Tool

HubSpot CRM for Startups (free forever plan)

HubSpot Free Beginner

When you are the only salesperson, the win is getting deals out of your head and into one place today, and HubSpot's free tier does that with drag-and-drop deal stages and no credit card. It stays genuinely free (one pipeline, up to 10 stages, ~1,000 contacts), which is more than enough while you are founder-led, and you only pay once you outgrow it. Treat this as a starting point: the goal is a single source of truth for your deals, not the fanciest CRM.

• The free plan gives you one deal pipeline with drag-and-drop stages, so you can see every open deal and its next step at a glance.
• It is free forever (not a 14 or 30 day trial), with real limits around 1,000 contacts and a single pipeline, which fits a solo founder for a long time.
• Qualifying startups (early, lightly funded) can later unlock 30 to 90 percent off paid tiers, so upgrading is cheap if and when you need automation or reporting.