HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which CRM to Choose for Your Business?

How do you choose the right customer relationship management (CRM) platform for your business? – Comparisons between Hubspot vs Salesforce:

Choosing the right customer relationship management (CRM) platform for your business is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Your CRM has the power to make or break the smooth running of your organization as a whole.

There are a number of great platforms out there today, but there are two that stand out: HubSpot vs Salesforce . Both have a very good reputation and have really helped move companies of all sizes forward.

In this article, we’ll break down the information to consider when comparing HubSpot vs Salesforce , so that you can more easily see which platform is best for your organization, industry, and business. your business.

Salesforce VS Hubspot in a nutshell

When it comes to choosing between two CRMs, the questions to ask are:

• Do you care more about how many CRM features each platform offers or how easy it is to use?
• Is customer service more important than a low price?
• Do you have a lot of third-party applications that you plan to integrate into your CRM?

HubSpot is a great software for businesses that want an easy-to-set-up and/or free customer relationship management solution that’s ideal for small businesses.

But, it also has a huge list of features that can make it appealing to larger businesses.

Much like HubSpot, Salesforce aims to meet the needs of all types of businesses, tailoring its solution to the size and needs of the customer. This solution offers many features, which involves a fairly steep learning curve. This problem is solved thanks, in part, to solid customer support.

All in all, this is powerful software that any business can use, as long as they are willing to put the time and effort into implementing it.

# 1. Ease of use and installation

The main objective of CRMs is to facilitate the management and organization of all customer data. This includes contacts, leads, and active accounts.

Need to quickly see the biggest deals in your pipeline and know who to contact to close a sale? What if you added the phone numbers and emails of the leads you met at a conference?

These are precisely the types of activities that Salesforce and HubSpot are designed to streamline.

Due to the massive amount of data you will be working with, ease of use is crucial. To get started, take a quick look at the dashboards for each tool.

HubSpot Dashboard

 

Salesforce Dashboard

Both have a similar structure, with the ability to quickly navigate to accounts, contacts, deals via a menu bar at the top of the screen.

Salesforce offers a lot more customization options because users can add tabs for things like:

• The quotations,
• Tasks
• Files etc. in addition to the standard tabs.

If you are working within a complex business or with a single pipeline, this functionality is invaluable for the user experience. If you become a Salesforce customer, an account manager will take the time to ensure that the user experience is optimized to best meet your needs.

This is useful in ensuring that you get the most out of your new tool, but it is a bit onerous at the start in terms of implementation.

Ease of implementation and use is so important that it may be wise to study alternatives to Salesforce on this specific point.

Regarding HubSpot, the CRM can be set up in a few minutes because the basic version is free. It is therefore not necessary to go through the implementation process.

# 2 Price lists

When it comes to pricing, Salesforce and HubSpot have dramatically different models, and the needs of each business will determine which is more appropriate.

salesforce pricing

Salesforce operates on a traditional SaaS software model, charging businesses a monthly subscription (billed annually), based on the number of users who will access the system. Subscription fees are scaled based on a few factors such as:

• The number of contacts,
• Personalization options,
• The chosen assistance.

The most basic and least customizable version of Salesforce is $ 25 / user/month for up to five users. Then there is no maximum user, but the price increases as and when the features are chosen.

The premium plan is $ 300 / user/month with advanced features like AI-based lead scoring. In addition to the Salesforce license, companies typically have to pay for the implementation.

The price can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands for multinationals.

hubspot pricing

As for the HubSpot CRM, it is free for an unlimited number of users. Many features included with the basic Salesforce subscription, such as reports and advanced dashboards, must be purchased separately.

To give you some idea, you’ll pay $ 200 per month for custom reports and $ 1,200 per month (for up to ten users) for features like predictive lead scoring, email signatures, and revenue tracking. recurring. The bill can go up very quickly!

If these rates are too high for your budget, there is free, easy-to-use CRM software available.

# 3 Reporting

It’s one thing to store your customers’ data, it’s another to analyze it. One of the biggest added values ​​that businesses get from CRM is reporting and analysis. From executives to salespeople, tracking and forecasting sales trends is essential.

What is the current value of each salesperson’s pipeline? How many leads are on hold? What has been the year-over-year growth for a sales group? These are the kinds of questions a CRM should answer.

HubSpot vs Salesforce allow users to generate reports to track:

1. Opportunities lost by geographic territory,
2. The highest sales value by customer segment or by industry,
3. The source of leads that generates the most interesting deals.

Salesforce has a slight advantage in reporting functionality due to the number of variables available.

Both of these tools have an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature in the report builder, with the ability to convert reports into attractive dashboards.

salesforce reporting

HubSpot only contains pre-configured reports to track business activity. Even HubSpot’s premium reports (which cost an additional $ 200 per month) have a limit of 200 dashboards and are much less personalized than on Salesforce.

Both tools come with ready-to-use reports that can help you get started if you’re new to it. However, Salesforce again offers more options for viewing your dashboard data.

HubSpot’s pre-configured reports are usually limited to bar charts or line charts although the Premium option offers more visualization options.

hubspot reporting

If reporting isn’t a key part of your business and you just want to focus on data and communicating with your customers, HubSpot can do the trick. If, on the contrary, you’re looking to dig deep into your data to help your sales team improve, Salesforce can’t be beat.

# 4 Lead management

This is one of the main features of all CRM software , lead management. HubSpot is unique in that it focuses on inbound and content marketing. Users can pay extra to use HubSpot as a CMS. The goal ?

which you can then integrate into the CRM.

• Capture leads. You have the option of automatically importing information into the system when someone makes an inquiry through your website, for example.
• Allow users to email contacts directly from CRM or connect the system to an email client like Gmail.

Once your leads are in your system, Salesforce shines with its customization options. With HubSpot, you can add and edit certain fields in a prospect, contact, or lead card (country, industry, gender, etc.). But Salesforce goes even further with:

• The ability to define lead assignment rules,
• Automatic addition of leads,
• Setting access levels so that only authorized users see the data they are supposed to see.
• Automatic scoring of leads on a scale of 1 to 100 depending, in particular, on the source of the lead.

HubSpot’s predictive lead scoring feature must be purchased as an add-on or part of the Enterprise package.

# 5 Commercial pipeline management

When it comes to pipeline management, Salesforce is more customizable by configuring transaction stages that match your company’s sales processes.

If your process is very granular, you can take it into account without losing the nuance of your sales reps’ actions. If you want to add a lead late in the process, you have that flexibility.

On the Hubspot side, the tool allows users to modify and add stages to the sales pipeline, in addition to the already preconfigured seven (Appointment, Qualified, Scheduled Presentation, Current Decision, Contract Sent, Sale Closed won / lost).

Please note, the system only allows one pipeline per company. This means that if you have a sales process for one product and a different sales process for another, Hubspot is not for you.

Unless you buy an add-on or bundle that allows multiple pipelines.

Even the pipeline management features of HubSpot Premium don’t compete with the features of Salesforce. With Salesforce, it is possible:

• Add documents at each stage of the transaction,
• Automate tasks as transactions occur,
• Associate an unlimited number of products with each transaction (associating products with transactions is a premium feature at HubSpot).

While HubSpot can also automate some sales cycle tasks, it is much more difficult to integrate other functions, such as accounting and inventory, into the system.

# 6 Customer support and training

With Salesforce, all “base” customers have standard support with access to the Salesforce community and the ability to submit support tickets.

The guaranteed response time is two days. A premium plan is also available, with access to 24/7 phone support, dedicated customer success and a guaranteed one-hour response to the most critical issues.

While you receive the same basic support with HubSpot’s CRM, premium support, dedicated customer success, and technical support can come at additional (sometimes substantial) costs.

HubSpot vs Salesforce both have vibrant user communities and offer certifications, training, and live events to help customers improve their skills and knowledge.

HubSpot offers a variety of certifications focused primarily on lead generation. Salesforce (also known as the Trailblazer Community ) trainings and certifications focus more on the technical aspects of CRM, teaching users how to customize the system, set up complex workflows, and even code in the proprietary APEX language. of Salesforce.

# 7 Automation & documentation

When you’ve finalized a sale, you probably have a lot of documents to send, sign, and return. The faster you complete these tasks, the faster you move on to the next deal.

Salesforce is a major asset because it allows you to automate complex document flows while acting as a cloud storage drive for all of your documents.

Salesforce offers 1 GB of storage for any business with an Essentials license and 2 GB per user license for higher plans.

HubSpot has a workflow feature available for purchase. You’ll be able to set up basic drag-and-drop processes, but this functionality falls far short of the depth, flexibility, and customization that Salesforce offers.

In the free version, HubSpot allows you to upload documents up to 250MB. Free users have access to five shared documents at any time.

If your business requires the storage of files larger than 250MB, you will need to pay. The advantage here is that there is no overall storage limit.

# 8 Integrations

That may have been the case initially, but HubSpot has since increased the total number of its integrations to 153, including lead management, data transfer, and e-commerce tools.

Salesforce has hundreds of integrations that work almost seamlessly to extend the tool’s core capabilities. Integrations come out of the box and require no development to fully integrate into your system.

And while the title of this article puts HubSpot in competition with Salesforce, the two companies have a pretty useful partnership when it comes to integrations, which connects your HubSpot tools to Salesforce.

Conclusion

Hubspot vs Salesforce, which of these CRMs should you choose? If you’re looking for a powerful CRM without sacrificing ease of use, choose HubSpot.

Choose Salesforce if you need a highly customizable CRM solution. However, for some companies, it makes sense to use both HubSpot vs Salesforce and have the integration between the two tools in place.

While HubSpot vs Salesforce are competitors and some functionality may overlap, businesses can benefit from using the two tools for different but complementary purposes.

However, it is important to make a choice. Rest assured, you don’t just have a choice between Salesforce and Hubspot. Some of the best CRM software can meet your needs perfectly.

Think about your plans for the next few years and ask yourself if HubSpot or Salesforce can meet your expectations.