At a glance — how these 3 alternatives compare
Our read on each project's adoption, maintenance activity and commercial-use risk, derived from GitHub signals and SPDX license terms rather than star count alone. Sorted by stars. How we score.
| Project | Adoption | Maintenance | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 58,063 · TypeScript | Flagship | Active | High risk Even a hosted/modified deployment can trigger source release. Split licence — this rates the core component; read the † text for the separately licensed parts |
| ★ 10,727 · PHP | Mainstream | Active | High risk Distributing a derived work obliges releasing its source |
| ★ 3,452 · PHP AGPL-3.0 | Established | Active | High risk Even a hosted/modified deployment can trigger source release |
† Licenses marked † were read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05 (linked, pinned to the commit we read) because the GitHub API returned no SPDX id for them. Unmarked licenses are the GitHub API's SPDX classification.
The alternatives
The open alternative to Salesforce, designed for AI.
twentyhq/twenty Updated 2026-10-08 Mautic: Open Source Marketing Automation Software.
mautic/mautic Updated 2026-10-07 espocrm
EspoCRM – Open Source CRM Application
espocrm/espocrm Updated 2026-10-08 Editor's take
Yusuke Morinaga · last revisited · star counts quoted in the text (≈) are as of that date; the cards above are refreshed daily
There is no single open-source HubSpot — leaving it means assembling a stack, and the seams between tools are the real cost.
The honest framing for HubSpot is that you cannot replace it with one thing. HubSpot is a CRM, marketing automation, email, live chat, and helpdesk welded into a single interface — and no open-source project covers all of that. So the editorial question isn’t “which alternative” but “which two or three, and can I live with the seams between them.” Every comparison that hands you a single name is skipping the part that will actually take your time.
That integration overhead is the pitfall. The moment you split CRM from email automation, you own the plumbing that HubSpot hid: keeping contacts in sync, making one tool’s workflow trigger another’s, and rebuilding embedded forms so the leads still land in the right place. None of it is hard individually; collectively it’s the migration.
Here’s how I’d sort the pieces:
- Twenty (≈56.3k★, mostly AGPL-3.0, with some enterprise-licensed files) is where I’d anchor the CRM. It’s modern, TypeScript, actively developed, and its UX borrows from Salesforce, so contacts, companies, and pipeline feel familiar rather than retro. If your team’s daily home was the HubSpot CRM view, this is the closest replacement for that surface.
- Mautic (≈10.4k★, GPL-3.0-or-later) owns the marketing side — email campaigns, lead scoring, segments. This is the tool you pair with a CRM, not instead of one. If newsletters and nurture sequences were why you paid HubSpot, Mautic is the load-bearing piece.
- EspoCRM (≈2.9k★, AGPL-3.0) is the more traditional, PHP-backed CRM. I’d point a smaller team that wants a stable, conventional system here over the newer Twenty, accepting a plainer interface for fewer surprises.
Two gaps to name plainly so they don’t ambush you: HubSpot’s AI features — content generation, deal scoring — have no open-source equivalent, so budget to lose them. And custom CRM properties won’t map themselves; the field schema is where imports quietly break.
The tell, in the end, is your own workflows. Export them, read them back as a flat list of triggers and actions, and the answer is right there: shallow logic means a two-tool stack will hold, while deep cross-object automation means the integration tax is the dominant cost — pay attention to that, not to the star counts.
Comparison notes
The honest framing for HubSpot is that no single open-source tool covers its full span of CRM, marketing automation, email, live chat, and helpdesk under one roof — you assemble it. On the CRM side, Twenty is a modern, actively developed TypeScript project with a Salesforce-flavored UX, handling contacts, companies, pipelines, and workflow automation; EspoCRM is the more traditional PHP-backed take. For marketing automation, Mautic brings email campaigns, lead scoring, and segments. Stitching CRM, email automation, and analytics together gets you most of the way but adds integration overhead, and HubSpot's AI extras — content generation, deal scoring — have no open-source counterpart.
Migration tips
- Export CRM data (contacts, companies, deals, notes) from HubSpot via Settings → Data Management → Export
- Map HubSpot CRM property types to your target CRM's field schema before importing — custom properties may need manual recreation
- Export HubSpot email lists and import them into your email automation tool (Mautic or equivalent)
- Audit HubSpot workflows and recreate the logic in your OSS tool's automation engine — triggers and actions will differ
- Migrate HubSpot forms (embedded in your site) to your OSS tool's form builder and update the embed codes on your website
Which alternative should you pick?
Replacing HubSpot isn't a single call — it's a trade between license terms, team size, and how much early-stage roughness you can absorb. The 3 projects above split along those lines:
- You want the project with the most GitHub stars in this list → twenty. 58,063★ — the most of the 3 projects here. Stars measure attention, not quality or maintenance; check the last-push date and the Editor's take before reading more into it.
- You want a copyleft project whose modifications must be shared back → mautic. GPL-3.0-or-later licensed — distributing a modified version (and, under AGPL, offering it over a network) obliges releasing the source, which is what some teams explicitly want.
License & commercial-use notes
When replacing HubSpot, the license usually decides more than the feature list — whether you can modify it, ship it inside a product, or host it as a service. The 3 projects here fall into:
- Strong copyleft (mautic) — GPL / EPL — distributing a derived work obliges you to release its source under the same terms. Fine for internal use; plan carefully before proprietary distribution.
- Network copyleft (twenty, espocrm) — AGPL / SSPL — the copyleft trigger extends to offering the software over a network, so a hosted deployment of a modified version can oblige you to publish your changes. Read the exact terms before building a paid hosted product on these.
Split licences: twenty (AGPL-3.0 (with Twenty Application Exception) + commercial license (files marked @license Enterprise) + MIT (some packages)). This project is grouped above by the core licence; the separately licensed directories (enterprise or EE parts) are not covered by that bucket — check which files you actually ship.
License fields come from the GitHub API's SPDX classification and can lag a relicense. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the license marked † was read from the repository's LICENSE file on 2026-09-05; the † links to the exact file and commit we read. The repository linked on each card is authoritative — confirm its LICENSE file before any license-sensitive deployment.
Maintenance health of these 3 projects
Of the 3 projects listed, 3 shipped at least one commit in the last 12 months. See how we rank for the full criteria and our self-hosting cost reality check, which apply across every comparison on this site.
Frequently asked questions
How do these 3 alternatives compare on maintenance health?
3 of 3 have shipped a commit in the last 12 months. At least one project here has 5,000+ GitHub stars. Always check the last-pushed date in the cards above and read the latest closed issues — those two signals are the fastest public check we know of.
How this page was compiled
- Repository facts (stars, license, language, last push) come straight from the GitHub public API and are linked on each card as the primary source. Where the API returned no SPDX id, the licence marked † was read from the repository's
LICENSEfile (linked, pinned to the commit we read, with the date checked). - Editorial analysis (the intro, comparison notes and migration tips) is Claude-drafted from HubSpot's use case and the alternatives' repository metadata — in Claude Code sessions or scheduled routines run under the operator's account. Samples are spot-checked against the upstream repositories; entries are not individually reviewed unless they carry a signature. See what Claude drafts and what the operator writes.
- Editor's take is signed by Yusuke Morinaga. It was drafted in a Claude Code session the operator ran, then read and confirmed by Yusuke Morinaga before publication, and carries the date it was last revised. It is written from each project's README, LICENSE, release history and issue tracker — not from running the project in production; where that distinction matters, the take says so.
- Maintenance signal: 3 of 3 projects shipped a commit in the last 12 months as of the latest rebuild (most recent activity: ).
- Last editorial review: by Yusuke Morinaga.
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