Salesforce VS Hubspot CRM

In this article, we introduce you to two leaders in the CRM and marketing automation software market: Salesforce and Hubspot.

Salesforce is the leader in commercial CRM. It offers a functional depth that is hard to find elsewhere, and a hyper-complete ecosystem of integrations and applications. It’s a complex tool to use, but one that perfectly meets the needs of well-established sales teams.

Like Salesforce, Hubspot is an all-in-one CRM solution that is very complete, very versatile, with a strong inbound marketing heritage. Hubspot offers advanced marketing automation and reporting features and can handle large volumes of data.

In this article, we compare these two solutions according to 8 criteria:

• 1. Sales pipeline management: Salesforce is much more adaptable to complex sales processes.
• 2. Reporting: Salesforce offers more advanced features.
• 3. Automation & Documentation: Salesforce allows you to go very far in sales automation, but Hubspot offers advanced marketing automation features.
• 4. Ease of use: Hubspot is easier to learn than Salesforce, which is very rich and therefore complex.
• 5. Lead management: Salesforce is more focused on sales process, while Hubspot is built on inbound lead generation.
• 6. Price: Hubspot is more suitable for small teams than Salesforce, which is perfect for larger needs.
• 7. Integrations: No real winner, the solutions are roughly equivalent.
• 8. Customer support & training: Hubspot is great for Do It Yourself enthusiasts, but Salesforce has built one of the largest networks of integrator partners.

Salesforce VS Hubspot at a Glance: Comparison Chart

Salesforce: our analysis in brief

Salesforce is a CRM software that offers many advanced features, including reporting, sales forecasting, personalization, and sales force animation. This tool also offers CPQ (Configure Price Quote) functionalities that are very useful to automate the edition of your purchase orders, your quotes, etc.

Its customer follow-up features are among the best on the market, and allow you to provide personalized follow-up to all your customers. This is particularly effective if you are using anAccount Based Marketing (ABM) approach.

Salesforce also has an AI-based sales assistant, Salesforce Einstein, that is very powerful, both in evaluating prospects and in automated activity tracking or its sales advice.

But the power of Salesforce makes it a complex tool to implement, configure and use. The learning curve is significant and in some cases requires the use of a . We therefore recommend this solution to those who have advanced needs and a well-defined CRM project.

Hubspot: our analysis in brief

Hubspot offers almost Salesforce-like features that are very good, especially in marketing automation and reporting, but are more accessible to smaller teams.

The integrations are also very numerous, deep and powerful.

Hubspot is recommended in two cases:

• for small teams looking for a free, quality CRM
• and for fast-growing teams looking for a reliable and powerful all-in-one tool to support their growth.

The free Husbpot plan is very generous and perfectly suited to the needs of small teams. On the paid side, the Starter CRM Suite includes Hubspot’s CRM Sales as well as marketing, customer support and content management tools for 50€ / month or 360€ / year.

Salesforce VS Hubspot: What their customers say

Salesforce

• Overall, users find Salesforce very deep and appreciate the capabilities it offers

• Some users are not very satisfied with the daily user experience.

Hubspot

• The vast majority of Hubspot users appreciate the ease of use and accessibility of the tool.

• Some people sometimes regret that the reporting functionalities are a little light and that it is difficult to set up very specific processes.

Hubspot CRM VS Salesforce: Functional scope

#1 Sales pipeline management

Salesforce makes it easy to track sales pipelines and lead progression through your sales funnel, as well as your estimated revenue potential and exact sales numbers at a glance. You can customize it according to your sales process, potential deal value and closing probabilities. Salesforce also offers to automate certain steps in the sales cycle.

Hubspot offers a solid sales pipeline, but it’s not very visual. The tool allows users to modify and add steps to the sales pipeline, in addition to the seven already pre-configured (Appointment, Qualified, Scheduled Presentation, Decision in Progress, Contract Sent, Closed Sale Won/Lost).

#2 Reporting

Salesforce offers highly effective reporting capabilities, including its artificial intelligence platform Einstein Analytics, which is available from the Salesforce Lightning plan. This tool offers customizable dashboards that make it easy to track quarterly or annual performance and also detailed forecasts through its pipeline trend tracking feature.

We recommend this solution to those who want to analyze their data in depth and generate more leads.

Hubspot offers very powerful complex reporting capabilities, especially if you use the entire Hubspot suite. They allow you to trace the entire customer experience thanks to specific tables for each of the sales, marketing and service activities. This is one of the advantages of using an all-in-one CRM. On the other hand, the customization and visualization possibilities are less rich than in Salesforce.

#3 Automation, Documentation & CPQ

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

Salesforce is a great asset because it automates complex document workflows while acting as a cloud storage drive. The tool offers 1GB of storage to any company with an Essentials license and 2GB per user license for higher packages. To make it easier for you to manage your documents, you can also download a dedicated app from the Salesforce App exchange.

Salesforce also offers an automated quote generator, Salesforce CPQ. This tool allows you to configure products and prices for cross-selling, up-selling, contract and proposal generation, and invoice and payment processing.

HubSpot has workflow functionality available in both the Pro and Enterprise plans to automate your business processes. But this functionality falls short of the depth, flexibility and customization offered by Salesforce.

In its free version, HubSpot allows you to upload documents up to 250 MB. Free users have access to five shared documents at any one time. If your business requires storage of files larger than 250 MB, you will have to pay. The advantage here is that there is no overall storage limit.

#4 Ease of use and implementation

The main objective of CRM is to facilitate the management and organization of all customer data. This includes contacts, leads and active accounts. The ease of use of CRM is therefore crucial to manage all this data.

Salesforce is a very rich and complex software to use, especially for those who are not familiar with CRM software. But the solution has made great efforts in terms of datavisualization and offers online training on Trailhead, to learn how to handle the tool in a fun way. For those who are looking for a software that is easier to use and implement, don’t hesitate to look into Salesforce alternatives.

Hubspot is a very intuitive solution and the CRM can be set up in minutes. Hubspot also provides advice to its users on the Hubspot Academy on improving their overall sales and marketing strategy.

#5 Lead management

Lead management is one of the main features of any CRM software.

Hubspot is a solution that focuses on inbound and content marketing. Hubspot offers very effective features thanks to the marketing automation tool and the integrated CMS. This tool also allows you to create very powerful workflows. For example, when a prospect fills out a form on your website, they receive a series of emails and an appointment for a call with your sales team. You can also run automated campaigns on social networks to generate leads.

Users can pay extra to use Hubspot as a CMS. It allows them to publish blog posts to generate inbound leads that feed directly into the CRM. A predictive lead scoring feature is available in the Enterprise plan.

Salesforce offers lead management features on a different tool, Pardot, which integrates with your CRM. Pardot offers the classic tools of marketing automation: creation of workflows, landing pages, email marketing, AI…The solution allows to identify the most qualified prospects before transmitting them to the sales team. You can identify specific prospect segments and define lead nurturing strategies tailored to each of these segments. The possibilities are numerous: definition of lead assignment rules, automatic lead addition, automatic lead scoring, etc.

#6 Customer support & training

Salesforce has built one of the richest and most robust ecosystems of experts in CRM software. .

Salesforce also offers very good quality training, either on their Trailhead platform or through external providers. Certifications are more focused on the technical aspects of CRM and teach users how to customize the tool, set up complex workflows, etc.

The Salesforce support offered by SFDC is however rather light. The Standard Success plan provides access to the community and all Salesforce content. A premium package is also available, with access to 24/7 phone support, dedicated customer success and guaranteed one-hour response for the most critical issues.

Hubspot offers support in French, Monday through Friday, for paid accounts. The solution offers a lot of content and very detailed training, especially for the handling of the tool, which are mostly in English. Hubspot also offers certifications, mainly focused on lead generation.

Onboarding new salespeople remotely costs about $1,500 per user, while in-depth sessions to help you solve complex problems can cost over $5,000. Onboarding is more detailed, dynamic and intuitive than Salesforce.

Salesforce VS Hubspot: Integrations & Philosophy

Salesforce is one of the largest third-party application marketplaces: the Salesforce AppExchange platform has been around since 2005 and gives you access to over 5,000 applications. We recommend the best of them in this article.

With the Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited plans, you also have a multitude of add-ons to add additional functionality.

For example, SalesforceIQ Inbox offers users a suite of productivity applications for mobile and desktop, including email and calendar integrations with smart contract and lead reminders.

Salesforce Billing allows for subscription renewals, contract renewals, and flexible billing. To collaborate, Salesforce offers its Chatter platform, which lets you share notes with colleagues or update the status of a project.

Hubspot’s marketplace is less generous than Salesforce’s, but the solution has managed to develop numerous application integrations (over 800) and is among the commercial CRMs that best integrate with a large number of tools. It is mainly oriented towards content marketing and online marketing.

The applications are divided into categories (marketing, sales, customer service, productivity, finance). The application pages are very detailed, showing key features and pricing in a clear manner. The software also has its own Operations Hub, a place where you can connect applications bidirectionally.

Hubspot VS Salesforce: Pricing

Summary: HubSpot’s pricing model is ideal for small businesses that need basic CRM functionality, while Salesforce is a better investment for companies that take advantage of advanced features.

Salesforce offers 4 plans, ranging from 25 euros/user/month to 300 euros. The Enterprise and Unlimited plans are the most comprehensive plans and are designed for large commercial organizations.

You can find the details of the different plans in this document. Salesforce offers flexible pricing when the volume of users increases but you must take into account, beyond the cost of licenses, other costs that we detail in this article. The price list is very complex, but you should expect to pay at least €5,000 the first year for a team of 5 with relatively simple needs.

Hubspot offers an interesting free plan for small teams or solopreneurs who want to take advantage of the sales features and other CRM tools (marketing or service), but its features are quite limited.

If your needs go beyond sales, you can subscribe to other tools and take advantage of attractive rates. For example, the Starter CRM Suite includes all Hubspot tools (marketing automation, sales CRM, help desk, CMS, and operations), for 50€/month for the Starter version.

The Professional plan offers, starting at 490€ per month for 5 paying users (590€ for 6 users) up to 100 custom reports, 500 emails/user/day, 5,000 email templates, 25 dashboards and 15 sales pipelines.

The Enterprise plan, starting at €1,180/month for 10 paying users (€1,300/month for 11 users), offers up to 500 custom reports, 300 teams, 50 dashboards, 200 inboxes, 50 dashboards and 50 sales pipelines.

You can find the details of the rates on the dedicated Hubspot page.