HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which Should Your Business Choose?

If someone asked you to name a CRM tool off the top of your head, there is a good chance that you would say Salesforce. Salesforce is one of the most popular CRM tools on the market. But, as we are all aware, they are not the only available solution and they may not be the right solution for everyone. All businesses have different needs and the needs of some businesses may not align with the offerings of Salesforce. This is where tools such as HubSpot come into play. This is a common comparison or battle, HubSpot vs Salesforce.

As many of us are aware, HubSpot isn’t exactly a tool for parlour-sized businesses. HubSpot is arguably just as popular as Salesforce as they offer a wide range of additional services. The true question is, which one of these tools is best for you and your team, and what do these tools have to offer? We’ll review Hubspot vs Salesforce in 4 key categories below.

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Cost

Let’s start with one of the first things that come to mind when thinking about adding any type of tool to your tool chest. Even if you don’t try to think about cost and are trying to look for the best tool for the job, you will always glance at the price tag. Price is one of the most important factors, especially for small to medium-sized businesses that do not have as much cash to spend on new tools. This may be one of the most important factors when it comes to HubSpot vs Salesforce.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a powerful CRM tool that also allows you to choose different sales, marketing, and other services to add on top of their CRM. This allows your team to have a one-stop-shop for most (if not all) of their needs, making daily tasks easier. Their plans start at $25/month, after this it’s $80/month/user for the professional plan and $120/month/user for the enterprise plan. These plans are billed annually. 

Salesforce

Salesforce offers very reasonable plans starting at $25/month, unfortunately, for most people, this plan is not going to get you too far. This is a good way to get your feet wet before you take the plunge into their software. Similar to HubSpot, their subscription plans are created in such a way that they have their base fees and then offer additional features. Most users will find themselves creeping closer towards the $150/month/user Lightning Enterprise plan for the Sales Cloud. 

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Automation

Automation is one of the features that is becoming increasingly important in every business. This allows you to have your data where you need it and when you need it, without further input from you or your team. When it comes to CRM tools it has never been more important for them to have automation. 

HubSpot

HubSpot has a comprehensive automation feature set. This includes workflows you can build for any contact, company, deal, etc. They have also built-in “if this, then that” functionality to have the tool make basic decisions for you. Some more intelligent or in-depth features are built within higher subscription plans and require you to upgrade. But, at every subscription plan, there are levels of automation. 

Salesforce

Salesforce has “Einstein”, their own custom-built AI system to help you and your team work more intelligently with more information. You can create completely automated processes to take contacts from new leads to your onboarding procedures and beyond. This allows you and your team to focus on other tasks and allows your tool to focus on the more tedious tasks. According to their own internal report, Einstein now generates more than 1 billion predictions a day for their clients. 

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Implementation & Support

Assistance with implementation and having the proper support channels after are important aspects of any software. You and your team are busy and if something goes wrong or you need support setting something up it can be frustrating not having the help you need. Even if the company doesn’t have 24/7 help, it can be extremely helpful if they have a thorough resource centre with videos, walkthroughs, FAW’s, etc. This could be the difference between finishing your task now and having to wait for someone to get back to you. 

HubSpot

HubSpot allows you to sign up and start using their platform immediately without subscribing to a plan. You are also able to import all of your contacts as a CSV, match existing fields to standard HubSpot properties and start organizing your pipeline. HubSpot is unique when it comes to support. Everyone is familiar with the abundance of free content resources they offer, and this carries over to their own platform as well. They also offer 24/7 phone support and support tickets via email. 

Salesforce

Salesforce offers a 14-day free trial, but it’s just that, a trial. Where HubSpot allows you to get more time to know if you like the product, Salesforce requires you to make a decision after 14 days. With Salesforce you are likely to require an in-house Salesforce specialist or scheduled session(s) with one of their experts, adding to the total cost. Each Salesforce plan includes a standard support package with a two-day response time to your inquiries. For critical response times, you’ll need to pay extra for the premier plan or above. 

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Reporting & Analytics

No matter your company size, you should interested in reporting and analytics. This is how you can gauge what is working and what is not for your business. Without analytics or reports, it would be more difficult and time-consuming to analyze how your team is performing. Reports are crucial to identify areas that need improvement and see where you are performing well to optimize these efforts. This is one aspect that the battle of HubSpot vs Salesforce is determinant of what you are looking for.

HubSpot

HubSpot has recently made improvements to their report building with the launch of their new attribution feature in Marketing Hub Enterprise. With this new feature, they have caught up to the industry standard in reporting and have added features that other tools do not have. The benefit of this offering through HubSpot is you now have access to these types of reports within one tool and you no longer have to have a quiver of tools to get the desired end-result. You can now have one tool or a small handful of tools to achieve the desired result. 

Salesforce

Salesforce has always been a leader in this category with its powerful and robust reporting with seemingly endless customizability. This customization can take time to get it to the point you want it and can take additional support to create. But, once created you no longer need to make adjustments, unless your goals change. 

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Integrations

Regardless of what you do as a business, integrations are always going to be an important aspect of choosing software. The ability to integrate a tool with your current tool chest is important as it will save you and your team time and effort down the road. Having the ability to get all of your data in one location instead of bouncing around from tool to tool is a feeling you will not want to leave. 

HubSpot

HubSpot has one of the largest app marketplaces on the market as they have an easy-to-build integration system. If a tool wishes to build an integration with HubSpot it is easy to do so, it may take time and effort but it can be done. As HubSpot offers a wide variety of services this can be one of the most important integrations. 

Salesforce

Salesforce has a marketplace where tools are allowed to integrate with Salesforce live. You can then download these apps and have them interact and live natively within your Salesforce account. This can be extremely handy for those businesses that want all of the data in locations. But also, have access to those applications within their Salesforce account as well. It is a one-stop-shop for your tools. 

Wrap Up

These are some of the more popular features that tend to be at the top of software tool searchers’ lists of features. There of course are more features each of these tools provides and this list could go on forever. But, across all companies, these are the features each company has in common and are important to them. 

In the battle of HubSpot vs Salesforce, each of these tools has its pros and cons, and it will come down to the specifics your business is looking for that will inevitably decide which tool is best. For some companies, pricing may be do-or-die, this is especially true in small to medium-sized businesses. Where some companies may have reporting and analytics as their number one priority, or they may have a smaller team and support is most important. This is why it is so crucial to know exactly what features are most important to you and have them ranked in order. This ensures you are choosing the tool best suited for you and not the one that seems like it could help. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. If there was, we would all be using the same tool.