HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which CRM Is Best for Your Team in 2024?

HubSpot and Salesforce are highly capable CRM systems for small businesses, but both providers also offer plans geared towards to larger companies. Used by thousands of businesses worldwide, they both offer a broad range of advanced features for managing customer and client relationships, as well as team management and organizational tools.

Which one is best for you will depend on the type of team you’re in. For example, HubSpot is a better option for sales and marketing teams than Salesforce. It’s got great automation features and a well-integrated AI, which makes it a good choice for growing businesses that want to scale their processes quickly and easily. HubSpot also has a free plan with a mix of core sales, marketing, and service features.

However, Salesforce is better than HubSpot for customer service because it offers more communication channels to reach customers – but it’s a lot more expensive. In this guide, we’ll cover the pros and cons of these two CRM providers — from features and pricing to customer support and ease of use — and 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 Pricing vs Salesforce Pricing
• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Head to Head
• About Our Research
• Verdict: Which CRM Is Better?
• Frequently Asked Questions

CRM Deals for 2024: Compare Prices

We’ll be pitting HubSpot vs Salesforce head to head throughout this article. However, these aren’t the only CRM tools to consider – and it’s good to be aware of what other providers are bringing to the table. The list below updates when providers lower their prices or put on new deals:

HubSpot vs. Salesforce – Which Should You Choose?

If you don’t have time to read our full Salesforce review or HubSpot review, below we’ve listed 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 is better for small businesses than Salesforce
• 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

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 the fact it’s generally available at a lower price point, make it the best option for small businesses.

That said, Salesforce is better for larger 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. But 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 Pricing

Both HubSpot and Salesforce can become very expensive, very fast, which can be concerning for businesses trying to navigate the looming recession.

HubSpot has one advantage over Salesforce – there’s a free tier to HubSpot CRM. This isn’t a short-term trial, either – you can use HubSpot free forever, should you choose. However, on the paid plans, you’ll have far more features, from workflow automation to sales forecasts, and any business that expects its sales and marketing teams to grow should be considering a paid plan from HubSpot (from $9 per user, per month).

Salesforce pricing starts from $25 per user, per month, and both providers offer industry-specific options. This means that entry-level plans for sales businesses, for example, could be a different price than those of marketing businesses.  Take note of that while checking out the breakdown below. In this section, I’ll cover:

• HubSpot Pricing Overview
• Salesforce Pricing Overview
• Salesforce’s Small Business Suite vs HubSpot’s Free Plan
• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Sales Software pricing
• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Service Software Pricing
• HubSpot vs Salesforce: Marketing Software Pricing 

HubSpot pricing overview

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.

The Sales Hub and Service Hub are priced similarly, but the Marketing Hub is a bit more expensive, which is commonplace for marketing-focused CRM providers. 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. 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.

Much like HubSpot, the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are priced similarly, and can be combined for a cheaper option. Again, the Marketing Cloud is much more expensive, as it provides a wide range of additional features that are more valuable.

Check out our full guide to Salesforce pricing for more information

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

Salesforce used to have an “essentials” plan for small businesses starting at $25 per user, per month,  but this has been replaced with two plans for small businesses: The Starter Suite and Pro Suite.

The Starter plan ($25 per user, per month) is a basic CRM suite with marketing, sales, service, and commerce features. You’ll be able to manage a basic sales pipeline, utilize prebuilt reports, and use the platform’s email marketing tools.

In this sense, it’s similar to HubSpot’s free plan (aside from the price, of course). This will be great for small businesses just getting started with CRM software, but companies looking to truly upscale their marketing operations will be better off with an industry-specific plan from Salesforce.

The Pro Suite costs $100 per user, per month and adds in additional customization and automation options, as well as sales quoting and forecasting tools and real-time live chat. However, if you have a budget of 100 dollars per user at your business, we’d suggest a HubSpot Professional package, as they have more features and HubSpot has a cleaner interface.

That being said, the most comparable plan from HubSpot is its free plan. It’s also a multi-purpose CRM tool with a mixture of marketing, sales, and service features rolled into one package. However, it’s much easier to set up and use and you’ll be able to get going quicker than you will with Salesforce’s small business plans.

That being said, there aren’t nearly as many features available – which isn’t surprising considering HubSpot’s plan is free. For example, Salesforce provides extensive sales forecasting features on all of its plans, whereas you’ll need a paid HubSpot plan for this sort of feature.

HubSpot vs Salesforce: sales software pricing

HubSpot’s plans are decidedly cheaper than Salesforce’s, and our research suggests it’s a better sales CRM system overall. They offer more features for capturing leads from websites, such as web forms, and you can accept payments via an integration with Stripe, which you can’t do with Salesforce.

However, Salesforce has better security options, including IP restriction capabilities and single sign-on options, which are available on all of its Sales Cloud plans. 24/7 live support is available too, although not on the Starter Suite plan. However HubSpot don’t offer this on any Sales Hub plans.

HubSpot Sales Hub pricing

The HubSpot Sales Hub starts off quite 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.

It’s also worth remembering that the Sales Hub pricing plans have a minimum number of users required and per user pricing, so you’ll definitely be paying more than the per month price listed. Here’s how all of the HubSpot Sales Hub plans match up against each other:

Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing

The Sales Cloud is arguably the most popular option from Salesforce, despite being quite expensive compared to other Salesforce alternatives. The starting price is well ahead of the industry average (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.

Unlike HubSpot, Salesforce does not have user minimum requirements for its plans, so what you see is what you’ll pay for all options. Check out how these plans match up against each other below:

HubSpot vs Salesforce: service software pricing

Although Salesforce’s Service Cloud prices are just as high as its Sales Cloud prices, its features more than make up for it. There are many more productivity and team management tools included in Salesforce than there are in HubSpot, including a feature called “Chatter” which will let you collaborate with people inside and outside of your company, and you can even assign learning content to members of your team.

In comparison, HubSpot’s free and starter plans have fewer features, and focus largely on core service functions like a team email and email reply tracking. The Professional plan adds advanced features like 1:1 video calling and a WhatsApp integration, so you can contact customers wherever they are. Plus, it’s still more than $70 cheaper per user, per month than Salesforce’s second-paid plan.

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 the prices start pretty competitive in the entry-level plans, but they get expensive fast. While HubSpot’s Starter plan is quite competitive in the industry, substantially undercutting Salesforce, the Professional plan ramps up the price by a lot, with the Enterprise sending it up even further.

Like the Sales Hub, the HubSpot Service Hub also has the same minimum user requirement and per-user pricing, so your monthly cost is going to be higher than these listed prices. Here’s how the HubSpot Service Hub pricing plans match up against each other:

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 nearly identical pricing, although the Service Cloud offers a few more pricing options, with five plans instead of four. The Einstein 1 plan costs quite a bit more due to advanced functionality like generative AI features.

The Service Cloud also doesn’t have a minimum user requirement, so you’ll pay the amount you see on the table below. Check out how these plans match up against each other now:

HubSpot vs Salesforce: marketing software pricing

HubSpot’s marketing hub prices are decidedly higher than some HubSpot alternatives, although the Starter plan ($15 per user, per month) is a lot cheaper than Salesforce’s comparable Marketing Starter Suite ($25 per user, per month).

HubSpot’s Professional ($800 per month) and Enterprise plans ($3,600 per month) also come in cheaper than Salesforce’s Pro ($1,250 per month) and Corporate plans ($4,200 per month). Plan for plan, they’re also a lot better when it comes to marketing features. HubSpot includes support for more channels for capturing leads, as well as ad and social media management support. There’s also automation and generative AI to help you (although Salesforce offers this too on its most expensive plans).

HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing

Unlike the sales and service hub plans, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub does away with the per-user pricing for the most part, although the $15 per user, per month Starter plan still uses it.

For this price, you’ll be able to store 1,000 marketing contacts in your database – however, Salesforce will let you store 15,000, 45,000 or 500,000 contacts depending on your plan.

HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise plans charge users based on the number of marketing contacts they would like to store, starting at 2,000. Here’s a breakdown of the Marketing Hub pricing plans:

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 outrageously 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. Still, that doesn’t change how expensive these plans are!

Thankfully, these plans don’t have a minimum user requirement either, but at this price, you’re going to be paying a lot no matter what. Here are how Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing plans match up:

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 medium-sized and large businesses, with better collaboration tools and analytics dashboards that can handle a lot more data. This makes it better for forecasting, and it’s a better all-round option for customer service teams. Like HubSpot, Salesforce ensures robust AI tools are available, but they aren’t as easy to use.

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, which is what we’ll breakdown in this section.

Marketing features

When it comes to the specific features on Salesforce Marketing Cloud versus HubSpot Marketing Hub, I found that it’s honestly not even close. 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.

Personalizing a company email in HubSpot. Image: Tech.co testing

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

Creating an email marketing campaign in Salesforce. Image: Tech.co testing

Another big reason I think HubSpot has the edge is its shared inbox, so you can centralize all of your communications, regardless of what platforms you’re connecting with customers on. Salesforce doesn’t offer this. There’s support for PPC ads too, something Salesforce doesn’t offer, and extensive tools for A/B testing different types of campaigns. 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

You’d think with a name like Salesforce that the popular CRM would easily take the cake on sales features. However, I found that HubSpot more than holds its own. In fact, HubSpot beats Salesforce on features like lead capture and lead conversion. It offers more avenues to capture leads from, including webpages and forms, and like Salesforce, provides AI-powered lead scoring capabilities.

Still, Salesforce offers better customer support and lots of powerful sales forecasting features. The dashboard area is more functional – its drag-and-drop functionality and wide range of custom fields will let you create any analytics dashboard you want with your information.

All in all, you’ll be able to track a lot more metrics, which will be great for really large businesses craving granular oversight over their team’s progress, but less relevant to smaller businesses that don’t ned the helping hand. You’ll also have a bit more freedom when it comes to customizing and organizing your sales pipeline, and the automation features are closely targeted around speeding up the deals process, which means they’re actually useful.

The sales forecasting dashboard in Salesforce. Image: Tech.co testing

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.

Creating a deal in the sales area of HubSpot. Image: Tech.co testing

Service features

This is where Salesforce shines. I 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 I 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 that are 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.

HubSpot also has a feature that will let you know whether a teammate is looking at the same conversation as you, which I’d love to see added to Salesforce – it’s very useful! But aside from that, Salesforce is effectively the whole package.

The Service Cloud dashboard in Salesforce. Image: Tech.co testing

HubSpot is easier to use than Salesforce

While a massive feature catalog is a huge benefit for Salesforce, I found that it does create a lot of extra work, which can seriously impede ease of use – 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 substantial learning curve for those unfamiliar with the software.

You can edit your contact database and sales pipeline at the click of a mouse in HubSpot. Image: Tech.co testing

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 just be edited with a single click.

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 (pictured below).

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 that pop up in the HubSpot interface. 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 quite comparable to Salesforce actually. 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 I used in Salesforce Sales Cloud. Image: Tech.co testing

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: Tech.co

HubSpot Salesforce Integration

If you really can’t decide between the two, HubSpot has a peculiar 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 hours setting up your metrics, your analytics, or your 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 longer than HubSpot’s, mostly due to the clunkiness of the Salesforce platform and the ease of customer data import on HubSpot (pictured below).

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

HubSpot has better automation than Salesforce

One of the great things about CRM software is the use of automation. It just makes your day-to-day that bit easier. These features can make a huge difference in freeing up time and resources for human employees to really get work done.

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. While you can achieve the same things with HubSpot’s automation builder as Saleforce’s, it’s just a bit easier to use – and the same can be said for HubSpot on the whole compared to Salesforce.

Building 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’s, but HubSpot’s is easier to use

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 actually leverage insights and create sales forecasts and predictions. However, you’ll spend a lot more time tinkering with it (a running theme in this HubSpot vs Salesforce head-to-head) than HubSpot’s AI and automation features.

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.

Generating an email subject line using HubSpot’s AI assistant. Image: Tech.co Testing

About Our Research

Here at Tech.co, we conduct extensive research into the products, services, and software we write about – including HubSpot and Salesforce. This is the only way to provide our readers with valuable, insightful, actionable information that will help them make the right choice the first time around.

For CRM, we devised a specific set of metrics derived from months of market research to use for our platform tests and investigations. We then used the conclusions from this process to rank and rate eleven different providers to give you a clear picture of which ones are the best.

The overarching criteria that formed the foundation for our research were: pricing, features, customization, team infrastructure, customer support, and scalability.

Although we have some commercial partnerships with the providers we write about, our independent research allows us to remain editorially independent. If you want to learn more about what happens during our research processes here at Tech.co, check out our research guide to get a peak behind the curtain.

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