Magazine · 5 September 2026 · revised 9 October 2026
HubSpot or Twenty CRM: renting or owning
HubSpot is something you rent: it works on day one, the data sits with the vendor, and the price grows with you. Twenty CRM is something you own: open source, on your own server, no licence fees, but with the work of running it. Two questions decide: does the data have to stay in-house, and who looks after the server?
Why this is not a feature comparison
Both cover what a mid-sized sales team needs for contacts, pipeline and reporting. The difference lies elsewhere: who owns the system and who keeps it running.
HubSpot: renting
You get a system that works on day one, and many tools already come with a ready-made integration. The price rises as contacts and users are added. The data sits with a vendor you have to trust, and getting it back out takes effort. That is the price of convenience, and for many companies it is worth paying.
Twenty CRM: owning
Twenty is open source, runs on your infrastructure, and the backups are yours. The licence fees disappear, but running it is added, and that has a cost: someone has to keep the server updated, check the backups and have rehearsed a restore at least once.
The two questions that decide
Does the data have to stay in-house? This means an obligation: a contract, an industry requirement or a promise to clients that this data must not leave your infrastructure. If one exists, the question is answered.
Who runs the server? If nobody in your company looks after servers and you don't want to buy that in, the question is answered too, just the other way.
Why the decision comes before the first field
Switching CRM means copying records, and that's the easy part. The hard part is the data model that habits have grown around: fields someone uses for something else, automations listening for a particular value, reports management has got used to.
Decide only once everything is set up, and you pay twice. That is why we decide after the assessment and before the first field.
Why we can say this openly
We set up both, and we earn nothing on the licences of either. So no sale depends on our answer.
In the audit we tell you which one we would pick in your place, and why. It takes about five of the 45 minutes. How we run CRM implementations is described under Sales OS.
Is Twenty CRM an open-source alternative to HubSpot?
Yes. Twenty is open source and can run on your own servers. It covers what a mid-sized sales team needs for contacts, pipeline and reporting. What it lacks is the large choice of ready-made integrations with other tools.
Is a self-hosted CRM free?
The licence, yes; the operation, no. Servers, updates, backups and a rehearsed restore cost time or money.
When does switching from HubSpot to Twenty pay off?
When data demonstrably has to stay in-house and someone takes over the operation. If one of the two is missing, you are better off staying with HubSpot.