HubSpot CRM Reviews

Pros

Extremely clean user interface, it's amazing support staff, and the ability for you to go into very strong account based and better be automations when your business grows. It does allow you to scale pretty easily. It also have a free tier for almost every hub.

Cons

As a start of this software can be a little expensive when you need some of it's more advanced features at an early stage

Alternatives Considered

HighLevel

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

Mostly software consolidation but also ease of use

Switched From

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

To me high-level seems like it is amazing for marketing automation but not as CRM. Pipedrive seemed like a pipeline with automation - the CRM feature wasn't really as prominent as I personally would have liked it to be.

Pros

I really like how easy it is to use especially in training. It was easy to integrate with other products.

Cons

I don't like that it doesn't have the ability to manage larger companies so we had to switch to sales force when our company grew for better tools.

Pros

Truthfully, nothing...Absolutely nothing.

Cons

They are misleading and fraudulent. I subscribed to their $20 per month "Starter" plan, primarily to build a website for my company. They claim ease of use...Lie. Their AI generated a templated website based on minimal information I provided at startup. My company name and logo looked like crap, and the so-called "Editor" mode was virtually non-functional. My plan supposedly provided live chat support, yet when I clicked the link for it I was taken to some "helpful" (not!), irrelevant article on all the great "features" of their web-builder.

I had to pay $20 up front for the starter package, and the company offered no refunds (geez, I wonder why?), so after canceling my auto-renewal, I put a claim in with my bank for than bogus charge, more on principle than because I needed the money.

Oh yeah...They also don't let you delete your account, even though their so-called "help" menu says you can.

Pros

As far as a CRM goes, easy to use, pretty intuitive and easy to use even for non technical people

Cons

The pricing model can get out of hand if you are not careful, obviously it's a pay to play CRM and the more you want to do the more modules you have to add which can get pricey.

Pros

It's very intuitive and easy to use. Lots of free options too. I used to organise contacts and manage when I last contacted each person and their details or notes.

Cons

Sometimes it was tricky to setup. For example there is no entrepreneur option, they have to have the contact details for a person and then assign them to a company as opposed to just combining these into one with a entrepreur/sole trader option.

Alternatives Considered

monday CRM

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

Trusted by Mark Cuban and other big name characters. Youtube videos and support is plentiful. Seemed the obvious choice.

Pros

Integrating HubSpot CRM into our workspace systems and tools was a paramount resolution. We have reaped so many benefits since day one of deployment. The comprehensive project management tools incorporated in HubSpot enable us to navigate through the numerous stages of project execution. It enable us to track progress, seamlessly allocate resources and ensure that we complete our project tasks on time. Additionally, it has centralised all our data including cast project information, product design docs, contract and customer information making this information accessible to the entire team. We highly appreciate the powerful marketing automation tools. They enable us to create result oriented marketing campaigns and follow leads from these campaigns. It is also easy to now keep clients informed about new products. The sales cycle has therefore smoothened and become more efficient providing our sales team with accurate insights of prospects. The reports on sales performance and customer engagements enable us to strategically plan and address business issues. HubSpot CRM has enabled us to build on our creativity to our own advantages. We have fully polished and customized our dashboard to only display our metrics and KPIs. This provide us with a wide vie if our performance on realtime

Cons

HubSpot CRM stands out from the rest of systems. It seamlessly integrates with our design tools and project management tools enabling us to create a more unified workflow that has eliminated manual data entry. Also we have b en able to scale it and add features to operate our complex environment.

Pros

HubSpot CRM has very efficient conversation tools that ensure smooth communications and sharing of information with customers and clients. It has an analytical tool that gives accurate performance insights on how to optimize customer engagement and improve relationships. Customizing HubSpot CRM is easily possible which helped us get a perfect solution for our relationship management needs.

Cons

We have never had any case with HubSpot CRM to this moment. It has been a smooth ride all along with no dislikes.

Pros

Easy to set up, tons of integrations, and great knowledge base. I have used Hubspot at multiple companies (both in-house and with clients as a consultant) and it's a solid solution.

Cons

Support has been a hit or miss, when it comes to tracking issues they are usually not helpful (support is pretty good otherwise). Also it's annoying that somewhat standard features are not included in the already expensive Pro plan and require Enterprise.

Pros

It's a very easy to use CRM at it's core, but contains so much depth and the ability to always take it a step further with automations and workflows

Cons

The cost adds up quickly, and there are a lot of features that you have to upgrade to gain access to. The simple act of clicking a button you don't have access to will trigger Sales Reps to try, fairly aggressively, and get you to upgrade

Pros

The UI is really intuition. It's easy to manage deals, create pipelines etc

Cons

Sometimes Hubspot asks to upgrade to use very basic features that other crm offers at same pricing

Pros

- Easy to get up and running, i.e. implementation is not a painful process
- Less expensive than competitors
- SO SO MANY amazing native integrations
- Clean layout
- Good mobile functionality
- Easiest to learn from a user and admin perspective

Cons

- Don't enjoy the "Hubspot fields that cannot be changed" i.e. customization is limited
- Workflows can be wonky and don't always work right
- Support is based on the person, though most of them are fairly knowledgeable

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

Needed something more professional with more integrations

Switched From

Zoho CRM

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

Salesfore was far too expensive and implementation would have been an additional high-cost

Pros

HubSpot focuses on simplicity and usability rather and competing for the most features or customization. The primary requirement of our CRM implementation project was ease-of-use and HubSpot has not dissapointed. And while there are limitations compared to other platforms, the feature set is growing all the time and we don't have to rely on third party integrators or developers. It is also easy to scale up quickly.

Cons

HubSpot has a strong culture and jargon. To truly understand the platform, you will need to learn to think like the HubSpot community which can use different terms and methodologies. The platform also seems to be biased mostly towards B2B service companies, however you can make it work for just about any type of organization. Also keep in mind that while the CRM starts as "free," the cost increases quickly as you leverage the other HubSpot "hubs."

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

MS Dynamics was clunky, buggy, and had an outdated user interface. I'm sure a custom integrator could have smoothed out some of the issues, but who wants to deal with that cost and complexity.

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

HubSpot had all the core features we needed at a lower cost without the need for a third-party integrator.

Pros

Hubspot is an incredible product which incorporates every aspect of sales and marketing and has so many integrations, that your success is unlimited. The CRM is fully customizable, the email marketing application has endless templates, you can import your entire website, do paid media and track all your campaigns and track all of your social media efforts as well. Don't even get me started on the reporting capabilities because they are endless. I want to see all contacts who have opened five web pages, completed a lead form, within the last three months, boom done. Segmentation, lists, snippets, automation, sequences for any process. Can you tell I'm a big fan!

Cons

The biggest problem you will have is getting your team to understand the full depth and functionality of the application. I wish I had more by in from the entire team, which is not the applications fault.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

To many different applications doing multiple marketing and sales tasks.

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

Cost, functionality, and familiarity with the product.

Pros

HubSpot is easy to deploy and setup. I like that you can upload an excel spreadsheet with all your contacts and companies into HubSpot which allows the data to be quickly synced. In addition there are a lot of integrations available for various commonly used business software with HubSpot such as WooCommerce and WordPress.

Cons

There are some features that are limited or not available depending on your level of membership plan.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Service Cloud and monday.com

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

Tracking everything in excel became unmanageable.

Switched From

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

HubSpot was the perfect fit for our business and it allowed us to take advantage of a full blown CRM system at a low cost.

Pros

HubSpot CRM is really great because it furnishes my business with a straight forward and powerful software. It has provided me with a robust digital marketing instrument and an arsenal of tools which I can effectively use for sales and customer service. I love how it comes with a lightweight, yet proficient free starter plan for those who might want to take it for a test drive and see how it operates. The subscription model is great as it is divided in tiers so one can purchase a subscription which suits their budget and get features included in that tier. It offers a simple user interface and setting up and maintaining the software is trouble-free. Ever since I started using the software, attracting prospects is no longer a challenge, I am also able to to get business growth strategies through various marketing techniques. With the lead management feature, I can acquire and manage potential clients or custormers effortlessly. In addition to this, the software enables me to schedule appointments and or schedule a client with an advisor. The email management option helps me to send, reply track and organize emails all at once which improves customer service while saving me time. A combination of all these features and more makes me feel really satisfied with the software.

Cons

I have noticed that some features require an upgrade which can become costly for small businesses. In addition to this, the free tier does not come with some automations. Lastly, it would have been nice if they offered a reccuring task option as it would aid in prompting a user to follow up with clients regularly thus the reminder feature leaves much to be desired.

Pros

The email campaigns, customer management, sales campaigns and customization.

Cons

The price you need to pay to put together an email sequencing campaign. Last I checked it was $400 a month to enable that feature. That's my only issue with the software. Other than that I love it.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

This was a much better platform. The value is also incredible. It staggering how many features you get for free. It's nuts. You can run a company's marketing, sales, and lead generation campaigns effectively for FREE.

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

In my opinion this is THE BEST CRM you can use. Especially considering what you get for free. In this time of financial insecurity you need to use what you can get for free to keep your overhead low.

Pros

I love the HubSpot platform. It's well designed, user-friendly and a very effective CRM tool. Pound-for-pound, dollar-for-dollar, HubSpot provides the most value of the business tools that I use.HubSpot is

Cons

I really don't have any major cons for the HubSpot CRM service. The only note I would share with is that I have to re-log in at times but is a very minor inconvenience.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

After doing some research, I determined that HubSpot was better equipped to meet my needs.

Switched From

Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

After doing some research, I determined that HubSpot was better equipped to meet my needs.

Pros

HubSpot excels in many things, contact/company/deal creation and association, email marketing, and automation. HubSpot really shines once the "Workflow" features are activated. Users can create automation that are, quite literally, only limited by your imagination. For example, form submissions on your website can lead to automated emails, adding a contact to a list, a sales pipeline, or hundreds of other things!

Cons

Ease of use.

Employees require a decent amount of onboarding to use HubSpot, and as your database grows, can become quite overwhelming and confusing to new employees. There are so many features and details that if a company doesn't have proper documentation, new employees can make quite a few mistakes with their data quite easily.

Pros

I love marketing, sales and customer experience automation aligned to the scalable growth of companies.

Cons

The onboarding of the HubSpot team was very bad and that caused us to take a long time to understand the commercial methodology that HubSpot supports.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

Because the other software was used to manage projects and we needed something professional and powerful.

Switched From

Bitrix24

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

Because the other software is very good for sellers but not for companies looking to grow.

Pros

Hubspot is user-friendly, attractive, and useful for different levels of expertise. We use it for the website, blog, social media, email, and CRM.
The content around the software is fantastic, with active blogs for different user groups, detailed guidance for how to use functionalities and what you could use them for, and templates to help you tackle projects. They provide a lot of resources to help you get the best out of Hubspot, and if you're stuck, the customer support is responsive and helpful.
Something I particularly like about Hubspot is how actively they are developing it. It seems to be every month that we receive an update of new features, functionality or integrations. They have recently added the ability to manage multiple currencies, which people had been really actively asking for on the community forum, and I was so pleased to see this added. Hubspot clearly listen to the feedback and suggestions from the community.

Cons

There are some things which are a bit inflexible. For example, the Industry field for Companies is very large and has a lot of industries which would never be relevant to us. I would like to be able to delete or at least hide features and information which we never use and would never use.
Our email is on Outlook Exchange, which unfortunately means we are unable to use some of Hubspot's functions, like being able to email from within the platform and the Meetings function, which I would love to be able to use.

Pros

Amazing customer service support. The success managers are extremely knowledgeable and answer emails quickly. They have made a huge difference.

The interface is very user-friendly so my not so tech-savvy salespeople can still use the software.

I like that new features are constantly coming out and that Hub gives beta options for users to test them out.

The reporting functionality is cool although I do prefer excel mostly.

It's nice that our marketing team can operate on the same platform (I am sales).

Cons

I wish there was more customization. Not every company sells the same way so it would be great to be able to customize the deal section to match how we code/itemize our deals. We can do it to an extent but it causes a lot of user error. I also know that its open-source API but that's not helpful if you don't have an engineer.

Because companies are based on domain, there are a lot of duplicate companies and, having a large database, it's a pain (nearly impossible) to manage. Also, the HubSpots Insights database is really bad. The information isn't accurate so we need to do data enrichment on our own.

Same complaint with contacts. Lot of duplicates.

There's no AI so, right now that's okay but I can see it being a problem as we grow.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Pros

Without a doubt, the ability to have unlimited free users was incredibly useful. We have a number of freelancers who work with us on a part time basis and we were able to give them all access to the CRM for free. This gives HubSpot a considerable edge over it's per-license competitors.

HubSpot's lightweight ecosystem allows you to link all sales, marketing and service information in one place, all with a very straightforward and easy to understand user interface (another of HubSpot's benefits).

On the Marketing side, HubSpot's email builder is simple, yet powerful, and allows us to create great emails to send out to our customer base. On the Sales side, the Outlook Add-in allows us to make sure all sales activity by all team members is being tracked and logged in the CRM, so we are able to track performance and customer interactions quickly and easily. The Service functionality has allowed us to build out a fully fledged help centre for our customers.

Cons

Some aspects of the software are a little incomplete and/or suffer from inexplicable lacks of functionality. Sadly HubSpot CRM is yet to completely separate itself from its past as solely a marketing automation tool. It is obvious that the entire system architecture has been built around the contact record object type, with several frustrating quirks arising as a result. For example, a lot of the workflow functionality differs depending on the object type in use; contact based workflows allow you to use future dates as a trigger (e.g. run workflow x days before y date), whereas Company and Deal based workflows do not.

There are also a number of fundamental functions that require the Professional tier license to access. These include but are not limited to calculated fields, multiple currencies, lead rotation automation and A|B testing on emails. Clearly I understand that you get what you pay for, but given that these are all indispensable functions of a CRM, it seems to render the 'Starter' tier entirely useless, forcing you to pay the higher price. That being said, I am grateful that calculated fields are now a Professional rather than a higher Enterprise feature.

One last frustration is the inability to have multiple users on different tiers within the same Hub. I would greatly appreciate the ability to give Starter licenses to some of my free users, to give them a little more functionality, however, I am only allowed to purchase more Pro licenses, which I can't afford.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Pros

I really liked the fact that HubSpot CRM is relatively easy to use. The navigation between its different sections and features is smooth.

The sales pipeline section lets you visualize what's happening at each of your stage pipeline, while sale forecasting shows you how much you'd be making if you were to close X deals.

Plus, there's the smartphone app: an excellent way to keep track of things and carry out tasks even when you're on the go.

Cons

The main con of HubSpot CRM, which is also true to other "freemium" tools, is the fact that certain features are only available in the paid plan(s).

That's not an issue itself but the fact that the paid plans don't cost $10 or so each month but much more than that, may lead a user facing the question 'Do I want to invest that kind of money or should I look for a more inexpensive option?'

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Pros

I love how everything about a contact is all in one place. From the first moment, they visit your website, to every conversion they've made on your website, all contacts with the company they've had, any meetings, calls, or emails. It's all right there in the Contact Record of the CRM.

This helps the marketing and sales team implement "Smarketing" in a seamless manner. Sales reps have all the marketing data in order to tailor their sales approach to a contact. Marketing has all the sales qualification necessities to add to their lead scoring system, so they can intelligently pass off marketing qualified leads to the sales team once they reach a specific score.

It tracks all the sales representative's performance, interactions, productivity and more. This helps sales managers know what their team is doing and how well they are doing at all times.

You also have a Deals section, where you can track all sales opportunities that have potential to become a customer and their path to either becoming a customer or a lost sales opportunity. That gives HubSpot the ability to better forecast your sales month-to-month for bottom line reports.

I love how you can call a contact directly from their contact record in the CRM, record it, take notes, and see all the information in front of you while you're speaking to them. That helps sales professionals increase their sales calls productivity and outcomes.

The HubSpot CRM can also integrate with your Gmail and Office 365.

Cons

The downside to the CRM is the limitation of integrating with your Gmail or Office 365. If you do not have your email or business hosted by Google/Gmail or Office 365, then it cannot fully integrate into your email system. The ability to have all the features of the HubSpot CRM right within your Inbox saves a lot of time and hassle of having to open up the HubSpot CRM and perform your tasks and communications there with a SQL.

There's the option to use IMAP with Microsoft Exchange if your company is hosted by another platform but still uses Microsoft 16 Exchange for your email service. But the drawback to this is that it is a bumpy road to setting up, and you do not have all the features and capabilities that you would have normally with Office 365 and a Business Gmail Account.

The price is also a common issue. HubSpot offers a free CRM but there are great limitations to this free CRM. It forces you to pay for the Sales Pro which is costly to add on to your other costs for the HubSpot platform such as the HubSpot CMS, MAP & Marketing.

With that being said, there are other CRMs that integrate with the HubSpot platform as an alternative and cheaper solution to having a robust CRM. The best one I have seen accomplish this is the BlueCamroo CRM.

Pros

Ease of use - it's obvious the way an iPhone or Google would be
Easy Integrations
Many capabilities and integrations
Fast start - up and running in no time flat

Cons

The sales team -- they just don't seem to really get Enterprise B2B CMO level folks... (in my experience!)
They have gotten chincy with on-boarding... used to be "all you need", now rather restricted timing
Customer Success people are good - but they're spread VERY thin with 100s of accounts

Alternatives Considered

ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing HubSpot CRM

ease of use, integrations, functionality

Switched From

Act-On

Reasons for Switching to HubSpot CRM

ease of use, integrations, reliability