Building a business to sell? What your CRM says about you

Ryan Jones • Published: 03 February 2026
Last updated: 03 February 2026

Building a business to sell? What your CRM says about you

17:04

Picture this: you are sitting across the table from a potential acquirer. The valuation looks strong and talks are moving forward. Then, they ask a simple question: What CRM do you use?

You may answer “HubSpot”. They nod. They know the system, they know the data structure and they know they can take over the keys on day one.

But if you say, “we built a custom solution in-house," the mood will no doubt shift. Suddenly, they aren't just buying a business. They are inheriting a software maintenance project.

When you are building a business to sell, your technology stack is an asset or a liability. Custom CRMs (customer relationship management) might feel like a superpower early on. However, they often drag down your value when it’s time to sell.

The romantic idea of proprietary tech often clashes with the cold reality of due diligence. Buyers today are looking for scalability, security and speed. A bespoke system often represents the opposite: friction, risk and stagnation.

Here is why moving to a platform like HubSpot can boost your business value and make it easier to sell when the time comes. Let’s take a look at HubSpot vs a custom CRM.

1. The transfer premium

Buyers pay for certainty. In an acquisition, the buyer needs to know that the revenue engine will keep running the moment you (the founder) walk out the door.

This concept relies heavily on how easily ownership can be handed over.

HubSpot: it’s an easily transferred asset. The buyer’s team likely already knows how to use it. If not, they can hire any of the thousands of HubSpot-certified RevOps professionals to run it.
The 'instruction manual' is public and standardised. The HubSpot ecosystem is global, ensuring training materials and support are always available.
Custom CRM: it is an institutional knowledge trap. It usually requires a specific developer or a niche team to maintain it.
If those key employees leave post-acquisition, the system, and your customer data, is at risk. Buyers discount their offer to offset this risk. They know they must spend money just to learn how your system works.

2. The security black hole

Cybersecurity can often be the first hurdle in technical due diligence. Acquirers, especially public companies or private equity firms, have strict compliance standards.

When you present a custom CRM, you are inviting a forensic audit of your code and security practices.

Compliance nightmares: does your custom CRM comply with GDPR, CCPA or Australian Privacy Principles? Can you prove it? HubSpot has teams of lawyers and engineers ensuring compliance with global standards, including Australian data residency options. A custom build rarely has this level of rigour.
Penetration testing: buyers will ask when the last time your system was penetration tested. If the answer is never, they will assume the system is vulnerable. Remedying security flaws in custom code is expensive and time consuming.
Access control: enterprise buyers need robust user permissions, audit logs and two-factor authentication (2FA). Custom CRMs often have rudimentary login systems that don't meet enterprise security policies.

If a buyer spots your customer data in an unsecured, home-brewed database, they will devalue your list. They must account for the potential legal liabilities.

3. The invisible maintenance tax

Founders often argue that custom CRMs are cheaper because they don't pay subscription fees. This is a fallacy that becomes painfully obvious during an exit.

A custom CRM has a high total cost of ownership that buyers spot immediately.

The browser break: browsers like Chrome and Safari update constantly. APIs for Gmail and Outlook change. A custom CRM requires constant patching just to keep basic integrations working. If your Lead Developer is on holiday when an API changes, your sales team stops working.
Server and uptime: who manages the AWS or Azure instance? Who responds when the server crashes at 3am? In a custom setup, this is an operational drag. With HubSpot, uptime is their responsibility, not yours.
Technical debt: you must maintain every line of code you write in-house. Over years, quick fixes pile up into a mountain of technical debt that makes the system unstable. Buyers subtract the cost of fixing this debt from their offer.

4. AI readiness: the new diligence standard

We have entered an era where AI is not just a buzzword. It’s a valuation multiplier. Buyers are looking for businesses that are AI-ready. Meaning they have clean, structured data that AI agents and large language models (LLMs) can ingest to drive efficiency.

HubSpot: the platform uses a standardised data schema (Objects, Properties, Associations). It comes with embedded AI tools (Breeze) that work out of the box. A buyer sees a dataset they can immediately leverage for predictive analytics and automation.
Custom CRM: these systems often suffer from spaghetti data. Without strict validation rules, data entry becomes inconsistent. Fields are often hard-coded or poorly defined. To a buyer, this looks like a massive data cleaning project before they can even think about using AI.

A custom SQL database with no clear documentation traps your data. It becomes dead data. It holds less value than the dynamic, AI-accessible data sitting in a modern SaaS platform.

5. Due diligence: speed kills deals

Time is the enemy of all deals. The longer due diligence takes, the more likely the buyer is to find a reason to walk away or lower the price.

HubSpot: an auditor asks for key metrics like churn rates or acquisition costs. You generate a trusted report in seconds. The data architecture is transparent. The buyer trusts the report because they trust the source.
Custom CRM: you inevitably spend weeks explaining how your system calculates these metrics. You have to prove the data is accurate. This friction frustrates buyers and raises red flags about data integrity. It also gets them asking, “is this revenue real, or is it just a glitch in their custom code?"

Every time you have to say, "Let me ask the Lead Developer to run a query to get that number," you lose credibility.

6. Removing the key person risk

Buyers fear key person risk. This is the danger that your business could fail if a specific employee leaves.

In the context of technology, this is often your Lead Developer or Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

The single point of failure: in a custom CRM scenario, the person who wrote the code is often the only person who understands it. Staff turnover after an acquisition is common. If your developer leaves, the buyer inherits a black box that runs the entire revenue operation.
The insurance cost: buyers often require golden handcuffs (expensive retention bonuses) for your technical staff to mitigate this risk. This money comes directly out of the acquisition pot.

With HubSpot, the support team is a multi-billion dollar public company. There is no single point of failure. This lowers the risk profile of your business, which directly supports a higher valuation multiple.

7. The innovation ceiling

A business that isn't growing is dying. Buyers pay premiums for growth potential.

The feature gap: HubSpot releases hundreds of updates a year. They have thousands of engineers building new features for marketing, sales, service and operations.
The stagnation of custom: with a custom CRM, you only get the features you build yourself. Your sales team might need a new lead scoring model or a webinar integration. They must wait for engineering resources. This slows down your go-to-market speed.

Buyers want a tech stack that accelerates growth. They do not want a bottleneck that requires a development sprint just to add a dropdown field.

8. The migration debt

Buyers often want to merge your data into their own systems. This usually means moving everything to Salesforce or HubSpot.

From HubSpot: migration is a well-travelled path with native integrations and standard APIs. It is cheap and predictable. The field mapping is standard. The associations are standard.
From custom: migration is a nightmare. The buyer has to pay expensive consultants to map your custom database fields to standard ones. They will deduct this estimated cost, often in the six figures, directly from your final payout.

This is the migration debt. You might not pay it today, but you will pay it at the exit.

So which one adds the most value?

Building a custom CRM is often an ego play, not a value play. It feels good to build software that fits your exact workflow today, but it ignores the reality of tomorrow.

HubSpot adds value to your exit because it removes variables. It tells the buyer: "This business is a machine. You can step in, turn the key, and drive."

Custom software tells the buyer: "This business is a puzzle. Good luck figuring it out."

When you are looking to exit, you want to be a machine, not a puzzle.