By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

A HubSpot alternative for deal makers only makes sense if your problem is the people, not the pipeline. HubSpot is a strong, free place to run deal stages; FRONT OF MIND tells one operator, broker or connector which relationship to text today, why, and drafts the message.

Full disclosure: I built FRONT OF MIND. HubSpot is a very good product, and I will say plainly where it wins.

Here is the scene. Your HubSpot board is clean. Twelve deals, every stage current. Meanwhile the M&A attorney who sent you a seller two years ago has not heard from you since spring. She is not a deal, so she is not on the board. When her next client wants to sell, she will call whoever she heard from last. HubSpot has no reason to show her to you, because nothing about her changed in your CRM.

If you are a searcher specifically, I wrote a separate page on why HubSpot goes stale during a search. This page is the head to head for anyone whose next deal comes from a referral source.

What is HubSpot good at for deal makers?

HubSpot is good at being the system of record for live deals, and the free tier is generous. Per HubSpot’s CRM page, the free CRM gives you “up to two users, 1,000 contacts, and no limits on customer data,” is “100% free, with no expiration date,” and includes:

• Contact management and deal pipelines
• Email tracking, templates and scheduling
• Meeting scheduling and document sharing
• Reporting dashboards and Breeze Assistant, its AI assistant
• A mobile app for iOS and Android

Where is HubSpot better than FRONT OF MIND?

HubSpot is better whenever more than one person, or more than one workflow, has to live in the same system.

• Deal pipelines. Stages, amounts, documents and a board your partner can read. FRONT OF MIND is not a deal pipeline.
• Teams and permissions. Starter adds permission sets and required fields, and paid seats scale with your firm. FRONT OF MIND is for one person.
• Email tooling. Tracking, templates and scheduling on the free plan. FRONT OF MIND drafts short texts and sends nothing on its own.
• Ecosystem. Marketing, service and commerce tools on the same platform, plus integrations. FRONT OF MIND does not try to be a platform.
• A native app. HubSpot has iOS and Android apps. FRONT OF MIND has no native iPhone app yet. It runs in your phone’s browser and can be saved to your home screen.
• Price at the bottom. Free with no expiration beats free for 25 contacts.

If your bottleneck is organizing deals across a team, HubSpot is the right tool.

What does FRONT OF MIND do that HubSpot does not?

FRONT OF MIND makes the daily decision a CRM leaves to you: who to reach today, and why. HubSpot shows what you logged. It waits for you to open a record and decide it matters. Say you know 800 people and stay current with maybe 50. The other 750 never surface, because nothing in the record changes.

I built FRONT OF MIND after 1,000+ introductions, because storing people was never the hard part. Knowing who to text this morning was.

• It opens on your 10 minutes for today. A short list, each name with a one line reason: they posted, it is their birthday, you met at an event 12 days ago and never followed up, a follow up is due, a pipeline deal has been quiet 7+ days, their company was in the news, or they are going cold.
• It writes a text, not an email sequence. 40 words max. Nothing sends without your tap. It learns from your edits.
• It only shows confirmed signals. A post appears only if it is confirmed to belong to that person.
• It captures at the event. Say a name and a sentence, snap a badge or card, or take a selfie together. It is filed under that event.
• You can ask it questions. Ask Liala “who do I know that lives in Miami” and get the people with the reason why.
• It suggests intros. Intros to make this week, with dated proof on both sides.

HubSpot vs FRONT OF MIND: side by side

	HubSpot	FRONT OF MIND
Core job	CRM platform: contacts, deals, reporting	Who to text today, why, and a draft
Free plan	Up to 2 users, 1,000 contacts, no expiration	First 25 contacts and 1 intro
Paid entry	Starter from $15/mo per seat	$29/mo
Deal pipeline	Yes	No
Team permissions	Starter and up	No, one person
Daily who to reach list	You build it with tasks	Built in, with a reason per person
Drafted outreach	Email templates	40 word text drafts, you tap to send
Phone	iOS and Android apps	Phone browser, save to home screen

HubSpot figures are from hubspot.com/products/crm as of October 2026. HubSpot notes the Starter price is a new customer discount that can be discontinued, so check before you buy.

How much does HubSpot cost in 2026?

HubSpot’s CRM is free for up to two users and 1,000 contacts, and paid tiers are priced per seat. From the HubSpot CRM page in October 2026:

1. Free: $0, up to two users and 1,000 contacts.
2. Starter: from $15 a month per seat. Adds required fields, permission sets, multiple currencies and no HubSpot branding.
3. Professional: from $50 a month per seat. Adds duplicate management, contact scoring, calculated properties and custom reporting.
4. Enterprise: from $75 a month per seat.

FRONT OF MIND is $29 a month, free for your first 25 contacts and 1 intro. Concierge setup is $500 one time. If FRONT OF MIND doesn’t surface people in your network worth reaching out to within 72 hours, we’ll refund you. No questions asked.

Do you need a HubSpot alternative for deal makers at all?

Match the tool to the job you are actually failing at. This is the decision table I would use.

You are	Keep in HubSpot	Add FRONT OF MIND for
Operator buying businesses	Live deals, LOIs, diligence tasks	Brokers, bankers and CPAs with no open deal
Business broker	Listings and buyer records	Which buyer or referral source to text before a listing goes wide
Super connector	Not much, unless you sell a service	Intros to make this week, people going cold
Independent sponsor	Deals and capital partner records	The family office you last spoke to in March

If every row on the right is already handled, you do not need FRONT OF MIND. If it is not, that column is where deals die quietly.

Can you use HubSpot and FRONT OF MIND together?

Yes, and for most deal makers that is the right setup. Here is how I would run it. HubSpot holds the deal. FRONT OF MIND holds the 10 minutes each morning where you text the attorney, the banker who changed firms, and the owner you met at a dinner 12 days ago. Neither tool tries to do the other’s job.

For more on why a pipeline tool cannot warn you about relationships that never became deals, see why your CRM failed you for deal origination. For every head to head in one place, see personal CRM comparisons.

How I would choose

Pick HubSpot if you need a deal pipeline, a team on one system, email tracking, or a free CRM with no expiration.

Pick FRONT OF MIND if your pipeline is fine and your problem is the people outside it: who to text today, why, and a draft that sounds like you.

Start free with your first 25 contacts and see who comes up first. Your contacts are encrypted. No one on our team looks at them, and you can export and delete anytime.

See how it works