Built for free-tier B2B sales teams

A free business contact database that already knows how a B2B deal cycle works.

Most "free business contact database" results drop you into a lead-list vendor pitching paid credits, or a free CRM capped so hard that the first real deal breaks the plan. Strkr runs the SMB B2B starting point as a serious contact graph with pipeline, dedupe, firmographic lookup, and a clear seat-based upgrade path.

What this audience is actually dealing with

The pains that bring buyers here.

Teams typing "free b2b contact database" into a search bar are almost always doing one of three things. Running SMB outbound and trying to replace a ZoomInfo bill they cannot justify yet. Starting a sales motion and looking for a free place to park 500 prospects before the first paying rep gets hired. Or escaping a free HubSpot workspace that quietly caps emails, custom properties, and automation at the free line. The pains below show up in every one of those searches, and they repeat with weirdly specific detail across SaaS, agencies, consulting, logistics, and B2B services. The free tier is almost always the wrong tier for a real deal cycle, which is why the right design question is how a free tier should hand off to a paid one.

Free lead-list bait and switch

The "free" directory charges you per export.

Hunter.io free tier gives 25 verified emails a month. Apollo free tier gives 1,200 credits a month that burn fast on real prospecting. Lusha free is 5 credits per week. The free label works in a landing page but breaks in a weekly cadence because any serious SDR work hits the ceiling in day two, and the per-credit price past the free line usually lands north of the actual CRM subscription. Strkr frees the contact graph itself and lets a buyer bring whatever lead source they are already paying for.

HubSpot free is a contact ceiling

1,000,000 contacts, 10 custom properties, no real workflow.

HubSpot Free is often picked for the volume headline, then the team discovers that custom property creation stops at 10, that automation stops at the Marketing Hub paywall, and that the sales sequences everyone needs sit in Sales Hub Pro. The contacts fit, the motion does not. The migration cost in month six (every custom field, every list, every workflow) is bigger than the cost of starting on a correctly scoped paid plan from day one.

Prospect list without company context

A spreadsheet of names with no revenue, no size, no stack.

Teams that scrape together free prospect lists (Chamber of Commerce exports, LinkedIn connection pulls, trade-show attendee sheets) end up with names and emails and nothing else. The rep cannot sort by revenue tier, filter by headcount, or qualify by tech stack. Firmographic context is the whole point of a B2B contact database and spreadsheets cannot deliver it. Strkr pulls firmographic enrichment on write so the free workspace already carries company size, industry, and funding stage without a separate paid tool.

Intent signals live somewhere else

The buyer is researching and the rep has no idea.

A prospect visits the pricing page three times in a week, reads a competitor comparison, and downloads a case study. On the free SMB stack, those signals live in Google Analytics, a Mailchimp report, and a Fathom view that the sales team never opens. The rep calls on Thursday and misses the moment. Strkr captures web, email, and in-product signals on the contact record so the account is scored and surfaced before the next call block starts.

Lead-to-opportunity gap

Nobody knows when a contact becomes a deal.

Most free CRMs treat contacts and deals as parallel objects without a real conversion event. A lead sits in a list, becomes an opportunity in a spreadsheet, and the two never reconcile. Pipeline math stays guessed instead of measured. Strkr runs the lead-to-opportunity transition as a tracked state change with timestamp, source, and attribution preserved so SMB sales teams can measure conversion rate and cycle time without wiring a reporting tool from scratch.

Upgrade price shock

Free works for 60 days, then the quote lands at 150 a seat.

The free tier closes the demo and six weeks later the finance partner asks for an upgrade number. Most SMB-targeted CRMs then quote the enterprise tier because that is where the "real" workflow lives. Flat per-seat pricing avoids the shock and keeps the trial-to-paid conversation honest. Strkr publishes paid tiers and the full feature matrix on the pricing page so the SMB sales team can plan the upgrade conversation with the exec team months before the quote hits.

What a free B2B contact database should carry

Nine capabilities an SMB sales team actually needs on day one.

A free workspace is not just a smaller paid workspace. The free tier has a job: let an SMB B2B team run outreach, qualification, and the first few opportunities without a credit card, while keeping the data clean enough to be worth the eventual upgrade. The nine capabilities below are the ones that separate a serious free entry point from a demo wrapper.

Companies as primary objects

B2B motion runs on the account, not the person.

B2B pipeline tracks the deal to the company, with contacts attached as the humans involved. Strkr models the company record as the primary object with contacts, opportunities, and activities nested under it. SDRs working the top of funnel see every known person at a target account on one tab. The free workspace carries this model, so the data shape stays correct from the first prospect through the first paid seat.

Firmographic enrichment on write

New contacts arrive with company context attached.

When a prospect lands (form fill, manual add, imported row, API), Strkr pulls firmographic data: industry classification, employee count band, revenue band where available, headquarters, and funding stage for venture-backed companies. The rep opens the record briefed instead of running a parallel LinkedIn tab. Strkr applies a fair-use quota on the free tier that covers typical SMB prospecting volume (hundreds of enrichments per month), with higher caps on paid tiers.

Prospect company lists

Save a query, name it, share it.

A segmentation query over the contact graph (industry equals SaaS, headcount between 50 and 250, headquarters in North America, no open opportunity, last activity more than 30 days back) saves as a reusable list. The free workspace carries saved lists without a per-list cap. Marketing-ops at an SMB stops writing the same filter from memory every Monday morning.

Intent signal capture

Web, email, and in-product behavior on the record.

The Strkr tracking script captures page views, time on page, and form interactions. Email opens and clicks flow in from the native Gmail and Microsoft 365 sync. Product usage events arrive via webhook or REST API from the customer product. The signals aggregate into a per-contact intent score that surfaces hot accounts without a RevOps dashboard build.

Lead-to-opportunity transition

One click, with the state change preserved.

When a qualified contact becomes a deal, the rep converts the lead into an opportunity on the same record. Source, campaign, first-touch date, and conversion timestamp carry over. The reporting layer sees lead creation, qualification time, and conversion as a connected funnel instead of two disconnected object sets. SMB sales teams get real cycle math from the first deal.

Deal-level pipeline

Stages the SMB closer actually works.

Pipeline stages default to a short SMB-friendly flow (Qualified, Discovery, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, Closed Lost) with weighted expected revenue by stage. The pipeline view groups by owner, stage, or expected close date. The free workspace keeps the pipeline UI active so the first two reps run the Monday forecast call on real data instead of a shared sheet.

Dedupe on write

The same company does not land twice.

Every write (form, manual, import, API) runs through a dedupe check: domain exact match on company, email exact match on contact, name plus company fuzzy match. On match, the system surfaces merge versus update versus create. The free workspace runs the full dedupe engine so the data stays clean even at low-volume prospecting rates. The habit stays correct through the first paid seats.

Open REST API plus webhooks

The free tier is not an API-locked tier.

Strkr exposes a REST API and outbound webhooks on every tier including the free one, with HMAC-signed webhook delivery and documented endpoints. SMB teams running Make, n8n, or custom glue scripts can wire in from day one without a plan upgrade. The approach replaces the "no free Zapier" pattern that cripples most free CRM tiers.

Upgrade path with the data preserved

Free to paid is a plan change, not a migration.

When the SMB sales team crosses the free-tier limits (seat count, enrichment quota, automation volume), the upgrade is a plan change in settings. Every contact, company, opportunity, activity, saved list, and permission rule stays in place. The data model expands with higher caps and additional capabilities (sequence automation, custom objects, Strkr AI features), not a new workspace. The migration tax disappears.

How the free tier handles an SMB outbound week

The seven motions SMB sales teams run on the free workspace.

A free business contact database only earns its keep if it can carry the actual week of an SMB sales team. The seven motions below cover the common rhythm: prospect, qualify, outreach, discovery, proposal, close, retrospect. Each one works on the free workspace without a seat upgrade and keeps the data clean for the paid tier when the team scales.

Monday prospect block

Build a target list in under 10 minutes.

The SDR opens the saved list "SaaS 50 to 250 headcount, no touch in 60 days" and sees 80 companies with the firmographic enrichment already attached. The outreach queue builds from the list with one click. The free workspace carries saved segmentation and bulk assign actions, so Monday prospecting runs on filters instead of a hand-sorted spreadsheet.

Outreach cadence

Email, LinkedIn task, and call block.

The outbound cadence on the free tier sequences email through the native Gmail or Microsoft 365 sync, drops a LinkedIn connection task to the rep for the social step, and schedules a follow-up call block on the calendar. Paid tiers add automated multi-step sequences; the free tier covers single-touch cadences with manual stepping, which fits early SMB volume cleanly.

Discovery notes

Call notes attach to the contact and company.

During a discovery call, the rep captures notes in the Strkr record with templated fields for pains, decision criteria, timing, and budget. The notes attach to both the contact and the company so a second rep on the next call sees the full history. Strkr AI (available on paid tiers) summarizes the call automatically; the free tier logs the notes manually with the templated structure in place.

Proposal attachment

Draft, store, and link on the opportunity.

The proposal document (PDF, Google Doc link, PandaDoc link, DocuSign envelope) attaches to the opportunity record with a sent date and recipient. On the free tier the proposal lives as an attachment or linked URL. On paid tiers the Strkr Docs module adds native proposal drafting with signatures through the DocuSign and PandaDoc integrations.

Weekly forecast call

Pipeline review in a shared view.

The free workspace carries a pipeline board and a saved forecast view: open opportunities grouped by close month, weighted by stage probability, and sorted by expected close date. The Monday forecast call runs on the shared view with the two or three reps on screen. The exec sees the number without a Google Sheet refresh ritual.

Closed-won handoff

The deal becomes a customer record cleanly.

When a deal moves to Closed Won, Strkr creates the customer record on the company (with the won opportunity, the ARR number, and the renewal date attached), triggers the welcome email through the native integration, and schedules the kickoff call. The free tier runs the manual steps; paid tiers automate the whole flow through the Strkr Flow canvas.

Monthly retro

Conversion math from real data.

At the end of each month, the free workspace reports lead creation count by source, qualification rate, conversion to opportunity, and win rate by stage. The exec sees the funnel math on the dashboard instead of a Friday spreadsheet build. SMB sales teams running on the free tier for the first quarter get the baseline numbers they need to plan the first paid-rep hire.

Where free SMB contact databases usually break

The failure modes to avoid.

Most "free B2B contact database" setups collapse in a predictable sequence between months three and nine. Automation hits the free cap, email volume outruns the Gmail quota, custom property creation stops at the hardcoded limit, and the migration debt starts compounding. The seven failure modes below are the ones that drive SMB sales teams to search for a replacement.

Email automation cap

The free marketing tier blocks the fourth email in a sequence.

Mailchimp free caps contacts at 500. HubSpot Marketing Hub free gates automation past a single-step email. Brevo free caps daily sends at 300. SMB teams hit the ceiling in the second month of a growing list and either pay a surprise invoice or stop sending. Strkr includes native Marketing on paid tiers (not a bolt-on) with the included sends covering typical SMB volume on the entry paid tier.

Custom property ceiling

10 custom fields covers one quarter of real sales data.

B2B sales teams build custom fields for industry sub-category, ICP tier, decision stage, procurement path, security review status, and compliance flag. Ten fields runs out before the first serious sales cycle completes. Strkr allows unlimited custom fields on paid tiers with a generous free-tier cap tuned for a starting SMB workspace.

Permission over-sharing

Everyone sees everything in the free tier.

Most free CRM tiers run flat permissions: every user sees every record. For a 2-person SMB that is fine. For a 7-person SMB it means the junior rep sees the enterprise pipeline, the content writer sees commission data, and the agency contractor sees competitor conversations. Strkr applies role-based scoping on paid tiers; the free tier runs a lighter permission model but still supports owner-based visibility.

Report builder gated

The free report shows the chart you cannot download.

Free CRM tiers often preview reporting with a watermark or a cap at the download button. The exec sees the dashboard, cannot export it, and the ritual becomes "ask marketing to screenshot." Strkr allows CSV export on every tier through the REST API, with report scheduling and shared dashboard links available on paid tiers.

No real pipeline forecast

Free tier gives you deals, not a weighted number.

Many free SMB CRMs show the pipeline list without weighted forecast math or confidence rolls. The exec gets a count instead of a dollar figure. Strkr carries weighted pipeline math on the free workspace, with the Weekly Forecast Roundup view (confidence tiers, commit versus best-case versus pipeline) available on paid tiers for sales teams running a formal weekly cadence.

Integration tax

Zapier bills before the sales tool does.

Free CRM tiers that lock the API or restrict native integrations force SMB teams onto Zapier for every outbound signal, and Zapier bills by task past the free line. The combined tool bill climbs fast. Strkr publishes an open REST API plus webhooks on every tier, so SMB teams can run native integrations without a per-task meter. We do not recommend Zapier as a workaround.

Vendor lock on the data model

The export does not carry the custom logic.

When the SMB team outgrows the free tool and tries to migrate, the CSV export carries contacts and companies but not pipeline stage logic, scoring rules, automation flows, or email templates. The migration becomes a rebuild. Strkr documents the full data model in the open API and exports flows, templates, and rules as structured artifacts.

The honest free-to-paid math

What SMB sales teams actually spend across the first year.

A free business contact database only works if the paid upgrade carries fair economics. SMB sales teams running flat per-seat pricing on a tool that scales with the team usually spend less in year one than teams running a stack of free tiers with surprise upgrade bills in month six. The breakdown below walks the typical first-year cost by stage for the common SMB shapes.

Solo founder, pre-revenue

Free tier covers month one through month six.

A founder running pre-revenue outbound with 50 to 200 prospects per month lives inside the free-tier limits for the first six months without a credit card. The contact graph, pipeline board, Gmail sync, and reporting basics are enough to run a founder-led sales motion through the first few paid customers. The upgrade conversation happens when a second seat is hired, not when the free cap hits.

Two-founder startup, 500 prospects

Free tier works through the first paying customer.

Two co-founders selling together on a shared free workspace carry roughly 500 companies and 1,500 contacts through the first year of outbound. The free workspace handles the data volume, the shared pipeline, and the firmographic enrichment without a cost. The paid upgrade (Strkr Starter per seat) usually lands when the first paid rep hires in month 10 or 12.

First AE hire, 3-seat SMB

Strkr Starter at a flat per-seat rate.

The first AE hire moves the team to Strkr Starter with 3 paid seats (two founders plus one AE). The upgrade unlocks sequence automation, Strkr AI call summarization, higher enrichment quotas, and the native Marketing module. The monthly bill lands in the low hundreds, which SMB teams routinely compare favorably against a 25-dollar HubSpot Free plus Apollo plus Mailchimp plus Zapier stack that already climbed to 400 a month.

7-seat sales team, early traction

Strkr Growth with the full module stack.

A 7-seat sales team at the early-traction stage usually crosses into Strkr Growth for the extended module stack: CRM, Marketing, Projects, Messaging, Docs on one plan. The flat per-seat math stays predictable through the next three hires. The alternative at this stage (HubSpot Sales Hub Pro plus Marketing Hub Pro plus a project tool plus a messaging tool) runs 2 to 3 times the Strkr line.

When free stops being free

The signals that it is time to upgrade.

Four signals mark the end of the free tier: a second rep joins and permission scoping starts to matter, outbound volume crosses the free enrichment quota, the sequence motion needs multi-step automation, or Strkr AI summarization moves from nice-to-have to must-have on daily call volume. Any one signal pays for the upgrade; the combination usually does so inside a month.

Security and compliance posture

What SMB teams can tell their prospects.

Role-based access on paid tiers, audit logs on every record change, SSO and MFA available, encrypted storage, open REST API and webhook integrations, and the compliance posture: HIPAA compliant with BAA available, SOC 2 Type II in progress through 2026-Q4, and GDPR plus CCPA compliant. The SMB team closing an enterprise security review can answer the common questions without a vendor call.

Three-year TCO view

What the stack costs by year three.

A 10-seat SMB sales team on Strkr lands at a predictable flat per-seat bill with the full module stack included. The same team on HubSpot Sales Hub Pro plus Marketing Hub Pro plus a project tool plus a messaging tool plus Zapier typically runs 2.5 to 4 times the Strkr line by year three. The gap compounds because each hub tier upgrade on HubSpot is a separate decision; Strkr includes the module stack by default.

Head-to-head

Strkr free tier vs HubSpot Free plus Apollo free.

The most common free SMB B2B stack today is HubSpot CRM Free plus Apollo free plus Mailchimp free plus a shared Google Sheet. The side-by-side below covers the real capabilities an SMB sales team runs through the first 10 months, including the pivot moments where each free tier breaks.

Feature Strkr HubSpot Free + Apollo free + Mailchimp free
Firmographic enrichment on write Included on free tier with a fair-use monthly quota Apollo credits burn in week two of real prospecting
Custom property ceiling Generous free cap, unlimited on paid HubSpot Free hardcoded at 10 custom properties
Pipeline forecast math Weighted by stage probability on free tier Deal list without weighted forecast on HubSpot Free
Email sequence automation Single-touch cadences free, multi-step on paid HubSpot Free blocks multi-step at the sequence tool
Open REST API plus webhooks Available on every tier including free HubSpot Free throttles API, Mailchimp caps webhooks
Dedupe at write Email exact plus normalized phone plus fuzzy name-with-company HubSpot Free uses email-only match post-write
Native Marketing module Included on Strkr Starter and higher HubSpot Marketing Hub billed separately
Lead-to-opportunity transition Tracked state change with attribution preserved Lead and deal objects require manual reconciliation
Projects and Docs on same workspace Included on Strkr Growth and higher Separate tools (Asana, Notion) with manual linking
Upgrade path Plan change preserves every record and rule Hub stacking produces step-function invoice growth
Three-year all-in cost at 10 seats Flat per-seat with the module stack included HubSpot stack plus Apollo paid plus Zapier past free
Compliance posture HIPAA compliant with BAA available, SOC 2 Type II in progress through 2026-Q4, GDPR plus CCPA compliant Varies by hub, often requires upgrade for enterprise security
How teams use Strkr

How SMB B2B teams actually run the free tier.

Five playbooks from SMB B2B teams that started on Strkr free, hit their growth moment on their own terms, and upgraded without a replatform. The motion tells the story.

Pre-revenue SaaS founder

From outbound notebook to pipeline board in a weekend.

A solo SaaS founder running outbound to 180 target SMB accounts imported a hand-sorted CSV into Strkr on a Saturday afternoon. Firmographic enrichment attached employee count, revenue band, and funding stage automatically. The founder built the first saved list ("SaaS 20 to 100 headcount, HQ in US, no touch in 30 days") and ran the Monday outbound block against the list instead of a spreadsheet. The free tier carried the motion through the first paid customer.

Agency starting a sales motion

From referral-only to a tracked SDR cadence.

A 6-person creative agency with no formal sales motion hired a part-time SDR and gave her a Strkr free workspace. She built a target account list of 240 e-commerce brands and ran a sequence of research, warm intro request, and personalized email over 8 weeks. The agency closed its first non-referral retainer in month 3. The free workspace handled the volume. The agency upgraded to Strkr Starter when the SDR moved to full-time and the Growth tier added Projects for client delivery.

Early-stage B2B services firm

Replacing a HubSpot free workspace that hit the cap.

A 4-person B2B services firm had been on HubSpot Free for 14 months and hit three ceilings simultaneously: custom properties at 10, automation at the Marketing Hub paywall, and the shared workspace quota on report dashboards. The firm migrated to Strkr free in a focused weekend using the HubSpot API export. Every contact, company, and open deal carried over with dedupe collapsing roughly 18 percent of records. The firm upgraded to Strkr Starter in month 2 for the sequence automation.

Consulting firm with inbound

Form-fill ingestion and firmographic enrichment on write.

A boutique strategy consulting firm pointed its website contact form at the Strkr REST API through a webhook. New inbounds landed on the free workspace with firmographic enrichment attached automatically. The partner reviewing the inbound pipeline on Thursday afternoon saw company size, industry, and funding stage without a parallel LinkedIn tab. The firm stayed on the free tier for 11 months before upgrading when the second partner joined the sales motion.

Logistics tech startup

Account research for enterprise outbound on a free workspace.

A 3-founder logistics tech startup targeted 60 mid-market shipper accounts for enterprise outbound. The free workspace carried the account research model (one record per shipper, every known contact nested under the account, firmographic context attached). The founders ran a 90-day prep cycle before the first discovery meeting using the account record as the research hub. The team upgraded to Strkr Starter when the first dedicated AE hire landed.

A free B2B contact database that is actually built for the SMB sales motion.

Start a free Strkr workspace, import your current contact list, and watch firmographic enrichment attach on write. Run the first pipeline review this week, and upgrade on your terms when the second rep joins the team.

Common questions

What buyers in this bucket ask most.

Is Strkr free really free, or is it a trial?

The free tier is a free plan, not a time-limited trial. SMB B2B teams can run the free workspace indefinitely within the free-tier limits: a capped number of contacts, a fair-use enrichment quota that covers typical early-stage prospecting volume, single-touch email cadences, the pipeline board, and the open REST API. There is no credit card required to sign up and no automatic upgrade. The paid tiers unlock higher caps, multi-step sequence automation, Strkr AI features, native Marketing module access, Projects, Docs, and Messaging. The free tier is designed as a real starting point for SMB sales teams running pre-paid-rep motion, not a demo wrapper that forces an upgrade in month two.

How does the free B2B contact database compare to Apollo or Hunter free tiers?

Apollo and Hunter are lead-list and email-verification vendors. The free tiers on those platforms cover a few hundred credits per month before paid credits kick in. Strkr is a CRM and contact graph, not a lead-list vendor. The free Strkr workspace does not generate new prospect lists from scratch, but it does carry firmographic enrichment on contacts the SMB team already has (from a scrape, a trade show, a form fill, a referral, or a LinkedIn export). The two product categories complement each other: SMB teams typically pair Strkr free with a lead-list source they already own (LinkedIn Sales Navigator, an industry directory, a scraped list) and run the outreach motion on the CRM side. Teams searching for a free prospect generator should start with a lead-list vendor; teams searching for a free place to run the sales motion should start here.

What are the real limits on the Strkr free tier for a B2B SMB team?

The free tier covers 2 users, a few thousand contact records, a fair-use enrichment quota tuned for SMB prospecting volume (roughly 200 to 400 enrichments per month depending on the current configuration), single-touch email cadences through the Gmail or Microsoft 365 sync, the pipeline board with weighted forecast math, saved lists, the open REST API with webhooks, dedupe on write, and the full contact graph with company and opportunity objects. Multi-step sequence automation, Strkr AI call summarization, the native Marketing module, Projects, Docs, Messaging, and higher enrichment quotas are gated on paid tiers. The exact numeric caps on the free tier adjust from time to time; the pricing page carries the current numbers in detail.

How does lead-to-opportunity tracking work in a free workspace?

The B2B motion treats leads (unqualified contacts entering the funnel) and opportunities (qualified deals with a company, stage, and expected close) as the same contact record in different states, not two parallel object types. A rep marks a contact as qualified, which triggers the opportunity creation with source, campaign, first-touch date, and conversion timestamp preserved automatically. The reporting layer sees lead creation, qualification time, and conversion as a connected funnel. SMB teams get real cycle math from the first deal: lead count by source, qualification rate, time to qualify, win rate by stage, cycle time by segment. The reporting works on the free workspace without a dashboard build.

Does the free tier integrate with the tools we already use?

Yes. The open REST API and webhook integrations are available on every tier including the free one. Native integrations with Gmail, Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, Google Contacts, LinkedIn Sales Navigator (where the customer has the subscription), DocuSign, PandaDoc, Slack, and the common analytics tools work on the free tier. For custom glue work, SMB teams typically wire in through Make, n8n, or a lightweight script against the REST API directly. We do not route recommendations through generic middleware services. The approach keeps the integration cost predictable even at the free tier because there is no per-task meter in the way.

What is the upgrade path when the SMB team outgrows the free workspace?

The upgrade is a plan change in settings, not a migration to a different product. Every contact, company, opportunity, activity, saved list, dedupe rule, permission setting, custom field, and API integration stays in place. The paid tier simply raises the caps and unlocks the gated capabilities (multi-step sequence automation on Strkr Starter, Strkr AI features, native Marketing, Projects, Docs, Messaging on Strkr Growth and higher). Most SMB teams upgrade at the second-rep hire or when outbound volume crosses the free enrichment quota. The pricing page lists the per-seat rates for each paid tier and shows the full feature matrix. Teams that want a conversation before upgrading can book a fit call through the pricing page.

Try it free. Bring your team next week.

No sales call, no migration consultant, no four-month implementation. Enter your card, get 14 days of the full Pro tier, cancel any time before day 14 with zero charge. Spin up a workspace, import your CSV, and have something useful before lunch.