Best Freshsales Alternatives 2026

Freshsales (now part of Freshworks CRM) earned its reputation as an affordable, user-friendly CRM with built-in phone and email. But as teams grow, they frequently bump into limitations — restricted reporting, a shallow integration ecosystem, and an AI layer that doesn’t always deliver on its promises. If you’re evaluating alternatives, here’s what actually matters based on real migration projects.

Why Look for Freshsales Alternatives?

The integration gap is real. Freshsales offers around 100 native integrations. Compare that to HubSpot’s 1,600+ or Salesforce’s 4,000+ on AppExchange. If your tech stack includes anything beyond the basics — say, a niche ERP, a specific proposal tool, or an industry-specific platform — you’ll likely end up building custom API connections or relying on Zapier as middleware. That adds cost and introduces failure points.

Reporting hits a ceiling quickly. Freshsales’ reporting works fine for basic pipeline metrics: deals by stage, revenue forecasts, activity counts. But the moment you need cross-module reports, custom calculated fields, or multi-touch attribution, you’re stuck. I’ve seen teams export to Google Sheets weekly just to get the insights their managers need — which defeats the purpose of having a CRM.

Freddy AI underdelivers for most teams. Freshworks markets its AI assistant heavily, but the lead scoring and deal insights require significant data volume to be useful. Teams under 1,000 leads typically see generic suggestions that don’t meaningfully improve conversion. And the AI features that do work well are locked behind the Enterprise tier at $69/user/month.

The Freshworks ecosystem lock-in question. If you’re using Freshdesk, Freshchat, and Freshsales together, the integration is tight. But the moment you swap out one piece — say, switching from Freshdesk to Zendesk — the CRM’s value proposition weakens considerably. The bundled pricing that made Freshsales attractive starts looking like a constraint.

Customization limits frustrate growing teams. Freshsales allows custom fields and basic workflow automation, but complex multi-step processes, custom objects, and advanced territory management are either limited or unavailable. Teams that started with 5-10 reps and grew to 30+ frequently find themselves needing capabilities Freshsales simply doesn’t offer.

HubSpot CRM

Best for: Marketing-heavy teams that want CRM + marketing automation in one platform

HubSpot is the most common destination I see for teams leaving Freshsales, especially when the real problem is marketing-to-sales handoff. Freshsales has basic email campaigns and web forms, but HubSpot’s marketing automation operates on a completely different level — visual workflows, smart content, A/B testing, and attribution reporting that actually tells you which channels drive revenue.

The free CRM tier is genuinely useful. Unlimited users, contact management, deal tracking, and basic reporting at no cost. Freshsales’ free plan limits you to basic contact and account management with minimal automation. HubSpot’s free plan won’t replace a paid Freshsales subscription entirely, but it gives you a real foundation.

Where HubSpot gets tricky is pricing at scale. The Starter tier at $20/user/month is competitive, but the features most teams actually want — custom reporting, sequences, calculated properties — require Professional at $100/user/month. Add Marketing Hub Professional at $890/month (flat, not per-user) and you’re looking at a dramatically higher bill than Freshsales. For a 15-person sales team with marketing automation, expect $2,400-$3,000/month on HubSpot vs. roughly $700-$1,000/month on Freshsales.

The integration ecosystem is where HubSpot genuinely outclasses Freshsales. With 1,600+ native integrations and a mature API, you’re unlikely to hit a wall connecting your other tools. The community is also massive — finding HubSpot consultants, agencies, and troubleshooting advice is far easier than finding Freshsales specialists.

I’d recommend HubSpot if marketing alignment is your primary reason for switching. If you’re purely sales-focused and budget-conscious, there are better fits below.

See our Freshsales vs HubSpot comparison

Read our full HubSpot CRM review

Pipedrive

Best for: Sales-first teams who want a visual pipeline and fast setup

Pipedrive and Freshsales compete for the same buyer: small to mid-size sales teams that want something simple and effective. But Pipedrive’s pipeline-first design philosophy results in a genuinely different experience. Every screen in Pipedrive is built around moving deals forward. Freshsales tries to be a broader platform — phone, email, chat, marketing — and the pipeline experience suffers for it.

The visual pipeline in Pipedrive is best-in-class for its price range. You can create multiple pipelines with custom stages, drag deals between them, and see rotting indicators when deals stall. Freshsales has pipeline views too, but they feel like an afterthought compared to Pipedrive’s implementation. The activity-based selling approach — where reps schedule and complete activities rather than just updating deal stages — creates better habits in sales teams.

Pipedrive’s main gap compared to Freshsales is the lack of built-in communication tools. Freshsales includes a phone dialer and email within the CRM. With Pipedrive, you’ll need the Caller add-on ($5/user/month) or a separate VoIP tool, plus the Campaigns add-on for email marketing. These costs add up but also give you flexibility to choose best-of-breed tools for each function.

Pricing is straightforward. The Advanced plan at $29/user/month hits the sweet spot for most teams — you get automation, email sync, and scheduling. Professional at $49/user/month adds revenue forecasting and team management features. For a 10-person team, you’re looking at $290-$490/month, roughly comparable to Freshsales’ Growth and Pro tiers.

See our Freshsales vs Pipedrive comparison

Read our full Pipedrive review

Zoho CRM

Best for: Budget-conscious teams who want a full business suite

Zoho CRM is the closest philosophical match to Freshsales — both aim to be affordable, all-in-one platforms for small to mid-size businesses. But Zoho’s ecosystem is dramatically broader. Where Freshworks offers maybe 10-12 products, Zoho has 50+ applications covering everything from accounting (Zoho Books) to HR (Zoho People) to project management (Zoho Projects). If you want one vendor for your entire business tech stack, Zoho goes further.

The CRM itself is more customizable than Freshsales. Zoho’s Canvas studio lets you design completely custom record layouts — not just rearranging fields, but actually designing the visual presentation of your data. Blueprint, their process automation tool, enforces sales processes with conditional logic that Freshsales’ workflows can’t match. And Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, is available starting at the Enterprise tier ($40/user/month) — more affordable than Freshsales’ Freddy AI at Enterprise.

The honest limitation: Zoho CRM’s interface hasn’t aged as gracefully as Freshsales. Navigation can feel cluttered, especially in the settings area. New users typically need a full week to feel comfortable, whereas Freshsales’ cleaner UI usually takes 2-3 days. The mobile app, while functional, also lags behind Freshsales’ mobile experience.

For pricing, Zoho CRM is hard to beat. The free plan supports up to 3 users — useful for very small teams. Standard at $14/user/month includes scoring rules, workflows, and custom dashboards. Professional at $23/user/month adds Blueprint, inventory management, and validation rules. A 10-person team on Professional costs $230/month, which is roughly 30-40% less than equivalent Freshsales tiers.

See our Freshsales vs Zoho CRM comparison

Read our full Zoho CRM review

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Best for: Scaling companies that need enterprise-grade customization and reporting

Salesforce is overkill for most teams leaving Freshsales. I’ll say that upfront. But if you’re leaving Freshsales because you’ve outgrown it — you need custom objects, complex approval chains, territory management, CPQ, or multi-entity reporting — Salesforce is likely where you’ll land eventually. Better to make the jump now than migrate twice.

The customization gap between Freshsales and Salesforce is enormous. Salesforce lets you create custom objects with relationships, build multi-step approval processes, design complex automation with Flow Builder, and generate reports that pull data across any combination of objects. Freshsales’ customization feels like adjusting furniture in a pre-built room; Salesforce feels like being handed architectural blueprints.

AppExchange alone justifies the switch for some teams. With 4,000+ apps and components, you’ll find industry-specific solutions, advanced analytics tools, and integrations with virtually any business software. Freshsales’ marketplace is tiny by comparison.

But the costs and complexity are real. Salesforce Professional at $80/user/month is roughly 2x Freshsales’ Pro tier. Add implementation costs — even a simple Salesforce setup with a consultant runs $5,000-$15,000 — and you’re making a significant investment. Ongoing administration typically requires a dedicated person or a managed services contract once you exceed 20-25 users. A 15-person team should budget $1,200-$2,475/month for licenses alone, plus $500-$1,500/month for admin support.

I recommend Salesforce only if you have specific requirements Freshsales can’t meet and you’re prepared for the implementation timeline (2-4 months for a proper setup). If you just want “something better,” start with one of the simpler options above.

See our Freshsales vs Salesforce comparison

Read our full Salesforce review

Close CRM

Best for: Inside sales teams that live on the phone and email

Close is an interesting alternative because it directly competes with one of Freshsales’ strongest features: built-in calling. But Close takes the phone-centric approach much further. Power dialer, predictive dialer, call coaching, and voicemail drop are all built into the CRM — not bolted on. If your reps make 50+ calls per day, Close’s calling infrastructure is meaningfully better than Freshsales’.

The email + phone unified view is Close’s killer feature. Reps see every email, call, and SMS in a single chronological timeline per lead. In Freshsales, you can access call logs and emails, but the experience requires more clicking and tab-switching. Close reduces the friction between “I just got off a call” and “Now I need to send a follow-up email” to nearly zero.

Email sequences in Close are also more sales-focused than Freshsales’ equivalent. You can build multi-step sequences mixing emails and calls, with conditional branching based on opens, replies, and call outcomes. Freshsales has sequences too, but they’re more basic — linear steps without the call integration.

The limitation is scope. Close is purely a sales execution tool. No marketing automation, no customer support features, no chat widget. If you’re using Freshsales partly because it connects to Freshdesk and Freshchat, Close won’t replace that. You’ll need separate tools for everything outside of direct sales outreach.

Pricing starts at $29/user/month for Startup (which includes calling and email features — already more than Freshsales’ base tier offers). Professional at $99/user/month adds power dialer and custom activities. For a 10-person inside sales team, budget $990/month on Professional, which is more expensive than Freshsales but includes calling features that would require add-ons elsewhere.

See our Freshsales vs Close comparison

Read our full Close CRM review

monday CRM

Best for: Teams already using monday.com for project management

monday CRM is the most unconventional alternative on this list. It’s not a traditional CRM — it’s a work management platform with CRM capabilities layered on top. For teams already using monday.com for project management, task tracking, or operations, adding CRM functionality within the same platform eliminates context-switching between tools.

The board-based interface is extremely flexible. You can model virtually any sales process as a series of columns and automations without writing code. Need a custom approval step between “demo completed” and “proposal sent”? Add a column and an automation rule. Need to track a non-standard metric alongside your deals? Add a formula column. This flexibility exceeds what Freshsales offers through its standard customization options.

Cross-department visibility is where monday CRM genuinely shines over Freshsales. When sales closes a deal, it can automatically create a project board for the delivery team, notify finance, and update the client record — all within the same platform. In Freshsales, you’d need integrations or manual handoffs to achieve the same result.

The CRM-specific features are the weakness. Lead scoring is basic. Territory management doesn’t exist in a meaningful way. Phone integration requires third-party tools. If you need a purpose-built sales CRM with deep pipeline analytics, monday CRM will feel shallow compared to Freshsales. But if your bottleneck is the handoff between sales, operations, and delivery, monday’s unified workspace solves a problem that Freshsales can’t.

Pricing is attractive. The Standard plan at $17/user/month includes automations and integrations. For a 10-person team, that’s $170/month — less than half of Freshsales’ Pro tier. The free plan for up to 2 users is useful for evaluation.

See our Freshsales vs monday CRM comparison

Read our full monday CRM review

Quick Comparison Table

Tool	Best For	Starting Price	Free Plan
HubSpot CRM	Marketing + sales alignment	$20/user/month	Yes — unlimited users
Pipedrive	Visual pipeline management	$14/user/month	No (14-day trial)
Zoho CRM	Budget-friendly full suite	$14/user/month	Yes — up to 3 users
Salesforce	Enterprise customization	$25/user/month	No (30-day trial)
Close CRM	High-volume inside sales	$29/user/month	No (14-day trial)
monday CRM	Cross-department collaboration	$12/user/month	Yes — up to 2 users

How to Choose

Be honest about why you’re leaving Freshsales. The “why” determines the “where.”

If your main frustration is limited integrations, go with HubSpot or Salesforce. Both have ecosystems large enough that you’ll almost never hit a connectivity wall. HubSpot is easier to implement; Salesforce is more powerful long-term.

If you want a better sales UX without added complexity, Pipedrive is the most direct upgrade. You’ll get a cleaner pipeline experience and better activity management without significantly changing your budget or workflow.

If budget is your primary concern, Zoho CRM gives you the most features per dollar. The broader Zoho ecosystem can also replace other paid tools in your stack, reducing total software costs.

If your sales team is phone-heavy, Close CRM’s built-in dialer and unified communication view outperform Freshsales’ calling features. The higher per-user cost is offset by not needing separate calling tools.

If you need more than a CRM, monday CRM makes sense when your problem isn’t really “sales software” but “how do we connect sales to the rest of the company.” It’s a workflow platform that happens to do CRM, not the other way around.

If you’ve genuinely outgrown Freshsales — you need custom objects, complex automation, multi-currency, CPQ, or advanced territory management — Salesforce is the move. Accept the implementation cost and timeline as investments, not obstacles.

Switching Tips

Export your data before you cancel. Freshsales lets you export contacts, accounts, deals, and activities as CSV files. Do this before downgrading your plan — some export features are tier-dependent. Export each module separately and verify row counts match what you see in the CRM.

Map your custom fields first. Before importing into any new CRM, create a spreadsheet mapping every Freshsales custom field to its equivalent in the new system. Freshsales uses some non-standard field types (like “score” fields) that may need to be converted. Skipping this step leads to data loss or messy imports.

Budget 2-4 weeks for migration. A simple migration (contacts + deals) takes a weekend. A full migration including email history, call logs, notes, and attachments takes 2-4 weeks with testing. Don’t try to compress this timeline — data issues caught after go-live are 3x harder to fix.

Watch out for Freshworks suite dependencies. If you’re using Freshdesk tickets linked to Freshsales contacts, or Freshchat conversations tied to leads, those connections break when you leave Freshsales. Plan how you’ll handle support history and chat transcripts before migrating.

Don’t migrate everything. This is a chance to clean house. Leads older than 12 months with no activity? Leave them behind. Duplicate contacts? Merge before export. Unused custom fields? Drop them. Every CRM migration is an opportunity to start with cleaner data than you had before.

Run parallel for at least one week. Keep Freshsales active (even on the free plan) while your team gets comfortable in the new CRM. This gives you a safety net for historical data lookups and lets you catch any process gaps before fully cutting over.

Train on the differences, not the whole system. Your team already knows how a CRM works. Don’t bore them with generic training. Focus specifically on what’s different: where to log calls, how automation works in the new system, and where to find their pipeline view. Thirty minutes of targeted training beats three hours of generic onboarding.

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