The honest answer from most founder threads: there is no perfect CRM at this stage. Every option is a tradeoff, and the CRM is only part of a bigger operations problem.
Fine for a contact database and basic pipeline. Once you add real workflows, sequences, or reporting, the free tier hits its limits fast and the paid plans jump hard. Founders end up with half a CRM and a login they open twice a week.
Flexible, and easy to shape around your process. The catch is upkeep. Every new field, view, and automation is on you. It works until the founder stops maintaining it, which happens roughly the week you close your first three deals.
The default for most first time founders. It survives one user. Add a co-founder, a contractor, and a warm intro from an investor, and the sheet quietly forks into three versions with different truths in each. This is also where founders start googling how to run a startup without a COO, because the mess is now bigger than the CRM.
Keep HubSpot, Attio, Pipedrive, or your Airtable base. Base reads and writes into your CRM so you are not migrating anything.
Deals, emails, contracts, and invoices for a contact all sit in one place, no matter which tool the data lives in.
Log a call, send a follow up, move a deal, chase an invoice. Base does the work in your CRM and reports back.
I tried HubSpot, then Airtable, then a Notion database, then back to HubSpot. Base sits on top of the one I kept and I finally stopped rebuilding my CRM every quarter.