One tool or three: can a single suite cover customers, email, and invoices?

Not on one plan, for most small businesses. A suite is one vendor selling several apps, and each app still has its own plan and limits. HubSpot’s free account comes closest, with contacts, marketing email, and invoices in one login, but invoices aren’t books, so you’d still want accounting software beside it. Zoho’s CRM and Zoho Books sync on every Zoho Books plan, free ones included, and Square bundles invoices with a customer directory, adding email campaigns on Plus and Premium or with Square Marketing. In our view, most owners are better served by three tools, each free or cheap and connected where the vendors document it, than by a suite bought for its connections. Start with the job that’s failing, and don’t move a tool that works.

What counts as a suite here?

Three jobs sit behind the question: keeping track of customers and leads (a CRM), sending a newsletter (an email tool), and sending invoices and keeping the books (invoicing or accounting software). A suite is one vendor covering more than one of them, usually as separate apps under one account.

Two of the pairs have their own pages. Do you need a CRM if your invoicing tool already holds your clients? covers customers and invoices, and can your CRM send your newsletter? covers customers and email. For the difference between sending invoices and keeping books, accounting software or just an invoicing tool? sets it out.

Which vendors in this guide cover more than one job?

Here’s what each vendor’s own pages say, and the plan each piece needs. It isn’t a map of every connection between the tools in this guide: for any pair not listed, check the vendor’s integrations page and the plan it asks for.

• HubSpot: customers, email, and invoices. The free account holds contacts, includes marketing email within a monthly send allowance (with HubSpot branding), and sends invoices on every plan. Taking payments online needs HubSpot payments, on Starter and up, or Stripe; otherwise you record payments by hand. HubSpot connects to QuickBooks Online to sync customers, products, invoices, and payments, and on QuickBooks’ side that needs a paid plan, since QuickBooks lists app integrations on its paid plans and none on Free.
• Zoho: customers and books, with email through the CRM. Zoho CRM and Bigin are Zoho’s CRMs, and Zoho Books is its accounting software. Zoho Books syncs customers with Zoho CRM on every Zoho Books plan, and Zoho CRM’s free edition can be connected (contacts, accounts, and vendors only). Bigin’s Zoho Books connection starts on Express. The CRMs’ paid plans send mass email in daily batches; Zoho’s own email tool, Zoho Campaigns, appears in Bigin’s integrations list, but this guide doesn’t cover it.
• Square: invoices and customers, with email on paid plans. Every Square plan includes the customer directory. Email campaigns are for Square Plus and Premium subscribers, or for a Square Marketing subscription. Square isn’t one of the CRMs this guide compares, so for leads and a pipeline, the CRM-or-invoicing page applies.
• QuickBooks and Mailchimp: books and email, connected. QuickBooks connects one account to one Mailchimp account, and your customers, with their invoice data, import into a Mailchimp audience with the marketing status you choose. QuickBooks lists app integrations on its paid plans, and neither company’s help article for this connection names a plan.
• Brevo: email and a simple CRM. Beside its free email plan, Brevo’s pricing page lists a free Sales package with one seat, for deals moving through a pipeline.
• Capsule and Pipedrive: customers, with email as a paid add-on. Capsule sells a Marketing add-on and Pipedrive its Campaigns add-on.

So the closest fits are partial: HubSpot covers the selling side and billing, Zoho covers customers and books, and Square covers billing and customers.

When does one vendor make sense?

Our view is that one vendor earns its place when at least two of these are true:

• One or two people do everything and would rather have one login than three.
• The plan you’d use covers your jobs already. HubSpot’s free account for customers, email, and invoices, as long as your books live in accounting software.
• You already use one of its apps for the job that matters most, and its next app connects without a paid upgrade, like Zoho Books and Zoho CRM’s free edition.

When are three tools better?

Any one of these tips it:

• Your books need accounting software, and the suite’s invoices don’t keep books.
• One job outgrows the suite’s free tier before the others. A growing list on a monthly email allowance, or one more person on a CRM capped by users, forces an upgrade that has nothing to do with the other two jobs.
• You’d have to move a tool that’s working. Moving customers, lists, and history costs time, and a connection you can add later doesn’t.
• The connection needs a paid plan you don’t otherwise need. Typing in a new client once is a short job while they come a few a week.

What does each path cost?

Say you run a two-person art gallery. You sell to about 300 collectors, send around a dozen invoices a month, email an invitation to each opening once a month to the collectors who’ve agreed to receive your marketing emails, and you keep the books yourself.

One vendor for the selling, plus books: HubSpot’s free account holds both of you (it fits 2 users) and the collectors (up to 1,000 contacts), sends the invitation through its marketing email to the collectors who’ve opted in, within the monthly allowance and with HubSpot branding, and sends the invoices. The books still need accounting software, but that can be free too: Wave’s Starter plan, or Zoho Books’ free plan if the gallery meets its revenue rule, with the dozen invoices a month recorded there by hand. Syncing is optional: if you’d rather HubSpot’s invoices reached your books on their own, its QuickBooks Online sync needs a paid plan, Simple Start, at $38 a month, for 1 user, which is you.

Three tools, two of them synced: Zoho CRM’s free edition holds both of you (it fits 3 users). Zoho Books’ free plan is open only to businesses that meet its revenue rule (revenue under $50K for the financial year), so check the gallery’s yearly revenue against it before you count on it. If the gallery qualifies, the free plan keeps the books and sends the invoices for 1 user, within 1,000 invoices a year; if it doesn’t, Zoho Books Standard, at $20 a month, does the same job. Either way, Zoho Books and Zoho CRM share collectors both ways. The invitation goes to the collectors who’ve agreed to receive it, from a free email plan that holds up to 300: AWeber’s, up to 500 contacts and 3,000 emails a month, or Kit’s, up to 10,000 contacts. Mailchimp’s free plan stops at 250 contacts.

So both paths can cost nothing: the first with free accounting software and the invoices recorded by hand, the second if the gallery qualifies for Zoho Books’ free plan. If it doesn’t, the second path costs Standard’s $20 a month, still less than Simple Start’s $38 a month for a first-path owner who wants the QuickBooks sync. The choice isn’t price, then. The second path is the one we’d pick for this gallery because of its sync: collectors becoming buyers move between Zoho CRM and Zoho Books on their own, and that’s the list that changes most. The email list is the one you’d move by hand, and at one invitation a month that’s a short export; the CRM-and-newsletter page covers doing it without re-adding anyone who unsubscribed. The first path is the better fit if one login for customers, invitations, and invoices matters more to you than that sync.

What not to pay for yet

• A suite’s paid tier for a connection you could do by hand. Count the retyping first.
• Two email allowances. If you upgrade HubSpot’s marketing email, don’t also pay for a separate email tool, and the reverse.
• A bundle before each job’s free plan has run out. Price each job on its own first.
• A move away from a tool that works. Connect it instead, or leave it.

Our view

Buy for the job that’s failing, not for the logo on the bill. We think most small businesses do best with the free plan that fits each job and one connection where the retyping actually hurts, which is usually customers and invoices. For one vendor on the selling side, HubSpot’s free account is where we’d look first; for a pair that shares a customer list at little or no cost, Zoho’s free CRM and Zoho Books, free if your revenue meets its rule. What three tools give up: three logins, and one export a month for the newsletter. For a business of one to five people, we think that’s a fair trade for real books and free plans that each fit.

Your next step

This week, write down your three jobs and the tool that does each one now. If each one works, keep it, and connect the pair you retype most, using the connection its vendor documents. If you’re starting fresh, pick the path from the example that fits you: for free books and a shared customer list, start Zoho CRM’s free plan and Zoho Books’ free plan (if your revenue meets its rule), and add a free email plan from the free-plan page; for one login across customers, email, and invoices, start HubSpot’s free account and keep the books in accounting software (a free plan works if you record the invoices by hand).