HubSpot vs Freshsales

HubSpot and Freshsales are two CRM platforms offering comprehensive tools for managing customer relationships and driving sales, each with a distinct focus. HubSpot provides an all-in-one platform with robust features for sales, marketing, and customer service, making it ideal for businesses seeking scalability across multiple functions. Freshsales, by contrast, emphasizes AI-driven insights, sales automation, and integrated communication tools, catering to teams that prioritize data-driven sales processes. In this blog post, we’ll compare their key features to help you decide which CRM suits your needs – or if folk might offer a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

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 Freshsales?

Freshsales is a CRM platform by Freshworks designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes with AI-powered tools and automation. It provides features like lead scoring, deal tracking, email and call management, and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and drive conversions. Freshsales also integrates communication and sales in one place, offering tools for personalized outreach and detailed insights to improve sales strategies. With its focus on reducing manual tasks and delivering actionable insights, Freshsales caters to teams looking for a smarter way to manage customer relationships and close deals faster.

Key features of Freshsales

• AI-powered insights: Freshsales leverages AI to provide recommendations, predict deal outcomes, and offer actionable insights to improve sales strategies.
• Lead scoring: Automatically prioritizes leads based on their engagement and likelihood to convert, helping sales teams focus on high-value opportunities.
• Deal tracking: Provides a visual sales pipeline to track deals through various stages and monitor progress in real time.
• Email and call management: Integrates email and phone communication, allowing users to manage interactions directly from the platform.
• Workflow automation: Automates repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or updating deal statuses, reducing manual work and improving efficiency.

HubSpot vs. Freshsales: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of HubSpot and Freshsales and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience, and more.

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.
Freshsales’ pipeline feature offers a visual sales pipeline that helps you track deals through various stages in real time. The drag-and-drop functionality allows you to easily move deals between stages, providing a clear overview of your progress. While the pipeline is designed for simplicity, it’s heavily focused on sales workflows, which may limit its flexibility for teams requiring broader project or task tracking capabilities.

2. Ease of use

HubSpot is renowned for its intuitive interface, making it user-friendly for both beginners and experienced users. Freshsales also offers a straightforward user experience but may require a bit more time to navigate due to its extensive features tailored for sales-centric activities.

3. Contact enrichment

HubSpot's Breeze Intelligence streamlines data collection with features like form shortening, automatically populating known information to enhance user experience. Freshsales does not currently offer a similar built-in data enrichment feature, focusing more on CRM functionalities.

4. Outreach

HubSpot offers a versatile email marketing tool with drag-and-drop capabilities for building campaigns, A/B testing, and personalization. Freshsales provides a comprehensive outreach suite with email, phone, and chat tools, focusing on sales communication but may lack the depth of dedicated marketing platforms.

5. Automation

HubSpot excels with robust automation for marketing, sales, and customer service, streamlining tasks like lead nurturing and follow-ups. Freshsales offers automation for repetitive tasks and complex sales processes, but setting up advanced workflows may require time and system familiarity.

6. Integration

HubSpot's App Marketplace boasts over 1,500 integrations, offering extensive connectivity options to enhance CRM functionality, catering to diverse business needs. Freshsales integrates with tools like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Mailchimp, as well as Freshworks products such as Freshdesk and Freshchat, to streamline workflows. These integrations support email, calendar, marketing, and customer support, enhancing the platform’s functionality.

7. Artificial Intelligence

HubSpot leverages AI for optimizing sales and marketing through automated tasks, insights, and chatbots. Freshsales' Freddy AI provides predictive analytics and lead scoring, enhancing decision-making but may require understanding AI-driven workflows for optimal use.

Price and plans comparison

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

HubSpot prices

Depending on the product hub you're after, HubSpot provides a few price plans. This overview is focused on HubSpot's sales hub.

• Starter: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $100 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $150 per user, per month.

Freshsales prices

There are two separate plans for Freshsales, and something else called Freshsales Suite where you can get sales-only, or sales and marketing features respectively. The following is an overview of Freshsales' annual price plans.

• Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
• Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $49/user/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to HubSpot and Freshsales

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size business, or large enterprise.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• 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. Freshsales: What's the verdict?

In the comparison between HubSpot and Freshsales, it's apparent that both CRMs offer robust features tailored to different business needs, with HubSpot excelling in integrated marketing tools and Freshsales providing strong sales automation. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach, folk emerges as a compelling alternative. Its ease of use, customization, and integration capabilities make it a versatile choice for businesses looking to enhance their CRM experience without breaking the bank. Try folk today, free.