Pipedrive alternative
The sales CRM that Pipedrive wanted to be — at half the price, in German, on EU servers.
Pipedrive is solid but pricey and English-only. HubSpot is comprehensive but bloated and expensive for pure sales. lumen.crm delivers the core sales workflow in one licence — with DACH focus, GDPR-compliant by design and prices in EUR.
Positioning
Three tools, three approaches
Short version for the quick decision — before we get into the details.
lumen.crm
Slim DACH alternative to Pipedrive. Sales-first with lead management, workflows and email integration — all in one licence, hosting in Germany, support in German.
Pipedrive
The sales pipeline pioneer, visually strong, broad international integrations (400+ apps). More expensive per user and registered in Estonia; DPA tied to US-framework sub-processors.
HubSpot Sales Hub
Part of a marketing/sales/service suite. Free tier as entry, Professional expensive incl. $1,500 onboarding fee. Makes sense when marketing automation and service desk are part of the plan.
Worked example
5 users, 1 year — three invoices
Annual billing, mid-tier plan. lumen.crm “Growth”, Pipedrive “Advanced”, HubSpot “Sales Hub Professional”. Taxes and conversion rates not included.
lumen.crm · Growth
5 × €15 × 12 = €900 per year. Includes email sync, workflow automation, custom dashboard builder and lead scoring — no add-on modules.
Pipedrive · Advanced
5 × ~$29 × 12 = ~$1,740 (~€1,600). Email sync and workflows arrive at this tier at the earliest. LeadBooster and Campaigns cost extra.
HubSpot · Professional
5 × $90 × 12 + $1,500 one-off onboarding = ~$6,900 (~€6,350) in the first year. Upside: marketing automation and service desk in the same platform.
Feature matrix
What is in each plan?
| Feature | Our solutionlumen.crm | Pipedrive | HubSpot Sales Hub |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free (2 users, 100 deals, 1 pipeline) | only 14-day trial | Free CRM (2 seats, ~1,000 contacts) |
| Entry (list price / user / month) | 12 monthly · €9.60 annually | ~$14 | $9–$15 |
| Mid-tier plan (list price) | 19 · €15 annually | ~$29 | |
| Sales pipeline · Kanban · drag-and-drop | from Free | all plans | all plans |
| Multi-pipeline | 1 / 3 / 10 / unlimited per plan | from Advanced | |
| Email integration (IMAP · Gmail · Outlook) | from Starter (€12) | Two-way sync only from Advanced | from Starter, full sequences only Professional |
| Workflow automations | from Growth (€19) | from Advanced (~$29) | multi-branch only Professional ($90+) |
| Lead inbox + scoring + routing | from Free (built in) | Inbox yes · scoring only via LeadBooster add-on | Scoring only from Professional |
| Duplicate detection · contacts & deals | from Free | from Professional | from Professional |
| Project management module | built in | only via “Projects” add-on | not in Sales Hub |
| Custom dashboard builder | from Free | from Professional | from Professional |
| REST API + API tokens | from Pro (€29) | all plans | all plans |
| Native integrations (app marketplace) | — (REST API + outbound webhooks) | 400+ apps | 1,500+ apps |
| Two-factor authentication | TOTP + backup codes · all plans | ||
| Contracting party · company HQ | vss software GmbH · Germany | Pipedrive OÜ · Estonia | HubSpot, Inc. · USA (+ HubSpot Ireland) |
| Hosting region | 100 % EU · Hetzner Falkenstein/Nuremberg | EU (Frankfurt · Stockholm · Dublin) | US primary · EU region optional |
| Support in German | DACH team | limited | premium support primarily English |
| Onboarding fee | None | None | $1,500 (Prof.) · $3,500 (Ent.) |
GDPR & data sovereignty
The real differentiator in DACH
Pipedrive is based in Estonia, HubSpot in the US — both rely on standard contractual clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. lumen.crm is hosted on Hetzner data centres in Germany; the contracting party is vss software GmbH. All sub-processors are transparently documented in our DPA.
- Hosting on Hetzner data centres in Germany
- MongoDB + Redis on EU infrastructure via Coolify deployment
- S3 object storage on Hetzner (Falkenstein/Nuremberg)
- Transactional email via Postmark (EU region Dublin)
- DPA template per Art. 28 GDPR available by default
- All sub-processors documented in the DPA
Switch triggers
Why teams come to us
From Pipedrive
Bill climbed once email sync (Advanced) plus workflows were needed. English support; compliance wanted a German DPA partner. Lead scoring and routing only via the LeadBooster add-on.
From HubSpot
Professional plus onboarding fee blew up the budget (> €6,000 in year one for a 5-person team). Marketing Hub was never used — pure sales case. The US group met resistance with regulated customers.
Migration in a day
Load the Pipedrive CSV export: contacts, organisations, deals incl. custom fields via the import wizard. Alias mapping helps with differing field names. On request we accompany the import in person.
Demo
We show the difference on your real sales process
Send us a CSV export from Pipedrive — in the demo we rebuild your pipeline 1:1 in lumen.crm. 30 minutes, no slides, direct comparison. On request with Pipedrive or HubSpot data as a starting point.