The way a business sells a product/service has changed drastically over the years with the term ‘Customer Relationship’ gaining traction.

Gone are the days when you could get customers just by having a product. With so many options to choose from, the way you attain and retain a customer has become important. However, as businesses scale, it becomes tough to maintain meaningful relationships with customers.

This is where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform comes into play. These are curated to manage interactions from the prospect stage to the customer and beyond. CRMs help businesses of all sizes track sales, maintain data, automate campaigns and offer overall better customer service.

Two giants have made their names known in the CRM industry—Salesforce & Hubspot. They have many similarities because of how they operate and their common aim of offering an improved customer experience.

We are here to give you a direct comparison of both these platforms along their shared elements and help you decide which one suits you the best. 

Salesforce vs Hubspot

• Pricing

  Launched in 1999, Salesforce has had enough time to perfect its craft and determine its perfect audience. While it can help businesses of all sizes, it is the large enterprises that make the most use of its wide range of features.

  Hubspot too offers core services including marketing, sales and service but is more popular among small and medium-sized businesses. The fact that Hubspot offers a free version with the first option to subscribe at 9$ per user makes it more favourable to businesses with a limited budget.

• Marketing

  The marketing cloud in Salesforce helps companies automate their marketing campaigns. It looks after marketing elements across multiple channels like email and social media. However, compared to the options Hubspot gives, these seem moderate.

  Hubspot’s marketing covers a wide range of channels with additional features like new user onboarding and seamless support should you run into any problems. 

• Sales

  Salesforce Sales Cloud combines a multitude of features like lead scoring and grading to streamline the sales funnel. With its accurate revenue and lead conversion prediction, it helps sales reps approach the right prospect at the right time for an improved chance of converting them into customers. 

  Hubspot is a great platform, empowering sales reps by equipping them with tools for outreach, tracking and closing. It offers a less cluttered look and is the better option while dealing with smaller numbers. 

• Analytics

  Analytics plays a pivotal role in improving sales and customer relations in the long run. While some can argue that this is a secondary feature for both, Salesforce takes the lead with better analytics and accurate forecasting. 

  Hubspot offers an entire dashboard but fails to keep up with the summarization of information and future predictions offered by its counterpart. 

• Integrations

  CRMs are quite advanced nowadays, however, neither of them can do everything perfectly. By integrating these with third-party solutions, one can unlock custom features that can help solve specific problems.

  Salesforce and Hubspot provide seamless integrations across major platforms like WordPress and Google Workspace. Not just that, Hubspot also gives you the option to integrate and sync with Salesforce!

• Ease of Use

  Salesforce is filled to the brim with features that promise to get your business marvellous results. Unfortunately, this is its downside too. All these features result in a steep learning curve, making it tough for beginners to get in on the fun.

  Hubspot is relatively simpler and effortless to navigate. It offers simple terminologies and easy access to tools and features that you’d need for day-to-day work.

Final Verdict

Choosing between the two is no easy feat. While Hubspot can be considered better in marketing and is easier to use, Salesforce takes the cake in customer service and analytics. 

All things considered, we can conclude that it all comes down to the type of business and how much they will spend. Hubspot is the better option for small businesses because of its free plan and the number of features you get. Salesforce is arguably the best if the business can afford to pay its subscription, making it ideal for larger companies with deeper pockets.

We hope this helps you take an informed decision on which CRM you should go for. A fair warning, complex systems take time to learn and implement. You cannot expect the best results if you fail to utilize either of them to their fullest.

We advise taking a helping hand instead of risking it all. Professionals help you get over the complexities of using a CRM. Tech9logy Creators is one such Salesforce development company that you can get on a budget. Our certified developers have 9+ years of experience and over 500 successful projects. Want to make your Salesforce implementation dreams a reality?

Discuss your requirement today!