Salesforce vs. Hubspot - Which one should you choose?
Salesforce and HubSpot are well-known CRM platforms across industries because of their unique collections of apps.
Whether you want to automate marketing funnels, manage projects or customer relationships, or develop an all-in-one digital work environment, both options are suitable and highly capable.
So, should you toss a coin and pick one of these two CRM platforms?
No worries at all! We will guide you through this.
We have put together both platforms' facilities, helping you decide which platform is more suitable for your business requirements. So, let’s get started!
Short Background of Salesforce and HubSpot
Salesforce and HubSpot are both popular customer relationship management (CRM) software, but they have some minor differences in terms of their features, pricing, and target markets.
HubSpot is designed for small to medium-sized businesses and offers multiple tools for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. Moreover, it is known for its easy-to-use interface.
It allows users to manage their contacts, create and track marketing campaigns, and analyze website data all in one place. Further, HubSpot offers a free CRM that includes some basic features such as contact management and lead tracking.
On the other hand, Salesforce is a more comprehensive CRM solution that is geared toward larger enterprises. Salesforce offers a variety of features, including sales automation, marketing automation, customer service, and analytics.
It also has a range of integrations with other business software, such as marketing automation and financial management systems.
Along these, Salesforce is considered more customizable and scalable than HubSpot, but it has a tricky learning curve and is more expensive.
In summary, HubSpot is a more user-friendly and affordable CRM software tailored for small and medium-sized businesses, while Salesforce is a more robust and flexible CRM software for large enterprises.
HubSpot vs. Salesforce at a Glance
Salesforce is widely recognized as a sales automation tool while HubSpot serves as an integrated marketing platform. However, both provide some same features written below:
CRM
Features that support customers
Forecasting and analytics for sales
VoIP
Contact scoring
Marketing Features
So before we go into more detail about their significant differences in the next sections here are short comparisons of some of the essential features of these two platforms.
HubSpot Salesforce Sales Forecasting and Reporting
It offers advanced sales forecasting and reporting but demands an upgraded premium package. It provides highly advanced sales forecasting and reporting available in baseline plans. Marketing Features
HubSpot’s extensive marketing features are accessible with starter and free plans. Salesforce's extensive marketing automation features are eligible in expensive scaled plans. Ease of Use It offers step-by-step guidance with navigation and a more integrated dashboard. It offers a demo-like account and its layout is initially confusing. Customization It provides customizable automation and workflows but without coding access. It is highly customizable with coding capabilities and its automation involves a marketing package.
Pricing It has extensive free plans available such as baseline features and a free CRM including specific product bundles. Moreover, its pricing packages might be scaled and customized by a user.It charges monthly fees per user. Its several features are available as standalone apps that are only accessible by purchase. Further, Salesforce plans are extremely segmented and their similar functionality may cost substantially more.
Salesforce vs. HubSpot Pricing Details
HubSpot
It has a variety of apps that contain different pricing packages. For example, HubSpot Sales Hub has three pricing buckets starting from $45, $450, and $1,200 per month.
Besides, its Marketing Hub starts from $45 per month. It also provides premium plans with monthly costs between $800 and $3,200. However, In many cases, the affordable plans are pretty lightweight. So, you might need to upgrade it to an expensive premium plan for any serious operation.
Salesforce
It offers an even wider collection of product bundles and sales prices. For instance, the cost of Salesforce Sales Cloud for a single user ranges from $25, $75, $150, and $300 per month, billed annually.
Meanwhile, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is further categorized into bundles, with its Customer 360 Audiences starting from $12,500 to $65,000, per organization with monthly and annual billing.
Along these, Salesforce’s Mobile, Web Marketing, and Email packages start from $400, $1,250 to $3,750, per month, invoiced yearly.
Free Versions of Salesforce vs. HubSpot
HubSpot
One thing that's pretty famous about HubSpot is its free CRM software and various complementary toolkits. Additionally, with their free marketing tools, you will get email marketing, forms, landing pages, ad management, and more.
Apart from this, their sales service provides basic bots, team email, and live chat with other free sales tools. Further, their free customer service support features ticketing tools, shared inbox, email scheduling, and calling.
Salesforce
Since Salesforce doesn't provide any free options for its software, comparing Salesforce and HubSpot in terms of their free programs is super easy. Besides, there are free trials available for Salesforce services, but obviously, this isn't similar to a free plan.
Salesforce vs. HubSpot User interface
HubSpot
HubSpot’s platform provides a basic and simple user interface, based on the tool you are using. However, this may not always be the case. Still, the dashboards of HubSpot are always incredibly effective at displaying the important details.
Salesforce
As you might be thinking, Salesforce is a bit more complicated or advanced CRM software, and therefore its user interface may also be complex.
Basically, the Salesforce dashboards are not that confusing or difficult, but there are more options available on their user interface than HubSpot. Regardless, with its use and some practice, the functions and interface of Salesforce will become clear and simple for you
Bottom Line
So the competition between HubSpot CRM and Salesforce CRM platforms has ended here. Both are undoubtedly great options, particularly for small and medium businesses.
HubSpot is unquestionably the winner in some categories like the free versions, ease of use, and user interface. However, some clients argue that Salesforce's slightly more robust complexity is its strength.
It depends ultimately on what your company requires!