Hello.
I’m looking for the following features on a CRM and I think that the starter plan of Hubspot might be enough but if someone who has the starter plan could give some advice or opinion would be great.
These are the main features I’m looking for.
The professional plan is way too expensive and overkill for the samll company:
| Contact Management |
• 150 pharmacies • 200 doctors • ≈ 3,000 consumers • Clear segmentation by audience type |
|
| Access & Mobility |
• 10 users • Mobile app for field visits |
|
| Automation & Campaigns |
• Dispatch of informational newsletters • Automatic follow‑ups |
|
| Events & Beauty Days |
• Manual attendance logging |
|
| Analytics & Reporting |
• Purchase frequency • Newsletter open/click rate |
|
| Costs & Scalability |
• Fixed cost per user |
|
| Compliance |
• GDPR |
|
| Integrations (future) |
• No external tools for now |
|
| User Experience |
• Simple interface |
|
| Relationship Management |
• History of visits and newsletters |
|
Hi @Wingheaded,
Great question. HubSpot’s Starter plan can actually go a long way for a small business, provided your needs are fairly straightforward.
Here’s how it stacks up against what you’re looking for:
- Contact management & segmentation — You’ll be able to organise your pharmacies, doctors, and consumers easily using custom properties and lists.
- Mobile access & users — The mobile app works well for field visits. Starter includes 2 paid users by default, and you can add more if needed (just keep an eye on per-user costs).
- Email campaigns & automation — You can send newsletters and set up basic automated follow-ups. It won’t handle complex logic, but it’s more than enough for standard campaigns and nurture flows.
- GDPR compliance — Built in. You can manage consent, preferences and subscriptions without needing additional tools.
- Reporting — You’ll get core metrics like open and click rates. If you need deeper reporting (like purchase frequency or custom analytics), that’s more in the Professional tier, but there are ways to work around some of those gaps in Starter.
- Attendance logging — No native events feature, but you can easily log attendance manually via notes or custom properties.
We’re a HubSpot Platinum Solutions Partner at Baskey, and we work with a lot of businesses using the Starter plan, helping them get the absolute most out of it without needing to jump to a higher tier.
If you’d like to chat through how to make it work for your setup, feel free to book a quick meeting here:
https://meetings.hubspot.com/jessica-hoernschemeyer/community-meeting-scheduler
Best,
Jess
Hi Jessica,
Amazing feedback, thank you so much.
I’m actually researching for a friend. I will pass this very helpful information, and I’m guessing I’ll be scheduling a quick meeting. How much would that be (the meeting I mean) so I can tell her to see if she wants to do it?
And again thank you for the feedback
Hey @Wingheaded,
One of the great things about HubSpot is that it can scale as your company grows. The Starter plan is a great place to begin.
During my time at Vitaccess, a company that runs real-world evidence studies in clinical trials, I rolled out HubSpot across the business. They quickly upgraded to the Professional tier because they made full use of features like Sequences, which help automate a lot of sales outreach via email.
This became essential because, as you may already know, when working with pharma and biotech companies, there are often many stakeholders involved. As a result, we naturally shifted into more of an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach.
Hope this helps! 
Thank you, it actually helps.