There are several names in the CRM Software game. Two of the most well-known are HubSpot and Salesforce.

They’ve both been around the block, having been founded in 2006 and 1999, respectively. HubSpot is extremely popular with small firms (it is neck-and-neck with Zoho for the top two and three slots), but Salesforce has the highest overall usage rate in the CRM industry.

If you’re comparing HubSpot vs Salesforce, the likelihood is that you’re searching for an all-in-one CRM. You require a platform that will enable you to manage the complete sales cycle, marketing, and service. You’re looking for automation and workflow management capabilities that will help your sales staff be more efficient.

Both systems perform admirably with this list of functions. However, HubSpot and Salesforce have significant variations in terms of data analytics, customization, and cost.

Which of the two platforms is a better fit for your organization? Continue reading to discover the features of the HubSpot and Salesforce products, as well as the distinctions between the two.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a well-known brand when it comes to CRM solutions. Additionally, they are recognized as pioneers in the field of inbound marketing.

The provider provides a free CRM that manages the fundamentals of the sales process and inbound marketing, such as lead management and cross-channel customer contact tracking. Track prospects and assign them to sales representatives; consolidate your customer interactions across many channels such as email, social media, chat, and your website.

To supplement this core operational functionality, you can purchase HubSpot’s marketing (Marketing Hub), sales (Sales Hub), service (Service Hub), or comprehensive growth (Growth Suite) add-on plans, which include a slew of features such as reporting, artificial intelligence, and advanced automation.

The platform integrates with G Suite and Microsoft Office and has several Zapier interfaces with applications like Slack, Facebook Lead Ads, and Google Sheets.

Salesforce

Salesforce, the largest planet in the CRM solar system, is a pioneer in CRM and other workplace SaaS services encompassing analytics, customer care, marketing automation, and application development.

The provider provides robust, well-developed sales processes and team communication capabilities, as well as several third-party connectors. Sales managers and sales teams will be able to create complex task management systems. Advanced automation significantly reduces the need for manual data input and removes the mundane low-stakes decision-making from the daily routine. Centralized contact and sales information, as well as a “single source of truth” for data, will help operations planning.

Salesforce CRM automates several time-consuming procedures and decision-making processes. Additionally, the platform contains a Marketing Cloud module that assists with community interaction, marketing intelligence, and consumer sentiment, among other functions.

What Is The Difference Between HubSpot and Salesforce?

So how do the two platforms compare quantitatively and qualitatively?

We compared HubSpot vs Salesforce based on many important factors, including simplicity of use, features, pricing, integration quality, customer service, reporting, platform migration, and the sort of business that each is best suited for. Additionally, we analyzed user ratings and reviews to determine the most often expressed compliments and criticisms.

HubSpot

Hubspot provides a free customer relationship management system. This entry-level product is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses to evaluate the vendor’s offerings, while its add-on packages provide the kind of flexible, detailed features required by large enterprises, such as artificial intelligence assistance, deeper sales prospect insights, and high-end automation.

If you’re on a budget, the free HubSpot CRM has comprehensive inbound marketing capabilities that assist you in directing blog content toward search engine traffic and provides adequate email marketing. Additionally, it excels at managing processes for enhanced project management. You’ll be able to allocate and manage leads effectively, monitor the sales process, and track customer interactions across channels.

Salesforce

Salesforce CRM is aimed at businesses of all sizes, however, it is arguably better suited to bigger corporations or expanding medium enterprises.

This is because Salesforce delves deeply into a broad range of company activities, from marketing and customer support to project management and revenue monitoring. The broad variety of add-ons available from the manufacturer enables additional customization to meet the needs of unique and sophisticated commercial applications.

With that in mind, Salesforce is not the easiest tool in the shed; it has a modest learning curve and takes some training time.

Pricing

HubSpot

  • HubSpot CRM is completely free, with starter options beginning at $30 per month paid yearly for the Marketing Hub for 1,000 contacts, the Sales Hub for five users, and the Service Hub for five users.
  • Professional plans for Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub begin at $800 per month for 1,000 contacts, $300 per month for five users, and $240 per month for five users, respectively.
  • Enterprise options for Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub begin at $3,200 per month for 10,000 contacts, $1,200 per month for ten users, and $1,200 per month for ten users, respectively.
  • While the core CRM is free, the expensive add-on plans do not provide free trials.

Salesforce 

  • Essentials are $25 per user/per month, payable annually, for all-in-one sales and support.
  • The professional plan, which includes comprehensive CRM functionality for teams of any size, is $75 per user/per month, invoiced yearly.
  • Enterprise plan with a highly customized sales process CRM is $150 per user/per month for businesses, invoiced annually.
  • The unlimited subscription includes “unlimited CRM power and support” and is payable annually at $300 per user/per month.
  • All options include a 14-day free trial.

Features

HubSpot

HubSpot streamlines project management by managing processes. With easy dashboards, you’ll be able to efficiently allocate and manage prospects, monitor the sales process, and track customer interactions across channels.

Synchronizing your HubSpot marketing communications enables you to enhance and unify your brand messaging. A drag-and-drop email editor enables you to easily create appealing, niche-specific marketing campaigns. Additionally, you may quickly design custom views to provide rapid overviews of pertinent information in one location.

Additionally, there are extensive social media marketing features; you can track your brand’s visibility across platforms and immediately publish to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. A diverse set of integrations with third-party applications enhances HubSpot’s possibilities.

Salesforce

Salesforce offers a comprehensive set of customer relationship management (CRM) and extended business productivity features, including contact management, task management, lead management, email integration with Microsoft and Google inboxes, sales forecasting, opportunity management, and a content management system (CMS).

The Salesforce CRM’s sales tools may be enhanced with add-ons such as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The package includes a number of tools for optimizing content marketing and overall marketing strategy, including the ability to create landing pages with the integrated Email Studio product.

Additionally, Salesforce Einstein provides business analytics powered by artificial intelligence.

Ease of use 

HubSpot

HubSpot is unmistakably geared for small company adoption. It’s immediately usable out of the box. Without technical help, you can rapidly learn how to browse sales features and enhance operations. As your platform usage grows, you may take advantage of classroom training.

Additionally, you may visit the HubSpot Academy to learn how to improve your whole sales and marketing approach.

Salesforce 

Salesforce is feature-rich, and it takes time to master the art of properly navigating between dashboards. To ensure that your sales force gets the most out of the platform, you’ll almost certainly require the aid of a technical support specialist.

Additionally, you’ll need to train your troops. Fortunately, the firm offers Trailhead, a gamified, well-designed online training resource.

Customer Support

HubSpot

HubSpot provides assistance to its clients via online training, community forums, and traditional one-on-one interactions. The vendor offers a number of certifications, most of which are focused on inbound lead generation.

Professional and Enterprise-level premium services provide dedicated phone assistance.

Salesforce

Salesforce provides a robust online training and certification infrastructure that guides users through the technical components of its CRM technologies. Additionally, community forums and the standard multi-channel help channels are available to assist with debugging particular issues that may emerge.

With the highest-tier Enterprise package, 24/7 support and configuration services are included.

Integrations

HubSpot

HubSpot is intended to integrate with both G Suite and Microsoft Office, ensuring that your business’s work processes flow smoothly regardless of which platform it prefers. The Zapier connector makes it simple to communicate data between apps (Google Sheets, Slack, Facebook Lead Ads, and others) and automate operations.

Additionally, the vendor offers several third-party connectors through the HubSpot App Ecosystem. This now comprises over 200 integrations, with more being added on a monthly basis.

Salesforce

Salesforce connects with thousands of third-party software applications, including well-known names like Mailchimp, G Suite, Slack, Dropbox, and Quickbooks. Additionally, you can effortlessly migrate client data from Gmail.

The Salesforce AppExchange offers an astounding array of options for extending your platform’s functionality if you’re seeking custom tool integration.

Reporting

Reporting HubSpot

HubSpot provides a simple-to-use reporting solution for key sales activity. It gives deep insights into who your greatest customers are, where your leads come from, the pain spots in your sales pipeline, and the motivations of your customers to purchase from you. Additionally, you may track data like as quota achievement, emails sent, meetings held, and the number and kind of sales concluded.

However, if you want more in-depth reporting, Salesforce may provide more possibilities.

Salesforce 

Salesforce manages complicated sales reporting requirements, with an almost endless number of reporting options that enable you to create, read, and exchange data. You have complete control over data fields and report formats, as well as the ability to filter data by case type and generate reports in the tabular, summary, matrix, or joined layouts. Reports may be stored and searched for, and report data can be analyzed using AI, including Einstein data insights.

Reporting features may be expanded further by connections with third-party applications like Tableau, Zoho Reports, and others.

Platform Migration

Migration to HubSpot

Migrating data from other CRMs or CSV files to HubSpot is quite simple since the platform performs an excellent job of eliminating data duplication. The data import process is designed to recognize and classify data according to HubSpot’s four primary object categories: contacts, businesses, deals, and tickets.

Additionally, HubSpot offers website migration to HubSpot’s CMS, which is facilitated by a dedicated Migrations Specialist.

Migration to Salesforce

Salesforce has a tool called the Data Import Wizard that enables you to transform accounts, contacts, leads, and data for custom objects into objects recognized by the platform. You can import up to 50,000 records in bulk at a time.

Data migration might occasionally result in access and permissions concerns. Manual modifications may be essential to prevent data corruption. This is especially true if you’ve begun developing and organizing data in Salesforce and then attempt to combine older data.

Reviews & Ratings

HubSpot

The HubSpot CRM platform consistently receives favorable praise for affordability, simplicity of use, and the functionality of the desktop client. Additionally, lead assignment and reporting tools receive high rankings.

On the other side, some users complain about the restricted customization choices available in HubSpot’s CRM. Others are dissatisfied with the smartphone app, describing it as clumsy and devoid of utility.

Salesforce

Users consistently praise Salesforce’s broad and extensible feature set; it truly is a one-stop-shop for corporate productivity software. The platform is praised for its ability to manage leads, prospects, analytics, contact records, and sales funnels neatly.

Concurrently, Salesforce’s CRM does receive some criticism from users due to its high price and complexity. People, in particular, find the process of creating and analyzing reports too difficult and time-consuming.

Conclusion

Both HubSpot and Salesforce provide robust CRM systems with a plethora of capabilities. The bottom line is that selecting the “best” customer relationship management platform is always determined by a business’s unique requirements.

That said, if you’re a really tiny business owner, you’re almost certainly going to choose HubSpot. HubSpot’s price structure is far more advantageous for small teams, which may begin with the free CRM and then upgrade to the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub add-ons, all of which are $30 per month for five users. Salesforce charges per user/per month, which results in a larger initial cost.

Salesforce has an advantage in terms of raw power and potential. The platform features extremely sophisticated data analytics and reporting capabilities, as well as an almost infinite variety of well-designed connectors. HubSpot has a similar number of connectors, and while its reporting capabilities are less robust, they are more straightforward and time-saving.

Fortunately, you may compare the two free of charge. Simply download HubSpot’s free CRM and register for a 14-day free trial of Salesforce at the same time.

After a week or two, it should be clear which of the two is the superior option for your business.

Would you like to know the benefits of project management software? Read our blog to find out