HubSpot vs Salesforce – Which Is Best?

Our research shows that HubSpot is better than Salesforce for sales and marketing, as well as offering an excellent CRM for small businesses, thanks to its robust free plan. On the other hand, Salesforce is better than HubSpot for customer service because it offers more communication channels to reach customers.

If you’re in the market for CRM, you’ve almost certainly heard of Salesforce, as its easily the most popular CRM in the world, boasting a whopping third of CRM market share. Subsequently, Salesforce offers a lot of pricing plans for different sizes and types of businesses, which is why getting a quote for your business is likely your best move.

Still, the HubSpot vs Salesforce matchup is a lot closer than you might think. In this guide, we’ll cover all the specifics about these two CRM providers — from features and pricing to customer support and ease of use — and explain when and why one might be a better fit for your business.

In this guide:

We’ll be pitting HubSpot vs Salesforce head to head throughout this article. Of course, these aren’t the only CRM tools to consider. Check out some of these further alternatives, below. Or, scroll on to learn more about Salesforce and Hubspot.

HubSpot Pricing

First off, we’ll start with the Hubs. HubSpot pricing offers three different types of service, or Hubs, aimed at the different purposes of CRM: sales, marketing, and customer service.

The Sales Hub and Service Hub are priced similarly, but the Marketing Hub is a bit more expensive, which is commonplace for marketing-focused CRM providers. Take a look at how these HubSpot Hubs match up against each other below:

Salesforce Pricing

Similar to HubSpot’s Hubs, Salesforce pricing offers different types of services depending on your needs, dubbed Clouds, for sales, marketing, and service. Each one offers a different set of pricing plans, but Salesforce offers some mix and match options that can save you some money if you want dual functionality.

Much like HubSpot, the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are priced similarly, and can be combined for a cheaper option. Again, the Marketing Cloud is much more expensive, as it provides a wide range of additional features that are more valuable.

Sales features

You’d think with a name like Salesforce that the popular CRM would easily take the cake on sales features. However, HubSpot absolutely holds its own, offering plenty of options for your business. In fact, HubSpot beats Salesforce on features like lead capture and lead conversion. Still, Salesforce offers better customer support, so it’s pretty much a toss-up between these two popular options.

Service features

Here is where Salesforce really shines. Customer support CRM features are thoroughly embedded in the Salesforce Service Hub, giving it an edge over HubSpot’s Service Hub. It provides more communication channels, more ticketing channels, and more offline functionality than HubSpot.

The only weak spot for Salesforce when it comes to customer service features is customer feedback functionality, like surveys, as the CRM offers none to speak of. Still, that shouldn’t deter you, as the other features more than make up for this small oversight.

HubSpot is easier to use than Salesforce

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. We found that the platform is laden with very specific terminology that needs to be learnt before it makes any sense, which could create a substantial learning curve for those unfamiliar with the software.

With HubSpot, you’re getting a comprehensive, intuitive interface that is easy to navigate, even if you aren’t familiar with CRM software. The biggest highlight with managing business contacts with HubSpot is the tidy user-interface where you view all the information related to a contact. HubSpot has designed a clear way of providing a holistic view of who your contact is, what interaction you’ve had, and where they work.

Simply put, HubSpot is built for ease of use, with a simple layout that will let you easily access all the tools available on the platform. There’s even a little help icon at the bottom of some screens, which will provide you with tailored advice on how to move forward (pictured below).

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.

Salesforce has better customer support

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, but you’ll also become part of the massive Salesforce community of users, who can help you solve any problems.

HubSpot also does not offer 24/7 live support on any of its plans, even the ones that cost thousands of dollars per month. Salesforce, on the other hand, provides it for an additional cost, and includes it for all Unlimited plans.

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.

Salesforce has better 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. We found that the best part of Salesforce analytics was that it allows you to store large levels of information, including emails, tasks, call logs, contact information, outreach campaign data and lead information.

Plus, with the new analytics add-on Tableau, you’ll be able to get a full 360-degree view of how your customers interact with your business, giving you more actionable insights for improving sales.

HubSpot also offers a lot of reporting tools, and they’re quite comparable to Salesforce actually. However, the only metric you get in every plan is to view revenue data, while other features like custom reports and sales forecasts are only available in the more expensive plans, which means you’ll have to pay a lot to get access to the same features.

HubSpot and Salesforce offer lots of integrations with other software

While both HubSpot and Salesforce are considered two of the most robust CRM options on the market, they can’t do it all. In that case, you might be interested in integrating these platforms with other third-party apps that can, in fact, do it all. Fortunately, both Salesforce and HubSpot offer a lot when it comes to integrations, so no need to worry there.

Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer massive app stores that can unlock a wide range of functionalities for your business. They can integrate with Google Workplace, WordPress, FreshBooks, Eventbrite, and dozens of others.

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.

HubSpot has simpler 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.

More specifically, the first part of the onboarding process for HubSpot — where you’re following a demo — is quite easy to follow and provides hands-on information on how to use the platform.

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.

In fact, our research found that the setup process for Salesforce was a full three minutes longer than that of HubSpot, mostly due to the clunkiness of the Salesforce platform and the ease of customer data import on HubSpot (pictured below).

Salesforce has better 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. Even better, these automation features are available at a much lower price than HubSpot, which is always beneficial.

Salesforce does, however, have a trick up its sleeve with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. This functionality – which is a part of the wider Salesforce Marketing Cloud – can automate sales funnels for new prospective customers and gives a killer edge to Salesforce’s marketing capabilities.

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, our research found HubSpot automation workflows to be complicated, which is unfortunate due to their invaluable nature for sales and marketing teams.

Best CRM for Sales

Yes, it’s hard to beat Salesforce when it comes to sales, as you may have guessed from the name. Still, it’s an incredibly robust option that can be a bit intimidating for smaller businesses or just businesses that don’t need all those features. If you’re looking for a provider that’s a bit more manageable, we’ve done a bunch of research on the topic and can help you find a better CRM for sales.

Best CRM for Marketing

HubSpot is truly a top-tier CRM for marketing, mostly because it offers a robust set of marketing features in its free plan. Even better, our research found that it offers great marketing integrations, like one with Canva that will allow you to design email elements straight from the email editing space.

Still, HubSpot is not perfect for everyone. The high prices and the massive feature catalog can be too much for some, which means that another alternative could be a better fit. Fortunately, we’ve done the research to find some of the best options out there for CRM for marketing. Take a look and get started today.

Best CRM for Customer Service

Neither HubSpot nor Salesforce are ideal as CRM for customer service, although they certainly provide some robust options to handle it. Salesforce is definitely better than HubSpot for customer service, mostly because we found it to provide a single hub that houses communication, so you can more effectively stay in touch with potential customers, while seeing all the information you need.

Still, we’ve done the research and found a wide range of other options that might be a better fit for your business. Zendesk is one of our favorite but take a look at some of the other CRM alternatives to get started today.