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5 minute read
What Vibe Coding Actually Is
Vibe coding refers to using AI to generate functional software from plain English descriptions. You describe what you want, the AI writes the code and you end up with something working without needing to be a developer yourself.
It has opened up software creation in ways that were not possible even two or three years ago. Simple internal tools, basic dashboards, lightweight applications that solve a specific problem; these are areas where vibe coding delivers real results quickly and cheaply.
The reason it has caught the attention of business leaders is understandable. The pitch is essentially "stop paying for software that was designed for everyone and build something designed for you". When it comes to a CRM, where frustration with rigid systems is almost universal, that pitch lands well.
Why the Appeal Makes Sense
To be fair to the idea, there are genuine problems with off the shelf CRM platforms that vibe coding is trying to solve.
Most CRMs are built around a generalised version of how businesses operate. They make assumptions about your sales process, your pipeline stages, your data structure and how your teams work. When those assumptions do not match your reality, you end up either bending your process to fit the tool or building workarounds that create their own headaches.
Cost is also a real consideration. HubSpot, Salesforce and their competitors are not cheap at scale. When you are looking at a growing team and the per seat licensing starts to add up, the idea of a one time build that you own outright starts to look attractive.
So the frustration that drives people towards vibe coding is legitimate. The question is whether building your own CRM actually solves those problems or just trades them for different ones.
Where It Starts to Break Down
The demo always looks good. You describe your pipeline, the AI builds something with a clean interface, the contacts load, the deals display, it all feels very promising. The problems tend to arrive once you move past that initial build.
The first issue is data
A CRM is only as useful as the data inside it. Getting your existing contacts, deals and history out of whatever you are currently using and into a new system cleanly is a significant project in itself. Vibe coded tools have no established migration paths, no import templates, no data validation. You are building that from scratch too, which is usually where the first round of unexpected costs and time appears.
The second issue is integrations
Your CRM does not exist in isolation. It needs to connect to your email, your marketing platform, your calendar, your finance system, your support desk. HubSpot has hundreds of native integrations that have been built and maintained by dedicated teams. A vibe coded CRM has none of them. Every connection you need is another build project and each one introduces another potential point of failure.
The third issue is what happens when something breaks
With HubSpot, you have a support team, a knowledge base, a community of users and a consultant ecosystem. When a workflow stops firing or your data is not syncing correctly, there are well trodden paths to a fix. With a vibe coded system, the person who can fix it is whoever built it, assuming the AI generated code is legible enough to debug. In practice, many vibe coded applications are difficult to maintain because the code is functional but not always well structured.
The fourth issue is that your requirements will change
What you need from a CRM today is not what you will need in 18 months. Your team will grow, your sales process will evolve, you will add products or enter new markets. HubSpot has a full product team constantly developing the platform to handle that kind of growth. A vibe coded system needs to be rebuilt or extended every time your needs shift and that work either falls to you or to whoever you pay to do it.
The Hidden Cost Calculation
One of the most common mistakes people make when comparing vibe coding to a platform like HubSpot is only looking at the upfront numbers.
HubSpot licensing feels expensive. A vibe coded build feels free or close to it. But that comparison ignores everything that happens after day one.
Think about the time involved in building it properly, the ongoing maintenance when things break or need updating, the cost of integrations that need to be custom built, the risk of data loss or system failure without enterprise grade infrastructure behind it and the productivity impact on your sales and marketing team every time the system has a problem and there is no quick fix available.
When you add all of that up honestly, the economics of building your own CRM rarely work out in your favour unless you have a very specific, narrow use case and in house technical resource to maintain it long term.
There is also a less obvious cost worth mentioning: attention. Every hour a sales or marketing leader spends thinking about their CRM infrastructure is an hour not spent on pipeline, on campaigns, on customers. HubSpot exists so that you do not have to think about the plumbing. A self built system, however clever, has a way of demanding attention at exactly the wrong moments.
There is also the question of security and compliance. HubSpot invests heavily in data security, GDPR compliance and infrastructure reliability. When you vibe code a CRM, you are taking on responsibility for all of that yourself. For any business handling customer data at scale, that is not a small consideration. Getting it wrong carries real legal and reputational risk that no amount of saved licensing cost makes worthwhile.
Where Vibe Coding Does Belong
This is not an argument that vibe coding has no place in a business context. It clearly does. The mistake is applying it to the wrong problems.
Building a lightweight internal tool to automate a specific manual task? Vibe coding is a reasonable approach. Creating a simple dashboard that pulls data from one source and displays it in a format your team finds useful? Absolutely. A small application to handle something very specific that no off the shelf tool covers well? That is the kind of narrow, contained problem where vibe coding shines.
A CRM is not a narrow, contained problem. It is the central system of record for your entire customer facing operation. It holds relationships, history, pipeline, forecasting and marketing data. The consequences of it failing or being poorly built are significant.
The principle that matters here is: use purpose built platforms for mission critical systems and use vibe coding for the gaps those platforms leave.
Final Thoughts
The rise of vibe coding is genuinely exciting and it is going to change how businesses build and use software over the next few years. But the enthusiasm around it has led some businesses to apply it in places where it creates more problems than it solves.
If your current CRM is not working for you, the answer is almost never to build your own. It is to either implement the one you have properly or move to a platform that is a better fit for where your business is going.
HubSpot, implemented well, is flexible enough to handle most of what growing sales and marketing teams need. The key word is implemented well; a poorly set up HubSpot portal will frustrate you just as much as any other system, which is a separate conversation worth having.
If you are at a point where your CRM feels like it is holding you back and you are wondering whether building something from scratch might be the answer, we would be happy to have an honest conversation about what is actually causing the problem and what the right solution looks like. Sometimes it is a new platform. Sometimes it is fixing what you already have. It is rarely a vibe coded build.