folk vs HubSpot CRM
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — folk is from $30/user/mo billed monthly, HubSpot CRM is free tier available.
- How to start: folk is from $30/user/mo billed monthly, HubSpot CRM is free tier available.
- Where they differ: only HubSpot CRM has mobile app and sso (saml); both offer public api.
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What folk is
What folk isfolk is a lightweight CRM organised around relationships and contact groups rather than deal pipelines. It fits agencies, investors and founders whose work is a network of people rather than a funnel of deals. If your team needs forecasting, quotas and stage-weighted pipelines, this is deliberately not that tool.
What HubSpot CRM is
What HubSpot CRM isHubSpot's CRM is free for up to two users and stays free indefinitely, which makes it one of the few genuinely usable free CRMs — but the free tier is shaped by two constraints that decide whether you can work in it: HubSpot branding appears on nearly everything you publish or send, and the per-object allowances are small enough to hit quickly. Three email templates, three snippets, one deal pipeline, one meetings link and 2,000 email sends a month are the working limits. The Starter Customer Platform lifts those by orders of magnitude for a per-seat price that is currently discounted heavily for new customers only.
Side by side
| folk | HubSpot CRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | CRM |
| How to start | $30/user/moverified | Free tiernot a monthly price |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile app | No | Yes |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | No |
| SSO (SAML) | No | Yes |
| Visit | folk ↗ | HubSpot CRM ↗ |
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What folk is built to do
- Contact-centric model
- Organises records around people and groups rather than deal stages.
- Inbox and LinkedIn capture
- Pulls contacts and conversation history in from mail and social profiles.
- Shared contact groups
- Lets a team maintain one enriched list instead of separate address books.
What HubSpot CRM is built to do
- Free CRM core
- Contacts, deals, live chat, forms and email tracking at no cost for up to 2 users.
- Starter Customer Platform
- Starter tiers of Marketing, Sales, Service, Content and Data Hub in one subscription.
- HubSpot Credits
- A separate balance consumed by the Prospecting and Data AI agents.
Choose folk if
- Small teams that want a CRM built around relationships rather than a sales pipeline
- Trying it properly first — a two-week trial unlocks premium features with no card
- Teams that use contact enrichment; 500 email lookups a month are included on Standard
Skip folk if
- You want a free tier — folk has none, only a two-week trial
- You need volume enrichment: Standard caps email lookups at 500/month and messages at 2,000/member
- You are one person and price-sensitive; $24/member/mo annual is not an entry-level CRM price
Choose HubSpot CRM if
- Teams of one or two: the CRM is free indefinitely with no credit card and no trial clock
- Businesses that want sales, marketing and service in one place — Starter bundles all five hubs from $7 per seat per month
- Anyone hitting the free template and snippet ceilings, which go from 3 to 5,000 and 10,000 respectively on Starter
- Companies publishing content, since Starter removes HubSpot branding from chat, email, landing pages and blogs
Skip HubSpot CRM if
- You need a third user — the free tier stops at 2 and there is no free expansion
- You publish customer-facing content on the free plan: HubSpot branding appears on chat, email, pages and the blog, and the favicon is fixed
- You are budgeting beyond the promotion: the $7 per seat figure is new-customer only and shown against $20 per seat monthly
- You run more than one sales process on free, which allows a single deal pipeline
- You plan to lean on the AI agents, which draw on a separate HubSpot Credits balance rather than being included
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
HubSpot CRM
Vendor pricing page verified · reviewed 2026-09-10
folk: pros & cons
- Feels like a contact book, not a sales system
- Good browser extension for capturing contacts
- Simple to adopt
- Limited pipeline and forecasting
- Fewer integrations
- Not built for large sales teams
HubSpot CRM: pros & cons
- Free for up to 2 users with no credit card and no time limit
- Starter lifts template and snippet limits by three orders of magnitude
- One subscription covers marketing, sales, service, content and data
- Free tier stamps HubSpot branding on public-facing output
- Headline Starter price is a new-customer promotion
- AI agents consume a separate HubSpot Credits balance
Our verdict on folk
A relief if traditional CRMs feel heavy. Sales teams needing forecasting should look elsewhere.
Our verdict on HubSpot CRM
The free tier is real, not a trial — but count the branding and the per-object caps before committing. And read the Starter price as a promotion, not a rate.
Published plans, side by side
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page and is shown with the sentence it came from. Where a vendor publishes no plan prices, we say so rather than guess.
folk
- Standard$30/user/mo billed monthly
Standard $30/member/month monthly, $24 billed annually
- Premium$60/user/mo billed monthly
Premium $60/member/month monthly, $48 annually
- Enterprise$100/user/mo billed annually
Enterprise from $100/member/month, $80 annually
HubSpot CRM
- Free Tools$0/mo
Free Tools $0/mo: free for up to 2 users, no credit card required, including free Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data and Revenue tools
- Starter Customer Platform$7/user/mo billed monthly
Starter Customer Platform starts at $7/mo/seat, shown against $20/mo/seat on the monthly-commit option, and includes 500 HubSpot Credits plus the Starter tier of Marketing, Sales, Service, Content and Data Hub
folk vs HubSpot CRM: common questions
- Does folk or HubSpot CRM have a free plan?
- Folk has no free plan listed, while HubSpot CRM has a free tier with limits.
- Which is cheaper once you start paying, folk or HubSpot CRM?
- HubSpot CRM has the cheaper first paid step: Starter Customer Platform at $7/user/mo billed monthly, against Standard at $30/user/mo billed monthly for folk — 4.3× the price. Both figures come from the vendors' own pricing pages.
- What is the difference between folk and HubSpot CRM?
- On the criteria we check, only HubSpot CRM has mobile app and sso (saml); both offer public api. The table above lists every criterion side by side.