SaaS free plans that are enough
Of eight verified SaaS free plans, Brevo, Zoho CRM, and Help Scout hold up for a real team long term. Loom, Mailchimp, and Apollo cap out within weeks.
SaaS free plans that are enough
Most "free plan" comparisons list the caps and stop there. We checked the free tiers of eight tools a small team would reach for, across CRM, email, support, video, and sales prospecting, and the honest split is this: three free plans are built to run a real team indefinitely, one works only for a founder and a co-founder, and four are extended trials wearing a "free" label. The table below shows exactly where each one breaks.
| Tool | Job | Free plan cap | Where the wall hits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Email, SMS, light CRM | 300 emails/day, CRM access | Sending volume, not contacts or seats |
| Zoho CRM | CRM | 3 users, basic automation | Your 4th hire, or needing multiple pipelines |
| Help Scout | Support inbox | 5 users, 100 contacts/month | Ticket volume, not team size |
| HubSpot | CRM | 2 users, 1,000 contacts | Your 3rd hire |
| Loom | Screen recording | 25 videos per person, lifetime | The 26th video you ever record |
| Mailchimp | Email marketing | 250 contacts, 500 sends/month, 1 seat | Your 251st contact |
| MailerLite | Email marketing | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month | Your 251st subscriber |
| Apollo | Sales prospecting | 900 credits per seat, per year | A few dozen unlocked phone numbers |
Prices and limits are pulled from each vendor's own pricing page, checked in July 2026. Free tiers change without much warning, so confirm the current cap before you build a plan around one.
The three that genuinely hold up
Brevo is the surprise here. Most email tools cap the free tier by contact count, so a growing list forces an upgrade even if you barely email anyone. Brevo instead prices by how many emails you send, and the free plan allows 300 a day, roughly 9,000 a month, while still including SMS, WhatsApp, and a working CRM. A small team with a large but quiet list can genuinely stay on it. The wall only shows up once you're sending daily campaigns to a real audience.
Zoho CRM's free plan covers 3 users with contact and lead management, basic workflow automation, and standard reports, no time limit. That's enough for a founder plus two reps to run a real pipeline. The wall is headcount: a 4th hire needs the $14/seat Standard tier, and multiple pipelines or sales forecasting live there too.
Help Scout's free plan gives 5 seats, a shared inbox, and a knowledge base site, which is a real support setup, not a stripped demo. The catch is a 100-contact-per-month cap. If your support volume is genuinely low, five people can run it for free indefinitely. Most teams doing real customer support will outgrow that number within a month or two of launch, and the next step up is $25/seat/month for Standard, which adds live chat, multiple inboxes, and an AI inbox assistant.
All three share a pattern worth noticing. Brevo doesn't throttle which features you can use, only how many emails you send. Zoho CRM doesn't strip automation out of its free tier, it only caps who can log in. Help Scout doesn't limit seats much at all, it limits the contacts you're allowed to talk to. That's a meaningfully different design than capping the thing your team does all day.
The one that works, but only for two people
HubSpot's free CRM has no expiration date and needs no credit card, and it does what it says: contacts, deals, tasks, basic live chat, and email tracking. The cap is 2 users and 1,000 contacts, or 1 million records once you count companies, deals, and tickets alongside contacts. That's fine for a founder and one hire testing the waters, and useless the moment you add a third person to sales. Our HubSpot alternatives breakdown covers what to move to once you hit that wall, including Zoho CRM's $14/seat/month Standard tier, cheaper than HubSpot's own $20/seat/month Starter bundle, and it's worth reading before assuming Starter is your only option.
The four that are trials wearing a free-plan label
Loom's Starter plan caps at 25 videos per person, but it's not a monthly allowance, it's a lifetime one. A team recording a couple of async updates a week burns through 25 videos inside a month, and there's no reset. Compare that with some of the tools in our Loom alternatives roundup: Dubb's free tier also caps at 25 videos, but Bonjoro's free plan allows 50 videos a month, not for all time, which is a meaningfully different shape of "free."
Mailchimp and MailerLite both cut their free tiers in 2026. Mailchimp dropped from 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month to 250 contacts and 500 sends, and only allows 1 seat. MailerLite went from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails down to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails. Both are workable for testing an email tool before you commit, not for running a live list.
Apollo gives full access to its 230-million-contact database on the free plan, which sounds generous, but every action costs credits: 1 to unlock an email, 8 to unlock a phone number. The free plan grants 900 credits a seat per year. That's roughly 112 phone numbers unlocked, total, for the year, or 900 emails if you skip phone numbers entirely. A team doing regular prospecting will run out inside a few weeks, not months, and the AI assistant on the free plan is capped at 5 chats on top of that.
The pattern with all four is the opposite of Brevo, Zoho CRM, and Help Scout: the cap sits on the exact thing the tool exists to do. A screen recorder that stops you from recording, an email tool that stops you from emailing, and a prospecting tool that stops you from prospecting are trials, whatever the pricing page calls them.
What a real $0 stack looks like
If you're a 2-3 person team and want to spend nothing until revenue justifies it, a workable combination is Brevo for email and light CRM, Zoho CRM for pipeline once you're past HubSpot's 2-user cap, and Help Scout for support if your ticket volume is low. Loom works for the occasional screen recording. Budget for its lifetime cap rather than treating it as a monthly allowance, and plan on paying for Business ($18/seat/month) once you're recording weekly. Apollo's free plan is worth having for occasional lookups, not as your main prospecting tool; a team that prospects daily should budget for Basic at $49/seat/month from day one rather than assume the free credits will stretch.
None of these free plans are marketing tricks. They're built around different limits, some tied to team size, some to usage volume, and only a few of those limits fit how a small team works day to day. Read the cap before you build a workflow around a tool, not after you hit it.
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FAQ
Which SaaS free plan is the most generous for a small team?+
Brevo's free plan stands out because it caps by email volume, 300 emails a day, rather than by contact count or seats, and still includes SMS, WhatsApp, and a working CRM. A team with a large but lightly emailed list can run on it indefinitely.
Is HubSpot's free CRM enough for a small team?+
It's enough for a founder and one hire. The free CRM caps at 2 users and 1,000 contacts with no expiration date, so a team of 3 or more hits the wall immediately and needs to move to a paid Starter or Sales Hub tier.
Is Loom's free plan a real free tier or just a trial?+
It behaves like a trial. The Starter plan allows 25 videos per person, but that's a lifetime cap, not a monthly one, and recordings are limited to 5 minutes each. A team recording regularly will use it up within a month or two.
Did any of these free plans get smaller recently?+
Yes. Mailchimp cut its free plan from 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month down to 250 contacts and 500 sends on February 17, 2026. MailerLite cut its free plan from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails in mid-2026.