HubSpot vs Salesforce vs Pipedrive: AUD Costs and Features for Small Businesses

This comparison uses the Australian-dollar list prices that HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive publish, works out what a five- or ten-person team pays on each, and sets out what setting one up involves for a small business in Australia or New Zealand.

How the three differ

HubSpot began as marketing software and still leads with it: forms, email, landing pages and automation share one database with the sales pipeline, so you can see which campaign produced which deal. That is the reason to choose it. The catch is that the automation most teams want sits in the Professional tiers, which cost several times the Starter price.

Salesforce is a platform more than a product. Objects, fields, automation and permissions can be built to fit almost any sales process, and the AppExchange marketplace fills the gaps. That flexibility is also its cost: beyond Starter Suite, someone has to design and maintain it.

Pipedrive is built around the visual sales pipeline and the next activity on each deal. It has the lowest paid prices of the three and the least to configure, and it leaves email marketing to a paid add-on or another tool.

What each costs in Australian dollars

List prices checked September 2026 on each vendor's own pricing pages, per user or seat per month. HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive all state in their terms that their fees exclude GST and other taxes.

HubSpot

• Free tools: A$0 for up to two users, with a limit of 1,000 contacts.
• Sales Hub Starter: A$31 a seat a month, paid monthly or annually. The Starter Customer Platform, which adds the Starter editions of Marketing, Service, Content and Data Hub, is also A$31 a seat. HubSpot was offering new customers a limited-time Starter discount when we checked.
• Sales Hub Professional: A$155 a seat a month paid monthly on an annual commitment, or A$140 paid annually, plus a required one-off onboarding fee of A$2,160. This is the tier with sequences, forecasting, automatic lead rotation and up to 300 workflows (Starter allows 50, with restricted triggers and actions).
• Sales Hub Enterprise: A$240 a seat a month, billed annually, plus A$5,040 onboarding. Custom objects start here.
• Marketing Hub Professional, the first tier with HubSpot's workflow-based marketing automation (up to 300 workflows; Starter automates forms and emails with up to 10 actions): A$1,380 a month, or A$1,241 paid annually, including three core seats and 2,000 marketing contacts. Extra core seats start at A$80 a month, and onboarding is a one-off A$4,320.
• One rule that changes the maths: if you hold different editions of different hubs, HubSpot prices every core seat at the highest edition you own. View-only seats are free.

Salesforce

• Free Suite: A$0 for up to two users, without the mobile app.
• Starter Suite: A$35 a user a month, billed monthly or annually. Sales, service and email campaigns in one, with lead assignment and routing.
• Pro Suite: A$140 a user a month, billed annually on a contract. Adds quotes, custom apps and objects, AppExchange apps and Flow automation (Salesforce's table allows five flows per org at this tier). API access costs an extra US$25 a user a month on Pro Suite; Salesforce's Australian page quotes that one in US dollars.
• Core, Advanced and Max: A$273, A$553 and A$770 a user a month, billed annually. Core is the first tier with advanced forecasting and pipeline management, sales territories, opportunity scoring and Flow Builder without the five-flow limit.
• Salesforce's pricing page lists no onboarding fee. Beyond Starter Suite, plan for someone who can administer it: flows, permissions and reports are built, not switched on.

Pipedrive

• Lite: A$19 a seat a month billed annually, or A$34 billed monthly.
• Growth: A$49 annually, A$69 monthly. Adds automations (50 per company), two-way email sync, email open and click tracking, sequences, the meeting scheduler and the forecast view.
• Premium: A$79 annually, A$109 monthly. Adds automatic assignment, a team inbox and phone support, and includes the LeadBooster (lead capture), Projects and Smart Docs add-ons.
• Ultimate: A$109 annually, A$139 monthly. Adds security alerts and rules, an audit log, a sandbox account, and email and phone data enrichment.
• Pipedrive charges for every seat on the account, assigned or not. Campaigns (email marketing) and Web Visitors are paid add-ons on every plan. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial.

New Zealand: none of the three publishes New Zealand-dollar prices. HubSpot and Salesforce contract with New Zealand customers through their Australian companies (HubSpot Australia Pty Ltd and SFDC Australia Pty Ltd). Pipedrive bills New Zealand in US dollars: US$14, US$39, US$59 and US$79 a seat a month on annual billing.

What a team pays in licences

Annual licence cost at list price, before GST, on annual billing. HubSpot Starter and Salesforce Starter Suite cost the same billed monthly; Pipedrive costs more monthly.

Over five years at today's list prices, five users cost A$14,700 on Pipedrive Growth, A$42,000 on Salesforce Pro Suite, and A$44,160 on HubSpot Sales Hub Professional including onboarding. Those are licence costs only. Implementation, integrations and the time someone spends running the system come on top, and they vary too much between businesses to average honestly.

If marketing automation is the reason you are looking at HubSpot, add Marketing Hub: Professional paid annually is A$14,892 a year for three core seats and 2,000 marketing contacts, plus A$4,320 onboarding.

The features that decide it

Which one fits

Choose Pipedrive when

• You need a pipeline your salespeople will keep up to date, and marketing either lives in another tool or does not need automation yet.
• Cost matters: five users on Growth cost A$2,940 a year on annual billing.
• Your team sells from phones and cars. The mobile apps come with every plan.
• You would rather set it up yourself than run a project.

Choose HubSpot when

• Marketing and sales need one database, so every deal can be traced back to the form, email or campaign that started it.
• You are ready to pay for Professional when you need automation. Ten Sales Hub Professional seats cost A$16,800 a year paid annually, plus A$2,160 onboarding; Marketing Hub Professional is a separate subscription.
• Ease of use for people who are not CRM specialists matters more than deep customisation.

Choose Salesforce when

• Your sales process needs its own objects, approval rules, territories or quoting, or the CRM has to connect to an ERP.
• Someone will own the system: an administrator on staff, or a Salesforce partner on call.
• You compare like for like. Pro Suite costs the same A$140 a user as HubSpot Sales Hub Professional paid annually, with no onboarding fee listed; Core, at A$273, is where advanced forecasting, territories and full Flow automation arrive.

What implementation involves for a small business

Whichever platform you choose, the same few jobs decide whether the CRM gets used.

1. Define the pipeline before you import anything. Write down each deal stage and what has to be true for a deal to move to the next one. If a stage means different things to different salespeople, every report built on it will mislead.
2. Clean the data on the way in. Merge duplicates, give every contact one owner, and record whether each person has agreed to receive marketing email. All three will import a spreadsheet; none of them will fix it.
3. Connect every lead source and keep where each lead came from. Website forms, calls and ad-platform lead forms should create records automatically, with the campaign and the ad click ID attached. That is what lets you send qualified leads and closed deals back to Google Ads so it bids for buyers rather than form fills; our guide to Google Ads for B2B SaaS covers how. HubSpot and Salesforce connect to Google's Data Manager directly; Pipedrive is not one of its connectors, so it needs a third-party tool such as Zapier.
4. Follow the spam and privacy rules from the first send. In Australia, the Spam Act 2003 requires consent, clear identification of the sender and an unsubscribe that is honoured within five working days (ACMA's guidance). New Zealand's Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 carries the same three obligations: consent, identity and unsubscribe (Department of Internal Affairs). Keep each consent record in the CRM. If you add personal details to New Zealand contacts from an enrichment service, IPP 3A has required you since 1 May 2026 to tell people when you collect their information from another source, unless an exception applies (Privacy Commissioner).
5. Connect the accounting system if you quote or invoice from it. Before you buy, check how the CRM connects to Xero or MYOB: who builds the connector, and whether it syncs only contacts or quotes and invoices as well.
6. Give it an owner and a weekly habit. One person owns the fields, automations and reports, and the weekly pipeline review happens in the CRM, not in a spreadsheet beside it. When a CRM fails in a small business, the cause is usually adoption rather than the software.

On time: a small team can set Pipedrive up itself. HubSpot takes longer because the marketing side (forms, lists, emails and workflows) has to be built as well as the pipeline. Salesforce beyond Starter Suite is a project, with an administrator or partner involved from the start.

If you are switching CRMs

Moving between the three is mostly a mapping job. Contacts, companies, deals and activities move by export and import; automations, reports and integrations do not, and have to be rebuilt. Leaving a heavily customised Salesforce org is the hardest case, because custom objects need HubSpot Enterprise and every flow has to be rebuilt. Map fields and stages first, migrate a sample, check it, then move the rest.

If you want help choosing a CRM, setting it up or connecting it to your website and ad accounts, see our CRM and marketing automation service.