Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot Marketing Hub start from 800€/month. For an SME just getting started with automation, that budget isn’t justified until you’ve proved the investment will generate a return. The good news: you can start with a much cheaper stack and migrate later.
The minimum viable stack
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) for email marketing and basic automations: 9€/month for 10.000emails per month. It covers the first essential automations: welcome, nurturing, reactivation.
Make or n8n for integrations between tools: 10€/mes or free if you self-host n8n. Connect the web form to the CRM, the CRM to email marketing, everything with everything.
Notion or Airtable as a basic CRM: free or very cheap. Sufficient to manage up to several hundred leads and clients.
Tally or Typeform for forms: free or 25€/mes depending on your needs. Better experience than the standard WordPress forms.
Google Sheets as an auxiliary database: free. It works for many things people assume require a “real database”.
Total monthly: 30–50€/mes. Sufficient for the first six months of automation implementation in an SME.
The order of implementation
1. Automatic welcome email when someone subscribes 2. Sales rep notification when a lead comes in via the form 3. Nurturing sequence of 3 emails for leads that don’t convert in the first week 4. Reactivation flow for leads with no activity in 90 days 5. Anniversary email for active clients with an offer or personal touch
With these five flows working well, you have the foundation. From there, the next implementations deliver a clear return and justify increasing the budget on more sophisticated tools.