What Independent Professionals Really Think About HubSpot: Results From My LinkedIn Survey
Debanshee Sajjan
Tech Enthusiast & Business Operations Innovator | Head of Sales & Marketing at TheCodeWork?? | Passionate about Researching and Implementing Technology to Enhance Business Success
Over the past month, I've been conducting informal interviews and surveys with freelancers, consultants, and solopreneurs across LinkedIn about their experiences with CRM systems.
What started as simple curiosity turned into an eye-opening investigation into the struggles that independent professionals face with enterprise-grade CRM solutions (that they have to deal with in absence of CRMs that are built for small businesses)
The Survey Process
I spoke with more than a 100 independent professionals, including:
- Freelance designers and developers
- Business consultants
- Independent financial advisors
- Solo legal practitioners
- Marketing consultants
The overwhelming consensus? Enterprise CRMs like HubSpot, while powerful, are simply not designed for their needs.
What Independent Professionals Actually Said? Here are some direct quotes from my LinkedIn conversations:
"I spent two weeks trying to configure HubSpot for my consulting business. It felt like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture." - Marketing Consultant, 5 years independent
"The features are impressive, but I'm using maybe 10% of what I'm paying for. It's frustrating." - Marketing consultant, 3 years into solopreneurship
Key Pain Points Revealed
The most common complaints about enterprise CRMs like HubSpot were consistent:
1. Overwhelming Complexity
Most respondents mentioned spending hours navigating features they'll never use. One consultant memorably described it as "death by a thousand features."
2. Cost vs. Usage Ratio
Almost 80% of those interviewed said they were paying for far more functionality than they needed, with most using only basic contact management and simple pipeline features.
3. Integration Overkill
Many mentioned the frustration of having to integrate multiple tools just to handle basic invoicing and financial tracking - functionality they believed should be standard for independent professionals.
An Interesting Alternative
This research particularly resonates with me because at TheCodeWork, where I head the marketing department, we've been hearing these exact pain points for years. It's what led us to build SureClient.
Rather than trying to compete with enterprise solutions like HubSpot, we took a different approach.
We listened to what independent professionals actually wanted - and more importantly, what they didn't want.
The message was clear: automate the essentials and skip the complexity.
Our market research showed that independent professionals consistently asked for just two features:
That's it. No complicated marketing automations, no enterprise-grade pipeline configurations, no features that would sit unused.
Just the core tools needed to run an independent practice efficiently.
We built SureClient based on this feedback, focusing exclusively on independent professionals and their actual needs.
Every feature decision was guided by real users who were tired of enterprise-focused CRMs that seemed to complicate rather than simplify their work.
My Takeaways
After all these conversations, it's clear that the CRM needs of independent professionals are fundamentally different from those of enterprises.
The ideal solution isn't about having the most features - it's about having the right ones.
What's Next?
I'm planning to dive deeper into this research. If you're an independent professional with CRM experiences to share, I'd love to hear your story. Drop a comment below or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Also, I'm curious: What features do you actually use in your current CRM? What do you wish was different? Your insights will help shape my follow-up research.