HubSpot vs Salesforce vs Pipedrive for Loan Brokers

HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive are the three general CRMs loan brokers ask about most. They're mature, they have mobile apps and big integration catalogs, and you can start small on any of them. What none of them has out of the box is the lending part of the job: lenders, submissions, offers, bank statements and the commission a lender owes you.

This comparison is for business loan, MCA and other commercial brokers deciding between the three, or between one of them and a lending-specific CRM. It uses each vendor's list prices and onboarding fees, checked October 24, 2026.

Before you build lending stages into any of the three, our top pick for broker shops is Ferrylend, a lending CRM that has lender matching, submissions, offers and lender commissions built in at a published per-user price. If you still want a general CRM, the comparison below is a straight one.

Here's the TLDR (prices checked October 24, 2026):

1. Ferrylend (our pick for broker shops): The one we'd look at first if submissions, lender matching and lender commissions are your daily work, since they're built in rather than built by you. $69 or $99/user/month.
2. Pipedrive: Best for small teams that want a simple visual pipeline at a low price. $39/seat/month (Growth, annual) gets email sync and automations.
3. HubSpot: Best if you also market to merchants or already know it. Free for 2 users; Professional is $90/seat/month plus a required $1,500 onboarding fee.
4. Salesforce: Best if you'll run a lending package built on it or have an admin. Starter Suite is $25/user/month; Pro Suite $100 (annual).
5. Another lending CRM: Best if you want the lending workflow on top of Salesforce. For example Cloudsquare Broker ($75/user/month plus Salesforce).

Side-by-side comparison

	HubSpot Sales Hub	Salesforce Sales Cloud	Pipedrive
Free plan	Yes, up to 2 users	Free Suite listed at $0	Not listed
Entry paid tier	Starter: shown at $7/seat/mo annual ($20 list)	Starter Suite: $25/user/mo, monthly or annual	Lite: $14/seat/mo annual
Mid tier	Professional: $90/seat/mo annual ($100 list)	Pro Suite: $100/user/mo, annual	Growth $39, Premium $59/seat/mo annual
Upper tiers	Enterprise: from $150/seat/mo	Core $195, Advanced $395, Max $550/user/mo, annual	Ultimate: $79/seat/mo annual
Required onboarding	$1,500 (Professional), $3,500 (Enterprise)	Not published; partners or Professional Services	None listed
Trial	Free plan instead	30 days, no card	14 days, no card
Lending features out of the box	None	None (lending packages sold separately)	None

What five brokers would pay

Arithmetic from each vendor's list price, not a quote:

• HubSpot Professional: 5 x $90 = $450/month on annual billing, $5,400 a year, plus the required $1,500 onboarding: $6,900 in year one. On Starter, five seats are $35/month at the displayed $7 price or $100/month at the $20 list price; HubSpot's page doesn't say how long the $7 price lasts.
• Salesforce: Starter Suite is $125/month for five users. Pro Suite is $500/month ($6,000 a year), and Core is $975/month ($11,700 a year), both billed annually. Implementation or partner fees aren't published.
• Pipedrive: Growth is $195/month ($2,340 a year) and Premium $295/month ($3,540 a year), billed annually. Monthly billing costs more; Pipedrive says annual saves "up to 42%".

For comparison, a lending-specific CRM with published prices: five Ferrylend Core users are $345/month on monthly billing ($295 annual), and its $999 setup fee is waived for workspaces created through December 31, 2026. Our MCA CRM pricing comparison has the full table, including the quote-only platforms.

HubSpot for loan brokers

HubSpot's strength is that sales and marketing live in one place, and the free tools (forms, meeting scheduler, live chat) are useful for capturing merchant inquiries from your website. The Sales Hub pricing page lists Free (up to 2 users, no card), Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Professional and Enterprise each carry a required one-time onboarding fee ($1,500 and $3,500), and Professional's monthly-pay option still says "Commit annually". AI features run on HubSpot Credits, with 500 to 5,000 included depending on the tier.

The catch for brokers: nothing on the pricing page addresses lending. Lender records, submission tracking, offer comparison, statement analysis, paid-in renewal tracking and commission splits all have to be built with stages, properties and automations, by you or a consultant. The same is true for mortgage brokers searching "HubSpot for mortgage brokers": it's a general CRM you configure. We compare it head to head with a broker-specific option in Ferrylend vs HubSpot for MCA brokers.

Pick it if: your team already knows HubSpot, you run marketing from it, or you're a one or two person shop that needs a free pipeline today.

Salesforce for lending

Salesforce is the most customizable of the three and the one lending software vendors build on. Its Sales Cloud pricing page lists Starter Suite at $25/user/month (monthly or annual, with Slack included), Pro Suite at $100, Core at $195, Advanced at $395 and Max at $550, the last four billed annually. There's a 30-day free trial with no card, and Salesforce says most of its products use annual contracts. AgentExchange (its app marketplace) access starts at Pro Suite.

The real reason brokers pick Salesforce is the lending packages that sit on top of it. Cloudsquare Broker, for example, starts at $75/user/month and requires you to buy the Salesforce license separately, without naming the edition. That gets you lender API submissions, a decision inbox and commission reconciliation, but it means two vendors and two bills. We compare that setup in Ferrylend vs Cloudsquare.

About Financial Services Cloud: it isn't one of the editions on the Sales Cloud pricing page we checked, so its pricing isn't covered here. Look it up on Salesforce's own site rather than relying on the Sales Cloud numbers above.

Pick it if: you'll run a lending package built on Salesforce, you have an admin or budget for one, or your capital partners expect it.

Pipedrive for loan brokers

Pipedrive is the simplest of the three: a visual deal pipeline that reps tend to actually use. Per its pricing page, Lite is $14, Growth $39, Premium $59 and Ultimate $79 per seat per month billed annually, with a 14-day trial and no card. Growth is the realistic floor for a broker, since that's where full Gmail and Outlook sync, automations and email sequences start. Premium adds web forms and lead routing (LeadBooster) and contracts with e-signatures, which covers merchant applications and signed docs without another tool.

The catch: you pay per seat whether or not it's assigned to someone, each plan caps deals per seat (5,000 on Growth, 15,000 on Premium), and as with the others, you'd model lenders, submissions and offers yourself.

Pick it if: you want a clean pipeline for a small team at a predictable price and you're comfortable keeping lender work in email.

What you'd have to build in any of the three

• Deal stages for the lending process: application in, docs in, submitted, offers, funded, renewal.
• A lender list with each lender's criteria (minimum credit, time in business, revenue, states, positions) and a way to check a deal against them.
• Submission tracking per lender, so one deal can sit at "submitted" with six lenders and "declined" with two.
• Offer comparison: amount, factor rate or rate, term, payment and your commission.
• Bank statement figures: deposits, average daily balance, NSFs and existing positions.
• Commissions owed to you by lenders, plus rep splits and clawbacks.

You can bolt some of this on. Heron Data, for example, adds statement scrubbing, lender matching and automated submissions on top of Salesforce, HubSpot or Zoho (pricing not published); our roundup of bank statement analysis software covers more. For commissions, QuotaPath connects to all three CRMs, and Salesforce sells Spiff at $75/user/month billed annually. Each add-on is another bill and another integration to maintain.

General CRM or a lending CRM? Where Ferrylend fits

The trade-off is maturity versus fit. HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive have years of polish, native mobile apps and huge integration catalogs. A lending CRM comes with the lender workflow already built, but the vendors are smaller and the ecosystems thinner.

Ferrylend is the lending-specific CRM we'd look at first: a CRM for MCA brokers and ISOs with rule-based lender matching, stamped multi-lender submissions, offer math with your commission, bank-statement figures and commission tracking matched against lender statements, at $69 (Core) or $99 (Pro) per user per month. Be clear on its limits next to the big three: it's much newer, we found no reviews on G2, Capterra or Trustpilot as of October 2026, it has no native mobile app, no SOC 2 report and no public API or Zapier yet, and its dialer and SMS are coming soon, not live. It also doesn't do ACH servicing, syndication or merchant debits. Our best MCA CRM roundup and business loan broker CRM guide cover the other lending options.

How to choose

• Fewer than three people and mostly calling? HubSpot Free or Pipedrive Growth is enough to start.
• Marketing to merchants matters as much as deal flow? HubSpot.
• You want a lending package or need heavy customization? Salesforce, budgeted with implementation.
• Submissions, lender matching and lender commissions eat your day? Price a lending CRM, starting with Ferrylend, before you spend weeks building one inside a general CRM.

FAQ

Is HubSpot good for loan brokers?

It's a good general CRM with a free plan for 2 users, but it has no lending features. You'd build lender, submission and commission tracking yourself, and Professional adds a required $1,500 onboarding fee.

How much does Salesforce cost for a small lending team?

From $25/user/month on Starter Suite, so $125/month for five users. Pro Suite is $100/user/month billed annually ($6,000 a year for five). Any lending package on top is priced separately by its vendor.

What does Salesforce Financial Services Cloud cost?

It isn't listed on the Sales Cloud pricing page, and we didn't verify its pricing for this article. Check Salesforce's own page for it rather than using the Sales Cloud prices above.

Is Pipedrive good for mortgage or loan brokers?

For pipeline management, yes: it's simple and cheap ($39/seat/month on Growth, annual). It has no lending-specific features, so lenders and submissions live in custom fields or your inbox.

Which is cheapest for five brokers?

At list prices on annual billing: HubSpot Starter at the displayed $7 price ($35/month), Pipedrive Lite ($70/month), then Salesforce Starter Suite ($125/month). Compare features, not just price: Pipedrive's full email sync and automations start at Growth ($195/month for five).

Any of the three can run a brokerage. The question is how much of the lending workflow you're willing to build and maintain yourself, and whether that time costs more than a CRM that already has it.

Disclosure: Ferrylend is made by Digital Mundo, a separate company with the same owner as Gold Penguin. We rank it first, and we've kept its drawbacks in plain view.