· 714 words · 4 minute read

Hubspot ➡️ Bear, contacts, Todoist

I’m moving away from American services in favor of European ones. This time I remove Hubspot from my stack.

I’m a reluctant Hubspot user. I’m not particularly fond of the app: aggressive pricing, bloated features, clunky interface. I knew this going in, why did I chose it still?

Hubspot is overly complete and gave me the idea I could grow in my marketing/sales journey. A sign-up form for collecting email-addresses for a newsletter, integrations with other tools, connection with my inbox, analytics, tracking sales.

Sound good, but I don’t do any sales and marketing. I dislike tracking people (my websites have no analytics). I don’t have the stamina to maintain a steady newsletter.

Really, I don’t need Hubspot.

What do I need? – Requirements #

If I don’t need Hubspot, why did I get started with it then?

I use Hubspot for two things:

  1. keeping notes on conversations with ‘prospects’: in my case usually recruiters or clients
  2. tracking ‘deals’: potential projects

I then proceed to ignore this information.

I realize I get more benefit from processing the information in a structured way, and not so much the tracking or re-reading the information.

Hubspot can do this, but the interface for writing notes is very clunky. It’s a tiny edit-field that feels like an after-thought. Tracking deals is a lot better with its Trello-like board, although that can be replicate in many other tools. On top of this, Hubspot contains a duplication of my contacts-information (it’s also in CardDAV in Fastmail, which syncs to my phone and computer). Maintaining my contacts in two places feels so-2020.

My main advantage is being a solo-entrepreneur. I do not need to work with other people, and I can align a lot of apps to work with my process.

My requirements are:

  • Single contact-list synced through CardDAV
  • Multiple notes per contact
  • Track ‘deals’ and be reminded to follow-up

I have just 30 contacts in Hubspot and 27 ‘deals’. I don’t need a complicated system.

My options #

There are tons of non-USA CRM systems that fit my basic requirements. Even ‘famous’ Dutch players (🇳🇱) AFAS and Exact, and slightly less famous Simplicate, Perfectview and Alexion. I used Brevo (French 🇫🇷) for a while, a straight-up Hubspot replica, and was equally overwhelmed as I was with Hubspot. I have a similar feeling with Odoo (Belgian 🇧🇪). I appreciate the look of the native OSX Daylite-app (Canada 🇨🇦). The downside of all these great tools is that they are overly feature-complete for me, and I end up paying 15-30 euro per month for stuff I don’t need.

Another option is to self-host with Nextcloud (German 🇩🇪), or go for one of the many opensource options.

Decision made #

I reflected on my simple requirements, and I realize I do not need a complicated CRM. I have excellent European note-taking software already (Bear, Italian 🇮🇹), a wonderful European app for tracking my tasks (Todoist, Spanish 🇪🇸), and I use my operating system’s contact-apps which syncs with Fastmail (Australian, 🇦🇺).

My new setup:

  • basic contact-information goes in the Contacts-app
  • add a callback-url to a Bear-note if I need to write down information on the contact
  • track my ‘deals’ in Todoist, with a callback-url to Bear for detailed notes

This might seem like a huge step down from the automated and integrated approach of Hubspot. Instead it feels like a liberation:

  • best-in-market note-taking and tasks
  • effortless syncing between laptop and phone
  • integration with my other workflows: I already work with Bear and Todoist
  • effortless switching if I’m ever unhappy again (contacts through CardDAV and notes through Markdown-export)
  • a more human approach: I spend conscious time with my contacts

Why not Obsidian/Roam or Notion or a database? I think I mostly like the current approach as it stays very close to my current modus-operandi. Hoping (fingers-crossed) this will make it easier for me to actually do something with my contacts.

It took me 4 hours of manual transferring contacts, during which I learned a lot about y’all.

I’m happy to report that most of the PII information entrusted to me is no longer in the USA. The only exceptions are iCloud&Photos, and information shared through LinkedIn/Whatsapp/Slack. The latter is in your own control!

as always, if you like to be removed from my systems, just let me know!