Should you build your own CRM?

Build it, vibe code it, or buy HubSpot? A clear-eyed look at the costs and tradeoffs in 2026.

The core question

Every growing company asks this at some point. Your sales team outgrows spreadsheets. You need something better. Do you buy a solution or build one?

The honest answer: for most companies, buying wins. But "most" isn't everyone. Here's how to figure out which you are.

What about vibe coding?

With Cursor, Claude, and v0, you can spin up a basic CRM in a weekend. Contact list, deal pipeline, basic reporting. It works.

But: email sync is still hard. Mobile is still hard. Permissions, integrations, reliability at scale — still hard. Vibe coding gets you an MVP fast; it doesn't get you HubSpot.

Vibe a CRM if: it's internal-only, your team is under 20, and you're okay with some jank. Otherwise, buy.

Real cost comparison

For a 50-person sales team over 3 years:

	Build	Buy (HubSpot)
Initial cost	$180K – $320K	$15K – $25K
Annual maintenance	$80K – $150K	$18K – $60K
Time to launch	6 – 12 months	2 – 4 weeks
3-year total	$340K – $620K	$70K – $200K

What people underestimate

Building a CRM sounds simple — contacts, deals, activities. But the details compound: email sync is tricky, mobile adds 50% to scope, permissions get complex fast, and your sales team will have feature requests forever.

The maintenance burden is real. Someone owns this system. When it breaks at 6pm on a Friday, that's your problem.