CRM software in Australia: how to choose, with AUD pricing and local support compared

Most Australian businesses shopping for CRM software end up comparing HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive and Microsoft Dynamics 365. At list price, Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is A$97.30 per user a month, and Salesforce Pro Suite and HubSpot Sales Hub Professional are A$140, billed annually. All five offer Australian hosting, but the route onto it differs.

The seat price is rarely what decides it. What your team will open every day, what the CRM has to connect to, where the data sits and who picks up the phone when something breaks matter more over three years. This guide compares the five on those four things and is plain about when HubSpot, the CRM we implement, is the wrong pick. For how we run the work itself, see CRM implementation for Australian businesses.

Which CRM software do Australian businesses shortlist?

The same five names come up in nearly every evaluation we are brought into. Prospects tell us they have looked at Zoho, Pipedrive and HubSpot before the first call, and the larger ones are usually weighing up Salesforce or Dynamics as well.

• HubSpot. Marketing, sales and service on one record, built so a team without a full-time admin can run it. Strongest when marketing and sales both live in the CRM.
• Salesforce. The deepest customisation of the five and the largest pool of admins and developers. It suits businesses that have, or will hire, people to run it.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. Sits inside the Microsoft 365 and Power Platform world. Often chosen by businesses whose IT provider runs everything on Microsoft.
• Zoho CRM. A low entry price and a large family of Zoho apps around it. It rewards a business willing to configure a lot itself.
• Pipedrive. A pipeline tool for sales teams, quick to set up and easy for reps to like. Thinner once marketing and service need the same record.

How much does CRM software cost per seat in Australia?

Here are the list prices each vendor publishes for Australia, per user per month for its sales CRM. Read the date and the GST column before you compare: vendors show prices differently.

Three things move the real number more than the headline seat price.

• Who needs a paid seat. HubSpot gives view-only seats away free, so people who only look at dashboards and records cost nothing. Work out how many people really edit records before you multiply anything.
• What else comes in the bill. HubSpot's Marketing Hub is priced on marketing contacts, and Professional carries a one-time onboarding charge. Our guide to HubSpot pricing in Australia works through a 35 person team line by line.
• Setup and admin. Our CRM implementations start from about A$7,000 plus the licence. A CRM that needs a full-time admin to change a field costs that salary on top, whatever the seat price says.

Can your CRM data be hosted in Australia?

Yes, with all five, but each gets you there differently. That matters if a customer contract, a security questionnaire or your board asks where the data sits. Sending personal information to a server overseas is a cross-border disclosure under Australian Privacy Principle 8, so the answer belongs in the selection, before anyone signs.

Hosting is only half of it. Every integration you add, from your email marketing tool to an AI assistant, is another place the data can travel. Our guide to where your data goes when you use AI covers the questions to ask of those tools too.

Who answers when something breaks, in AEST?

Every vendor offers support. What differs is which tier your edition includes, whether it covers Australian business hours, and how many people near you know the product well enough to fix it. Put these questions to each vendor and each implementation partner on your list.

Partner depth is easy to check for HubSpot and Salesforce, because both publish searchable partner directories with a filter for Australia. HubSpot also ranks its partners by tier, which our explainer on HubSpot partner tiers in Australia walks through. Neighbourhood is a HubSpot Diamond Partner in Brisbane, with our team on Australian time. We answer the phone weekdays from 8am to 5pm AEST, and a person replies to every enquiry within one business day.

When is HubSpot the wrong CRM?

We implement HubSpot, so read this part with that in mind. We still turn work down when it is the wrong fit, because a CRM a team resents costs more than it saves. Three situations come up again and again.

• You have years invested in another CRM and it works. If its problems come down to how a few things were configured, fix those where they sit before paying to move. The same goes for a mature Salesforce instance with an admin team behind it.
• An industry system already does the job. HubSpot is not a booking, stock or job management system, and building one inside it means paying development costs for a platform not designed for the work. The answer there is usually to connect the two, or leave the CRM out.
• Your IT is Microsoft from end to end. If your managed IT provider supports Microsoft and the sales team already works in Dynamics 365, keeping it for sales and running HubSpot beside it for marketing can be the better design. The work then is making the sync between the two trustworthy.

The opposite pattern is just as common. When a team barely uses the CRM it has, and treats it as a set of fields to fill in, switching costs less than most people expect.

How do you choose between them?

Start with what already holds your customers, then who will run the CRM, then which teams need it. Licence price comes last, once the shortlist is down to two.

A starting point for a shortlist. Budget, contracts and the systems you already run can change the order.

Once you have two names, run the same test on both: give each vendor three jobs your team does every week, such as logging a call, moving a deal and pulling the monthly pipeline report, and have the people who do those jobs try them in a trial account. The CRM your team finishes the tasks in fastest is usually the one they will still be using in a year.

What does it take to switch CRM?

Less than most teams fear, if you decide what not to bring. For a 50 to 250 person business, plan on four to six weeks for a straight move of one or two hubs onto HubSpot, and eight to twelve weeks once integrations and automation rebuilds are in scope. The import itself takes hours. The weeks go on deciding what to keep and cleaning it first.

We have written up the moves people ask about most: Pipedrive to HubSpot, what moves and what breaks, Zoho to HubSpot migration and a Salesforce to HubSpot migration plan at 100 seats. The ten steps of a CRM implementation cover the order to do it in, whichever CRM you land on.

Clean-up is the part people underestimate. When a membership organisation we work with moved its members into HubSpot, legacy Salesforce properties were still sitting on member records beside thousands of duplicate contacts. Both had to go before the renewals could run on their own. Once the move is done, teams rarely want to go back. One client who moved off Salesforce put it this way:

"As a prior user of Salesforce I would never go back as HubSpot mixed with Neighbourhood support has delivered beyond our expectations."

Frequently asked questions

What is the best CRM software in Australia? There is no single best one. HubSpot suits businesses where marketing, sales and service share one record and no one wants a full-time admin. Salesforce suits businesses with people to run a heavily customised system. Dynamics 365 suits Microsoft shops, and Pipedrive or Zoho can be enough for a small sales team.

How much does a CRM cost per user in Australia? At list price, entry tiers start at A$31 a month for HubSpot Sales Hub Starter and A$35 for Salesforce Starter Suite. Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is A$97.30, and HubSpot Sales Hub Professional and Salesforce Pro Suite are A$140, billed annually. Setup, admin and extra hubs often cost more than the seats.

Which CRMs store data in Australia? HubSpot hosts in Sydney, Salesforce runs Hyperforce in Australia, Dynamics 365 uses datacentres in New South Wales and Victoria, Zoho runs an Australian data centre, and Pipedrive hosts Asia and Pacific sign-ups in Sydney. In each case, confirm the region your own account is created in.

Do CRM prices in Australia include GST? Usually not. HubSpot and Microsoft list prices excluding GST, and Zoho says local taxes are added. Salesforce's and Pipedrive's pricing pages do not say either way, so ask either for a quote that shows GST.

When should we not switch CRM? When your current CRM is heavily customised, works, and has people who know how to run it. When an industry system already holds your customers and only needs connecting. Fixing the setup you have is often cheaper than moving.

Read next

• CRM implementation for Australian businesses
• How much HubSpot costs in Australia, every hub in AUD
• HubSpot vs Salesforce for 60 to 200 people
• What a bad CRM implementation costs a growing business

Sources

• Sales Cloud pricing, Salesforce Australia, checked 9 November 2026.
• Dynamics 365 Sales pricing, Microsoft Australia, checked 9 November 2026.
• Zoho CRM pricing, Zoho, for the GST note.
• How much does HubSpot cost in Australia, Neighbourhood, for HubSpot's AUD prices as checked on 16 October 2026.
• HubSpot cloud infrastructure and data hosting FAQ, HubSpot, last updated 24 July 2026.
• Hyperforce, Salesforce Australia.
• About Microsoft Cloud Australia, Microsoft Learn.
• Zoho Voice is now live in the AU data centre, Zoho.
• How secure is my data in Pipedrive?, Pipedrive, last updated 3 September 2026.
• APP guidelines, chapter 8: cross-border disclosure of personal information, OAIC.
• CRM implementation, Neighbourhood, for our starting price and timelines.

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Neighbourhood sets up and runs HubSpot for Australian businesses as part of our RevOps and HubSpot work. We have worked with 300+ businesses since 2015.