You just got licensed. Or you're a year in, running lean, and not ready to commit $200 a month to software that might not fit your workflow yet. Either way, you've probably Googled "free CRM for mortgage brokers" and come back with a list of tools that were built for American loan officers, enterprise sales teams, or people who have an IT department.
This post is different. It's a real breakdown of the free tools that actually work for independent Canadian mortgage brokers — what each one gives you, where the walls are, and the exact moment you'll know you've outgrown it. No affiliate links. No "top 10" lists that are secretly paid placements. Just the tools, the honest limits, and a free stack you can be fully operational on from day one.
What an Independent Broker Actually Needs on Day One
Before jumping into tools, it helps to name the five things you need to cover before you take your first client:
- Pipeline and contact tracking — Where are your leads, who are you waiting on, what's the next step on every active file. This lives in your head right now. It shouldn't.
- Scheduling — Clients need to book calls with you without a back-and-forth email chain. You need a booking link.
- Document collection — Your clients need to get you T4s, Notices of Assessment, bank statements, employment letters, gift letters. This is the most painful part of every file and almost every broker is still doing it over email.
- File storage and organization — Somewhere to keep documents organized by deal that isn't a chaotic shared Dropbox folder.
- Professional communication — A professional email address. Not one that ends in @gmail.com.
Everything below maps to one of these five. The goal is to cover all of them at near-zero cost, and be honest with you about when each tool starts to crack.
The Free Stack, Tool by Tool
1. HubSpot Free — Pipeline and Contact Tracking
HubSpot's free CRM is the most commonly recommended tool for brokers starting out, and for good reason. It gives you a visual deal pipeline, a contact database, basic email tracking, and a built-in meeting scheduling link out of the box. For a solo broker in year one, that covers a lot.
But there are two limits you need to know about before you commit your workflow to it.
The contact ceiling: As of September 2024, HubSpot quietly cut the free plan contact limit from 1 million contacts down to 1,000. That change didn't get a lot of press, but it matters for a broker building a long-term referral database. When you factor in every lead, every past client, every realtor partner, every referral source, and every cold prospect — 1,000 contacts goes faster than you'd expect. You likely have a year, maybe two, before you hit that wall. Plan for it.
The automation wall: On the free plan, there is none. Every follow-up reminder, every pipeline status trigger, every drip sequence — all manual. To access even basic workflow automation you need to upgrade to roughly $50 per month. If you're the kind of broker who wants the software to remind you and your clients automatically, the free plan is not going to deliver that.
There's also a branding reality worth naming: HubSpot's logo appears on your emails, your forms, and your meeting links on the free plan. For a broker whose brand is their primary trust signal with clients, "Powered by HubSpot" on client-facing touchpoints is a small but real consideration.
Use it for: Contact database and deal pipeline tracking in year one.
Know that: 1,000 contacts and zero automation are your ceilings. When you hit 800 contacts, start planning your move.
Upgrade when: You want any automation at all, or your contact list is growing fast.
2. Airtable Free — Flexible Deal Tracking and Task Management
Airtable is a spreadsheet that doesn't feel like a spreadsheet. It's genuinely one of the most flexible free tools available for a broker willing to spend a few hours setting it up the way they want.
The free plan gives you unlimited bases, 1,000 records per base, 1 GB of attachment storage, 100 automation runs per month, and up to 5 editors. In practice this means you can build a deal tracker, a referral partner database, a document checklist tracker, and a task board — all in separate bases, all for free.
The 1,000 records per base limit sounds generous. It isn't once you start tracking every deal, every contact linked to that deal, every document status row, and every note. A broker with two to three years of consistent history will hit this ceiling. It's not a day-one problem, but it's a year-two problem you should be aware of.
The bigger thing to flag is the upgrade cliff. When Airtable raised prices, the Team plan jumped 67% from $12 to $20 per user per month, and the Business plan jumped 87.5% from $24 to $45 per user per month. If you build your whole workflow in Airtable and then outgrow the free tier, the jump is steep. Go in knowing that.
Use it for: Building a custom deal tracker and document checklist system.
Know that: 1,000 records per base is the wall, and the paid upgrade is not cheap.
Upgrade when: You need more than 1,000 records per base or more than 100 automation runs per month.
3. Cal.com Free — Client Booking and Scheduling
This is the clearest win in the free stack. Cal.com's free plan gives you unlimited event types, multiple calendar connections, workflow automations, routing forms, and even payment collection. For a mortgage broker this means you can have a separate booking link for purchase consultations, refinance reviews, renewal calls, and first-time buyer sessions — all without paying anything.
This is worth comparing directly to Calendly because Calendly is what most people default to. Calendly's free tier allows only one event type and one calendar connection. A broker who wants separate booking links for different appointment types hits Calendly's wall on day one and needs to pay to unlock what Cal.com gives away for free. The cost difference works out to roughly $120 to $192 per year depending on the Calendly plan, for functionality that Cal.com provides at zero cost.
The honest reason Cal.com can do this is that it's open source. The free hosted version is genuinely full-featured. The paid plans are for teams and enterprise features that a solo broker doesn't need.
Use it for: All client booking and scheduling. Set up separate event types for each kind of meeting you take.
Know that: There is almost no meaningful limit on the free plan for a solo broker. This is the one tool on this list where the free tier legitimately covers your needs long-term.
Upgrade when: You have a team that needs shared scheduling or round-robin booking.
4. Google Drive Free — File Storage and Organization
Google Drive free gives you 15 GB of storage shared across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. For a starting broker that's workable — a typical mortgage file with T4s, bank statements, and employment letters runs roughly 20 to 40 MB, so 15 GB covers a few hundred deals before you hit the ceiling.
The storage limit is not actually the thing to pay attention to here. The thing to pay attention to is the email address.
A free Gmail account means your client-facing email ends in @gmail.com. Free Gmail does not support custom domain email. For that you need Google Workspace Business Starter, which is $7 per user per month. For a broker whose credibility is the product, a @gmail.com address on a client proposal or lender communication is the detail that can quietly cost you deals. It signals that you're not yet running a real operation — even if you are.
Of everything on this list, the $7 per month for a professional email domain is the highest-ROI upgrade available to you. Do it before you send another proposal.
Use it for: File storage and deal folders.
Know that: The 15 GB storage limit is manageable. The @gmail.com address is the real issue.
Upgrade when: You're sending proposals to clients. Prioritize this upgrade above everything else.
5. Document Collection — The Gap the Free Stack Doesn't Close
Every tool above is a general tool being adapted to a mortgage workflow. None of them solve document collection properly.
The current reality for most independent brokers looks like this: you send an email asking a client for 12 documents. They respond with one attachment and a question about which bank statement you want. You reply. Three days pass. You follow up. They send two more. A week later you're still missing the Notice of Assessment and they've stopped responding.
HubSpot free has no document portal. Airtable has 1 GB of attachment storage shared across everything you're tracking. Google Drive works but requires you to manually set up folder structures, share individual links, and follow up yourself when a client hasn't uploaded anything. None of them send automatic reminders. None of them give your client a clean, single place to submit everything.
This is the one gap in the free stack worth acknowledging honestly — and worth solving separately from everything else above.
The Full Free Stack at a Glance
| What You Need | Free Tool | The Real Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Contact and pipeline tracking | HubSpot Free | 1,000 contacts, 2 users, no automation |
| Flexible deal and task tracking | Airtable Free | 1,000 records per base, 1 GB storage |
| Client booking and scheduling | Cal.com Free | No meaningful limit for solo brokers |
| File storage | Google Drive Free | 15 GB — the @gmail.com address is the real issue |
| Document collection | None — this is the gap | Email and Dropbox is what most brokers use. It doesn't scale. |
Estimated monthly cost: $0
The one upgrade worth making immediately: Google Workspace Starter at $7/month for a professional email domain. That's it. Everything else above runs for free until your volume grows out of it.
When You've Outgrown the Free Stack
Be honest with yourself when these moments arrive:
- You've hit 800 contacts in HubSpot. Don't wait for the wall. At 800 you have enough runway to evaluate what comes next and migrate cleanly.
- You're manually following up on documents more than twice per deal. The free stack isn't solving this. A purpose-built tool is.
- You're closing more than 4 to 5 deals a month consistently. At this volume, manual processes cost you more in time than software costs in money. Run the math.
- You have an assistant or a partner. HubSpot's 2-user cap and Airtable's 5-editor limit still work for a small team, but pipeline visibility and handoffs become important fast.
- Clients are asking if you're a one-person operation. If the @gmail.com address hasn't been fixed yet, fix it today. It's $7 a month.
What to Upgrade First, In Order
First — Professional email domain ($7/month, Google Workspace Starter). Do this before the next proposal you send. The return on this is immediate.
Second — Document collection tool. If you're still chasing docs over email, this is the bottleneck costing you the most time per file. Fix it before you fix anything else in your stack. Look for something that gives clients a single upload link with no login required and sends automatic reminders when they haven't submitted yet.
Third — HubSpot Starter or equivalent CRM. When you need automation and your database is growing, this is the move. At that point you're running a real operation and the $50/month pays for itself quickly.
Fourth — Airtable Team. Only worth paying for if you've built heavily in Airtable and hit the record ceiling. Otherwise, a paid CRM likely replaces the need for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is there free CRM software for mortgage brokers in Canada?
- Yes — HubSpot's free plan is the most practical option for independent brokers starting out. It gives you a contact database and deal pipeline at no cost. The limits to know are 1,000 contacts and no automation on the free tier.
- Is Cal.com better than Calendly for mortgage brokers on a free plan?
- Yes, significantly. Calendly's free plan limits you to one event type and one calendar connection. Cal.com's free plan includes unlimited event types, multiple calendar connections, and workflow automations. For a broker who wants separate booking links for different consultation types, Calendly free isn't a real option.
- Can I use Airtable as a CRM for my mortgage files?
- You can, and some brokers do. The free tier gives you enough flexibility to build a solid deal tracker. Just know the 1,000 records per base limit is a real ceiling and the upgrade pricing is steep when you get there.
- How do independent mortgage brokers collect documents from clients?
- Most are still doing it over email, which means chasing clients repeatedly, receiving documents piecemeal, and manually organizing everything into folders. CollectDoc is built specifically to replace that process with a client-facing upload portal that doesn't require your client to create an account.
- When should a mortgage broker start paying for software?
- The first thing worth paying for is a professional email domain ($7/month). After that, the trigger for paid software is usually volume — when you're consistently closing 4 to 5 deals a month, the time cost of manual processes starts to exceed what the software would cost.
The Bottom Line
The free stack is real and it works. A newly licensed independent Canadian mortgage broker can be fully operational for near-zero software cost using the tools in this post.
The honest caveat is that free tools are general tools. They'll cover your basics, but none of them were built for a mortgage workflow. You'll feel the edges of each one within 12 to 18 months of consistent use — the contact ceiling in HubSpot, the record limit in Airtable, the @gmail.com address on your proposals.
The one gap the free stack genuinely doesn't close is document collection. It's the part of every file that costs you the most time, and email plus Dropbox doesn't get better with volume — it gets worse. When you're ready to fix that piece, CollectDoc is built specifically for it: client upload portal, no login required, automatic reminders, organized by deal.
Start with the free stack. Fix the email domain immediately. Upgrade everything else as your volume earns it.