Why

At 8 demos a week, you're running roughly 32+ active conversations a month. One rep on a Sheet can manage that — until a follow-up slips, a deal goes cold, or you hire a second person. The Sheet isn't the problem; the absence of automatic reminders and a deal stage view is. HubSpot's pitch to you is €600/mo for features you won't use for at least two years.

What you actually need

1. HubSpot Free (€0) — gives you a proper deal pipeline with stages, contact history, and task reminders, replacing your Google Sheet without replacing your wallet.
2. Pipedrive (~€15/mo, Starter) — if you want email-open tracking and slightly cleaner pipeline automation than HubSpot Free; it's built for exactly one rep running demos.
3. A habit — same-day logging — every demo gets logged with next action and a follow-up date before you close your laptop; the tool is irrelevant if this discipline doesn't exist.

Do this today

Open HubSpot Free (hubspot.com/crm), create a free account, and import your Google Sheet contacts using the "Import" button in the Contacts tab. Your 8 weekly demos will have a real stage view by end of day, and your Sheet stays intact as a backup.

What to ignore

HubSpot Sales Hub Starter at €20/mo is borderline; Sales Hub Professional at €600/mo is laughable for one rep doing 8 demos a week — that tier is built for teams of 5+ with SDRs, sequences, and a RevOps person to configure it. Salesforce is not worth mentioning. Close is US-focused and priced accordingly. You're being sold headroom you won't need this year.

What doing nothing costs you

At 8 demos a week, a conservative 10% follow-up slippage means roughly 3 lost deals a month. Without knowing your ACV, that number is the only honest thing I can say — but even one lost B2B SaaS deal likely exceeds a year of any tool on this list.

When to revisit this

When you hire a second rep and two people are both updating the same pipeline — that's the moment to consider a paid tier with assignment rules and team-level reporting.