Salesforce vs HubSpot: Which is the Right Choice for You?
If your business operations involve managing sales and prospects on a regular basis, then you definitely need a CRM or Customer Relationship Management software. No second thoughts there. A CRM helps in tracking your prospects, nurturing them into customers, and developing a long-lasting relationship with them. It achieves this by offering data-driven insights that you’d typically miss without a CRM. Now, the market is flooded with a plethora of CRMs, but if we have to pick two, it will invariably be Salesforce and HubSpot, the two market leaders. But which is better of the two? Let’s find out as we take you through a detailed comparison between the two platforms and help you pick one for your business. Salesforce: At a Glance It is a cloud-based CRM software useful for finding prospects, closing deals, and connecting deeply with customers to turn them into loyal advocates of your business. Salesforce offers a complete product portfolio that includes CRM apps for sales, service, marketing, and commerce. Artificial intelligence is ingrained in the entire Salesforce technology stack so that it becomes effortless to deliver personalised experiences to your customers. One of the reasons why most people prefer Salesforce is its customisation and integration capabilities. These two features are a necessity for most modern businesses looking to drive their sales. HubSpot: At a Glance HubSpot is another popular CRM software with a focus on inbound marketing. Some of the core functions offered by HubSpot include activity tracking, pipeline visibility, real-time chat with customers/prospects, and a repository for contact information. Like Salesforce, it operates in the cloud, so all your customer data is always in sync across devices and can be accessed even on the go. One reason for the immense popularity of HubSpot is its simplified user interface. The platform is quite user-friendly and can offer value from day one without much training. Hubspot vs. Salesforce: Key Differences With that basic introduction about HubSpot and Salesforce, let us now compare the two platforms on different key parameters. Salesforce vs HubSpot: Pricing HubSpot is one of the few CRMs in the market to offer a free plan. While the features are quite basic, this plan might still suffice for very small businesses with limited customer management needs. HubSpot also offers a handful of affordable plans starting from $15 per user per month. There is also a free 14-day free trial on all the paid plans. On, the other hand, Salesforce does not offer any free plans but has a more extensive free trial for 30 days. The paid plans start at $25 per user per month and can go to $500 per user per month. Winner: HubSpot, mainly because of its affordable plans. Salesforce vs HubSpot: Dashboards & Reporting HubSpot’s dashboards are intuitive and powerful, but they are no match to the advanced and more capable dashboard of Salesforce that covers real-time sales analytics, trend analysis, predictive analytics, and customer segmentation. It is covered in all the plans except the Starter Suite. HubSpot, on the other hand, offers more basic reports related to sales activity, sales forecasting, website activity, and individual email performance in their paid plans. If you want advanced analytics capabilities, you need to sign up for their Enterprise plan, which could burn a hole in your pockets. Winner: Salesforce, thanks to in-depth and comprehensive reports that can give a much deeper understanding of your sales performance and customer behaviours. Salesforce vs HubSpot: AI Capabilities The market is already flooded with a variety of AI productivity tools. This can make it harder for most platforms to keep up with the top ones. Thankfully, both Salesforce and HubSpot have taken on the challenge and integrated some of the most advanced AI features into their platforms to decrease time spent on administrative tasks. Salesforce’s AI engine, Einstein offers many of the GenAI features such as forecasting, text generation, and conversational bot creation. There is also a useful prediction builder that enables you to generate custom forecasts based on user data. Even HubSpot is not lagging behind, as you will see plenty of prompts to interact with a built-in AI chatbot that can suggest workflow enhancements, provide data-based insights, and dive into predictive analytics. Winner: Salesforce. While HubSpot’s AI capabilities are more integrated into its platform, Salesforce’s AI capabilities are slightly more advanced and customisable, giving it a slight edge. Salesforce vs HubSpot: Onboarding & Ease of Use Both platforms have great onboarding processes, plenty of tutorial guides, and a thriving community to answer any query. HubSpot displays your onboarding journey in the form of milestones, highlighting what you need to do to get going. The best part about HubSpot is how its apps and features are built right into the platform. The layout is also pretty neat and easy to navigate, even if you are new to CRMs. Salesforce, on the other hand, has a more hands-off approach. It walks you through the platform with the help of pop-ups and pre-created demos as you explore its different functions. The layout is also slightly complicated, and your team might need initial handholding from Salesforce experts. Winner: HubSpot. While Salesforce might have a strong onboarding experience, it is slightly difficult for newbies to navigate because of how its dashboard and features are laid out in the system. Salesforce vs HubSpot: Customisability In Salesforce, you can add specific new features with the help of standalone apps. If that’s not enough, you can also access their custom coding function to tailor any component that you want. This is extremely beneficial for those businesses that operate with very specific business processes and want a single source of truth for all their operations. Salesforce also has the Code Builder to allow users to develop from anywhere without any additional software. HubSpot’s features can be customised to a good extent too through a no-code process. You can even create custom objects, modify properties, and associations to manage specific data models within HubSpot. Winner: Salesforce, because of its more robust coding capabilities
