Hubspot vs Salesforce – Which Is Best?

Hubspot vs. Salesforce – Which Should You Choose?

The simple answer is, if you're a smaller business with ambitious plans to grow, then Hubspot is likely the better choice than Salesforce. Hubspot offers an accessible interface – even for beginners – with admittedly less functionality overall, while Salesforce houses a massive feature catalog at the expense of ease of use.

The free Hubspot plan and good value premium tiers will make it particularly attractive for small business owners, while Salesforce is ideal for larger businesses ready to invest in an industry-leading, feature-rich CRM suite that can scale.

As CRM platforms go, Hubspot and Salesforce may initially look a long way apart. Hubspot's freemium model and relative lack of features contrasts sharply with the sprawling, feature-rich Salesforce CRM. That doesn't make either CRM the “best,” but it does mean different businesses will prefer one over the other.

Can you achieve great results with a freemium CRM platform like Hubspot? Absolutely. Plus, it's a slick, modern platform to use – nothing about it feels like costs are being cut. However, to get the best out of Hubspot, you'll want to pay for some of the premium features and plugins. At that point, it's worth pausing to consider a fully paid-for platform, such as Salesforce.

Hubspot vs Salesforce Pricing

If you decide to pay for additional features and services with Hubspot, the first option is to subscribe to the Sales Hub. Prices start at $50 per user per month, with the Professional and Enterprise tiers adding features and cost from there.

We have some highlights below, but if you're after a deeper level of detail, we'd recommend checking our Salesforce Pricing Guide and our Hubspot Pricing Guide.

Hubspot Pricing

The obvious benefit of Hubspot is that it offers a free option, dubbed the Basic plan. Obviously it's not that robust, lacking some of the more important CRM features, but it does allow for unlimited users, which makes it a great jumping off point to test out the software.

The Starter plan adds some of the more important features, like chatbots and marketing tools, but only allows for one user, with a $50 charge added for each additional. This makes it a pretty hard plan for a business to get behind, which leads us to the two higher tier options.

Hubspot Professional costs $400 per month and includes five users, with additional users beyond that costing $80 per month. Meanwhile, Hubspot Enterprise is priced at $1,200 per month with 10 free users, with additional users costing $120 per month. Each offers more flexibility with the number of users and adds some of the more advanced features, like hierarchical teams and social permissions.

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce's pricing is a little more traditional. The bottom rung is Salesforce Essentials, which offers Sales Cloud or Service Cloud for $25 per user, per month for up to five users. This isn't exactly aimed at businesses outside of very small, bare bones operations.

From there, the pricing has three tiers that are viable for businesses: Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited, priced at $74, $150, and $300 per user, per month respectively for either Sales or Service Cloud.

Salesforce also allows you to pair two clouds together at a discount price, costing $100, $175, or $325 per user, per month for each respective tier. Each tier offers increased features and customizability.

Remember, pricing can change depending on your needs. The best way to find the right fit is to get a customized price by clicking our simple Quotes Form.

Features – Salesforce

Salesforce doesn't just have more features than Hubspot – this popular platform boasts the most robust catalog of features out of pretty much every CRM we've researched. The massive selection is perfect for larger businesses, as it allows for a lot of customizability to narrow down exactly what you want to use it for.

Marketing features

Naturally, Salesforce houses all the standard CRM features you'd expect, like contact tracking and sales data. However, you'll also find handy marketing features within the platform that can help you reach new customers via email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. You'll also find content management features, as well as lead generation functionality to seriously boost your customer numbers. Salesforce has its own marketing automation solution, Pardot, as well, though it comes at an extra cost.

Sales features

Attracting customers is one thing, but you've got to be able to sell to them too. With Salesforce sales features, you'll be able to manage your leads into a comprehensive funnel, making sure each contact ends up in a lucrative position. Plus, with opportunity management features, you can make sure that every potential lead turns into a real chance at a sale.

Ease of use – Hubspot

While a massive feature catalog is a huge benefit for Salesforce, it does create a lot of extra work, which can seriously impede ease of use – particularly for beginners. With Hubspot, you're getting a comprehensive, intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, even if you aren't familiar with CRM software.

Hubspot is built for ease of use, with a simple layout that will let you easily access all the tools available on the platform. In fact, Hubspot is so dedicated to improving ease of use that they tested their software with drunk users to be sure it's as straightforward as possible, no matter how impaired you might be.

Customer Support – Salesforce

While Salesforce may be lacking in the ease of use department, the customer support options are 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, you'll also become part of the massive Salesforce community of users, who can help you solve any problems.

If you require an actual person to walk you through the complication 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.

Reporting and Analytics

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

Hubspot is a bit more limited – the features list is a bit smaller, so you won't have the same access, particularly if you're relying on the free CRM available on the platform. It is a bit more open to third-party reporting tools, but who wants to go through all that hassle when Salesforce has it all built in?

Integration with Other Software

When you can't beat them, join them! Hubspot might not be the most robust CRM out there, but it certainly provides a wide range of third-party integrations to get the most out of it. With its HubSpot App Ecosystem, you can integrate the CRM with WordPress, Mailchimp, Outlook, Slack, G-Suite, and more, which is a decidedly impressive and vital assortment of popular apps.

Because Salesforce is so robust, you wouldn't expect to need a lot of integrations, but their absence is noticeable compared to Hubspot. The popular CRM integrates with G-Suite, Mailchimp, and Quickbooks, but that's about it, so if you need more out of your integrations, Hubspot is the way to go.

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. Salesforce integration is not available on the free or Starter tiers, requiring at least Sales Hub Professional.

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.

With Salesforce, you're a lot more likely to need the 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, definitely not the cheapest option.

Automation

One of the primary reasons why a business would sign up for CRM software is the use of automation to make business life a bit easier. Powered by artificial intelligence, these features can make a huge difference in freeing up time and resources for human employees to really get work done.

This matchup is a close one, but in the end, Salesforce's Einstein takes the cake. The AI-powered 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.

Because CRM software is built on automation, Hubspot has solid options as well, although they're a bit less consolidated. Tools like lead and contact management features automation capabilities, with simple “if this then that” functionality, allowing you to automate where you see fit. Still, it's not as impressive as Salesforce's full-on automation suite, so we have to give the win to them.

Salesforce vs Hubspot: FAQs

Is Hubspot Like Salesforce?

Kind of, in that they're both CRMs, but the functionality of each is decidedly different. Salesforce is a robust CRM with lots of features and a large company behind it to provide unparalleled customer support for users, making it perfect for larger companies. Hubspot, on the other hand, is aimed at smaller businesses, featuring an easier to use platform that's intuitive even for beginners. Plus, Hubspot offers a free plan, which Salesforce does not.

Is Hubspot Better than Salesforce?

Depends on what you're looking for. Salesforce is considered the industry standard for CRMs, but it isn't perfect for every business. If you're a smaller company looking for an easy to use platform with a gentle learning curve, Hubspot is going to be the better option. However, if you need a robust CRM with lots of features, Salesforce is the most popular option for good reason.

Is Hubspot Free Forever?

Hubspot does offer users a free plan, rather than a trial, which can last forever – but it's understandably pretty weak. You'll have access to basic features, like contact management, task tracking, and forms, but you'll miss out on essentials like reporting and analytics. Still, it's a great way to test out the software before committing to a premium plan.

Who Are Salesforce’s Other Competitors?

Salesforce has a lot of other competitors in the CRM space outside of Hubspot. Some of these include SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho CRM, and Zendesk.