HubSpot pioneered self-serve CRM and is excellent at it. The wall most teams hit is at Pro → Enterprise: per-feature upgrades, missing custom-RBAC, no consent ledger, and pricing that scales faster than the team does. Pact ships custom RBAC and the consent ledger on Pro, at the same price point as HubSpot Pro, and BYOK on Team.
HubSpot is best at
The friendliest onboarding in the category, with inbound marketing as a first-class religion.
Pact's wedge
Same friendly onboarding, plus enterprise primitives — custom RBAC and the consent ledger at the same price band as HubSpot Pro, and BYOK on Team.
Capability comparison
| Capability | HubSpot | Pact |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding experience | Best-in-class. The new-tenant flow is famously polished. | We took the HubSpot onboarding pattern and added live, schema-aware migrators: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Zoho move accounts, contacts, deals, owners, and custom fields in one guided run. HubSpot activity history is not migrated yet. |
| Custom RBAC | Hub-level permissions (Sales Hub admin, Marketing Hub admin). Granular field-level / record-level controls are an Enterprise add-on. | Custom roles + RBAC + SCIM ship on Pro ($99/seat) — no upgrade required. |
| Marketing & sales unification | Two hubs that share a contact table; segmentation in Marketing Hub vs lists in Sales Hub have subtly different semantics. | One platform, one segment definition, one contact graph. The marketing team's send-to list is the sales team's account list. |
| Consent + audit | GDPR fields on contacts and a Consent dashboard. No immutable ledger; audit evidence requires CSV exports + reconciliation. | Consent ledger is the system of record for opt-in / opt-out / lawful basis with proof text and source. Tenant-scoped NDJSON export for auditors. |
| Pricing curve | Pro starts ~$90/seat; Enterprise often crosses $150/seat. Per-feature upgrades (Custom Objects, hierarchical teams, etc.) stack. | Pro ($99/seat) includes everything in the comparison except BYOK and self-host. No per-feature upgrade ladder. |
| Free CRM tier | Forever-free CRM with generous limits — the gateway drug. | Free tier exists (1 user, 500 contacts, 1k events) but is intentionally narrow — proves-the-loop, not full-team. HubSpot wins the freemium funnel. |
| Workflow & automation | Workflows are powerful and visually approachable. Cross-hub triggers are an Enterprise capability. | Visual workflow builder on every plan (Free runs one active workflow) — triggers, branches, test-runs, and versioning, with every send consent-gated at execution. Email + SMS sending and Slack alerts are included on Pro. |
The takeaway
The trigger for switching off HubSpot is usually three things: missing RBAC, missing BYOK, and pricing-curve shock at Enterprise. Pact ships RBAC at the Pro price point and BYOK on Team — same league as HubSpot Pro, not Enterprise.
We took HubSpot's UX as a baseline expectation — command-K, in-product onboarding tour, gentle defaults — and added the enterprise primitives (custom RBAC, BYOK, audit log, consent ledger) most teams discover they need around month 18.
The live HubSpot migrator maps Companies → Accounts, Contacts → Contacts, and Deals → Opportunities, with owners and custom properties, and shows a dry-run report before it writes a record. It does not convert workflows or move activity history yet; those are rebuilt in Pact.
Where HubSpot wins
Honest about where HubSpot is the better choice. If your shape matches one of these, we'll be the first to recommend you stay.
Compare against another stack
The /pricing calculator drags in vendor list prices and shows the order-of-magnitude story for your team's shape — no procurement call required.
Last reviewed: 2026-06-15
American English · concessions backed by shipped functionality
