Salesforce vs. HubSpot

HubSpot includes all the features you need in its advertised price, and you only pay for additional revenue-generating sales seats. Free seats are available for team members who need visibility into the business, such as reporting, without any of the day-to-day functionality of sales tools. Learn more about the value of HubSpot’s free seats. 

Salesforce charges for every user and requires paid add-ons for essential features. Aligning your marketing and sales teams, giving executives visibility into reporting, or even letting your reps operate in a shared inbox is going to cost extra.

HubSpot is uniquely dedicated to ease-of-use and simplicity for admins, reps, and managers. This way, you spend less time (and money) getting your sales system to work how you want it to. Customers have the freedom to organize and administer their CRM without the need to hire a dedicated admin. Need a more sophisticated approach? We've introduced custom objects which let you architect your enterprise sales CRM in a flexible, intuitive way for your business.

Salesforce implementation and maintenance requires experienced and well-trained administrators. Most Salesforce customers need to bring in a consulting agency (source), hire one or more full-time admins (with an average salary of $77,503 according to Glassdoor), or have current employees become Salesforce administrators.
 

Support that scales with you

HubSpot is invested in your success from day one. Our world-class support and customer success teams are available to all customers– with phone and email support at no extra charge for Pro and Enterprise customers– and you won’t pay more for it as you grow. HubSpot Academy, consistently ranked as one of the top online learning platforms in the world (source), is also available right at your fingertips. 

Salesforce charges 20% of your net contract price for 24/7 premier support, while additional feature access costs 30% of your net contract price. With percentage pricing as you spend more on additional seats and add-on features, you’ll have to pay more for the same support. When choosing a Salesforce support plan, you’ll want to carefully forecast how much your team will need.

HubSpot CRM combines a consumer grade user experience with enterprise power. Sales Hub delivers on contact management, sales analytics, sales automation, pipeline management, and much more. Sales Hub products are trusted by thousands of growing mid-market B2B companies, enterprise brands, and high-growth unicorns to scale with them as they grow.  

Salesforce offers top-of-the-line contact management, dashboards, analytics, pipeline management, sales automation, forecasting and much more. They offer a wide range of powerful products for businesses of all sizes. 

Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer the most powerful, complete tools for sales teams on the market.

HubSpot is consistently ranked the most user-friendly CRM and B2B software (source), with rep adoption often cited as a key benefit among HubSpot users. As a result, customers making the switch to HubSpot often see an improvement in their data quality. When paired with HubSpot’s powerful reporting and automation features, high-quality data gives admins greater visibility into the overall health of their business. 

Salesforce is incredibly powerful with robust reporting that’s endlessly customizable. This customization can take time to implement and require training to master. G2 crowd users ranked HubSpot above Salesforce in ease of setup (source).

HubSpot and Salesforce both offer powerful tools for sales teams. But what good is power if the tools are hard to learn, understand, and put to use? A great CRM should be easy-to-use and loved by all.

HubSpot’s CRM and supporting Sales, Marketing, & Service suites have all been built by HubSpot from the ground up. The result is a unified and consistent user experience where data, reporting, and individual tools are all similar and work in concert with each other. 

Salesforce offers more products and tools, but their breadth can come at the cost of usability and maintenance. Their platform has grown through acquisitions such as Pardot, which can create a less integrated user experience for customers. 

HubSpot and Salesforce are all-in-one platforms. They both offer a CRM along with all the tools your front office teams need including sales, marketing, and service tools. Choosing an all-in-one CRM for your teams to use will not only unite your work and data, but also create a better end-to-end customer experience.

HubSpot prioritizes ease-of-use and prescriptive recommendations to make it easier for businesses to get started. HubSpot also offers a flexible data structure for your CRM with custom objects, so custom implementations are a breeze. HubSpot’s usability means that you have the flexibility to change and adapt your HubSpot instance over time, layering in more customization and nuance as your business scales.

Salesforce offers endless customization for the most complex organizations. This level of customization allows for best-in-class forecasting and reporting dashboards. However, these advanced features may require more admin support, which can make it difficult for businesses to change and adapt their Salesforce instance over time. 

HubSpot and Salesforce both offer powerful software for fast-scaling businesses. As a business evolves, it’s important for your CRM to be able to grow and change with your business needs. With this in mind, having the flexibility and control to customize your CRM is critical. 

HubSpot’s App Marketplace takes the same approach to 3rd party integrations as it does its own software – focusing heavily on power, ease-of-use, and quality. Installing and configuring integrations via the marketplace is simple with over 500 apps and integrations, many of which are native (HubSpot-built) integrations.

Salesforce’s AppExchange is the largest and broadest CRM app marketplace, offering a wide variety of options for different requirements. AppExchange is the fast and easy way to extend Salesforce with over 3,400 apps and integrations. 

HubSpot and Salesforce both offer excellent add-on functionality through a robust app ecosystem. Both offer open APIs and developer tools to help you cater your CRM to your company. 

With HubSpot’s fast, reliable, and powerful integration with Salesforce, syncing your data can be done in minutes – no technical setup required. This makes it possible to use both platforms for your different teams. Learn more about our integration here.