You had contacts to manage. Leads you were talking to, clients you needed to stay across, referral partners you wanted to keep warm. You needed somewhere to put them properly. Not a spreadsheet. Something with notes. Something with follow-up reminders. Something that would not lose data when the next person started.

You searched for a CRM. HubSpot came up. Thousands of reviews. A free plan. You signed up.

The free plan worked. Then it did not. You needed email templates, or task reminders that synced, or a pipeline view that made sense. You moved to Starter. Now you are paying A$75 to A$150 a month for a full marketing platform.

The Three Things Your Business Actually Opens

A contacts list. Notes after a call or meeting. A reminder to follow up next week.

That is the job most small businesses hired HubSpot to do. And HubSpot does all three.

It also does sequences, lead scoring, marketing automation, website visitor tracking, live chat, meeting scheduling, social media tools, ad management, and campaign reporting. You pay for all of it. Most small businesses open three things.

What your HubSpot subscription pays for
  • Marketing automation and email sequences
  • Lead scoring and pipeline management
  • Website visitor tracking
  • Live chat and chatbot tools
  • Meeting scheduling links
  • Social media management
  • Ad tracking and campaign reporting
  • Full analytics suite
What most small businesses actually open
  • Contacts list
  • Notes and call log per contact
  • Follow-up reminders

Who HubSpot Is Actually Built For

HubSpot is a serious tool for companies with a dedicated sales and marketing function. Outbound teams running sequences to hundreds of prospects. Marketing departments managing campaigns and lead pipelines at scale. Businesses with a sales manager who lives inside a CRM dashboard every working day.

If your business is a small team, a sole trader with admin support, a trades company, or a professional services firm with a regular client base, HubSpot is built for a different customer. You are using 10 percent of the platform and paying for the other 90 percent every month.

The Cost of Paying for the Platform You Do Not Use

HubSpot Starter runs around A$75 to A$100 a month for the CRM features a small business typically needs. Professional plans go higher. Per-seat pricing means every person who needs access to the contacts list adds to the monthly bill.

Picture a small business that has been on HubSpot for three years. They use the contacts list, the notes, and the task reminders. They have never opened the sequences tool. They have never touched lead scoring. They paid A$2,700 to A$3,600 to access three features of a platform built for a marketing department.

HubSpot Starter over 3 years
A$2,700
A$75/mo. Recurring. Forever.
Merebase Merebase contact manager
A$499
Once. No monthly fee after that.

What a Merebase contact manager Includes

A Merebase contact manager is built for the job your business actually has. You describe the fields you need, the way you track status, the kind of notes you write, and the follow-up logic that fits your work. The app is built to do exactly that.

What a Merebase contact manager includes:

A contacts list with the custom fields your business uses. Notes and call logs per contact. Follow-up reminders and task tracking. Search and filter by any field. Full data export at any time. Unlimited users. A$499 once. You bring your own hosting. A basic plan runs A$5 to A$20 a month.

There is no sequences tool you will never open. No ad tracking dashboard. No social media panel. The app does the job. Nothing else clutters the screen.

Your Data Is Already in HubSpot

This is the most common reason people stay. Their contact history is in HubSpot and moving it feels difficult.

HubSpot lets you export your contacts as a CSV file. The data is yours and always has been. A custom Merebase app can import that file and continue from where HubSpot left off. Your contact history comes with you.

Once it is in your own app, the data stays there. No platform can reprice it, restrict access to it, or hold it if you decide to leave.

Common questions
Is there a cheaper alternative to HubSpot for small businesses?
Yes. A Merebase contact manager built by Merebase does what most small businesses actually use HubSpot for: contacts, notes, and follow-up reminders. A$499 once. No subscription fee. No per-seat pricing. You bring your own hosting.
Can I migrate my HubSpot contacts to a Merebase app?
Yes. HubSpot lets you export your contacts as a CSV file. A custom Merebase app can import that file and continue from where HubSpot left off. You keep your contact history. The scope for how your data migrates is agreed in writing before any payment.
What does a Merebase contact manager include?
A Merebase contact manager from Merebase includes a contacts list with the fields your business uses, notes and call logs per contact, follow-up reminders, search and filter, and data export. Your data lives on your own hosting. A$499 once, agreed in writing before payment.
What if I need to add features later?
Additional features can be added as separate builds. Each change is scoped and priced in writing before any payment. You are never locked into a recurring fee or dependent on a platform's roadmap.