Best CRM for Photographers & Creatives 2026: What I Actually Use

I’m going to do something most “best CRM for photographers” articles don’t: tell you what I actually use and pay for, not just what looks good on a comparison spreadsheet.

I’ve been running my client workflow through 17hats for over three years. Before that, I was duct-taping together Google Calendar for scheduling, a Word template for contracts, PayPal for invoicing, and a spreadsheet to track who was in my pipeline. It worked until it didn’t. I missed a follow-up on a $3,000 shoot because the lead was buried in row 47 of a spreadsheet I hadn’t opened in a week.

That’s when I switched to 17hats, and I haven’t looked back.

But I want to be honest: 17hats isn’t the right pick for everyone. If you’re booking your first few clients, spending $60/month on a CRM is hard to justify. So I’m covering three options, from free to full-featured, so you can pick the one that fits where you are right now.

Rank	Tool	Price	Best for
1	17hats	$50-60/mo	Established photographers who need all-in-one
2	HubSpot Free	$0	New photographers who need a free starting point
3	Freshsales Growth	$9/user/mo	Budget CRM with automation for growing studios

1. 17hats, What I use and why ($50-60/month)

17hats is a studio management platform built for solopreneurs and creative businesses. It’s not a traditional CRM; it’s the entire client workflow in one tool: lead capture, proposals, contracts, invoicing, scheduling, questionnaires, and a client portal.

What I pay: $50/month on the annual plan ($60/month if you pay monthly). One plan, one price. No tiers to compare, no feature gating, no “upgrade to unlock.” Everything is included.

What I genuinely like

The all-in-one workflow is the real selling point. When a lead fills out my contact form, 17hats automatically creates a project, sends a questionnaire, and queues up my contract and invoice. I built this workflow once, and it’s handled hundreds of bookings since. The time savings are real; I estimate it saves me 3-4 hours per week on admin.

Contracts and invoicing live inside the CRM. This is the killer feature for photographers. A new client gets a contract to e-sign and an invoice to pay in the same client portal. No switching between DocuSign and FreshBooks and a separate CRM. When the contract is signed and the retainer is paid, the project status updates automatically.

The client portal keeps things professional. Clients see their project timeline, upcoming sessions, documents, and payment history in one place. I’ve had clients tell me the portal makes my operation look more established than it actually is. That perception matters when you’re charging premium rates.

Online scheduling eliminates the email back-and-forth. Clients pick from my available times, the booking syncs to my calendar, and a confirmation goes out automatically. This alone saves me a dozen emails per week.

Email templates and workflows handle repetitive communication. “Thanks for your inquiry,” “Your session is coming up in 3 days,” “Your gallery is ready.” I wrote these emails once. 17hats sends them at the right time in the workflow.

What I’ll be honest about

The UI feels dated. Compared to newer tools like HoneyBook or Dubsado, 17hats looks like it was designed in 2016, because parts of it were. The functionality is solid, but the visual polish isn’t there. If design matters to your daily experience, this might bother you.

No free plan. You get a 7-day trial and then it’s $50-60/month, period. For a photographer who’s still building a client base and booking 2-3 shoots a month, that’s a real cost to absorb before the tool pays for itself.

The $60/month starting price is steep for beginners. There’s no lower tier. You’re paying the same price whether you book 3 clients a month or 30. For established photographers, $60/month is a rounding error. For someone just starting out, it’s grocery money.

Add-ons can push the cost higher. Bank Connect is $5/month extra. Additional users are $5/month each. Additional brands are $5/month each. Time tracking is $5/month. None of these are essential, but they add up if you need them.

17hats pricing breakdown

Feature	Details
Monthly price	$60/mo
Annual price	$50/mo
Users	1 (additional at $5/mo each)
Contacts	Unlimited
Contracts	Unlimited
Invoicing	Unlimited
Online scheduling	Included
Client portal	Included
Questionnaires	Included
Automated workflows	Included
Email templates	Included
Lead capture forms	Included
Free trial	7 days

My recommendation: If you’re booking 5+ clients per month and your admin work is eating into your shooting/editing time, 17hats pays for itself within the first month. The workflow automation alone is worth the price.

2. HubSpot Free CRM, Best free starting point ($0)

If you’re just starting your photography business and can’t justify $60/month, HubSpot’s free CRM is the best place to begin. It’s not built for photographers specifically, but two features make it immediately useful: the meeting scheduler and the deal pipeline.

The meeting scheduler lets potential clients book time with you directly from a link. Put it on your Instagram bio, your website contact page, or in email replies. No more “what time works for you?” threads. This single feature makes HubSpot worth setting up even if you use nothing else.

The deal pipeline gives you a visual board of every lead: who inquired, who received a proposal, who’s booked, who still needs to pay. When you’re juggling 10+ conversations, this is infinitely better than email and memory.

What you get for $0:

• 2 user seats
• Up to 1,000,000 contacts
• Deal pipeline with drag-and-drop stages
• Meeting scheduler with calendar sync
• Email marketing (2,000 sends/month)
• Email templates
• Live chat widget

What you don’t get (and why photographers notice):

• No invoicing, so you’ll need FreshBooks, Wave, or similar
• No contracts or e-signatures, so you’ll need a separate tool
• No client portal, so clients can’t see their project status
• No photography-specific workflows. It’s a general CRM
• HubSpot branding on emails and chat widgets

The honest assessment: HubSpot Free is an excellent lead tracker and scheduler, but it’s not a studio management tool. You’ll still need separate tools for contracts and invoicing. That’s fine when you’re starting out, but as you grow, managing 3-4 tools gets old. That’s exactly the problem 17hats solves.

Full breakdown: HubSpot pricing

3. Freshsales Growth, Best budget CRM with automation ($9/user/month)

Freshsales Growth sits between free and all-in-one. At $9/user/month (annual), you get features that free CRMs don’t offer: AI-powered contact scoring, sales sequences, and visual pipelines. None of those include the photography-specific features of 17hats.

Why a photographer might choose this:

• You want automation (follow-up sequences, lead scoring) at a fraction of 17hats’ price
• You have a small team (assistant, second shooter) and need multiple seats without breaking the budget
• You’re organized enough to handle invoicing and contracts separately and just need a strong CRM backbone

What $9/month gets you:

• AI-powered contact scoring (prioritize hot leads)
• Sales sequences (automated follow-up emails)
• Visual deal pipeline with multiple pipelines
• WhatsApp and SMS integration
• Custom dashboards and reports
• 21-day free trial, no credit card

What it doesn’t do:

• No contracts or e-signatures
• No invoicing
• No client portal
• No photography-specific features
• No online scheduling (you’d need Calendly or similar)

Best for: Photographers who want CRM automation at a low cost and are comfortable using separate tools for contracts, invoicing, and scheduling. At $9/month, it’s easy to justify even at low volume.

Full breakdown: Freshsales pricing

What about HoneyBook and Dubsado?

I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention them. HoneyBook and Dubsado are the two other major studio management tools in the photography space. Both offer similar all-in-one workflows to 17hats: contracts, invoicing, scheduling, client portals.

I chose 17hats over both because it fit my workflow at the time I was evaluating tools, and switching costs are real (migrating hundreds of client records, templates, and automated workflows is not a weekend project). HoneyBook in particular has modernized its interface significantly and is worth evaluating.

We don’t currently have detailed pricing data for HoneyBook or Dubsado on PriceFrame, so I can’t give them the same rigorous cost breakdown. We’ll cover their pricing in a future article. In the meantime, if you’re starting fresh with no existing tool, I’d recommend trying all three (17hats, HoneyBook, Dubsado) during their free trials before committing.

How to decide: a simple framework

Booking fewer than 5 clients/month and watching every dollar? Start with HubSpot Free. Use the meeting scheduler and deal pipeline to organize your leads. Handle contracts and invoicing separately. Upgrade to a dedicated tool when admin is eating into your creative time.

Booking 5-15 clients/month and ready to invest in efficiency? Try 17hats (or HoneyBook/Dubsado). The all-in-one workflow pays for itself in time savings. The 7-day trial isn’t long, so set aside a day to import your client list and build one automated workflow. That’s enough to know if it fits.

Small studio with a team and need low-cost CRM fundamentals? Freshsales Growth at $9/user/month gives you automation and lead scoring for a fraction of the all-in-one tools. Pair it with a free invoicing tool and Calendly for scheduling.

My honest verdict

I pay $50/month for 17hats and I’d pay it again tomorrow. The automated workflow, from lead inquiry to signed contract to paid invoice, saves me more than $50/month in time every single week. But I’ve been building on it for three years. If I were starting today with zero clients, I’d start with HubSpot Free and upgrade to an all-in-one tool once I had consistent bookings.

The best CRM for photographers isn’t about features. It’s about eliminating the admin that keeps you from doing the work you actually love.

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Pricing sourced from 17hats, HubSpot, and Freshsales. Last checked February 2026.