Monday CRM vs HubSpot 2026: Which CRM Actually Wins?

Here's the deal — most CRM comparison articles are written by people who've spent about 20 minutes in a demo. I've actually spent serious time inside both of these platforms — configuring pipelines, chasing down integrations, rage-clicking through onboarding flows — so you don't have to. If you're trying to decide between Monday CRM vs HubSpot in 2026, you're in the right place.

Both tools are genuinely good. That's what makes this comparison tricky. Monday CRM is a visual, flexible sales platform built on top of monday.com's project management DNA. HubSpot is a full-blown CRM ecosystem with marketing, sales, and service hubs that's been growing aggressively for years. They're not really competing for the same customer — but a lot of buyers still end up comparing them side by side. So let's settle this properly.

This comparison is aimed at small-to-medium businesses, sales teams, and founders trying to figure out where to invest in 2026. Whether you're switching from a spreadsheet or migrating from Salesforce, there's something useful here for you.

Monday CRM vs HubSpot: Quick Comparison Table

Monday CRM Overview

Monday Crm

Monday CRM didn't start as a CRM — and honestly, that shows in the best possible way. It grew out of monday.com's work OS platform, which means it brings a level of visual flexibility that most dedicated CRMs just can't match. You see everything as customizable boards, which feels intuitive if your team already thinks in tasks and workflows. Fun fact: some of the teams I've seen get the most out of it are not traditional sales teams at all — operations and client services folks love it just as much.

Key Features

• Visual pipeline management with drag-and-drop deal cards
• Customizable columns — add fields for anything: deal size, lead source, custom tags
• Built-in automation — trigger emails, update statuses, assign tasks automatically
• Contact and account management with activity tracking
• Sales forecasting dashboards that are actually readable
• Email integration with Gmail and Outlook, including email tracking
• Lead capture forms and basic web forms
• Collaboration tools baked in (comments, @mentions, file sharing)

Pricing

Monday CRM runs on a per-seat model with four main tiers:

• Basic — ~$12/seat/month (billed annually) — contacts, pipelines, basic dashboards
• Standard — ~$17/seat/month — adds timeline view, advanced search, 250 automation actions/month
• Pro — ~$28/seat/month — sales forecasting, email tracking, 25,000 automation actions/month
• Enterprise — Custom pricing — advanced security, unlimited automations, dedicated support

Worth noting: Monday CRM requires a minimum of 3 seats, so the real entry price is higher than it looks on paper. A lot of people miss this and get annoyed when they go to check out.

Best For

Teams that want flexibility over structure. If your sales process is a little unconventional — or if you're already using monday.com for project management — Monday CRM is a natural fit. It's especially strong for SMBs that don't need native marketing tools.

HubSpot Overview

Try HubSpot

HubSpot has been around since 2006, and at this point it's basically an institution in the CRM world. What started as a marketing tool has evolved into one of the most comprehensive customer platforms on the market. Honestly, I think HubSpot's brand reputation sometimes overshadows how genuinely good the core product is — people either worship it or dismiss it, and both camps are missing nuance. The free CRM is legitimately impressive — I've seen startups run on it for 2-3 years without paying a cent.

Key Features

• Free CRM core — contacts, deals, tasks, basic email
• Marketing Hub — email campaigns, landing pages, ad management, lead scoring
• Sales Hub — sequences, deal tracking, meeting scheduling, CPQ
• Service Hub — ticketing, knowledge base, customer feedback
• CMS Hub — website and blog management (this is where it gets deep)
• Powerful workflow automation across all hubs
• Extensive reporting — custom dashboards, revenue attribution, funnel analytics
• AI-powered tools — content assistant, predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence
• 1,500+ integrations in the app marketplace

Pricing

HubSpot's pricing is more complex — each hub has its own tiers:

• Free — CRM core, limited marketing, sales, and service tools
• Starter — ~$15/seat/month — removes HubSpot branding, more email sends, basic automation
• Professional — ~$90/seat/month — full automation, reporting, custom properties, sequences
• Enterprise — ~$150/seat/month — advanced permissions, custom objects, predictive scoring

Look, those Professional and Enterprise prices add up fast when you're buying multiple hubs. A full HubSpot stack at the Professional tier can easily run $800–$1,500+/month for a small team. I've watched founders go pale when they realize this mid-sales call with a HubSpot rep.

Best For

Businesses that want an all-in-one platform covering marketing, sales, and service. HubSpot is exceptional for inbound-focused companies, content marketers, and teams that want everything in one place without duct-taping 6 different tools together.

Feature-by-Feature Breakdown: Monday CRM vs HubSpot

User Interface & Ease of Use

Monday CRM wins here for pure visual appeal. The board-based layout is immediately familiar if you've ever used any project management tool, and you can customize it to look and feel exactly like your team thinks. The learning curve for new reps is genuinely low — most people are navigating it confidently within a day or two.

HubSpot's UI is clean and well-organized, but it's more menu-driven and structured. There's more to learn because there's simply more product. New users can feel genuinely overwhelmed during onboarding — I've seen people open the workflows section for the first time and immediately close the tab. That said, once you've got it dialed in, it's incredibly powerful.

Winner: Monday CRM (for ease of use), HubSpot (for depth once mastered)

Core CRM Features

This one is closer than you'd expect. Monday CRM covers the essentials really well — contacts, deals, activities, pipelines, forecasting. For a pure sales team managing a single pipeline, it's more than enough.

HubSpot goes deeper. Deal tracking is more sophisticated, sequences let you automate multi-step outreach, and the native email tools are legitimately good. If you need a CRM that also handles marketing automation natively, HubSpot isn't just better — it's operating in a different category entirely.

Winner: HubSpot (for full-featured CRM functionality)

Integrations

Monday CRM offers 200+ integrations including Salesforce, Slack, Google Workspace, Zoom, and Zapier (which extends its reach significantly). For most teams, that's plenty — I'd estimate 90% of SMBs never bump up against that ceiling.

HubSpot has 1,500+ native integrations and a massive app marketplace. It connects with virtually every tool your business might use, and many integrations are bidirectional and deep — not just "send a Slack notification when something happens" level stuff.

Winner: HubSpot (it's not even close on volume)

Pricing & Value

This one depends heavily on your situation. Monday CRM is more predictable — what you see is largely what you get. For a small sales team that just needs pipeline management, it can be very cost-effective.

HubSpot's free tier offers ridiculous value. If you can operate on the free or Starter plan, HubSpot wins on value by a wide margin. But once you need real automation or reporting — which most growing teams do around the 6-12 month mark — you hit the Professional tier and costs spike sharply. That jump from Starter to Professional is, honestly, brutal. It's one of the most aggressive pricing cliffs in the SaaS world right now.

Winner: Monday CRM (for mid-market predictability), HubSpot (for early-stage free value)

Customer Support

Monday CRM offers 24/7 support on higher plans via email and live chat. Their knowledge base is solid, and the community is active. Enterprise customers get a dedicated customer success manager.

HubSpot's support quality is famously inconsistent — and here's my hot take: their community forums are genuinely more useful than their front-line support, which shouldn't be the case for a platform at this price point. Free users get limited access and will spend a lot of time in documentation. Paid plans improve access, and Enterprise gets dedicated reps.

Winner: Monday CRM (more accessible support across more plans)

Mobile App

Both apps have come a long way. Monday CRM's mobile app is clean, and you can manage deals and contacts comfortably on the go. HubSpot's mobile app is similarly functional — it covers the essentials and syncs well.

Neither one is a joy to use for complex tasks (looking at you, mobile automation setup — please, just don't), but for logging calls, checking pipeline status, and updating deals? Both do the job.

Winner: Tie

Security & Compliance

Both platforms offer solid security fundamentals — SSO, 2FA, data encryption at rest and in transit. Monday CRM has ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and GDPR compliance baked in at the Enterprise tier. HubSpot matches all of this and additionally offers HIPAA-eligible features for Enterprise customers in certain configurations.

For most businesses, both are more than adequate. Regulated industries like healthcare or finance will likely lean toward HubSpot's more mature compliance framework.

Winner: HubSpot (slight edge for regulated industries)

Pros and Cons

Monday CRM

HubSpot

Who Should Choose Monday CRM?

Monday CRM is the right call if you:

• Already use monday.com for project management and want your CRM in the same ecosystem
• Run a visual, flexible sales process that doesn't fit neatly into rigid CRM structures
• Have a small-to-medium sales team (say, 5–50 reps) focused purely on pipeline management
• Don't need native marketing automation — you're happy using Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or similar tools via integration
• Want predictable pricing without surprise cost spikes as you scale
• Value speed of setup — Monday CRM can be production-ready in days, not weeks

If you're in manufacturing, construction, consulting, or any industry where deals are complex and visual tracking matters, Monday CRM's board approach is genuinely refreshing. It just gets out of the way and lets you run your process.

Who Should Choose HubSpot?

HubSpot is the better fit if you:

• Are just starting out and want a powerful CRM for free while you find product-market fit
• Run inbound marketing — content, SEO, email campaigns — and want it tied directly to your CRM data
• Need a full revenue platform covering marketing, sales, AND customer service under one roof
• Have a growing team that will benefit from sophisticated automation and lead scoring
• Operate in a regulated industry and need enterprise-grade compliance features
• Want deep reporting — attribution modeling, revenue forecasting, funnel analytics
• Are scaling quickly and can justify the Professional tier costs as revenue grows

SaaS companies, agencies, e-commerce brands, and B2B marketing teams tend to get the most out of HubSpot's full feature set. If content marketing is a core part of your growth strategy, honestly, there's no better-integrated option right now.

Verdict: Monday CRM vs HubSpot 2026

Look, there's no universal winner in the Monday CRM vs HubSpot debate — and anyone who tells you otherwise is either oversimplifying or trying to hit an affiliate quota.

Choose Monday CRM if you want a fast, visual, flexible CRM that your sales team will actually use without a two-week training program. It's particularly strong for teams already living inside the monday.com ecosystem, and the pricing is refreshingly transparent. It's not trying to be everything — and that focus is a feature, not a flaw.

Choose HubSpot if you want an all-in-one growth platform and you're willing to invest real time in setup, learning, and eventually cost. The free tier alone is worth trying — there's almost no reason not to create an account and poke around. Just be realistic about where you'll land on pricing once you need the features that actually move the needle.

If you're a startup or solo founder? Start with HubSpot Free — it's a no-brainer. If you're a 10–50 person sales team that's tired of overbuilt, overpriced software? Monday CRM will feel like a genuine breath of fresh air.

Try Monday CRM → Monday Crm Try HubSpot → Try HubSpot

And if neither feels quite right, Try Pipedrive and Zoho Crm are both worth a serious look as alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Monday CRM actually a CRM or just a project management tool dressed up?

It's a real CRM — but one built on monday.com's work OS, so it has more in common with visual project tools than traditional CRMs. That's actually a plus for teams that want flexibility. It handles contacts, deals, pipelines, email tracking, and automation just like dedicated CRMs do. The "is it really a CRM?" question comes up a lot, and after using it extensively, my answer is: yes, stop overthinking it.

Is HubSpot really free in 2026?

Yes, and it's genuinely useful — not just a glorified lead capture form with a paywall behind every useful button. The free tier includes unlimited contacts, deal tracking, email templates, live chat, and basic reporting. You'll hit limits when you need serious automation or advanced features, but plenty of small teams run on it for 12+ months without upgrading.

Can Monday CRM replace HubSpot for marketing?

Not really. Monday CRM doesn't have native email campaign tools, landing pages, or lead scoring — you'd need to integrate external tools like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign for anything beyond basic email tracking. If marketing automation matters to your business, HubSpot has a structural advantage that Monday CRM simply can't close with integrations alone.

Which is easier to set up?

Monday CRM — and it's not particularly close. Most teams can have a working pipeline configured in under a day. HubSpot takes significantly longer to set up properly, especially if you're using multiple hubs. The payoff for HubSpot's setup time is a more powerful system long-term, but if you need something running this week, Monday CRM wins.

How does pricing actually compare for a team of 10 in 2026?

Here's the math: Monday CRM Pro runs roughly $280/month for 10 users (billed annually). HubSpot Sales Hub Professional comes in at approximately $900/month for the same team. HubSpot Free or Starter at around $150/month for 10 seats is much more competitive, but you lose key features like sequences and advanced automation at that tier. For a pure sales team, Monday CRM wins on value at that size — it's not even subtle.

Can you migrate from one to the other without losing your mind?

Yes — both platforms support CSV import/export, and there are dedicated migration tools and integration partners that can help with larger data sets. The process isn't painless (moving CRM data never is), but it's doable. Monday.com actually has a decent native HubSpot integration, so some teams run both simultaneously during a transition period to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.