HubSpot vs Salesforce

HubSpot and Salesforce are two of the most popular and powerful CRM platforms available, each offering a wide range of tools for sales, marketing, and customer service. While both cater to businesses looking to enhance their customer relationship management, they differ significantly in their approach, features, and target audiences. HubSpot is known for its user-friendly interface and all-in-one marketing capabilities, while Salesforce offers extensive customization and scalability for complex sales processes. In this blog post, we’ll compare HubSpot and Salesforce to help you determine which CRM is better suited to your business’s needs and growth goals. Additionally, we'll introduce folk - a popular alternative.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot CRM is a user-friendly, scalable platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations efficiently.

Key features of HubSpot

• Marketing hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools.
• Sales hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting.
• Service hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases.
• Operations hub: Syncs and automates business processes across different systems.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring to improve sales efficiency.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability.

Key features of Salesforce

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for the varied needs of large enterprises.
• Customization and scalability: Salesforce is highly customizable and scalable, allowing large organizations to tailor the platform to complex workflows and manage significant growth.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein offers AI-driven analytics and automation, providing insights that help large businesses optimize their strategies.
• Extensive integration capabilities: With Salesforce's AppExchange, large companies can integrate the platform with a wide range of third-party applications, ensuring seamless operation across different business systems.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Salesforce provides robust security measures and compliance features, critical for large organizations handling sensitive customer data.

HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

HubSpot's pipeline management feature provides a visual overview of deals, allowing users to track the progress of sales opportunities, customize stages, and automate tasks for a more efficient sales process. It is designed for ease of use, making it accessible for teams looking to streamline their sales efforts without a steep learning curve. On the other hand, Salesforce's pipeline management feature, known as Pipeline Inspection, offers a comprehensive view of sales opportunities by consolidating key metrics, deal changes, and AI-powered insights into a single interface. This feature is ideal for larger organizations that require in-depth analytics and a robust set of tools to manage complex sales processes. Both platforms excel in their own right, with HubSpot being more user-friendly and intuitive for small to medium-sized businesses, while Salesforce provides extensive customization and scalability for enterprises needing a more detailed approach to sales management.

2. Easy of use

HubSpot is renowned for its intuitive interface, making it user-friendly for businesses of all sizes. Salesforce, while powerful, has a steeper learning curve due to its extensive customization options, which may require more time and training to master effectively.

3. Contact enrichment

HubSpot's Breeze Intelligence feature streamlines data collection by automatically populating known information, enhancing user experience with form shortening. This ensures efficient contact enrichment, allowing businesses to maintain accurate and comprehensive customer profiles effortlessly.

4. Outreach

HubSpot offers an email marketing tool with a drag-and-drop interface, facilitating campaign creation, A/B testing, and personalization. Salesforce's outreach is powered by Einstein AI, offering intelligent insights and cross-sales paths to engage leads effectively.

5. Automation

HubSpot automates marketing, sales, and customer service tasks like lead nurturing and follow-ups. Salesforce provides robust automation with workflow rules, flow builders, and AI-driven processes, enhancing business operations and decision-making.

6. Integration

HubSpot's App Marketplace offers over 1,500 integrations, ensuring seamless connectivity with various tools. Salesforce's AppExchange provides extensive third-party integrations, including Slack and Mailchimp, enhancing marketing, analytics, and collaboration capabilities.

7. Artificial intelligence

HubSpot uses AI for automating tasks like data entry and lead scoring, offering sales insights and enhancing customer service with chatbots. Salesforce's Einstein AI provides predictive analytics and intelligent recommendations, automating lead scoring and opportunity forecasting.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both HubSpot and Salesforce.

HubSpot prices

HubSpot has multiple subscription plans that cater to specific functions. A general CRM suite on an annual subscription are as follows.

• Starter: $15 per user, per month.
• Professional: $450 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $1,500 per user, per month

Salesforce prices

Salesforce has a few subscription plans that targets small business owners, and a separate one for enterprises.

• Starter suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses
• Pro suite: $100/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to HubSpot and Salesforce

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is a multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system.

Key features

• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

HubSpot vs. Salesforce: What's the verdict?

In the battle between HubSpot and Salesforce, both platforms offer robust CRM solutions tailored to different business needs. HubSpot shines with its user-friendly interface and integrated tools ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. Meanwhile, Salesforce excels in customization and scalability, making it a top choice for large enterprises. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach, folk offers a flexible alternative, combining ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.