HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which CRM Is Best for Your Business?

HubSpot and Salesforce are highly capable CRM systems for small businesses, but which one is better? Well, our research found that it really depends on your particular CRM needs.

HubSpot is a better option for sales and marketing teams than Salesforce, with great automation features and a well-integrated AI, making it an easier to use platform than Salesforce. HubSpot also has a free plan with a mix of core sales, marketing, and service features, which Salesforce doesn’t.

On the other hand, Salesforce is better than HubSpot for customer service because it offers more communication channels to reach customers. Plus, its focus on analytics gives you powerful insights to grow your business — but it is a bit more expensive.

In this guide, we’ll cover the pros and cons of each CRM — covering features, pricing, and ease of use — to explain when and why one might be a better fit for your business.

In this guide:

• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which Should You Choose?
• HubSpot vs Salesforce Pros and Cons
• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Head to Head
• HubSpot Pricing vs Salesforce Pricing
• How Did We Research HubSpot and Salesforce?
• Verdict: Which CRM Is Better?

HubSpot vs. Salesforce – Which Should You Choose?

If you don’t have time to read our full Salesforce review or HubSpot review, I’ve listed below the fundamental differences between the two popular CRMs that I found during our 2024 CRM research and testing series:

• HubSpot is better for small businesses than Salesforce
• Salesforce is better for larger businesses than HubSpot
• HubSpot offers an easier-to-use interface than Salesforce
• Salesforce offers better analytics and reporting tools than HubSpot
• HubSpot has better sales and marketing features than Salesforce
• Salesforce has better customer support features than HubSpot

While they remain pretty similar, HubSpot’s free forever plan is a big differentiator. And even though Salesforce has rejigged its small business pricing recently, there’s still no free plan, and the prices are higher than HubSpot’s comparable plans. All in all, HubSpot’s speedy, modern interface and its generally lower price point make it the best option for small businesses.

That said, Salesforce is better for growing businesses because it allows users to store large amounts of information from emails, tasks, call logs, and contact information, to outreach campaign and lead information. Along with that, it has the tools needed to draw out insights you can use to improve your processes en masse.

Salesforce vs HubSpot: Pros and Cons

If you want to cut straight to the chase, here’s a quick tour of the strengths and weaknesses of Salesforce and HubSpot based on the time we’ve spent testing and reviewing both platforms in full.

HubSpot pros and cons:

Salesforce pros and cons:

HubSpot vs Salesforce: Head-to-Head

Now that you understand the basics of how Salesforce and HubSpot differ on pricing and functionality, it’s time to dig a little deeper. In this section, we’ll explore how HubSpot and Salesforce compare on everything, including:

• Features
• Ease of use
• Customer Support
• Reporting and Analytics
• Integration
• Automation
• AI Features
• Training features

In summary, HubSpot is a more lightweight program, with a cleaner, tidier interface than Salesforce, and a huge range of marketing and sales tools available. It’s easier to use, so will be good for small teams filled with newbies who’ve never used a CRM before. It’s easier to build automations and use the AI assistant in HubSpot than in Salesforce.

Salesforce is better for growing businesses. It offers better collaboration tools and analytical sales dashboards that can handle a lot more data, making it better for forecasting. It’s also a better all-round option for customer service teams. Like HubSpot, Salesforce ensures robust AI tools are available, but it’s a bit more expensive.

Salesforce vs HubSpot: Features

Because Salesforce and HubSpot are both considered high-end CRM options, they both offer a vast array of features for a myriad of purposes. As we’ve said a few times now, it all comes down to what you need those features for.

Marketing features

When it comes to the specific features on Salesforce Marketing Cloud versus HubSpot Marketing Hub, we found the latter to offer more functionality. In fact, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is our top choice for CRM for marketing, thanks to its vast array of marketing channels, including content, social, web, email, and paid. It’s got a great marketing email designer with a Canva integration, so you can make your official company correspondence look authentic, professional, and unique.

We were able to easily personalize a company email in HubSpot. Image: Tech.co testing

In comparison, Salesforce offers some basic options for channels like social, paid, and content, which is why we give HubSpot the advantage on this one.

Creating an email marketing campaign is easy in Salesforce. Image: Salesforce

Another big reason HubSpot has the edge in marketing is its shared inbox, allowing users to centralize all of their communications, regardless of what platforms they’re connecting with customers on. Salesforce doesn’t offer this. There’s support for PPC ads, too, which Salesforce doesn’t offer. When you add in the fact that you can get started with HubSpot for cheaper, it’s a no-brainer for marketing teams.

Sales features

We gave HubSpot the edge of sales features against Salesforce, but it was a close one. HubSpot beats Salesforce on features like lead capture and lead conversion, and it offers more avenues to capture leads from, including webpages and forms.

Still, if sales analytics and forecasting are important to you, Salesforce is definitely the way to go. You’ll be able to track a lot more metrics and have a bit more freedom when it comes to customizing and organizing your sales pipeline. On top of that, the automation features are closely targeted around speeding up the deals process, which means they’re actually useful.

Both options provide AI-powered lead scoring capabilities, so if that was a requirement for you, you’re in good hands with either Salesforce or HubSpot.

The sales forecasting dashboard in Salesforce provided lots of valuable sales data. Image: Salesforce

However, HubSpot offers plenty of its own sales forecasting features, including ones that facilitate recurring revenue tracking and custom goal setting. What’s more, not all businesses will need these advanced features, especially with Salesforce’s price tag attached. So it’s pretty much a toss-up between these two popular options, and your budget is likely to play a significant role.

We found creating a deal in the sales area of HubSpot to be very easy. Image: Tech.co testing

Service features

This is where Salesforce really shines. We found customer support CRM features thoroughly embedded in the Salesforce Service Hub, giving it an edge over HubSpot’s Service Hub. While HubSpot provides basic support features like a live chat function and features like a playbook maker so you can create handy guides for your team, it’s much more basic than Salesforce’s service offering.

Salesforce provides more communication channels, more ticketing channels, and more offline functionality than HubSpot. The omnichannel routing tools included in Salesforce make assigning tickets to users based on a variety of factors (such as their experience) super easy for managers/supervisors to organize on a large scale.

The only weak spot we found for Salesforce when it comes to customer service features is customer feedback functionality, like surveys, as the CRM offers none to speak of. Plus, some features included in HubSpot, such as a customer portal and the ability to build your own knowledge base, are only available in Salesforce if you purchase an add-on. But aside from that, Salesforce is effectively the whole package.

The Service Cloud dashboard in Salesforce provides insightful data about customers and interactions. Image: Salesforce

HubSpot is easier to use than Salesforce

With HubSpot, you’re getting a comprehensive, intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, even if you aren’t familiar with CRM software. The biggest highlight is the tidy user interface where you view all the information related to a contact. It’s a lot less intimidating than Salesforce, and I liked the way that the cells in the main contact table could be edited with a single click.

While a massive feature catalog is a huge benefit for Salesforce, I found that it does create some extra work, which can impede ease of use to an extent – particularly for beginners. I found the platform laden with specific terminology that needs to be learned before it makes any sense, which could create a learning curve for those unfamiliar with the software.

We were able to edit your contact database and sales pipeline at the click of a mouse in HubSpot. Image: Tech.co testing

HubSpot has a clear way of presenting a holistic view of who your contact is, what interaction you’ve had, and where they work. Simply put, HubSpot is built for ease of use, with a simple layout that will let you easily access all the tools available on the platform. There’s even a little help icon at the bottom of some screens, which will provide you with tailored advice on how to move forward.

In fact, HubSpot is so dedicated to improving ease of use that it tested its software on drunk users to be sure it’s as straightforward as possible, no matter how impaired you might be.

The help options just pop up in the HubSpot interface, which made it easy for us to find where we were going. Image: Tech.co testing

Salesforce has better customer support

While Salesforce may be lacking in the ease-of-use department, I found the customer support options to be quite robust, which can make it worth the hassle. Not only does Salesforce offer a huge catalog of online documentation and tutorial videos that can help you figure out any issues, but you’ll also become part of the massive Salesforce community of users, who can help you solve any problems.

Our researchers found that HubSpot does not offer 24/7 live support on any of its plans, even the ones that cost thousands of dollars per month. Salesforce, on the other hand, provides it for an additional cost, and includes it for all Unlimited plans.

If you require an actual person to walk you through the complications of Salesforce, you’re all set there, too. Once you’re logged into the platform, you can phone, email, and live chat with representatives to hammer out the details of your problem, so you don’t have to rely on forms and forums to get it done.

Salesforce has better reporting and analytics

As you might expect, Salesforce’s robust feature catalog comes with equally robust reporting and analytics functionality. I found the built-in system to be widely customizable, just like the rest of the platform, giving you complete control over what you track and how you track it.

Plus, with the new analytics add-on Tableau, you’ll be able to get a full 360-degree view of how your customers interact with your business, giving you more actionable insights for improving sales.

HubSpot also offers a lot of reporting tools, and they’re comparable to Salesforce. However, the only metric you get in every plan is to view revenue data, while other features like custom reports and sales forecasts are only available in the more expensive plans, which means you’ll have to pay a lot to get access to the same features.

An example of a Sales Rep dashboard you can access in Salesforce Sales Cloud. Image: Salesforce

HubSpot and Salesforce offer lots of integrations with other software

While both HubSpot and Salesforce are considered two of the most robust CRM options on the market, they can’t do it all. In that case, you might be interested in integrating these platforms with other third-party apps that can, in fact, do it all. Fortunately, both Salesforce and HubSpot offer a lot when it comes to integrations, so no need to worry there.

Both HubSpot and Salesforce have massive app stores that can unlock a wide range of functionalities for your business. They can integrate with Google Workplace, WordPress, Microsoft Teams, FreshBooks, LinkedIn, Slack Eventbrite, and dozens of other platforms and programs. For both providers, the list well and truly goes on.

The Salesforce app exchange is full of useful integrations. Image: Salesforce

HubSpot Salesforce Integration

If you really can’t decide between the two, HubSpot has a feature that allows you to sync information from Salesforce into HubSpot and then back again. This is very different from the usual features that let you import data from Salesforce in order to migrate to a new platform. It seems curious to offer deep integration with a competitor, but there are situations where this integration could become useful. If you already use HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, for example, but the sales team is on Salesforce, then this integration could help bridge the gap between the data held by the two teams.

HubSpot’s integration is bi-directional, which means you can send information to Salesforce as well as pull information from it. There are limits to how much data you can pull from Salesforce on any given day, depending on how many API calls your contract with Salesforce allows.

This feature is nice enough if you need it, though having both teams on the same platform would be much easier and offer more seamless data sharing. However, the Salesforce integration is not available on the free or Starter tiers, requiring at least Sales Hub Professional.

HubSpot has simpler implementation and training

Because HubSpot is easy to use, the setup process is pretty easy. You won’t have to spend a lot of time setting up your metrics, analytics, or integrations, as most of them will be set up for you upon installation. If you do need a bit of help, you can sign up for onboarding sessions for between $1,500 and $5,000 for your whole team, which is obviously not very cheap.

More specifically, the first part of the onboarding process for HubSpot — where you’re following a demo — is quite easy to follow and provides hands-on information on how to use the platform.

With Salesforce, you’re a lot more likely to need help getting started, and the company offers a wide range of helpful tools to do so. Between the online community of users and the robust support team, you’ll be taken care of – and you’ll need it, too, due to the complicated nature of the CRM. Salesforce even offers training seminars, which typically cost approximately $4,500. Again, it’s definitely not the cheapest option.

In fact, I found that the setup process for Salesforce was a bit longer than HubSpot’s, if only because of all the data that Salesforce can handle and the ease of customer data import on HubSpot (pictured below).

Importing customer data into HubSpot, which was a really quick process for us. Image: Tech.co testing

HubSpot has better automation than Salesforce

Salesforce is a highly customizable platform, so you can create approval processes for whatever you want. For example, on the Professional plan upwards, you can create automation triggered by email updates and notifications, and you can program the software to automatically update fields and cells with information when certain actions occur. However, you’ll need at least the Enterprise plan if you’d like access to the flow builder, which will let you build and roll out processes at the click of a button.

However, HubSpot will let you automate more, and for less money. Complex automation building is available as early on as the Starter plan, in all of HubSpot’s different hubs. Admittedly, you can achieve the same things with HubSpot’s automation builder as Saleforce’s, it’s just a bit easier.

We were able to easily build automations in HubSpot. Image: HubSpot

For example, in HubSpot, you can automate email drip campaigns so you’re not forgetting to follow up on leads, or send ones that satisfy specific conditions through to your sales team. You can also automatically change the status of tickets and leads based on the time since they were last contacted (which you can customize yourself).

The presence of these targeted automation features for marketing is one of the key reasons why HubSpot is better than Salesforce in this regard.

Salesforce’s AI is more powerful than HubSpot

This matchup is a close one. Both Salesforce and HubSpot provide “AI assistants” of sorts, and they’re both useful. But in the end, Salesforce’s Einstein AI takes the cake. The tool can help you automate a wide range of processes, from lead management to customer onboarding, with a world-leading company’s resources behind it.

However, it is generative AI after all, so it can be tasked with generating text for emails or websites, and sourcing the insights needed to make sales forecasts. Einstein is designed to help businesses with large amounts of information leverage insights and create sales forecasts and predictions. However, you’ll spend a lot more time tinkering with it than HubSpot’s AI and automation features, given the depth of functionality available.

HubSpot’s AI assistant can be called upon to help with a wide range of tasks, including generating email subject lines and copy. While it’s not quite as good at piecing data points together to create actionable insights, it still makes the software a lot easier to use. For instance, you can ask it to generate customized reports based on a few short prompts, rather than building them yourself.

We were able to generate an email subject line using HubSpot’s AI assistant. Image: Tech.co Testing

HubSpot vs Salesforce Pricing

HubSpot pricing starts at $15 per user, per month, while Salesforce pricing starts at $25 per user, per month. On top of that, HubSpot offers a great free plan, while Salesforce only offers a 30-day free trial. Consequently, HubSpot clearly has the edge when it comes to value, particularly for small businesses that are low on resources.

Beyond that, HubSpot and Salesforce offer a myriad of pricing plan options for each of their sales, marketing, and customer service platforms. Keep scrolling to learn more about all of them, or click the link below to learn about the specific Hub or Cloud you’re interested in:

• HubSpot Hub Pricing
• Salesforce Cloud Pricing
• HubSpot vs Salesforce Small Business Pricing
• Sales Hub Pricing vs Sales Cloud Pricing
• Service Hub Pricing vs Service Cloud Pricing
• Marketing Hub Pricing vs Marketing Cloud Pricing 

HubSpot Hub pricing

First off, we’ll start with the Hubs. HubSpot offers three different types of service, or Hubs, aimed at the different purposes of CRM: sales, marketing, and customer service. Find out how HubSpot’s Hubs match up against each other just below or read on for an in-depth look at each Hub.

Check out our complete guide to HubSpot pricing for more information

Salesforce pricing overview

Similar to HubSpot’s Hubs, Salesforce offers different types of services depending on your needs, dubbed Clouds, for sales, marketing, and service, as well as a Suite plan for smaller businesses. Each one offers a different set of pricing plans, but Salesforce offers some mix-and-match options that can save you some money if you want dual functionality, as well as two plans for small businesses.

Check out our full guide to Salesforce pricing for more information

Salesforce’s Small Business Suite vs HubSpot’s free plan

When it comes to small business options from Salesforce and HubSpot, the options are noticeably different. For one, HubSpot offers a free forever plan that is surprisingly robust, offering sales, marketing, and customer service functionality in one service. Comparatively, Salesforce has no free plan to speak of, and only allows for a 30-day free trial, which isn’t sustainable for small businesses.

However, both Salesforce and HubSpot have paid-for small business offerings that are affordable and functional for all the basics you need in sales, marketing, and customer service. HubSpot calls it the Customer Platform, while Salesforce calls it Suite.

HubSpot vs Salesforce: sales software pricing

HubSpot’s plans for sales are cheaper than Salesforce’s, and our research suggests it’s a better pick for small teams. However, Salesforce has better security options and 24/7 live support is available with Salesforce, although not on the Starter Suite plan.

HubSpot Sales Hub pricing

The HubSpot Sales Hub starts off pretty affordable, but as you can see from the table below, it gets expensive pretty fast. The entry price is enticing, particularly considering the free plan is available, but the advanced features — like lead scoring and custom reports — don’t unlock until you hit the Professional plan, which is far above the industry standard on price.

Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing

The Sales Cloud is arguably the most popular option from Salesforce, despite being more expensive than other Salesforce alternatives. The starting price is ahead of the industry average (which is around $15 per user, per month), and the more expensive plans are indeed far ahead of the market. Still, as one of the more feature-heavy options on this list, you’re definitely getting what you pay for, and ambitious, growing businesses will be able to get more out of it.

HubSpot vs Salesforce: service software pricing

Salesforce and HubSpot service options are quite similar to those in the sales section. In fact, they’re nearly identical across all plans, so the comparison should be easy. It’s worth noting, however, the Salesforce features available in the Service Cloud outmatch those in HubSpot and other Salesforce Clouds, making it an excellent choice for customer service businesses.

HubSpot Service Hub pricing

As is also the case with Salesforce, HubSpot’s Service Hub is identically priced to the Sales Hub. This means that, again, the prices start pretty competitive in the entry-level plans, but they get expensive fast.

Salesforce Service Cloud pricing

In the same way that the Sales Hub and Service Hub cost the same for HubSpot, the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud from Salesforce also have identical pricing, with the same five plans.

HubSpot vs Salesforce: marketing software pricing

Marketing plans for CRM providers are generally more expensive than sales or customer service, and that trend continues with Salesforce and HubSpot. Each option starts off affordable, but quickly reaches four-digit cost per month enterprise plans that balloon in price when you consider add-ons.

HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing

While the Starter plan from HubSpot sticks with the “per user, per month” pricing model, the more expensive plans from HubSpot are simply per month, and the cost is based on the number of contacts you go with. Here’s how these Marketing Hub plans match up against each other:

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing

The prices in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud are a bit jarring at first, but trust us, it’s for good reason. The high prices stem from the fact that the Marketing Cloud is filled with a wide range of automation features that can handle operations in a streamlined way, making it a better option than HubSpot for large sales teams. Here are how Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing plans match up:

How Did We Research HubSpot and Salesforce?