EngageBay

EngageBay is the CRM you consider when you want what HubSpot offers but can’t justify the price tag. It bundles sales CRM, marketing automation, and helpdesk ticketing into a single platform starting at $0. For small teams that need all three functions and don’t want to pay $1,000+/month to HubSpot for the privilege, EngageBay makes a genuinely compelling case — but it comes with real tradeoffs in polish, integrations, and reporting depth.

What EngageBay Does Well

The free plan is legitimately generous. You get 15 user seats, 250 contacts, email marketing, a landing page builder, basic helpdesk, and the core CRM with deal tracking. Most competitors cap their free plans at 2-3 users or strip out marketing features entirely. HubSpot gives you unlimited users on free, but locks marketing automation behind its $800+/month Professional tier. EngageBay puts real marketing workflows within reach at its $55/user Growth plan. For a 5-person team, that’s $276/month vs. potentially $1,200+ at HubSpot for similar capabilities. The math isn’t subtle.

The all-in-one architecture genuinely works. I’ve set up EngageBay for three small SaaS companies, and the biggest win each time was data continuity. When a support ticket comes in, the agent sees the full contact timeline: which emails they opened, where they are in the sales pipeline, what landing pages they visited. You don’t need to build Zapier bridges or pay for a data sync tool. It’s all in one database. For a 10-person company where the same people wear sales and support hats, this is a real time-saver.

Marketing automation, while not as sophisticated as ActiveCampaign or Marketo, covers the 80% case well. You can build multi-step sequences with triggers based on email opens, page visits, form submissions, and tag assignments. The visual workflow builder supports branching logic with if/else conditions. I’ve built onboarding drip campaigns, lead nurture sequences, and re-engagement flows that all ran fine. The automation isn’t as fluid to build as HubSpot’s — the canvas feels a bit clunky when you’re connecting a lot of nodes — but functionally, it gets the job done.

Lead scoring deserves a mention because it’s included starting at the Basic tier ($12.74/user/month). You assign point values to behaviors (email click = +5, pricing page visit = +10, unsubscribe = -20) and demographics (job title = VP = +15). Leads that cross your threshold get routed to sales automatically. This feature alone costs $800+/month to unlock in HubSpot. It’s not as refined — you can’t build predictive scoring models — but for small teams running inbound, manual scoring rules work fine.

Where It Falls Short

Reporting is EngageBay’s weakest link by a wide margin. On the free and Basic plans, you’re limited to pre-built reports: pipeline value, deal velocity, email open rates. There’s no way to create custom reports or cross-reference marketing data with sales outcomes without exporting to a spreadsheet. Even on the Pro plan, custom reporting is constrained. You can’t build the kind of attribution reports that tell you which marketing campaign sourced which closed deal with any real granularity. If reporting matters to your team — and it should — you’ll end up supplementing with Google Sheets or a BI tool.

The integration ecosystem is thin. EngageBay lists about 40 native integrations, including Zapier, Stripe, Shopify, Mailchimp, and a handful of others. Compare that to HubSpot’s 1,500+ app marketplace or Zoho CRM’s 800+ integrations. If your stack includes niche tools — a specific project management app, an industry-specific billing platform, an analytics tool — you’ll likely need Zapier as middleware. That adds cost and latency. For two of the three implementations I did, we needed 4-6 Zapier connections to fill the integration gaps, which added roughly $50/month to the total cost.

The UI and overall polish lag behind competitors. The email builder works but feels like it’s from 2020. Drag-and-drop elements sometimes snap to unexpected positions. The automation canvas doesn’t support zoom or minimap views, which makes complex workflows hard to navigate. The mobile app exists but it’s bare-bones — you can view contacts and deals, but you can’t edit automations or build emails from your phone. None of these are dealbreakers, but they add friction. If your team is accustomed to the polish of HubSpot or Freshsales, EngageBay will feel like a step down in user experience.

Pricing Breakdown

EngageBay structures pricing by contact count and user seat. All prices below reflect annual billing — monthly billing runs about 20% higher.

Free ($0): 15 users, 250 contacts, 1,000 branded emails/month. You get the CRM, basic email marketing, landing pages, and helpdesk. The 250-contact limit is the real constraint. This tier works for testing the platform or running a very small operation, but most teams outgrow it within a few months.

Basic ($12.74/user/month): 1,000 contacts, 2,500 branded emails/month. Adds lead scoring, SMS marketing, third-party integrations, and a custom deal pipeline. Removes EngageBay branding from emails. This is where EngageBay starts being genuinely useful. For a 5-person team, you’re looking at about $64/month total. That’s hard to beat for a CRM with lead scoring and email sequences.

Growth ($55.24/user/month): 10,000 contacts, 25,000 branded emails/month. This is the tier that unlocks marketing automation workflows, A/B testing for emails and landing pages, custom domain for landing pages, proposals, and call records. For most small businesses doing real marketing, this is the tier you actually need. A 5-person team runs about $276/month — still well under what you’d pay for HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional.

Pro ($101.99/user/month): Unlimited contacts, 50,000 branded emails/month. Adds goal tracking, custom reporting, phone support, role-based access, and proposal analytics. This tier makes sense for teams above 15-20 people who need role management and more reporting depth. At 10 users, you’re at $1,020/month, which starts narrowing the gap with mid-tier HubSpot pricing. At this level, run the numbers carefully against HubSpot and Zoho CRM bundles — the feature gap gets wider at the high end. See our EngageBay vs HubSpot comparison for a tier-by-tier breakdown.

There are no setup fees. You can also buy individual modules (Marketing Bay, CRM & Sales Bay, Service Bay) separately if you don’t need all three, which drops the per-user cost. But the all-in-one bundle is where the value lives.

Key Features Deep Dive

Email Marketing & Sequences

EngageBay includes a drag-and-drop email builder with pre-built templates. You can create broadcast emails, automated drip sequences, and transactional emails. The sequence builder lets you chain emails with time delays, send conditions (e.g., only send the next email if the previous one wasn’t opened), and automatic CRM updates.

In practice, the builder handles standard layouts fine — header image, text block, CTA button, footer. But complex multi-column designs or heavily branded templates require some HTML editing. A/B testing (Growth tier and above) supports subject line and content variants with automatic winner selection. Open and click tracking work reliably. The one limitation that surprised me: you can’t send emails from multiple domains within the same account on plans below Pro.

Marketing Automation Workflows

The automation engine uses a visual canvas where you build flows with triggers, conditions, and actions. Triggers include form submissions, tag assignments, deal stage changes, page visits, and email events. Actions include sending emails, assigning tasks, updating contact fields, adding tags, notifying team members, and moving deals between pipelines.

I’ve built workflows with 15-20 nodes without issues. Beyond that, the canvas gets hard to manage because there’s no zoom control. The execution speed is fine — triggers fire within a minute or two, which is acceptable for marketing automation. One thing to watch: the automation quota on the Growth plan is 25,000 contacts, not unlimited runs. If you’re running multiple complex automations on a large contact list, you’ll hit that ceiling.

Deal Pipeline & Sales CRM

The pipeline view is a standard Kanban board with drag-and-drop deal cards. You can create multiple pipelines (useful if you sell different products or have separate sales processes), customize deal stages, and set win probability percentages per stage. Each deal card shows contact info, associated company, deal value, expected close date, and activity timeline.

Compared to Pipedrive, which is purpose-built for pipeline management, EngageBay’s pipeline feels functional but basic. Pipedrive offers activity-based selling prompts, more sophisticated pipeline analytics, and a smoother drag-and-drop experience. But Pipedrive doesn’t include marketing automation or helpdesk. If your primary need is pipeline management and you don’t need the marketing/support modules, Pipedrive is probably a better choice.

Helpdesk & Ticketing

The Service Bay includes ticket management, canned responses, ticket assignment rules, and basic SLA tracking. Tickets can be created from email, live chat, or web forms. Each ticket displays the full contact history, so agents see previous purchases, open deals, and past support interactions.

It’s a competent basic helpdesk. Canned responses save time for common questions. Auto-assignment rules distribute tickets based on round-robin or agent availability. But it’s no substitute for a dedicated support platform like Zendesk or Freshdesk if you’re handling high volumes. There’s no knowledge base builder, no customer portal for self-service, and no sophisticated ticket routing based on issue type or customer segment. For teams handling 20-50 tickets per day, it works. Beyond that, you’ll feel the limitations.

Landing Page Builder

EngageBay includes a landing page builder with templates, form capture, and custom domain support (Growth tier+). You can build pages for lead magnets, webinar registrations, product launches, and simple sales pages. The builder supports basic elements: text, images, buttons, forms, video embeds, and countdown timers.

The templates are decent starting points, but customization options are limited compared to dedicated tools like Unbounce or Instapage. You can’t add custom CSS without workarounds, and responsive design previews are sometimes inaccurate — I’ve had to test pages on actual mobile devices rather than trusting the in-app preview. That said, for simple lead capture pages, it does the job without requiring a separate subscription.

Live Chat

A chat widget you install on your website. It supports automated greetings, chat routing based on page URL or visitor behavior, and canned responses. Chat transcripts automatically attach to the contact record in the CRM.

The chat works reliably but lacks advanced features like chatbot builders, proactive messaging based on scroll depth, or co-browsing. If you need a basic “talk to us” widget that feeds into your CRM, it’s included and it works. If you want an AI-powered chatbot or sophisticated chat routing, look at Freshsales or a dedicated tool like Intercom.

Who Should Use EngageBay

Bootstrapped startups with 2-15 people who need CRM, email marketing, and basic support in one tool and don’t want to patch together 3-4 separate subscriptions. The free plan lets you get started, and the Basic tier at $12.74/user keeps costs manageable as you grow.

Small businesses spending $50-300/month on separate tools for email marketing (Mailchimp), CRM (Pipedrive or HubSpot free), and helpdesk (Freshdesk). Consolidating into EngageBay can save money and eliminate data silos.

Marketing-aware sales teams that want lead scoring, email sequences, and landing pages without paying enterprise prices. If your budget for marketing automation is under $500/month and you have fewer than 10,000 contacts, EngageBay’s Growth plan covers a lot of ground.

Non-technical teams who need something simpler than Zoho CRM (which has more features but a steeper learning curve) and cheaper than HubSpot. EngageBay’s interface isn’t the prettiest, but it’s relatively intuitive. Most users I’ve onboarded were productive within a day.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Teams that need deep reporting and analytics. If your leadership team wants attribution reporting, custom dashboards, or revenue forecasting with any sophistication, EngageBay won’t satisfy them. Look at HubSpot or Salesforce instead.

Companies with complex integration requirements. If you’re running a tech stack with 10+ tools that need to talk to each other, EngageBay’s 40 native integrations won’t cut it. You’ll spend too much on Zapier workarounds. HubSpot or Zoho CRM have far deeper ecosystems.

High-volume support operations. If you’re handling 100+ tickets per day and need a knowledge base, customer portal, ticket deflection, and advanced routing, EngageBay’s helpdesk is too basic. Use a dedicated platform or look at Freshsales Suite, which has a more mature support module.

Teams above 25-30 users. At that size, EngageBay’s Pro tier pricing ($101.99/user) approaches what you’d pay for more capable platforms. The feature ceiling becomes a real constraint. Run a proper comparison against HubSpot and Zoho CRM bundles before committing. See our full CRM comparison to evaluate your options.

Anyone who prioritizes UI polish and design. EngageBay is functional, not beautiful. If your team will resist adopting a tool that feels clunky, that’s a legitimate concern. Pipedrive and HubSpot both offer significantly smoother user experiences.

The Bottom Line

EngageBay delivers about 70% of HubSpot’s functionality at roughly 20-30% of the cost. For small teams under 15 people who need CRM, marketing automation, and helpdesk in one place, it’s one of the best value propositions in the market right now. Just go in with clear eyes about the reporting limitations, integration gaps, and UI rough edges — and have a plan for when you outgrow it.

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