages;
- Reporting limited to a few standard dashboards;
- Community-only support, with no dedicated contact.
The Threshold Where You Have to Pay
The Starter plan begins at around CHF 18 per user per month: it removes the branding, unlocks email sequences and adds extra pipelines. The real trap lies elsewhere: as soon as you want advanced marketing automation workflows, HubSpot steers you towards Marketing Hub Pro, roughly CHF 750 per month. It is the steepest price jump on the market. Budget for it before building your entire sales operation on the tool.
Brevo: Email First, with a Decent CRM as a Bonus
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) approaches CRM from the opposite angle to HubSpot: email marketing is the heart of the product, and the sales pipeline comes as a complement. For an SME whose prospecting relies mainly on email campaigns, it is often the most cost-effective choice.
What the Free Version Includes
- Unlimited contacts, with no artificial cap;
- 300 emails per day, with a full campaign editor;
- A sales pipeline with deal tracking, included at no extra cost;
- Sign-up forms and basic segmentation;
- Marketing automation limited to 2,000 contacts.
The Real Limitations
The 300 emails per day cap is the true constraint: a newsletter aimed at 1,200 contacts has to be spread over four days, which ruins any time-sensitive campaign (promotion, event, launch). The Brevo logo appears at the bottom of every email, and reporting remains basic: open and click rates, with no revenue attribution.
The Threshold Where You Have to Pay
The Starter plan begins at around CHF 22 per month for 5,000 monthly emails, with no daily limit and the option to remove the Brevo logo. It is one of the gentlest transitions to paid on the market: pricing depends on sending volume, not the number of users, a real advantage for small teams.
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Notion: The Custom-Built CRM, Paid in Time Rather Than Francs
Notion is not a CRM, but its databases let you build one: a contacts table, an opportunities table, Kanban views by sales stage. The free plan is enough for individual use, and the Plus plan costs around CHF 10 per user per month.
The limitations are structural, not commercial: no built-in email sending, no follow-up sequences, no automatic logging of interactions. Every touchpoint must be entered by hand. For a freelancer managing 15 active prospects, it is workable and even pleasant. Beyond two people or 50 simultaneous opportunities, manual data entry becomes the biggest hidden cost of your sales follow-up.
Zoho CRM and the Other Credible Alternatives
- Zoho CRM: free for up to 3 users, with basic automation workflows included, something HubSpot does not offer. The Standard plan costs around CHF 18 per user per month. The interface is less polished, but the feature-to-price ratio is unbeatable.
- Odoo CRM: free for a single application, open source, very complete. The downside: onboarding is technical and the ecosystem quickly pushes you towards paid modules.
- Streak: a CRM directly inside Gmail, free for light use. Perfect for validating a prospecting approach before investing in a full tool.
The Three Signals That It Is Time to Go Paid
- You follow up manually. If your salespeople copy-paste the same follow-up emails, the automated sequences of a paid plan pay for themselves within weeks.
- Your email volume exceeds the quota. Spreading a campaign over four days to stay within the free limit costs more in missed opportunities than the CHF 22 per month of a Starter plan.
- You are flying blind. Without reporting on conversion rates by stage, you cannot know where your pipeline is leaking. Once revenue depends on the CRM, advanced reporting is no longer a luxury.
Our Recommendation by Team Size
Freelancer or Duo (1 to 2 People)
Start with Notion if your prospect volume is low and you already live in the tool, or with Brevo if email is your main channel. Budget: CHF 0. Switch to a proper CRM as soon as you exceed 30 active opportunities.
Small Team (3 to 10 People)
HubSpot Free is the best starting point: shared pipeline, centralised history, easy adoption. Plan the move to Starter (around CHF 18 per user per month) within 6 to 12 months, as soon as manual follow-ups become unmanageable. If the budget is tight, Zoho CRM, free for up to 3 users, is the most generous alternative.
Established Team (More Than 10 People)
Do not waste time with free versions: their limits will cost you more than the licences. Go straight to a paid plan, compare HubSpot Starter and Zoho Standard against your real use cases, and above all invest in the setup: a poorly configured paid CRM delivers less than a well-maintained free one. This is precisely the kind of project covered by our automation and artificial intelligence service for SMEs: connecting the CRM to your forms, automating follow-ups and making reporting reliable.
Turn Your CRM into a System, Not an Address Book
The best free CRM of 2026 is the one your team will actually use: HubSpot Free for versatility, Brevo for email, Notion for solo flexibility, Zoho for automation on a zero budget. But a tool is only as good as the system around it: where your leads come from, who handles them, and how fast. A website optimised for conversion remains the number one source of a well-filled CRM, and that is exactly what we build with our website creation service in Geneva. And to know what full support would cost, request a free quote: it is clear, with no surprises.
