Cheap CRM for Small Agencies: 7 Options

Overview

A small agency shopping for a CRM is usually quoted a number between $7 and $15 per user per month, and usually ends up paying more than that. The gap is not a trick exactly. It is that the advertised tier is the price of entry to the software, not the price of the job the agency needs done, and the difference is made up of add-ons, contact ceilings, seat rules and occasionally a setup fee that only appears once you ask for a quote.

Finding a cheap CRM for small agencies is not the same job as finding the cheapest seat price. This guide compares seven options on the bill rather than the badge. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 18 October 2026. Where a vendor publishes an add-on that a small agency is likely to need, the add-on is in the comparison rather than in a footnote, because that is where the money goes.

If you want the arithmetic for a specific team size before choosing, the cost model in what an agency should pay for a CRM works through it. If the agency is considering leaving its current product rather than choosing its first, the CRM alternatives guide groups seven options by what each one replaces. If you are already on a CRM and wondering whether the add-ons are worth it, Pipedrive add-on costs covers that decision in detail.

How we compared them

Three rules kept this comparison honest.

First, every price is the annual billing rate, because that is the rate vendors advertise and the rate an agency that has decided to commit will actually pay. Monthly rates are higher, sometimes by 50 per cent, and are noted where they matter.

Second, a plan is only called cheap if the agency can do its actual work on it. A $9 tier that caps active contacts at 1,000 is not a cheap CRM for an agency with 4,000 client contacts, it is a cheap CRM for an agency that will upgrade in month two. Contact and record ceilings are treated as cost, not as features.

Third, mandatory charges count. A required setup fee is part of the price. An add-on that the vendor's own feature list treats as necessary for the workflow is part of the price. A support premium charged as a percentage of licence is part of the price.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is score the software on how it feels. We read pricing pages, plan comparison tables and vendor FAQs. Where a conclusion depends on usability rather than a published number, it is labelled as an opinion.

The seven options, priced properly

Zoho Bigin at $7 per user a month

Bigin is Zoho's small-business CRM and it is the cheapest paid seat in this comparison. Express is $7 per user per month billed yearly, or $9 monthly. It includes 50,000 records, three team pipelines, 30 automations, ten custom fields per module and 1,000 AI credits a month.

The reason it wins on price is the seat rule. Zoho states that Express and Premier have no user limit, and that you are charged per user licence. There is no minimum seat count and no tier that quietly requires five seats. For a three-person agency, that is $21 a month.

The free edition is the constraint worth understanding. It is free forever, but it allows a single user, 500 records, one pipeline and three automations. That is a personal CRM, not an agency one. If the free tier is what attracted you to Bigin, the free tier is also the reason a team has to pay.

Add-ons exist as toppings for extra pipelines and extra record storage. A small agency will rarely need them at the Express ceiling of 50,000 records, which is high enough that record storage stops being the limiting factor.

Freshsales at $9 per user a month

Freshsales Growth is $9 per user per month billed annually, which makes it the second cheapest paid seat here. It covers kanban view, contact lifecycle stages, email, chat and phone, custom fields and basic workflows.

The catch is the add-on billing basis. Freshsales prices its two published add-ons per user: Branded documents at $19 per user per month, and the Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions. A per-user add-on is the expensive kind, because it multiplies. Adding Branded documents to a five-person team more than triples the plan cost, from $45 to $140 a month, and the add-on alone is then the largest line on the invoice.

There is no free plan. The trial runs 21 days, which is generous, and then the account is suspended rather than downgraded, so there is no free floor to fall back to.

monday CRM at $12 a seat a month

monday CRM Basic is $12 per seat per month billed yearly, $18 monthly, quoted at ten seats. The platform is priced per seat with a minimum of three users.

The number that decides whether Basic is cheap is the contact ceiling. Basic allows 1,000 active contacts and deals, one workspace, one custom dashboard, five columns per board, and 20 quotes or invoices a month. Standard, at $17 a seat yearly, raises this to 10,000 contacts, three workspaces and 250 custom automations a month.

An agency with a few hundred client contacts will be fine on Basic. An agency that has been trading for three years and imports its list will hit 1,000 active contacts quickly, and the upgrade to Standard is then not optional. That upgrade costs $5 more per seat per month, so the real entry price for a working agency is closer to $17 than $12.

Pipedrive at $14 a seat a month

Pipedrive Lite is $14 per seat per month billed annually, which is $168 per seat per year. Growth is $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79.

Pipedrive's advantage for a small agency is the add-on billing basis, and it is the opposite of Freshsales. Add-ons are priced per company rather than per seat: Campaigns from $13.33 a month, Projects from $16.66, LeadBooster and Smart Docs from $32.50, and Web Visitors from $41. LeadBooster at $32.50 costs the same for a three-person agency as for a twenty-person one, so its cost per person falls as the team grows.

That makes Pipedrive the better long-run choice of the two where add-ons are likely. It is the worse choice if the agency only wants a pipeline and nothing else, because $14 a seat is double Bigin's $7 for a similar core job.

One billing detail that catches people: Pipedrive states that its prices are VAT exclusive, and that VAT is billed to EU customers unless a valid VAT number is provided. A UK agency that is not VAT registered should treat the listed price as the pre-tax figure.

HubSpot at $0 for two users, then $7 a seat

HubSpot is the only option here whose free tier is a real agency tool rather than a demo, and it is limited to two users. Starter is $7 per seat per month billed annually, or $20 monthly, and includes 1,000 marketing contacts.

The cost mechanism to understand is credits. Starter includes 500 HubSpot credits, and credits are a consumption allowance rather than a feature unlock, which means they run out. Additional capacity is $10 per 1,000 credits, and unused credits expire monthly. The mechanics are set out in how HubSpot credits work.

So HubSpot's honest position in a cheap-CRM comparison is this. For a two-person consultancy it is the cheapest option on this page, because $0 beats $7. For a team of five it is $35 a month before credits, and the credit allowance is the part that varies with how much automation you actually run. If you are choosing between HubSpot and Pipedrive specifically, the two compared for agencies works through the difference.

Less Annoying CRM at $15 per user a month

Less Annoying CRM publishes one price and one plan. It is $15 per user per month plus applicable tax, and the page states there are no tiers, no contracts and no features locked behind upgrades.

For an agency that has been burned by add-on pricing, this is the most predictable option in the comparison. Everything is included: unlimited contacts and companies, unlimited pipelines, unlimited custom fields, user permissions, email logging and 25GB of file storage per user. The vendor states there is no strict contact limit, with a rule of thumb to stay below 50,000 total.

The trade is that $15 is more than the entry price of four of the six other options. If the agency's needs are genuinely basic, Bigin at $7 or Freshsales at $9 is cheaper. If the agency would otherwise buy two or three add-ons, the flat $15 usually wins, and the reason is that the flat price cannot grow while the workflow stays the same.

The trial runs 30 days with no credit card, which is the longest here.

Insightly at $29 per user a month

Insightly Plus is $29 per user per month billed annually, with Professional at $49 and Enterprise at $99. That is the most expensive entry tier in this comparison, and it is included because it illustrates the fee that most often turns a reasonable plan price into an unreasonable one.

Insightly's All-in-One bundles are priced per account: Plus at $349 a month, Professional at $899 and Enterprise at $2,599, including two, five and ten users respectively. Alongside those, the vendor lists as required an AppConnect technical setup fee of $3,000, guided product onboarding at $1,500, and Premier support at 20 per cent of licence with a $3,000 annual minimum.

Those figures are stated as required, not optional. On the per-user plans they do not apply, so Plus at $29 a user remains a straightforward price. The point is that the same vendor can be a cheap per-user purchase or a five-figure commitment depending on which product line the agency is sold, and the difference is visible only on the pricing page.

What the free plans actually include

Two of the seven publish a free tier, and neither is a substitute for a paid plan for a team of more than two.

The distinction that matters is between a free tier and a free trial. A free tier is a permanent workspace with limits you can live inside. A free trial is a test window that ends, and when it ends on a vendor with no free tier the account is suspended or the data is frozen until a plan is chosen. Five of these seven have no permanent free option at all.

For an agency that needs a free CRM because the budget genuinely is zero, the realistic shortlist is HubSpot for two users, or a different set of products entirely, which the free CRM options for consultants covers.

Best cheapest paid starting point Zoho Bigin Express $7 per user a month billed yearly, with no user limit on paid plans

Best option that cannot grow through add-ons Less Annoying CRM $15 per user a month includes every feature and 25GB of storage per user

Best free tier for a two-person agency HubSpot $0 for up to 2 users, with 500 credits on the paid Starter tier

Best long-run value if add-ons are likely Pipedrive $14 a seat, with add-ons priced per company rather than per seat

Best avoided as the cheap option monday CRM Basic $12 a seat sounds cheap until the 1,000 active contact cap is reached

The seat rules that change the total

Seat rules matter more than seat prices in this price band, because two vendors charging the same per user can produce very different annual bills.

Pipedrive, Freshsales, Insightly and monday CRM all charge per seat with no ceiling on how many you buy. Zoho states its paid Bigin plans have no user limit and are charged per user licence. Less Annoying CRM charges per user with no tiers. HubSpot's free tier caps at two users, and its paid tiers are per seat above that.

The practical consequence is that the cheapest CRM for a two-person agency and the cheapest for a ten-person agency are often different products. Bigin at $7 wins at three seats. Pipedrive at $14 with per-company add-ons can win at ten seats once two or three add-ons are in play, because its add-on cost is fixed while Bigin's per-seat cost is not.

An agency should run its own numbers at its own headcount rather than trusting a "best cheap CRM" label, including this one. The arithmetic for two, five and ten seats is worked through in the CRM cost model for agencies.

Where the cheap options stop being cheap

Three patterns recur.

The first is the contact or record ceiling. monday CRM Basic at 1,000 active contacts is the clearest example. The upgrade is not a feature decision, it is a capacity decision, and it arrives on a date set by how fast the agency adds clients rather than by any choice it makes.

The second is the per-user add-on. Freshsales charges $19 per user per month for branded documents. On a five-person team that is $95 a month for a feature that costs Pipedrive's equivalent $32.50 a month for the whole company. The billing unit, not the feature, is the deciding factor.

The third is the required setup fee. Insightly's $3,000 AppConnect setup and $1,500 onboarding are the largest single numbers in this guide, and they apply to a product line that a small agency might well be steered towards if it asks about marketing or support modules alongside the CRM. The wider pattern is covered in CRM software hidden fees. Whether a CRM is worth buying at all is a separate question, answered in the break-even checklist for small agencies.

Which one to choose

If the agency is three people or fewer and wants the lowest possible bill, Zoho Bigin Express at $7 per user per month is the cheapest credible answer, and the free single-user edition is a genuine way to test it first.

If the agency is two people and the budget is genuinely zero, HubSpot's free tier is the only real option here, with the caveat that the second user is the last free one.

If the agency has been running for a few years, has a few thousand contacts and would otherwise buy two add-ons, Less Annoying CRM at $15 per user is the option whose bill is most likely to match its quote a year later.

If the agency expects to buy email, projects or lead capture inside the CRM, Pipedrive's per-company add-on pricing beats the per-user alternatives at almost any team size above three.

If the agency's contact list is small and the priority is the lowest seat price on a modern interface, monday CRM Basic is defensible, but the 1,000 active contact ceiling should be treated as a known expiry date on that price.

Our verdict

The cheapest CRM for a small agency is not the one with the lowest advertised number. It is the one whose bill does not change when the team hires, when the contact list grows, or when a workflow is switched on.

On that test, Zoho Bigin wins on entry price, Less Annoying CRM wins on predictability, and HubSpot wins on the only free tier that a two-person agency can actually run a business inside. monday CRM has the cheapest-looking seat price that is most likely to change, and Freshsales has the cheapest seat price with the most expensive add-on basis.

Two things are worth doing before choosing. Add up the agency's contact count, because that is what decides whether a cheap tier survives. And write down which add-ons the workflow genuinely needs, because the billing unit for those add-ons will decide the total more than the plan price will.

Frequently asked questions