Why

With 2-3 people, 10–50 inquiries/month from a web form + LinkedIn, and <100 customers, the sales side is genuinely small. The hard part is the license layer: machine IDs, versions, expiry dates with notifications — that's asset/subscription tracking, not CRM. Forcing it into HubSpot's custom objects pushes you into Sales Hub Pro ($100+/seat/mo) for a feature you can get free elsewhere. And feature requests belong near your dev team, not buried in a contact record.

What you actually need

1. HubSpot Free CRM (free) — Companies = your customers, Contacts with a "Role" custom property (User / Admin / IT), web form → auto-create lead, one deal pipeline for new leads from LinkedIn. Done.
2. Airtable (free tier, ~$20/seat/mo if you outgrow it) — one base called "Licenses" with fields: Customer (link to company), Machine ID, Version, Expiry Date, Contact Email. Add an Automation: "When Expiry Date is 60/30/7 days away → send email." This is the killer feature you actually need, and HubSpot can't do it without a paid tier.
3. GitHub Issues or Linear (free for small teams) — feature requests live where your dev team already works. Tag each with the requesting customer. Stop trying to make CRM be a product backlog.

Do this today

Open airtable.com, create a base called "License Tracking", add a table with columns: Customer, Machine ID, Software Version, Expiry Date, Primary Contact Email. Then Automations → "When record matches condition" → Expiry Date is 30 days away → Send email. Paste your current license list in. By end of day, you'll never personally chase a renewal date again — the system will email you and the customer.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Sales Hub Pro and Service Hub — the only reason you'd "need" them is custom objects for licenses, and Airtable does that for free with better automations. Ignore Salesforce entirely at 2 employees. Ignore Zendesk / Intercom upsells until you have inbound support volume you're actually drowning in. Don't buy Canny ($79/mo) for feature requests when you have <100 customers — GitHub Issues is free and your devs already live there.

What doing nothing costs you

Every expired license you forget to chase is a renewal a competitor gets to pitch into. At <100 customers, losing even two or three renewals a year because the email didn't go out is a material chunk of your ARR.

When to revisit this

When you hire a dedicated customer success person, or when your license table crosses ~300 rows and Airtable starts feeling slow.