HubSpot vs Salesforce Comparison 2023: Which Is Best?

It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a small business or a huge one, any sized business will have to decide on a great CRM.

That decision begins with a heavyweight rivalry: HubSpot vs Salesforce. In this article, we’ll compare their pricing plans, talk about whether they have good free versions, and then do a side-by-side comparison of some of their key tools and modules.

What is the difference between HubSpot and Salesforce?

The difference between Salesforce and HubSpot is considered by many to be between a complex and expensive selling system, which is Salesforce, versus a lightweight and affordable marketing and sales tool, which is HubSpot. In some cases, this is an accurate view, but not always.

Both Salesforce and HubSpot have toolkits for marketing, sales, customer support and so much more. Both rank among the best CRM Software out there. HubSpot features on our list of CRM tools for small business crm as an affordable-yet-powerful option.

Salesforce is a pioneer of CRM solutions. It really puts sales and ROI as top priorities of its pitch, and aims to be the number one tool in the salesperson’s kit. You can check out our Salesforce review for a thorough rundown of its features.

HubSpot started the industry of inbound marketing, meaning it helps companies create amazing content to attract potential leads. It used to be the only piece of tech modern marketers needed. Our HubSpot review has lots of info on the platform as it is today.

HubSpot vs Salesforce comparison chart

HubSpot vs Salesforce pricing

HubSpot

Both HubSpot pricing and Salesforce pricing have a wide variety of app suites with different pricing plans. For example, with HubSpot Sales Hub, there are three pricing buckets, ranging from $45 per month, $450 per month, and $1,200 per month. 

The HubSpot Marketing Hub starts at $45 per month, and there are premium plans at $800 per month, and $3,200 per month. In most cases, the cheapest plan is pretty lightweight, and any serious operation will surely soon enough need to upgrade to a pricier premium plan.

Salesforce

Salesforce has an even larger selection of product packages and pricing tiers. For example, Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing goes from $25 per user per month billed annually, to $75, $150 and $300, all per user per month billed annually. 

Meanwhile, Marketing Cloud is further subdivided into packages, with Customer 360 Audiences ranging from $12,500 per organization per month billed annually, to $50,000 and $65,000, all per organization per month billed annually. 

Salesforce’s Email, Mobile and Web Marketing package starts at $400, and goes to $1,250 and then to $3,750, all per organization per month billed annually. 

Which is best for you?

Salesforce edges out HubSpot for their overall pricing packages. This is partly because the cheaper versions of Salesforce get you more functionality than those of HubSpot. 

There are also more subdivided packages with Salesforce so you can try and pay for only those tools that you need. However, if you’re seeking an all-in-one platform package anyway, this advantage might be moot.

Salesforce vs HubSpot free versions

HubSpot

One thing that is quite famous about HubSpot is their free CRM software and other related tool kits. 

When it comes to marketing tools you get forms, email marketing, ad management, landing pages and more. 

For sales you get live chat, basic bots, and team email among other free sales tools. For customer service free features there are ticketing tools, email scheduling, shared inbox and calling.  

Salesforce

Comparing HubSpot vs Salesforce regarding their free versions is a snap, because Salesforce does not offer any free versions of its software. Of course, there are free trials for Salesforce packages, but obviously this is not the same thing as a free plan.

Which is best for you?

HubSpot does free stuff, while Salesforce doesn’t. What’s more, there are lots of features and tools offered to HubSpot users in their various free plans.

Customer support

HubSpot

HubSpot’s customer support is based on which package you are subscribed to. For example, the free CRM software only gets you community support, while the starter package gets you email and live chat support too. 

Professional and enterprise plans offer phone support. If a HubSpot user has multiple subscriptions, their support will be based on their most premium plan.

Salesforce

Navigating Salesforce’s customer support sections can seem a bit tricky. There is a Salesforce 1-800 number but getting to the right support agent can be a bit involved.

Salesforce really encourages its users to try out other forms of self service before attempting to speak with a customer service agent. You can access online chat with support but for that you need to be logged in, which does not help if you need support before subscribing.  

Which is best for you?

You’ll need to sign up to the more premium HubSpot packages for the best support, but the rest of HubSpot’s customer service is still pretty decent. 

Salesforce customer support for high-end priced plans is strong, but if you’re getting one of the more economical plans and want support it can get a bit involved.

Knowledgebase & learning

HubSpot

HubSpot has a variety of resources for its users to help themselves. Its knowledge base is full of useful articles that are easy to search using natural language. 

There’s a HubSpot community where HubSpot users can exchange tips. There’s also HubSpot Academy where you can watch video tutorials. For developer issues, HubSpot provides all the documentation for their API.

Salesforce

Where Salesforce is lacking with human customer service, they make up for it with their knowledge base and self service features. You can read docs, watch videos and do walk-throughs of various tools. 

There are guided learning paths with interactive tutorials. Like HubSpot, you get a Salesforce community portal where users can pose questions to other Salesforce users. Finally, Salesforce even has events to help with the learning process.

Which is best for you?

The question of learning resources and knowledge bases isn’t an easy one to answer regarding whether HubSpot or Salesforce is better. After careful consideration, we are giving Salesforce a slight lead in this category.

HubSpot or Salesforce for ease of use

HubSpot

HubSpot makes it so that its users feel like they can learn the platform while they are using it. It’s quite intuitive and sometimes can even feel like a game when mastering its tools. Most HubSpot users can manage the onboarding process with minimal effort.

As your use of the platform expands, you can make use of HubSpot’s classroom training to master new features. You can also check out the HubSpot Academy for tips on boosting your overall sales and marketing strategy.

Salesforce

Salesforce may be a tad more complicated than HubSpot. The learning curve can seem steeper especially for users who are not familiar with CRM platforms. That’s not to say it’s not user friendly at all, just that it requires more work.

That said, the company provides online training resources under the Trailhead banner, which are well-designed and offer a gamified pedagogical experience.  

Which is best for you?

When it comes to the initial user experience and overall first impressions of ease-of-use, HubSpot looks and feels cleaner. 

However, it should be emphasized that Salesforce is not terribly difficult either, and many users may find that what it lacks in ease of use it makes up for with robust CRM tools.

Does HubSpot or Salesforce have greater market share?

HubSpot

HubSpot has a market share of around 32%, and approximately 137,000 websites currently use HubSpot. It is considered the number one marketing automation software.

Salesforce

Salesforce’s market share is a bit higher than HubSpot at 38%. It has approximately 100,000 websites, which may seem strange since it has a larger market share than HubSpot. Salesforce is considered the number one customer relationship management system.

Which is best for you?

The truth is, market share is a slippery metric to keep in mind, as it is always shifting. Since according to leading market share analysis websites Salesforce has more market share, but HubSpot has more websites, we’ll just put the two at par. 

See the resource section at the end of this article for references. 

Salesforce CRM vs HubSpot CRM features & functionality

Now that we’ve covered the basics for each solution, let’s look at the specific modules and features in order to find out which one reigns supreme.

Overall best CRM

HubSpot

HubSpot has its free CRM platform. But when it comes to a premium CRM system, what you get instead are separate modules for things like sales, marketing, support, content management and operations. 

This means your basic CRM tools are spread over these other modules. Sales teams get CRM tools like contact management, call tracking, company insights, meeting schedulers and pipeline management. 

Marketers get CRM features like lead management, landing page and form builders, ad management, lead generation and email marketing tools.

Salesforce

Like HubSpot, you can often get a good deal of CRM tools in Salesforce’s other modules like Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud. In fact, with Salesforce, CRM is more of a solution than a package. 

Salesforce CRM is great for sales forecasting, lead scoring, customer journey optimization, account management, as well as multiple marketing tools. 

This is a great platform for sales reps to make the most of customer data, helping leads take a smooth ride down the sales pipeline.

Which is best for you?

HubSpot offers a dedicated CRM solution. It’s a bonus that this is free.

If you want just the core CRM functions from Salesforce, you may end up needing to buy other packages with add-ons at additional costs.

User interface

HubSpot

The user interface in HubSpot’s platform aims to be minimal and simple, though depending on what tool you are using, this is not always the case. Still, the HubSpot dashboards are always really effective at putting the key data front and center. 

Salesforce

As you may be realizing, Salesforce is a slightly more complicated CRM solution, and therefore the user interface is also less sleekly minimal. This is not to say that the Salesforce dashboards are cluttered and ugly, but there is more going on. Regardless, with some practice, the look and feel of Salesforce will become less intimidating.

Which is best for you?

Clean, minimal and simple are the ways to go in this modern age of business SaaS. HubSpot’s dashboard design and overall user interface does this very well. Salesforce does it pretty well. 

Marketing automation

HubSpot

HubSpot offers automated workflow features for marketing automation. These work great for email marketing automation, but they are not limited to emails, though drip email marketing is huge here. 

Workflows are customizable and personalizable with an editor which utilizes visualization, and drag and drop functionality. You can set up workflows for lead scoring, sending leads from marketing to sales, and internal notifications. 

Salesforce

Salesforce leverages artificial intelligence when it comes to marketing automation. They call this tool Pardot. Pardot helps manage all interactions with new leads and helps prepare them to be handed over to the sales reps. 

What’s more, it helps qualify those leads, so only the most promising prospects get put into the sales pipeline. Pardot is especially effective for B2B marketing, meaning when your potential customer is another business and not an end user. 

You also get more marketing automation features for email marketing and digital marketing, which includes social media ads.

Which is best for you?

Salesforce’s collection of marketing automation tools, including Pardot, makes it the more powerful marketing automation solution. While HubSpot does get credit for pioneering inbound marketing, Salesforce has caught up in that regard, and still has better features for traditional outbound marketing.

Business intelligence

HubSpot

HubSpot does not have any dedicated modules or tools for advanced business intelligence. Of course, you get great analytics and reporting. But for deeper insights, HubSpot works best with a BI integration like Power BI or Hotjar, which you can find in the HubSpot ecosystem in their apps marketplace.

Salesforce

Salesforce has a dedicated BI tool and it’s called Einstein. Einstein is a smart assistant and it is meant to work across all the major departments, from marketing to sales to service. It helps sales reps increase their empathy, for example, or can be used to boost the productivity of support agents. The result is always a more personalized customer experience using past data and artificial intelligence. 

Which is best for you?

Salesforce’s artificial intelligence tool Einstein is a truly amazingly powerful BI tool. HubSpot, as of now, has nothing really to compare it to when it comes to AI virtual assistants who can help with things like sales rep empathy.

Sales process management

HubSpot

When it comes to sales management, HubSpot’s Sales Hub is a very solid platform. It gives sales reps many tools for outreach, including email templates and call tracking. 

It provides detailed customer profiles on all your contacts inside your Gmail or Outlook. Sales automation works alongside a meeting scheduler and live chat options. 

There is also a series of sales management playbooks, which includes sales scripts and positioning guides. Sales pipeline management makes it easy to create deals and tasks and track the progress of sales opportunities in the works. 

Finally, you also get a tool for quotes, and sales analytics.

Salesforce

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a total comprehensive selling solution. It combines contact management with opportunity management to best streamline prospects into potential deals. 

Lead management lets you route leads to the best possible sales rep. You also get great visibility on all their current activity in your sales pipeline. 

What’s more, you can set up automatic sales reports to be shared via email, and these are customizable as well with easy drag and dropping. Salesforce has strong predictable revenue forecasting, which is quite flexible if you have changing KPIs. 

Which is best for you?

The best sales tools in HubSpot are less cluttered and quicker to master than those with Salesforce, meaning your sales team can get to selling faster. Of course, after the initial learning phase this advantage might disappear. 

Customer support tools

HubSpot

HubSpot Customer Service Hub does three major things. It makes the onboarding process easier for your customers using your products, offers flexible help desk tools like ticketing tracking, and lets you forge better relationships with your regular customers. 

You can create your own knowledge base and use a live chat feature to offer customer service. Support reps can use a shared inbox to avoid overlap. 

There are customer feedback surveys, conversation intelligence and contact scoring. The support reporting dashboards are also quite useful.

Salesforce

Salesforce Service Cloud is pretty similar to HubSpot. 

Agents get a workspace and can share workspaces to collaborate on helping users. Case management leverages automated processes to speed up the ticketing process and other support issues. 

When it comes to major problems there is something called incident management. Omni channel routing automatically matches incoming communications from any channel, like chat, email or social media message, to the best sales agent for the job. 

Which is best for you?

There may be fewer tools overall, but the ones HubSpot offers are simple and straightforward and get the job done with minimal fuss. Salesforce has more tools but also more complexity.

Mobile version

HubSpot

The HubSpot mobile app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or the Google Play store. It’s a clean interface and good for most of the basic CRM stuff. You can set and review tasks, reminders and work on deals. 

You get all your contact data including communication histories. Emailing and other outreach features are available on their mobile app. There’s even a detailed caller ID screen. 

The mobile app uses your microphone so you can dictate notes. It will also give you real time notifications whenever there is any update among your team or on open deals.

Salesforce

There is a Salesforce mobile app for Android and iOS. The app is built with lighting speed as its core characteristics, but of course that depends on your internet connection. It gives you comprehensive CRM customer data. 

There are many great mobile tools to streamline team collaboration. A to-do task tracker is also on offer here. What’s more, it’s easy to customize the mobile app according to your needs or what data or tools you prefer to see front and center, and you don’t need to know any code to do so.

Which is best for you?

Both mobile apps get the job done. But the scope and ease of Salesforce’s mobile app when it comes to customization is great, and edges out the HubSpot mobile app in this area of their general comparison. 

What’s more, the reporting dashboard in the Salesforce app looks a bit better than HubSpot’s, despite HubSpot generally having a better look overall.

Integrations

HubSpot

The HubSpot App Marketplace is where you get the buffet of integrations for HubSpot. Popular app integrations include Google tools like Gmail and Google Calendar. There are even apps built exclusively for HubSpot like a special timeline visualizer or a business news alerts tool, even a series of Zoho integrations like CRM and analytics. 

On the subject of data migration, HubSpot also provides website migration to HubSpot's CMS. This process is assisted by a designated Migrations Specialist. 

Salesforce

For Salesforce integrations you visit the AppExchange, where you’ll  see sponsored app integrations. Some examples include marketing tool MailChimp or LinkedIn Sales Solutions. Otherwise, basic Salesforce integrations are available for a lot of popular SaaS like Slack, Quickbooks or Jira. 

Which is best for you?

HubSpot’s series of app integrations built exclusively for HubSpot is enormous. 

However, this field is pretty subjective, so take that result with a grain of salt. Salesforce’s integrations leave nothing to be desired.

Certifications

HubSpot

At HubSpot Academy, you can complete free certifications courses and show off your new skills on LinkedIn. Certification programs exist for lessons like content marketing and inbound sales, two things HubSpot is famous for. 

Salesforce

Salesforce also offers courses to boost your credentials and show off your new skills. Some of these certifications work with other SaaS, like a Slack certification, Tableau certification and MuleSoft certification. There are many certification paths for different roles, like administrator, developer or consultant.

Which is best for you?

Salesforce has slightly more robust certification training programs than HubSpot, and 3rd party app certification courses. HubSpot has the certifications you need, but Salesforce has more. 

Which is better, Salesforce CRM or HubSpot CRM? Our final points

So that wraps up the CRM platform showdown between Salesforce CRM and HubSpot CRM. Both are clearly great choices, especially for the medium and small business. 

HubSpot takes the cake in categories such as the free versions, the user interface and ease of use. However, some may argue that the slightly more robust complexity of Salesforce is its strength. 

Ultimately, it's up to your business needs.

Resources

For market share data, we consulted the following sites:

• Datanyze: Market Share in Market Automation - HubSpot: Metrics on the top industries and competitors in the marketing automation category, indicating HubSpot’s #1 position with 35.55% market share. 

• Datanyze: CRM Market Share - Salesforce: Metrics on the top industries and competitors in the CRM software category, indicating Salesforce’s #1 position with 26.64% market share. That’s up from a 19%+ market share a few years ago.