HubSpot vs Salesforce: Which CRM is Right for Your Business in 2024?

Delve into the distinguishing features between HubSpot and Salesforce CRM to pinpoint the ideal match for your business requirements in 2024. Widely recognized in various industries for their diverse selection of applications, both HubSpot and Salesforce excel in organizing projects, managing customer relationships, automating marketing funnels, and creating comprehensive digital work environments for multiple teams. Instead of leaving your decision to chance, I thoroughly tested both platforms to showcase their strengths and help you find the perfect fit. While Salesforce and HubSpot stand as premier customer relationship management (CRM) software choices, determining which CRM suits you best involves understanding their unique strengths and weaknesses. This in-depth comparison by Findernest Advisor on Salesforce versus HubSpot equips you with the insights needed to make a well-informed CRM platform decision.

An In-Depth Analysis: Contrasting Salesforce with HubSpot

CRM platforms, commonly known as Customer Relationship Management tools, play a crucial role for businesses seeking to streamline customer interactions, enhance sales processes, and optimize marketing strategies. Acting as a centralized hub, these platforms empower businesses to securely manage and organize customer data, monitor engagements and communications, and leverage data insights for informed decision-making.

Salesforce and HubSpot stand out as top contenders in the competitive CRM landscape. While Salesforce offers a sophisticated CRM solution with advanced tools at a premium price point and requires a learning curve, HubSpot stands out for its user-friendly interface and cost-effective options, although it may lack some of Salesforce's advanced functionalities.

HubSpot caters to basic CRM needs with a free plan, a feature not found in Salesforce. Salesforce offers a 30-day free trial to entice users, while HubSpot provides a 14-day trial for its paid plans. Both platforms offer essential CRM features such as sales forecasting, email marketing, and contact and lead management. When it comes to customization, analytics, and advanced capabilities, Salesforce excels, while HubSpot leads in terms of user-friendliness and affordability. It's interesting to note that HubSpot originated as a marketing tool that evolved into a CRM, while Salesforce initially focused on CRM before expanding into sales and marketing features.

While HubSpot remains renowned for its inbound marketing capabilities, Salesforce is recognized for its sales automation software. Despite their different origins, both platforms offer a comparable range of features:

• CRM?
• Contact Management
• Lead Management
• Email Marketing
• Sales Forecasting
• Built-in Automation
• Reporting
• Analytics & Dashboard
• Customer service features
• Contact scoring
• VoIP
• Payment Gateway Integration
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools
• Management and optimization of digital advertising campaigns
• Content management (blog, videos, documents, whitepaper)
• Online appointment booking
• Live chat
• AI Features

Since Salesforce's offering is much more modular than HubSpot's, to keep things equal, I'll use its Sales Cloud offering as a baseline, which can be amended with additional packages for use cases like support and marketing. I'll walk through more of the core differences between HubSpot and Salesforce in depth in the coming sections, but here's a quick breakdown of how some of their key features compare.

Feature Comparison: HubSpot vs Salesforce

HubSpot and Salesforce stand out as top contenders in the CRM landscape, offering a diverse array of features and functionalities to streamline sales and marketing processes for businesses. While both platforms share common goals, there are distinct differences that set them apart. Key features to consider when comparing HubSpot and Salesforce include lead and contact management, email marketing, sales automation, reporting and analytics, and integrations with various business tools. By analyzing and comparing these features, you can determine which CRM platform best suits your business needs in 2024.

Customization and Scalability

Salesforce shines in the realm of customization, offering the flexibility to integrate specific new features through standalone apps, enabling a versatile approach to enhancing tools. Users can delve into custom coding, empowering them to tailor every aspect to their exact requirements. This level of customization is particularly valuable for large enterprises with complex and specialized business processes. Salesforce has also introduced the Code Builder beta this year, enhancing accessibility to coding and allowing users to develop from any location without the need for additional software.

On the flip side, HubSpot showcases an impressive level of customizability within its features, allowing for the creation of workflows, reports, and tasks either from scratch or using templates. The platform seamlessly integrates with GitHub, providing easy project code storage and access to GitHub tools. HubSpot's CMS serves as a robust tool for crafting personalized webpages, blogs, forms, and even basic apps. While HubSpot supports JavaScript and Python coding for workflow customization, Salesforce's coding capabilities are highly regarded for their depth and versatility. Both platforms offer unique strengths in customization, catering to different business

Reporting and Forecasting

Salesforce seamlessly integrates robust sales reporting and forecasting features into its platform, making it a top choice for users in need of these functionalities. While forecasting is a secondary feature on both platforms, Salesforce offers a cost-effective solution on a per-user basis. With personalized widgets for tasks, opportunities, and leads, Salesforce's standard dashboard acts as a central hub for CRM activities, offering a comprehensive view of your pipeline. The Opportunities tab showcases sales opportunities with a visual bar chart for easy interpretation.

In tandem with a well-trained sales team, Salesforce's contact scoring tools accurately evaluate a lead's quality based on various customer fit criteria, aiding in predicting conversion probabilities. On the other hand, HubSpot also excels in forecasting and reporting, especially with its custom report creation feature available in second-tier plans and above. This user-friendly tool enables real-time report generation, enhancing data analysis and decision-making processes.

While HubSpot's reporting dashboard boasts a modern design, Salesforce's inherent utility gives it a slight edge in providing straightforward reporting, sales insights, and detailed forecasting. Both platforms offer valuable tools for users seeking comprehensive CRM solutions, but Salesforce shines slightly brighter in this aspect. HubSpot is a strong contender in this arena.

Marketing Capabilities and Automated Solutions

HubSpot offers a comprehensive range of marketing features across various plans, making it an ideal choice for brands seeking an all-in-one sales and marketing solution. Unlike Salesforce, HubSpot's marketing features are conveniently bundled together instead of being offered as separate packages or standalone apps.

For instance, HubSpot provides pay-per-click (PPC) ad management tools that allow users to create and manage PPC ads directly within the platform. This integrated functionality is a significant advantage for businesses looking to streamline their marketing tasks within a single platform.

Additional marketing features available on HubSpot include:

• Page optimization recommendations
• Email templates
• Marketing automation based on triggered actions
• Social media account management and publishing capabilities
• Website and webpage creation tools
• AI-assisted blogging
• Automatic SEO suggestions for entire websites
• Website performance analysis and content topic suggestions through Google Search Console integration

While Salesforce also offers robust marketing features, including email automation, lead nurturing, AI capabilities, competitor monitoring, and website creation tools, their pricing structure for marketing packages is separate from the CRM. The entry-level tier starts at $1,250 per month for up to 10,000 contacts, which may be out of reach for smaller businesses with budget constraints. However, for larger teams, Salesforce's pricing model could be comparable to or even more affordable than HubSpot's.

Artificial Intelligence Capabilities

Salesforce boasts robust AI capabilities with a plethora of advanced features, while HubSpot focuses on creating AI solutions that are user-friendly. In a market filled with a variety of AI tools, finding the right fit and seamlessly integrating them into your workflows can be a daunting task. Fortunately, both Salesforce and HubSpot have fully embraced AI technology, offering integrated features that eliminate the need for multiple standalone tools.

Salesforce's proprietary AI engine, Einstein, provides a comprehensive suite of AI marketing tools, including text generation, forecasting, assistive bot deployment, conversational bot creation, and workflow automation. Users can access these features based on their pricing plan or opt for additional add-ons. Moreover, Einstein's prediction builder empowers users to create tailored forecasts based on their Salesforce data.

On the flip side, HubSpot seamlessly incorporates generative AI into many of its features, such as the CMS hub, enabling users to effortlessly edit existing content or generate new material for their website, landing pages, or blog.

As you explore the HubSpot interface, you'll encounter prompts to engage with an integrated AI chatbot that provides workflow suggestions, data-driven insights, and predictive analytics. HubSpot's AI integration is seamlessly integrated into the platform, making it user-friendly and easy to utilize.

While both platforms offer similar AI functionalities, Salesforce's AI is more intricate and customizable, whereas HubSpot's AI is simpler and more seamlessly integrated into its platform, giving it a slight advantage in the AI category. In conclusion, Salesforce's AI is more robust, but HubSpot's AI is easier to use.

Comparing Costs and ROI: Salesforce vs. HubSpot Pricing - A Tale of Two Options

If you find yourself caught between choosing HubSpot and Salesforce, the key to distinguishing between the two lies in their pricing structures. The number of users and the features that hold the most value for you will heavily influence the package that best suits your needs, with differences that can vary significantly between the two brands.

Given the array of packages available from both platforms, let's focus on a direct comparison between HubSpot's Sales Hub and Salesforce's Sales Cloud. These offerings share more similarities than their other options, making it easier to pinpoint the ideal choice for your business.

Salesforce's Sales Cloud Pricing Model:

• No Free Plan: There are no complimentary plans or features available, but you can take advantage of a free trial to explore the platform before committing.
• Essentials, $25/month/user: The entry-level package provides essential features such as seamless email integration, efficient account and contact management, personalized sales workflows, detailed reports and dashboards, and advanced AI-powered activity tracking.
• Professional, $80/month/user: This level of the package includes advanced features like forecasting, tracking quotes and sales orders, unlimited customization options for applications, and efficient contract management tools.
• Enterprise, $165/month/user: At this tier, you'll have access to advanced features like automated workflows, specialized sales console applications, dedicated sales team support, thorough pipeline analysis, territory management tools, opportunity evaluation metrics, and cutting-edge reporting functionalities.
• Unlimited, $330/month/user: At this level, you'll receive all the aforementioned features along with a premier success plan, lead scoring, conversation insights, access to the Developer Pro Sandbox, and the ultimate treat - the complete suite of Einstein functionality for predictive and generative AI.
• Unlimited+, $500/month/user: This top-tier plan is the epitome of premium offerings. In addition to the Ultimate features, you'll also enjoy performance management, seamless team collaboration via Slack, unlimited access to knowledge, and Salesforce's cutting-edge tech stack integration.

Sales Salesforce also offers the flexibility to pay for individual features separately. This means that if there's a specific key capability that is available in a higher tier than the one you're currently considering, you have the option to add it on as needed.

HubSpot's Sales Hub Pricing Model:

• Free plan: Excluded from specific hub categorization, this plan offers essential features such as CRM tools, live chat functionality, conversational bots, email marketing capabilities, landing page creation options, a customer service ticketing system, and more. Additionally, it includes branding from HubSpot.
• Starter, $20/month: Starting with two users, this plan expands as your team grows. It eliminates any HubSpot branding and introduces features such as conversation routing, task queues, goal tracking, automation tools, and chat support.
• Professional, $500/month: Starting with a base of five users, this tier expands as your team grows. The Professional plan offers added benefits such as enhanced sales analytics, customizable CRM interface options, advanced forecasting capabilities, video messaging tools, and increased automation features.
• Enterprise, $1,500/month: This tier expands with a minimum of 10 users per month. With Enterprise access, you unlock custom objects, sandboxes, advanced permissions, conversation intelligence, and predictive lead-scoring capabilities.

Choosing between HubSpot and Salesforce: Which CRM platform is the right fit for your business?

In conclusion, HubSpot and Salesforce provide similar CRM, sales, and marketing resource management tools, packaged differently. To sum up their distinctions:

Salesforce excels in reporting and customization.

HubSpot offers a user-friendly interface, an easier learning curve, and comprehensive marketing and sales tools at an affordable price point, including a free tier.

If you're contemplating a switch between the two, note that transitioning from HubSpot to Salesforce may be more complex due to Salesforce's customization and intricacy. When starting with one platform, assess key factors like essential features, contact numbers, and user counts to determine the most suitable pricing package.

For those considering a dual-tool approach, combining Salesforce's CRM and sales strengths with HubSpot's complimentary marketing tools, integrating HubSpot and Salesforce via Zapier can streamline tasks like generating new Salesforce leads from HubSpot form submissions.

- Team FindErnest