Positives
- Comprehensive, all-in-one solution
- User-friendly interface
- Customization and scalability
- Free-forever core CRM system
- Hundreds of integrations
Negatives
- Extremely expensive
- Time tracking not included
If the CRM industry were Hollywood, HubSpot would be an A-list star. When most competitors scaled back their packages to include either marketing software or help desks, this company put them all to shame by implementing both into its platform.
HubSpot provides five ‘hubs’, with two covering operations and content management systems and its CRM hubs dedicated to customer service, sales, and marketing. With this jam-packed, all-in-one platform, the headache of manually integrating different software to cover all your business management needs becomes a thing of the past.
HubSpot’s free version features basic tools from all hubs, and when it’s time to expand, there are premade software bundles. Furthermore, the company allows users to customize their own bundles with an extensive list of products and add-ons.
Although HubSpot isn’t the most affordable option on the market, this cloud-based CRM solution delivers an intuitive interface, high-quality features across plans, and easy onboarding.
Stick with the forever-free version of HubSpot that’s limited to one account. Experience the service’s basic features and upgrade to a paid plan if your CRM needs grow.
Features
To start using HubSpot, it’s easy to add team members individually or in bulk via a CVS file. Users can quickly start importing or creating contacts after completing the initial prompts and account authentication.
HubSpot’s comprehensive reporting dashboards present all customer-related data, including interactions, contracts, notes, deals, tickets, and other pertinent information – offering an authentic 360-degree experience. However, it’s unfortunate that its e-signature feature only works for quotes, forcing users to resort to integrated solutions like PandaDoc.
While HubSpot’s pipelines don’t differentiate between leads and contacts, you can assign a deal stage status to each item, such as new, open, in progress, and bad timing. Though this approach saves time by avoiding the need for a separate tab, it would be confusing if it weren’t for the handy segmentation filters provided.
Like most CRM solutions, HubSpot requires an email provider integration. The platform automatically syncs with calendars when a meeting is organized, but only if a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace email address is used.
Although team members can visualize their upcoming meetings and tasks, as well as their own recent activity, HubSpot lacks a built-in time tracking tool. Instead, it features several integrations with software such as HourStack and StopWatch.
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Sales
HubSpot’s Sales Hub is for managing and monitoring leads and includes the means to easily generate quotes, such as with its CPQ tools. However, to create new contracts, a third-party app is necessary.
Managers and users, with permission, can create invoices directly from a contact, company, or deal. Plus, clients can purchase directly from the website, over email, or even during a chat session with HubSpot’s built-in payments feature.
Even with the free version, users get complete visibility over the entire sales cycle and can customize a default pipeline or create a new one. There’s also an efficient drag-and-drop tool that facilitates deal-stage editing and filtering.
HubSpot’s sales automation is enticing, providing the possibility to personalize thousands of email templates, queue follow-ups and reminders for each lead, and trigger notifications to keep teams informed about customer behavior.
With a Sales Hub Professional subscription, users can access forecasting software that provides a seamless picture of their entire pipelines, fostering data-driven decisions, revenue control, and enhanced team management.
Marketing Automation
HubSpot’s marketing toolkit includes several features, from lead-management tools to email campaign automation, and caters to businesses of all sizes when it comes to attracting quality leads.
From the Marketing Hub, users can personalize offers and messages based on their audience’s behavior and trigger engagement campaigns at the most relevant times. The possibility to automate branded emails, landing pages, live chats, and ads is the bread and butter of any successful company, and HubSpot offers just that.
What sets this hub apart is its social media software, which can run campaigns, publish content, monitor brand mentions, and nurture clients with contextual interactions.
A 360-degree view of customer data, advanced marketing analytics, and the flexibility to customize data-gathering prompts and filters should be deal-breakers in any company’s search for the perfect CRM solution. Thankfully, HubSpot does this and more, excelling in empowering its users with in-depth insights into campaign performance, SEO recommendations, and client journeys.
Customer Support
Each hub in HubSpot comes with its own array of communication features, but for any company seeking tools to assess client satisfaction and manage tickets, there’s the Service Hub. Its primary purpose is to group communication channels, consolidating every interaction from website chats, Facebook Messenger, and VoIP calling in one shared inbox.
Integrating this hub with the marketing and sales hubs unlocks its full potential as businesses gain access to AI-powered conversation intelligence for client calls, a vast selection of email templates, social media engagement, and customer service playbooks.
HubSpot’s ticketing system prevents endless back-and-forth emails and offers a range of organizational tools for efficiently tracking, prioritization, and assignment of tickets. Another feature that stands out is the knowledge base service, where users can design their own library of company information and guides.
Lastly, the Service Hub comes with its own customer feedback software, where teams can create NPS, CES, and CSAT surveys and send them out via email or web link. To access this, HubSpot provides built-in feedback dashboards packed with essential insights into customers’ satisfaction and opportunities for improvement.
Reports
HubSpot offers several default and customizable reports, but unlike most competitors, it also provides an innovative report builder. This tool gives users unparalleled flexibility, enabling them to select different data sources, incorporate subcategories such as contacts or deals, and personalize the layout with bars, tables, and pie charts.
With the marketing toolkit, HubSpot subscribers can understand customer preferences and behavior, track site analytics, and evaluate communication channel performance – ranging from website interactions to social media or email campaigns.
Within the Sales Hub, this report builder allows managers to tailor visual reports and view real-time analytics on pipelines, deal status changes, and revenue conversions. Plus, the reporting filters make it extremely easy to analyze the number of sales made over a specific period.
But that’s not all, as HubSpot also helps track the performance levels of team members, such as identifying which agents closed which deals and how many hours it took them to make the sale.
Device Support
Although we couldn’t test it ourselves, HubSpot’s mobile app is touted as an outstanding portable CRM platform. The app is free to download as part of the Sales Hub, but the scope of tools available varies depending on the subscription level.
Nonetheless, every user, even on the free plan, can access customer data, create and assign tasks, receive real-time notifications, and engage with clients at no cost.
As a highly customizable CRM solution, HubSpot offers a vast range of extensions. Besides providing the ability to create API, HubSpot allows users to set up a Sales Hub browser add-in for Chrome, Office 365, and Outlook. Integrating your email provider from the start is advantageous for tracking and logging client interactions.
Ease of Use
HubSpot’s usability and intuitiveness are fundamental to the overall experience of the software. The account is a breeze to set up, and the main dashboard’s organization is seamless, even though we only had access to example reports. Plus, switching between tabs is smooth and straightforward.
The easiness of it all is a huge advantage for users of the free plan who don’t have access to live support chats. However, HubSpot compensates for this limitation by offering invaluable guidance tools like an extensive knowledge base. In fact, this CRM solution excels in providing customers with various resources, including a webinar library, free training, certifications, and a plethora of eBooks and guides.
Integrations
Besides its already feature-rich CRM hubs, HubSpot boasts hundreds of integrations with third-party services. From the service’s App Marketplace, users can explore a multitude of tools to customize their HubSpot platforms and address specific needs. Some noteworthy integrations include:
- Slack: Team collaboration and live chat notifications.
- Make: Workflow automation.
- Typeform: Create surveys, forms, and quizzes.
- Google Ads: Reports on ROI and performance.
- Zoom: Team meetings and contact records.
- Canva: Designing and branding.
- Salesforce: Bi-directional data syncing.
- Shopify: Analyze and segment campaign data.
Moreover, HubSpot connects with Zapier to further increase personalization and enhance adaptability for every company with a subscription.
Pricing
HubSpot’s plans may have robust feature sets, but they are not the most affordable. Luckily, a 14-day free trial is available for both the service and marketing hubs.
HubSpot offers a generous free version that’s limited to one user and supports basic features from each hub. These include branded emails, live chat, three reporting dashboards, one deal pipeline, and integrations.
Although each of the five hubs can be acquired independently, it’s also possible to purchase bundles or customize your own CRM toolkit from HubSpot’s list of products and add-ons.
The Starter bundle comes in at $20 per month and, like the other plans, provides a discount with an up-front payment. This plan includes two users – with each additional user costing $25 – online payment management and technical support.
The Professional plan costs a whopping $1,600 per month for five users, $100 for each additional user, plus a one-time $3,000 fee for onboarding. However, this plan includes HubSpot’s most advanced features, such as AI forecasting, SEO, and unlimited automation across channels.
HubSpot only accepts credit and debit cards, such as American Express, Visa, Mastercard, and Maestro. Like most CRM solutions, the company doesn’t have a money-back guarantee after a certain usage period, although it can refund any prepaid but unused fees.
Customer Service
HubSpot’s free version is not meant to offer top-notch customer support. However, we were pleasantly surprised when a chatbot redirected us to a customer service agent who provided thorough and patient assistance. As it turns out, if users of the free plan have questions that aren’t technical, they can still benefit from the 24/7 help of an advisory team.
Beyond its self-support tools, such as a knowledge base and several guides, courses, and certifications, HubSpot offers personal onboarding assistance for every product. Additionally, users can access a list of professional services, including inbound and technical consulting, migration aid, and customer training.
Chat With Agent
Onboarding Assistance
Professional Services
This powerhouse of a CRM solution maintains a broad social media presence, engaging with internauts across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.
Bottom Line
HubSpot is a true one-stop shop for business management tools. It’s a favorite among
medium-sized businesses, given how its Professional bundle includes highly advanced and scalable CRM features while ensuring a smooth and independent onboarding process.
While it may not be the most budget-friendly option, HubSpot provides free and Starter bundles with tons of capabilities, ranging from sales automation to editable reports, a marketing toolkit, and hundreds of integrations. Its centralized nature allows businesses to gain a much-needed 360-degree view of customer data, encompassing behavioral metrics, forecasting analytics, and more.
HubSpot’s popularity stems from its ability to cover sales, customer support, marketing, operations, and CMS features in a unified platform. Despite their cost, HubSpot’s services are incredibly rich and adaptable to the market changes and future demands of the CRM industry.
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