HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Realities of Ownership & Key Advantages

Customer relationship management helps you find patterns in client data, understand your target audience better, and seize opportunities to improve your marketing. CRM software is powerful, delivering an average return on investment of over 700%.

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Two platforms dominate the CRM landscape: HubSpot and Salesforce. Which option is best for your business?

Overview of HubSpot Vs. Salesforce

HubSpot and Salesforce are both titans of the CRM space, but they have different brand focuses, use cases, and advantages.

HubSpot Overview

HubSpot started in 2006 as a marketing and analytics company. Over time, it launched a comprehensive suite of digital marketing, web development, sales, and CRM tools.

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HubSpot remains a popular all-in-one marketing management solution for small-to-medium businesses, retailers, manufacturers, eCommerce companies, and many other B2C and B2B organizations.

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In 2023, the company reported annual revenues of $1 billion, with more than 100,000 subscribers, and over 225,000 total platform users. 

Salesforce Overview

In 2000, salesforce.com launched with online CRM tools for enterprise businesses. From less than 6,000 clients and $51 million in revenue in 2002, the company has grown to over $17 billion in annual revenue 20 years later. It has more than 150,000 customers and almost 30,000 employees.

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One look at Salesforce’s client list tells you which type of organizations use its platform. Amazon, American Express, Bayer, GE, and Samsung are a few examples. In a nutshell, Salesforce is a deeply intricate CRM with a high ceiling for enterprise businesses — and a complexity to match.

Cost and Pricing Models

HubSpot takes a package approach to pricing, whereas Salesforce offers an extensive range of a la carte options:

HubSpot Pricing

The free CRM tier for HubSpot offers unlimited tracking of customer data, making it a useful choice for sole entrepreneurs on a budget. It offers an overview of key performance indicators, such as website traffic sources and email marketing statistics.

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HubSpot’s paid options adapt to your company’s size and CRM focus. There are four main pillars (sales, marketing, customer service, and content tools), with three pricing tiers for each.

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The CRM Sales Hub has $15, $90, and $150 monthly plans per seat. Features begin with simple automation and conversation routing capabilities and ramp up to predictive lead-scoring tools and full account-based marketing automation.

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Larger enterprises can combine sales CRM and next-gen marketing tools with the full HubSpot Customer Platform, costing $1,170/mo for five seats.

Salesforce Pricing

Instead of four main offerings, Salesforce has 12+, each with different pricing structures and add-ons. Small businesses can access the Sales suite for $25 or $100 monthly per user, with different levels of account management, automation, tracking, customization, and forecasting tools.

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Large enterprises can expect to pay $165 to $330 monthly per user, with access to extensive pipeline automation, lead engagement, and workflow tools. To build a complete CRM sales experience with statistical tracking, predictive AI, and Data Cloud features, large businesses must invest $500 per user/month.

Ease of Use and Implementation

User-friendly design is one area where the differences between HubSpot and Salesforce are easiest to see:

HubSpot Usability

One of the strongest benefits of HubSpot’s interface is that it requires very little prior experience in CRM, analytics, and marketing automation. Tools and features seem designed with small business owners and smaller sales teams in mind. The location of tools seems intuitive, and finding customer and lead information is easy.

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There is a learning curve, but it’s not overwhelming for everyday entrepreneurs. The easy-to-use tools are an advantage for sales teams because it doesn’t take much for everyone to be on the same page. Accelerated adoption drives productivity.

Salesforce Usability

Salesforce shines in the sheer number of tools, custom settings, automation options, lead analysis, and data forwarding options. Experienced users can push the limits of CRM reporting, prediction, and generation pipelines.

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Unfortunately, what you see is what you get, so it can take significant time, third-party training, or targeted hiring decisions to get Salesforce modules up and running.

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Large enterprises with an in-house team of CRM professionals can benefit from the intricate customization capabilities, but small-to-medium businesses often struggle with implementation.

Features and Functionality

Both HubSpot and Salesforce earn their reputation as powerful CRM platforms with excellent data management features, though the most exciting AI tools require higher-tier plans.

HubSpot Features

HubSpot’s identity as a full-service CRM and marketing platform is helpful for many industries. Tools naturally support each other and integrate well for customer-centric objectives. In a way, it’s like the platform’s design starts by asking what you want to achieve, and then it helps you build the right pathway for success.

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Some of our favorite HubSpot features include:

• Deal stages: Create different trigger actions and automated processes for every stage of the contact’s journey.
• Customizable pipelines: Design unique pipelines for each type of target customer.
• Employee dashboards: Easily build tracking dashboards for different sales employees to help with task management, customer interactions, daily goals, and relevant CRM data at a glance.
• Automated data uploads: View contact call transcripts and email communications without your staff needing to upload them manually.

The lead management, sales, marketing, and customer service tools all follow the same user interface. You can track customer purchase data, view metrics with personalized dashboards, and gather information on how leads interact with your sales funnel.

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It only takes a few clicks to go from CRM insights to advertising strategies and remarketing campaigns. In other words, HubSpot data quickly becomes real content. There are templates for crafting personalized emails, landing pages, quotes, ads, posts, and lead forms, along with easy-to-use automation for them all.

Salesforce Features

In the right hands, Salesforce offers practically limitless scalability and efficiency gains. Few other CRM platforms on the market offer the same depth of customization. This complexity can be good or bad depending on the user’s level of training.

Salesforce CRM functionality includes:

• Sales forecasting
• eCommerce integrations
• Contact and lead management tools.
• Fully customizable reporting features.
• Unified view of customer profiles with detailed sorting characteristics.

You can leverage client data to plan your entire sales funnel:

• ad performance
• pre-and post-sales behaviors
• click sources
• drip campaigns
• automated marketing tasks

Integration Capabilities

Comparing app integrations for these two platforms highlights the same key difference: user-friendly design versus complexity. Both get the job done nicely, but they approach integration in different ways.

HubSpot Integrations

Through its App Marketplace, Hubspot offers over 1,000 integrations with popular CRM tools and business management solutions. These integrations span the spectrum of sales, marketing, analytics, customer service, and CRM automation tasks.

Key CRM integrations for HubSpot include:

• Databox for in-depth KPI monitoring and deep dashboard customization.
• Drift for live chats, chatbots, and customer support data integration.
• Google Ads and Google Search Console for web analytics and PPC performance tracking.
• PandaDoc for automated creation of customer contracts, invoices, support forms, quotes, and other sales documents.
• Slack for coordination between sales, customer service, and marketing teams.
• SurveyMonkey for easy creation and deployment of surveys and feedback forms.

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HubSpot carefully curates the app integrations offered, so they have good functionality with the platform ecosystem. The App Marketplace itself is easy to browse, with integrations clearly sorted by category, use, and type.

Salesforce Integrations

Salesforce wins in integrations in terms of pure volume. Nearly every CRM tool, analytics platform, payment processor, and business management app is supported. Some notable integrations include:

• PayPal Checkout for credit card, debit card, and CNP payment processing.
• G Suite for syncing all Google Cloud team collaboration tools.
• Quickbooks for managing financial records and customer data simultaneously.
• ActiveCampaign for automated email marketing and lead nurturing.
• Mailchimp for segmented email campaigns, analytics tools, and pipeline creation.

Where things start to get complicated with Salesforce is turning the myriad of integrations into a seamless CRM experience. Apps aren’t always easy to locate or view, which can create a disjointed feel even though you’re technically accessing them on the same platform.

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Large organizations with in-house developers can get around this limitation by taking advantage of Salesforce’s coding capabilities.

Customer Support and Community

In terms of customer support for small businesses and solopreneurs, HubSpot clinches an easy victory. At higher tiers, both platforms offer excellent support for setup, technical issues, and learning the tools.

HubSpot Support

HubSpot offers 24/7 support via chat on all plans. To connect with support managers over the phone, you need a professional or enterprise subscription.

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The onboarding process includes step-by-step instructions for setting up tracking tools, creating reporting dashboards, importing customer lists, and customizing the interface in other ways. Getting started out of the box is relatively fast and simple.

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HubSpot Academy is a series of in-depth video guides available for free (though you need a valid HubSpot account). These courses cover dozens of sales and marketing topics, from buyer personas to lead generation techniques.

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Another community highlight are boot camps (also free for HubSpot members), professional-led courses that last four to six weeks.

Salesforce Support

Setting up a Salesforce account for the first time is simple, and so is learning how to navigate the dashboard’s basic features. For deeper customization, however, you’re on your own.

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Customer assistance doesn’t kick in until you have a pro membership or above, which isn’t good for new users. That said, enterprise clients get VIP treatment, with customer success managers assigned to each client for premium tiers.

Realities of Ownership

Choosing between HubSpot and Salesforce also means considering the little things, such as maintenance costs, campaign needs, and changes in your organization’s plans over time.

HubSpot Ownership

The total cost of ownership for HubSpot depends on your company’s needs at the time and the number of users. You can pay per month or get an annual membership to save money ($15/m annually or $20/m monthly).

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Thanks to the free tier, you can still use HubSpot (with fewer features) if your advertising needs change or you have to tighten your budget.

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If you opt for the Professional tier, keep in mind you need to pay a one-time fee of $1,500 for the in-depth training and onboarding process.

Salesforce Ownership

The base Salesforce membership isn’t overwhelming for most businesses ($25/m per user), but hidden costs add up quickly. For many accounts, the platform has a 10GB data storage limit. Exceeding these limits costs money, and the rates aren’t cheap.

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Midsize businesses need to consider the per-seat costs of membership. As more team members get involved, each one needs a version of the software, quickly adding hundreds of dollars to the total cost.

Key Advantages and Disadvantages

The optimal CRM software depends a lot on your organization’s makeup:

HubSpot Advantages and Disadvantages

HubSpot’s main strengths are:

• User-friendly design and intuitive tools.
• Integrated suite of tools for CRM, sales, and marketing.
• Great customer service
• Free plan for solopreneurs.
• Wide range of tools for reporting, automation, lead management, and contact management.

These features make HubSpot an excellent choice for small and medium-sized businesses, and other companies that have a straightforward sales and marketing process.

Salesforce Advantages and Disadvantages

Salesforce is an amazing tool for enterprise organizations and companies that need greater customization for CRM automation. Businesses with hundreds or thousands of employees can benefit from the in-depth features of Salesforce.

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On the downside, Salesforce has a higher overall cost for most businesses, and many companies simply don’t need such complex features. 

HubSpot Vs. Salesforce: Final Recommendations

There’s no “correct” answer when comparing HubSpot and Salesforce. The right choice is the platform that meets your company’s needs for analytics, CRM automation, and marketing tools.

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We recommend HubSpot to most of our clients, especially small businesses, manufacturers, and organizations without IT staff. HubSpot is like a jack-of-all-trades for customer-centric marketing. True, there are times when Salesforce is the ideal choice, especially for distributed teams with dozens of markets to monitor.

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You don’t need to weigh the pros and cons of HubSpot vs. Salesforce yourself. At elk Marketing, we’ve been doing this for a long time. Our friendly team offers recommendations based on your specific circumstances, target audience, and budget.

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We can even help you sign up for a free trial to “test drive” the ideal platform. Learn more about our CRM services right away.