HubSpot and Salesforce are like the dynamic duo of sales and marketing CRMs.
How on earth do you choose between the leaders of both categories?
Salesforce brings the big guns with its sophisticated tools, designed with the large enterprise in mind.
It's no surprise that Salesforce is often referred to as "a hammer to crack a nut" when it comes to mid-sized businesses. However, all this power is well and good, but it comes at a price - a high price tag and a steep learning curve that could rival climbing Mount Everest!!
On the other hand, HubSpot is a friendly neighbour, easy to use, budget-friendly and pretty powerful, with a ton of features to rival its competitors.
HubSpot offers a free plan for all your basic CRM needs, unlike Salesforce, which does not offer free plans.
You can get your hands on the Salesforce platform with a 30-day free trial, while HubSpot offers a 14-day free trial for its paid plans.
Both platforms bring the heat with essential CRM functionalities like sales forecasting, email marketing, and contact and lead management.
HubSpot has taken top place in the G2 awards for the past few years, knocking Salesforce from the top spot.
If you're a small or midsize divisional business looking for an easy-to-use CRM that focuses on aligning sales, marketing, and service on one platform, HubSpot is certainly the way to go.
The best part? HubSpot offers a user-friendly interface that's perfect for those with limited access to technical resources, such as overworked IT Departments. It simplifies and streamlines tasks with sequences and workflows, making it accessible for teams without specialised training. This is especially beneficial for businesses that prioritise sales and marketing, as it provides a range of tools in these areas.
HubSpot's ease of use on a single platform makes it a better choice than Salesforce. These features allow businesses to manage customer relationships effectively without requiring extensive resources or technical expertise.
HubSpot streamlines workflows with its flexible automation capabilities and an intuitive visual editor for custom workflows, enabling the creation of sales and service processes without the need for extensive technical knowledge.
With a minimal and straightforward interface, HubSpot meets the needs of businesses looking for an easy-to-navigate CRM tool without the extensive training that Salesforce may demand. HubSpot's foundation as a single platform aligns well with the primary focus of many businesses. In comparison, Salesforce, with its extensive customisation and scalability, may be more sophisticated than what is needed.
72% of Sales Hub Professional and 84% of Enterprise customers display high Sales Hub feature usage
Salesforce is well-suited for large enterprises or businesses with intricate CRM needs, especially those in search of sophisticated integration with mission-critical systems like provisioning, manufacturing, and demand planning, with extensive customisation and a comprehensive range of features. In contrast to HubSpot, which caters more towards small and medium-sized businesses with its user-friendly interface and integrated marketing tools, Salesforce offers a robust, feature-rich platform capable of handling a diverse array of business processes and requirements.
It should be noted that HubSpot is increasingly evolving into a more robust enterprise solution with impressive developments this year in customer-sensitive data and HIPAA compliance.
Salesforce boasts impressive analytics and reporting capabilities, making it a valuable asset for businesses looking to delve deep into their data to steer decision-making. The reporting is notoriously difficult to configure, and Salesforce specialists are required to tailor all custom reports.
HubSpot began as a nifty marketing tool that blossomed into a full-fledged CRM, whereas Salesforce initially focused on CRM and later expanded to include sales and marketing features.
Today, HubSpot remains the go-to for agility, while Salesforce is hailed for its sales automation prowess. Despite their origins, both platforms offer a similar array of features:
|
|
HubSpot |
Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
|
Sales reporting & forecasting |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced sales reporting and forecasting, but requires an upgraded paid plan |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly advanced sales reporting and forecasting, with basic reporting available in baseline plans |
|
Marketing features |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Extensive marketing features available with the free and Starter plans |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Extensive marketing automation features available in separate marketing packages |
|
Ease of use |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Strong onboarding with step-by-step guidance; more integrated dashboard and navigation |
⭐⭐⭐ Strong onboarding with a demo-like account; layout is initially less intuitive |
|
Customisation |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Customisable workflows and automation, including JavaScript and Python coding for workflows |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly customisable (including coding capabilities) |
|
Pricing |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Extensive free plan, including a free CRM and baseline features; plans include specific product bundles; pricing packages can be customised and scaled by user: Free, Starter ($20/month), Professional ($500/month), Enterprise ($1,500/month) |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Charges per user per month; many features come as standalone apps accessible by purchase; plans are highly segmented; similar functionality can be much more expensive: Essentials ($25/user/month), Professional ($80/user/month), Enterprise ($165/user/month), Unlimited ($330/user/month), Unlimited+ ($500/user/month) |
|
AI features |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very well-integrated AI features even at lower pricing tiers, including generative AI, predictive analytics, and smart suggestions |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ AI functionality comes from the proprietary Einstein application, which offers generative tools, workflow automation, predictive analytics, and smart insights; isn't as conveniently integrated; scales features by plan |
When deciding between HubSpot and Salesforce, numerous feature/function comparisons are available to help you understand the differences.
While all these features and functions are informative, they really don’t complete the comparison because the core of the decision rests on the nature of your business.
Let's face it: history matters. A company’s heritage can be very useful in informing you when you make this critical decision.
If you’re in an IP-based business, like TIC, Professional Services or Technology, or a manufacturing business and your turnover is less than 100m you should choose Hubspot and here’s why....
Salesforce is a platform on which over 4,000 applications have been written. It was born in the era of large centralised systems like SAP and offered what was then a unique value proposition, effectively creating SAAS as an accepted platform.
Back in the day when I was a Director at PwC, we had (just like Accenture) thousands of skilled Salesforce consultants. We had them because Salesforce implementations are complex and resource-heavy, resulting in the billing of huge amounts of time to projects.
This leads to an indefinite over-reliance on external experts.
Which is what is needed if you’re Fortune 500, complex, global and multi-divisional.
If your business moves physical goods, such as manufacturing or distribution, chances are you have a fairly sophisticated billing and inventory requirement being serviced by an ERP. If that ERP is SAP then chances are, on balance, your scale and complexity could well benefit from the sophistication of Salesforce.
If not, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub are easy to implement CRM solutions.
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