Feeling confused about choosing between HubSpot vs Salesforce?
You’re not alone.
Picking the right customer relationship management (CRM) tool can feel overwhelming.
Imagine your business growing, but your tools aren’t keeping up.
We’ll examine what makes each one special, helping you decide between HubSpot and Salesforce and which CRM is best for you.
Overview
We’ve spent countless hours exploring HubSpot and Salesforce, testing their features, and comparing their real-world usability.
This hands-on experience allows us to provide a clear.
Unbiased look at what each CRM offers so you can make an informed decision.
Ready to grow your business with a powerful all-in-one platform? Get started with HubSpot’s tools today.
Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $15/month.
Key Features:
- CRM
- Marketing Automation
- Analytics & Reporting
Ready to explore the world’s leading CRM? Sign up for a free trial of Salesforce today!
Pricing: It has a free trial. The premium plan starts at $25/month.
Key Features:
- Lead management
- Sales forecasting
- Opportunity management
What is HubSpot?
Think of HubSpot as your all-in-one growth platform.
It’s built to help your business attract, engage, and delight customers. Simple, right?
It covers marketing, sales, and customer service.
Let’s see what makes it tick.
Also, explore our favorite Hubspot alternatives…
Our Take
HubSpot is a powerful platform with many features, but you must consider your budget and needs before committing. It’s a good choice for businesses that want a comprehensive solution & are willing to invest in it.
Key Benefits
- Free CRM: Start with a free plan with basic CRM features.
- All-in-one platform: Access a marketing, sales, and service tools suite.
- Extensive community and resources: Benefit from a wealth of knowledge and support.
- Inbound marketing focus: Attract and engage leads with valuable content.
Pricing
- Free Tools: Free for up to two users.
- Marketing Hub Starter: $15/seat/month.
- Starter Customer Platform: $15/seat/month.
- Marketing Hub Professional + three seats: $800/month, additional seats at $45/month.
Pros
Cons
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a powerhouse CRM. It’s built for enterprise-level businesses.
It offers a wide range of cloud-based solutions.
Think of it as a highly customizable platform.
It can handle complex sales and customer service needs.
Also, explore our favorite Salesforce alternatives…
Our Take
It’s incredibly powerful and flexible. The free plan is very generous, and it has many features for managing projects.
Key Benefits
Salesforce helps businesses connect better with customers. It gives a full view of each customer.
This helps improve sales and service.
- 360-Degree Customer View: See all customer interactions in one place.
- Boosts Sales by 39%: Many users report higher sales and productivity.
- Powerful Automation: Automate tasks like emails and lead tracking.
- Huge AppExchange: Connects with thousands of other apps.
- Scalable for Growth: Grows with your business, from small to large.
Pricing
All the plans will be billed annually.
- Free Suite: $0/user/month.
- Starter Suite: $25/user/month.
- Pro Suite: $100/user/month.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
This comparison evaluates HubSpot, celebrated for its streamlined approach and powerful hubspot sales hub.
Salesforce, the enterprise standard with unparalleled depth in sales analytics and sales processes.
This analysis will clarify which CRM best equips sales professionals and sales and marketing teams to achieve their goals, from contact management to sales forecasting.
1. Primary Focus and Target Market
- HubSpot: Built as an integrated platform around the hubspot crm and hubspot sales hub. It is designed for ease of use, swift adoption, and unifying sales and marketing teams for growth-stage and mid-market companies.
- Salesforce: Centered around the powerful salesforce sales cloud. It is designed for maximum scalability, complexity, and customizability, targeting large enterprises and global organizations with intricate sales processes.
2. Core Feature Philosophy
- HubSpot: Offers robust sales and marketing features natively within the hubspot sales hub. It excels at providing seamless sales automation tools that are straightforward to set up for sales professionals.
- Salesforce: Provides deep, granular tools across the salesforce sales cloud ecosystem. While powerful, its features often require extensive configuration, making it the choice for customized, enterprise-level sales processes.
3. Reporting and Analytics
- HubSpot: Includes strong sales analytics and standard reporting out-of-the-box, providing clear data on sales pipeline management. It focuses on actionable, easily digestible reports for sales and marketing teams.
- Salesforce: Offers industry-leading advanced reporting and predictive sales analytics across the salesforce sales cloud. It provides the most comprehensive data visualization and customization tools for complex sales forecasting.
4. Lead Scoring and Intelligence
- HubSpot: Features built-in, easy-to-use predictive lead scoring that works best when leads originate from the connected Marketing Hub. It helps sales professionals prioritize leads based on engagement with marketing campaigns.
- Salesforce: Offers highly sophisticated predictive lead scoring via add-ons (like Einstein AI). This scoring can be customized based on complex sales data models and integrated from various external sources, aiding sales forecasting.
5. Sales Automation
- HubSpot: Provides powerful sales automation for routine tasks like email sequences, task creation, and lead rotation within the hubspot sales hub. This allows sales professionals to save time and focus on key sales processes.
- Salesforce: Provides comprehensive sales automation capabilities that can be built into almost any part of the salesforce sales cloud. Its complexity allows for intricate, multi-step automated sales processes that are tailored to the business.
6. Marketing and Campaign Integration
- HubSpot: The hubspot crm is famous for its native integration with the Marketing Hub. This tight connection makes running and tracking marketing campaigns effortless and provides deep visibility into lead origins for sales and marketing teams.
- Salesforce: Requires the separate Marketing Cloud, which is a powerful, yet disconnected tool that needs specific integration to connect with the core salesforce sales cloud. Coordinating marketing campaigns is powerful but requires more setup.
7. Core Data Management (Contacts/Leads)
- HubSpot: Excels at contact management and lead organization. The hubspot sales hub provides a clear, single view of the customer, making it easy for sales professionals to access all communication history.
- Salesforce: Also offers robust contact management within the salesforce sales cloud, but due to its highly customizable nature, organization and naming conventions must be strictly governed by the salesforce team.
8. Customization and Ecosystem
- HubSpot: Highly customizable with custom objects and fields, providing flexibility for growing sales teams. Its ecosystem is vast but more curated than Salesforce’s.
- Salesforce: Unmatched in customization; the salesforce sales cloud can be modified to fit any unique industry or sales processes. Its AppExchange marketplace is the largest in the industry.
9. Overall Value and Price
- HubSpot: Offers better overall value and accessibility, starting with a free hubspot crm tier and providing a streamlined hubspot sales hub for mid-market sales professionals.
- Salesforce: Provides better long-term scalability and raw power for large enterprises that need highly specialized sales analytics and are willing to pay the premium for the salesforce sales cloud and its advanced reporting.
What to Look for in a CRM Software?
- Scalability: Can the CRM grow with your business?
- Ease of Use: How quickly can your team adopt it?
- Integration: Does it connect with your existing lead management tools?
- Customization: Can it be tailored to your specific needs?
- Support: What level of support is provided?
- Budget: Does the pricing align with your budget?
- Specific Features: Ensure it has the features your business truly needs.
Final Verdict
So, which one wins? It depends on your business.
If you’re a small to medium-sized business, HubSpot is likely the better choice.
It’s user-friendly and great for inbound marketing.
For larger enterprises, Salesforce offers more power and customization.
It can handle complex needs. We’ve tested both, and we know what works.
We’ve seen how each platform impacts productivity. Choose the one that fits your needs best.
Don’t just pick the popular one. Pick the one that helps you grow.
More of Hubspot
Here’s a brief comparison of Hubspot with these software solutions:
- HubSpot vs GoHighLevel: Hubspot is an all-in-one platform for agencies, with strong marketing automation and white-labeling options.
- Hubspot vs Pipedrive: It is a sales-focused CRM known for its visual sales pipeline management and intuitive interface, which makes it ideal for tracking deals. Hubspot provides a more comprehensive, all-in-one platform that encompasses sales, marketing, and customer service.
- Hubspot vs Keap: It (formerly Infusionsoft) specializes in CRM and marketing automation, particularly for small businesses looking to streamline sales processes. Hubspot offers a wider range of marketing, sales, and service features.
- Hubspot vs ActiveCampaign: It excels in email marketing and marketing automation, with advanced segmentation and conditional logic. However, Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform that encompasses lead generation.
- Hubspot vs Clickfunnels: It is dedicated to creating high-converting sales funnels, focusing on landing pages and sales processes. Hubspot, on the other hand, is a broader marketing and sales automation platform.
- Hubspot vs Folk: It is a simpler CRM solution that excels in straightforward contact management and organization. It is suitable for small teams that prioritize ease of use.
- Hubspot vs Instantly: It specializes in cold email outreach and lead generation automation. Hubspot provides a much broader suite of tools, including a full CRM, comprehensive email marketing with advanced design capabilities.
- Hubspot vs ClickUp: It is primarily a project management tool with extensive customization and collaboration features. It allows users to manage tasks, documents, and goals. While it offers some CRM functionalities through custom fields.
- Hubspot vs Monday CRM: It.com is a work operating system focused on project management, collaboration, and workflow automation. In contrast,
- Hubspot vs Capsule CRM: It is a simpler, user-friendly contact manager and sales tracker, ideal for small businesses needing organized customer information and clear pipeline views.
- Hubspot vs Insightly: It combines CRM with strong project management features, making it versatile for businesses requiring both.
- Hubspot vs Freshsales CRM: It is a sales-focused CRM emphasizing AI-powered lead scoring and sales automation for efficient deal management. Hubspot provides a more extensive all-in-one platform with robust marketing automation features integrated alongside sales and service tools.
- Hubspot vs Salesforce: It is a powerful, highly customizable enterprise-grade CRM with robust reporting and forecasting capabilities, ideal for large organizations with complex needs.
- Hubspot vs Zendesk: It is a specialized customer service and support platform, excelling in omnichannel support, ticketing, and advanced AI capabilities for issue resolution.
More of Salesforce
Here’s a brief comparison of Salesforce with these software solutions:
- Salesforce vs Pipedrive: Salesforce is a comprehensive, highly customizable CRM for sales, marketing, and service, while Pipedrive focuses on intuitive visual sales pipeline management for streamlined sales processes.
- Salesforce vs GoHighLevel: GoHighLevel is an all-in-one platform for marketing agencies, offering white-label options and extensive automation.
- Salesforce vs Keap: Salesforce offers a vast, customizable CRM ecosystem for businesses of all sizes; Keap provides integrated sales and marketing automation, particularly strong for smaller firms.
- Salesforce vs ActiveCampaign: Salesforce is a broad, enterprise-grade CRM with powerful sales automation, whereas ActiveCampaign excels in marketing automation, email campaigns, and customer journey visualization.
- Salesforce vs Hubspot: Salesforce emphasizes deep customization and robust reporting for complex business needs, while HubSpot offers an integrated suite of marketing, sales, and service tools with a more user-friendly interface.
- Salesforce vs Clickfunnels: Salesforce is a comprehensive CRM for managing customer relationships and sales; ClickFunnels is specifically designed as a sales funnel builder to guide customers through a conversion path.
- Salesforce vs Folk: Salesforce is a highly scalable, feature-rich CRM for complex operations and large enterprises; Folk provides a simpler, collaborative contact management and relationship-building tool.
- Salesforce vs Instantly: Salesforce is a broad CRM platform that covers various aspects of customer management; Instantly specializes in automated cold email outreach and lead generation for targeted campaigns.
- Salesforce vs ClickUp: Salesforce is a dedicated, powerful CRM for managing customer interactions and sales processes; ClickUp is a versatile work management platform that includes CRM functionalities within its broader project management tools.
- Salesforce vs Monday: Salesforce is a robust CRM with extensive data models for complex workflows across diverse industries; Monday CRM offers highly customizable visual workflows and is often used by companies already on Monday.com for project management.
- Salesforce vs Capsule: Salesforce is an enterprise-grade CRM suitable for large organizations with complex needs; Capsule CRM is a simpler, user-friendly CRM, ideal for small to medium-sized businesses focused on core contact and sales tracking.
- Salesforce vs Insightly: Salesforce provides a comprehensive, highly customizable CRM for diverse business needs; Insightly offers a versatile CRM with integrated project management, often favored by small to mid-sized businesses for its ease of use.
- Salesforce vs Freshsales CRM: Salesforce is a highly customizable and scalable CRM with advanced features for large organizations; Freshsales CRM focuses on AI-driven sales insights and automation for streamlined sales management, often preferred by smaller teams.
- Salesforce vs Zendesk: Salesforce is a comprehensive CRM that covers sales, marketing, and customer service; Zendesk is a specialized customer service platform designed for ticketing, support, and omnichannel customer interactions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, HubSpot or Salesforce?
It depends on your team’s needs. HubSpot (rated 4.0) is often preferred for its ease of use and unified interface, making it ideal for growing companies. Salesforce (rated 3.8) excels in extreme customization for massive enterprises but often requires a dedicated administrator to manage.
What is the difference between HubSpot and Salesforce CRM?
HubSpot is built on a single code base, offering a seamless experience across Marketing, Sales, and Service hubs. Salesforce is a powerful ecosystem of acquired clouds, offering limitless customization but often resulting in a steeper learning curve and disjointed data.
What are the cons of HubSpot CRM?
While HubSpot offers excellent Free Tools and entry-level plans ($15/seat/month), costs can jump significantly as you scale. For example, the Marketing Hub Professional plan rises steeply to $800/seat/month, which can be a hurdle for mid-sized businesses.
Why switch from Salesforce to HubSpot?
Teams often switch to reduce complexity and cost. HubSpot allows for faster implementation and easier adoption without needing expensive consultants. With a rating of 4.0 vs. Salesforce’s 3.8, users frequently cite better usability and integrated support as key drivers.
Who is HubSpot’s biggest competitor?
Salesforce is HubSpot’s primary competitor, particularly for mid-market and enterprise clients. While tools like Pipedrive or Zoho compete on price, Salesforce is the direct rival for comprehensive, all-in-one business growth platforms.
What is HubSpot best used for?
HubSpot is best for Inbound Marketing, Automation, and Contact Management. Its strength lies in connecting marketing data with sales pipelines, allowing teams to nurture leads via email and content campaigns seamlessly within one platform.
Can HubSpot be used as a CRM?
Absolutely. HubSpot offers robust CRM features including Contact Management, List Segmentation, and CRM Import/Export capabilities. It serves as a central database for customer interactions, fully comparable to dedicated CRMs like Salesforce.
More Facts about HubSpot and Salesforce
- How They Charge You: Salesforce charges a monthly fee per user, usually starting at $25. HubSpot starts at around $15 per person, but the price increases as you add more users or features.
- Annual vs. Monthly Bills: With Salesforce, you usually have to pay for a full year upfront. HubSpot prefers yearly payments, too, but they will let you pay month-to-month if you agree to pay about 10% more.
- Free Trials and Plans: Salesforce lets you test their software for 30 days, but they do not offer a free version to keep. HubSpot offers a 14-day trial of its paid tools, but it also has a “forever free” plan that includes basics like contact lists and email tools.
- Ease of Use: HubSpot is known for being very easy to learn and for its clean design. Salesforce is much harder to learn and can look cluttered, often requiring a specialist to set it up correctly.
- Marketing Tools: HubSpot is considered the best choice for marketing because all its marketing tools are built right in. Salesforce has marketing tools, too, but they are often separate programs that you have to connect.
- Customer Service Tools: Salesforce is very powerful for big customer support teams handling thousands of issues. HubSpot is great for support, too, but it is generally better suited for smaller or simpler teams.
- Connecting Other Apps: Salesforce has a huge store with over 4,000 apps you can connect. HubSpot has fewer apps, but the ones they have are usually easier to connect to and manage.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): Both systems use smart computer tools (AI) to help you work. HubSpot’s AI (called Breeze) is easy to use for daily tasks like writing emails. Salesforce’s AI (called Einstein) is very powerful for predicting future sales, but it needs more data to work well.
- Who is it for? In 2026, HubSpot is often the best choice for small businesses that want to start selling quickly without hiring tech experts. Salesforce is usually recommended for very large or complex businesses that need to customize every single detail.
- Sales Features: Both tools let you track your customers and sales deals. However, Salesforce offers more advanced tools for managing specific territories and for very detailed sales forecasting.
- Costs for Pro Teams: If you need “Professional” level features, Salesforce costs about $80 per person. HubSpot’s Professional pricing is different—it often costs a flat fee (around $500+) that covers a group of users, though this can vary based on how many “seats” you buy.
- The “Enterprise” Level: For big companies, Salesforce’s top plan costs about $165 per person. HubSpot’s top plan costs around $1,500 per month and includes access for multiple users.
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