Key takeaways
- HubSpot: best for inbound marketing. Salesforce: best for large enterprise sales.
- Custom CRM: best for small teams, industry-specific workflows, and no per-seat lock-in.
- Custom often breaks even within 2–3 years for teams under 20.
HubSpot and Salesforce are powerful—and expensive, complex, built for scale. For many British businesses, a custom CRM that fits your workflow is a better fit. We've built them for agencies, property firms, and service businesses. Here's when to go custom and when to stick with the big platforms.
When off-the-shelf makes sense
If you need marketing automation, complex sales pipelines, and a huge ecosystem of integrations, HubSpot or Salesforce can be worth it. HubSpot excels at inbound marketing: email campaigns, landing pages, lead scoring, and content workflows are all baked in. Salesforce is the enterprise standard—deals, forecasting, territory management, and a vast AppExchange. If you're a 50–100+ person sales org with a standard sales funnel, the big platforms often justify the investment.
The catch: if your team is small and your process is straightforward, the learning curve and cost often outweigh the benefits. You'll pay for implementation, training, and support. You'll also pay for features you never touch. Many teams under 20 seats end up using 20% of their CRM—and paying for 100%.
When custom wins
A custom CRM is built around your workflow, not the other way around. That's the core difference. Off-the-shelf tools assume you'll adapt to their structure: leads, contacts, deals, stages. If your workflow doesn't match—property viewings, project stages, client onboarding, service delivery—you'll spend hours configuring workarounds or living with friction.
- Your workflow doesn't match the standard sales funnel (e.g. project-based, service delivery, property)
- You need industry-specific fields and logic
- You're paying for features you never use
- Integrations with your tools are clunky or missing
- You want full ownership and no per-seat lock-in
We've built custom CRMs for agencies tracking projects and retainers, property firms managing viewings and offers, and service businesses with multi-stage delivery. Each one has fields and logic that match their real process. No duct-taping. No unused modules. You own the system, so there's no per-seat lock-in.
What each option is good for
The table below summarises when each approach makes sense. Use it as a starting point—your situation may sit across multiple columns.
| Use case | HubSpot | Salesforce | Custom CRM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small team (< 10) | Overkill, expensive per seat | Overkill, expensive per seat | Best fit |
| Inbound marketing | Excellent | Strong (with add-ons) | Built to order |
| Complex sales pipeline | Good | Excellent | Tailored to your stages |
| Industry-specific workflow | Limited | Customisable but costly | Designed for it |
| Integrations | Large ecosystem | AppExchange | Only what you need |
| Implementation time | Weeks to months | Months | 6–12 weeks typical |
| Ongoing cost | Per seat + add-ons | Per seat + add-ons | None (you own it) |
| Customisation | Configurable | Highly configurable | Fully custom |
| Break-even (small teams) | N/A | N/A | Often 2–3 years |
The real cost
HubSpot and Salesforce add up: per-seat fees, add-ons, implementation. A 10-person team on HubSpot Sales Hub can easily run £5–8k/year. Salesforce Enterprise starts around £120/user/month for core CRM. Add marketing automation, reporting, integrations, and you're looking at £15–30k/year for a small team.
A custom CRM has upfront build cost but no ongoing platform fees. For teams under 20, custom often breaks even within 2–3 years. After that, you're paying for hosting and any new features you choose to add—not for the privilege of using the software.
Migration and growth
If you're already on HubSpot or Salesforce—can you migrate? Yes. Data can be exported and mapped. The migration is a project, but it's doable. We've helped teams move from spreadsheets to custom CRMs, and from HubSpot to custom when the fit was wrong.
And if your team grows? Custom CRMs are built to evolve. We can add modules, integrations, and workflows as you scale. You own the system, so there's no per-seat lock-in. Add 10 seats, 50 seats—no extra platform cost.