HubSpot CRM Review The Pros, Cons And The Hidden Costs
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We awarded HubSpot our Best CRM Tool For Small Businesses badge for 2023!
HubSpot CRM, the customer relationship management (CRM) titan.
With a third of the market share, you’ve most likely heard of them? No doubt, one of your buddies has an account with them, or you’ve come across one of their helpful blog articles when researching digital marketing best practices.
It’s a company we can certainly get behind...to an extent. After all, we’re all looking to keep costs down, right? Which is exactly why you’re going to want to stick around till the end of this HubSpot CRM review.
Yes, HubSpot offers a very generous free CRM plan for small sales and marketing teams, but what happens when you outgrow its “lite” features and become aware of its limitations? Do you simply move onto one of its paid plans?
Having analyzed other HubSpot CRM reviews, and the product itself in detail, we thought it was time to share our findings with you, so you can make an informed decision on whether HubSpot’s CRM platform is for you.
HubSpot CRM Review Summary
Most will be interested in the HubSpot free CRM plan, which comes with 1M contacts, unlimited users, email marketing, tracking and landing pages. Those who want to remove HubSpot branding, send higher volumes of email, automate campaigns and add more custom properties and reporting dashboards will be looking at Starter, which starts at $20/month. The much pricier Professional and Enterprise plans are for those looking for sophisticated analytics, CMS features and lead scoring. But when we say expensive, we mean $890 a month expensive.
So, let's see if this is the best CRM for your needs in this HubSpot CRM review.
HubSpot CRM Screenshots
HubSpot CRM Pricing
Free CRM
Free CRM plan with limited features
1,000
Marketing Starter. Discounts applied to annual subscriptions
3,000
Marketing Starter. Discounts applied to annual subscriptions
5000
Marketing Starter. Discounts applied to annual subscriptions
7000
Marketing Starter. Discounts applied to annual subscriptions
10000
Marketing Starter. Discounts applied to annual subscriptions
The free plan is very generous, and the Starter plans are just about manageable for small businesses, however, the Professional and Enterprise plans are extremely expensive. Making HubSpot not a great solution for scaling. Find out more in our complete pricing guide
Pros and Cons
- Pros
- Cons
Pros
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Generous freemium plan
It’s really great that HubSpot CRM lets you add unlimited users and 1M contacts on the free version. You’ll find that many other free CRMs are much more limited. Features include web forms, email marketing, ticketing, email tracking and landing pages. It really is the best CRM system for those looking for a free service.
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Ease-of-use
The fact that it’s so user-friendly is a big advantage to using HubSpot’s CRM platform. Its guided set-up wizard, demos and intuitive interface make it a great tool for all levels of experience. It’s still a huge software with a lot of bells and whistles, but taking all that into account, its usability is still outstanding. You’ll be particularly impressed with its lead management features.
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Excellent customer support
Chat support is available within your dashboard, and the customer support agents are quick to reply with helpful answers. There is also a breadth of rich content on their blog, knowledge base and within Academy, their free, online course platform.
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Call feature
HubSpot’s call feature allows you to make phone calls to your current and prospective leads from your account. Calls can be recorded and saved to your contact log for future reference. This feature is available on all plans, though the time limit varies.
Is HubSpot CRM the right CRM software for you?
- Recommended if:
- Not recommended if:
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You’re looking for a free plan
If you can make do with the “lite” version of paid features, then HubSpot’s free CRM plan is definitely worth checking out.
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You’re a beginner
Even if you have zero experience working with CRMs and other marketing features, you’ll be able to get to grips with HubSpot CRM fairly quickly, as everything feels quite intuitive and there are plenty of resources available if you get stuck.
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You want to set up sales funnels
Because HubSpot includes a landing page builder, form builder, live chat, sales pipelines, and much more, you’re able to build complete sales funnels under one roof.
Rating Details
Conclusion
HubSpot dominates the sales and marketing market for a reason: they’re pros at inbound marketing. In other words, they provide potential and existing customers with rich, useful information and, once you’re on board, they delight you with an excellent user experience, which includes a well-designed product, helpful support and a good range of free features.
The fact that the free plan comes with a bit of everything from HubSpot’s Marketing, Sales CRM and Service hubs means that sales and marketing teams in small businesses and solopreneurs can do everything from lead capture to contact management for absolutely nothing.
The only catch is that once the time comes to upgrade, you’ll notice a significant jump in costs. But, with 1M contacts and unlimited users, you should be able to benefit from HubSpot CRM’s free plan for quite a while.
Not sure if HubSpot of the best CRM for you? Sign up for the free trial and take it for a spin.
FAQ
If you are a small business looking for a free CRM tool, then HubSpot’s free CRM plan is definitely worth your consideration. You can compare it against other free CRM tools here.
HubSpot and Mailchimp are slightly different tools. Mailchimp is principally an email service, whereas HubSpot is a customer relationship management tool, though both tools offer a range of marketing services.
It’s important to analyze each tool with your needs in mind.
HubSpot is a very successful all-in-one sales & marketing software company. As of Jan 2022, it’s worth $21.97B.
HubSpot’s email deliverability is surprisingly low according to our bi-annual deliverability tests. It’s worth keeping an eye on this.
Yes, HubSpot is a CRM with excellent functionality. We recommend HubSpot’s CRM system for ease of use, breadth of features and support.
HubSpot is considered an “all-in-one” CRM platform. The array of sales and marketing features found in its various “Hubs” is designed to facilitate marketing, sales and service processes.
HubSpot CRM Alternatives
A couple of HubSpot alternatives to check out are Pipedrive and ActiveCampaign CRM. The former is made for sales teams, and the latter is a mix of sales and marketing features.
ActiveCampaign is a particularly good choice for those serious about automation.
EngageBay is also a great option for those looking for a similar offering to HubSpot at a reasonable, scalable price.
Zoho CRM is another alternative, however, we wouldn’t necessarily recommend it over HubSpot because of its overly complicated interface. The advantage of using Zoho CRM is that it’s available in 26 languages, whereas HubSpot is only available in 8.
HubSpot is a big Salesforce competitor, see how it compares in our complete guide. you might also want to check it against the other ActiveCampaign alternatives.
The authors
Learn more about us
We keep our content up to date
24 Apr 2023 – Video review added
08 Mar 2023 – Prices updated
15 Dec 2022 – Added badge
17 Nov 2022 – Small updates
07 July 2022 – HubSpot now offers marketing automation on Starter plan
24 May 2022 – Note about deliverability added
08 Feb 2022 – Added call feature
20 Jan 2022 – General Update
15 Jul 2021 – Added FAQ
Our Methodology
This review has been written and researched following our EmailToolTester methodology.
Our Methodology
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