HubSpot CRM Review and Pricing

Why We Chose HubSpot as the Best CRM for Sales and Marketing Integration

Sales and marketing teams drive revenue and help businesses grow. HubSpot’s tools are uniquely qualified to foster sales and marketing integration, making this customer relationship management (CRM) system an attractive option for many companies. For example, HubSpot provides shared dashboards and real-time sales and marketing information, which creates a trusted data source that promotes cooperation and the exchange of insights and opinions. Everyone involved in generating leads and closing sales can use concrete data to shape marketing efforts and sales processes. With its automation features like email templates, custom text shortcuts and even a library of documents to share with clients and leads, HubSpot helps accelerate sales and marketing efforts and allows teams to stay focused.  

HubSpot’s intuitive and comprehensive omnichannel functionality impressed us. Whether communication with customers is done by phone, email, WhatsApp, the company website, social media or another channel, HubSpot users can log interactions and update the relevant client record with new information. 

Sales managers can integrate HubSpot with popular calling apps like Zoom or use its calling tool to record calls between representatives and customers. On higher-tier plans, these recordings can be transcribed and analyzed automatically by HubSpot’s Breeze AI to extract in-depth insights and set the appropriate follow-ups. Sales reps can then share client recordings with marketing managers so they can listen to real two-way interactions. Hearing common and genuine pain points and hopes expressed firsthand by customers provides more insight into purchasing motivations than even the best buyer personas allow. Marketers can use this information to sharpen messaging on email campaigns, website collateral and more. Additionally, users can group call recordings into playlists and use them for team coaching and onboarding. 

HubSpot can also help you analyze your website visitors’ behavior and identify companies that express interest and are more likely to convert. This way, sales managers can determine the highest value opportunities and marketers can prioritize and nurture those leads.

We were also impressed by HubSpot’s usability. Unlike some competitors, including Salesforce and Oracle NetSuite, HubSpot prioritizes intuitive navigation and a visually appealing interface for building complex sales and marketing automations. The same simplicity applies to building workflows for website chats that can be created and managed from within the CRM, providing an extra customer communication and lead generation channel.

What stood out during our evaluation is HubSpot’s AI automation, summarization and content generation functionality. Breeze AI can offer automatic conversation, sales interaction and data summaries, build templates, generate copy and customize the tone of messages, fetch and visualize CRM data, answer simple prompts and more. It also gathers information from across the web and helps populate contact and company details, making it much easier for sales and marketing managers to generate leads and tailor their communication. By making it easy to share and access this information, HubSpot accelerates cross-team collaboration and boosts productivity.    

For these reasons and more, HubSpot is our pick for the best CRM for sales and marketing integration. 

HubSpot’s intuitive and customizable dashboards allow teams to access the most important insights at a glance. (Source: HubSpot)

Ease of Use

We found HubSpot to be a very intuitive and easy-to-use platform, especially compared with the more complex competitors we reviewed. The company wants clients to get up and running immediately. 

You use the horizontal menu at the top of the screen to access settings and notifications easily and search across your account, as well as HubSpot’s support documents and video lessons. Most notably, this menu includes shortcut access to Copilot, HubSpot’s virtual assistant. You can use simple prompts to draft various content from LinkedIn posts to outreach emails to entire blog posts, pull up specific CRM data quickly, summarize contact’s activity to prepare for a meeting and more. 

HubSpot’s AI assistant, Breeze Copilot, makes it easy to quickly access CRM data and create supporting marketing and sales materials. (Source: HubSpot)

We found that accessing various sections like automations and reports as well as tools from other hubs, including Marketing, Content and Commerce, is easy using the vertical menu on the left side of the screen. We like how simple it is to “bookmark” a section you use often for easy access. Higher-tier plans also give managers access to the Sales Workspace, a daily command center with top-level dashboards, lead and deal details, recommended actions and team activity feeds.   

We like how you can use the visually pleasing, intuitive interface to create and amend automations and workflows. To add to the system’s functionality, HubSpot’s marketplace contains over 1,800 apps, including integrations with many popular business solutions.

HubSpot’s modern, uncluttered interface and seamless user experience are among the best of all the CRMs we reviewed.

HubSpot’s straightforward navigation menu makes accessing essential sections and creating new elements easy. (Source: HubSpot)

HubSpot Features

HubSpot’s CRM features can help foster greater understanding and cooperation between the marketing and sales teams. Here are some features we particularly liked:  

Shared Dashboards

We like that you can build customized sales dashboards to display individual and team performance on metrics, such as win rates and average deal size. Marketing dashboards reveal overall performance on engagement, as well as conversions overall and by campaign. Updating dashboard elements can be done with a simple drag and drop. HubSpot’s attractive, functional dashboards stand out among the competition. 

We especially like that teams can share and comment on dashboards. Shared dashboards create valuable engagement opportunities. For example, sales reps can share customer insights with marketing team members by tagging them in a comment. They will be notified instantly and can review what led to the sale or why a marketing campaign failed. Marketers can take these insights and craft more targeted messages to address customer pain points and improve campaigns.

HubSpot allows users to create custom dashboards to share across the teams easily.  (Source: HubSpot)

Lead Generation and Nurturing

HubSpot’s lead capturing and management tools impressed us. Here are a few highlights: 

• Capture lead data via website forms easily: Add a custom HubSpot form to your website for visitors to complete; their data will create a new record in the CRM. You can set up follow-up email sequences to warm up leads and turn them into prospects.
• View all customer interactions: HubSpot can capture and log all customer interactions at every stage. Marketers can see which channels are most effective, and sellers can pinpoint the advertising methods and landing pages that persuade customers to sign up or make an inquiry. 
• Set lead-scoring criteria: HubSpot lets you set lead scoring criteria depending on a customer’s actions (or inaction). It also updates lead scores in real time. You define the actions that indicate positive or negative scoring criteria.
• Capture leads via web chat software: HubSpot’s customizable chatbot captures lead information. It creates a new record automatically and populates it with AI-analyzed interaction details, including the products or services the lead was interested in and the questions they asked. This information is valuable to salespeople because it saves time in identifying prospect pain points and desires. Sales reps can also share the chat’s details and transcripts with their marketing colleagues easily, ensuring more tailored customer communication. You can also use the chatbot to book meetings and qualify leads. 
• Capture leads via mobile devices: We like that HubSpot’s mobile lead-capturing functionality makes it easy to capture leads while you’re on the go. You can conduct web and social media conversations and other interactions through the HubSpot app or via an integration with communication software such as Slack. 
• Create lead-nurturing automations: HubSpot’s comprehensive lead-nurturing tools help move inquirers to solid prospects. We were particularly impressed that HubSpot’s flexible CRM software lets you set up various lead nurturing automations depending on lead scores and other attributes you control.

HubSpot allows users to create complex lead nurturing workflows with simple predefined elements. (Source: HubSpot)

Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns

We love that HubSpot offers powerful omnichannel communication, which is ideal for sales and marketing teams. You can interact with and market to customers via phone, text message, live chat, social media and email. 

Here are a few aspects of HubSpot’s omnichannel capabilities that impressed us:

• Email marketing tools: HubSpot boasts an impressive suite of email marketing tools that’s much more comprehensive than many competing CRMs we reviewed. You can design emails using drag-and-drop tools and optimize them later to improve their performance after you view campaign results. HubSpot provides various goal-based email templates — many of which are free — with customizable layouts, branding and calls to action. You can drop information from your database into marketing emails to personalize them or create email templates of your own with the help of HubSpot’s AI, as well as run A/B tests to see which designs lead to better results.
• Telemarketing tools: Telemarketing is still a popular route to market. HubSpot includes voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) functionality, although you can use your own carrier if you prefer. You can run outbound campaigns using the Campaigns tool, set goals, track performance by rep and measure return on investment. There’s also a handy call recording tool. HubSpot’s AI assistant can transcribe and analyze conversations and put them into a customer’s record. Additionally, agents can call directly from the HubSpot browser with one click or use one of the numerous teleconferencing integrations.
• Text and other messaging integrations: Although HubSpot offers only a limited short message service integration via its Twilio partner, over 40 apps are available to support this functionality. You can also add integrations to send and receive messages via private messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram, as well as send and receive direct messages on social media platforms. 

HubSpot allows users to schedule and send customized mass emails for more effective lead nurturing. (Source: HubSpot)

Customer Segmentation and Personalization

We were particularly impressed by HubSpot’s powerful customer segmentation tools. You can segment markets using desired attributes like demographics, psychographics and previous interactions, including event attendance.  

HubSpot lets you create static and active lists — a feature that sets it apart from the competition. Static lists include people or companies who meet specific segmentation criteria and active lists include people or companies added to or removed from the list, depending on their current state. 

This feature is helpful for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer companies. For example, a B2B company with a complex sales process could create separate segments based on the company type and sales funnel location, such as “visited the pricing page,” “downloaded the Q4 whitepaper” and “expressed an interest in a demo that has not yet occurred.” Marketers can then use HubSpot’s Breeze AI to create personalized emails for each segment member. After sending the emails, you can create a follow-up calling list for your telemarketing team to reengage past clients or cold leads.

HubSpot allows users to run advanced filters on their lists to customize communication workflows further. (Source: HubSpot) 

Analytics, Forecasting and Reporting

We found HubSpot’s data analytics, forecasting and reporting capabilities among the best in the sector for sales and marketing teams — and beyond. Here are a few features we found particularly impressive: 

• Attribution reports: Attribution reports are especially helpful for your in-house marketing team. They’ll link revenue to specific interactions and provide customer journey data that analyzes progress through the sales funnel at different touch points. This information can help marketing managers decide which promotional channels should get additional investment.
• Sales forecasting tools: HubSpot executes its sales forecasting features particularly well. The system sets up deal stages by default; its forecasting tool uses these stages to gauge how likely a sale is to happen and what its potential value might be. This tool helps reps identify how to meet their revenue key performance indicators and helps managers uncover training opportunities. Additionally, marketing managers can use this data to understand which products and services are in demand and which channels are the best for potential sales.
• Insight into sales tunnel problems: Sales and marketing managers can use sales forecasting data to identify sales funnel problems. For example, they may spot issues with lead quality if expected revenues are missed. This could indicate campaign messaging and targeting issues. Sales managers can also share the objections they’ve heard from prospects with marketing teams to provide insight into why and where leads and prospects drop out of the funnel.

HubSpot makes it easy for sales managers to forecast team member’s individual performance and goal progression. (Source: HubSpot)

Workflows and Automations

HubSpot offers some of the most powerful workflow automation tools of any CRM provider we reviewed. These tools help companies optimize sales, marketing and customer service performance.

Automated workflows are actions that occur after a specified trigger or criterion is met. Consider this example:

1. A marketing manager sets a trigger to send a lead to the sales manager for a follow-up after a prospect downloads a whitepaper or clicks a link in an outbound marketing email. 
2. The sales manager creates a workflow based on the lead’s characteristics — such as industry, revenue, size and the product or service they’re interested in — and transfers the lead to a rep with experience in that sector. 
3. The great thing is that most of these actions and triggers can be set with HubSpot’s Breeze AI using prompts. You can also ask it to send reminder emails, trigger a marketing message on a contact’s birthday or automatically create a contact record and a follow-up email for an event attendee.

Experimenting with automations helps sales and marketing teams refine their approach. For example, they can determine the ideal interval between contacting leads at various sales funnel stages to significantly enhance the likelihood of securing a sale. 

We like how easy it is to build automations in HubSpot using its visual editor or via one of the numerous available templates. We appreciate that this function streamlines workflows and keeps marketing and sales teams aligned throughout the process. 

HubSpot makes it simple to create workflow automations. (Source: HubSpot)

Integrations

HubSpot’s marketplace boasts over 1,800 apps that customers can use to customize the platform. We appreciate how easy it is to find and install the right apps on your system. 

Compared with other CRM marketplaces, we found that HubSpot has a much tighter focus on marketing and sales apps, which is one reason we chose the platform as the best CRM system for sales and marketing team integration.

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot offers six products: marketing, sales, customer service, content, operations and commerce. For simplicity, we’re quoting prices from the Customer suite, which essentially bundles the vendor’s functions.

HubSpot’s Free Tier

We like that HubSpot has a free service level — a rarity in today’s marketplace. The features in this tier are limited but still quite generous. The free level, which is available for up to two users, allows you to do the following:

• Access basic SEO recommendations and optimizations. 
• Send 2,000 emails per calendar month (with HubSpot branding).
• Utilize live chat (with HubSpot branding). 
• Create two custom dashboards, with five reports each.
• Unlock most of Copilot AI’s functionality, including content generation, CRM data summarization and website tracking of most likely buyers.    

However, the free tier lacks crucial features, like social media, automations, 1:1 tech support, custom field mapping, campaign management and employee collaboration tools.

HubSpot’s Paid Tiers

HubSpot offers a 14-day trial for new users to see if the system is right for their business. The paid service levels are listed below (these are annual rates paid upfront):

• Starter  – $15 per user, per month: The Starter tier provides everything in the free tier but with HubSpot branding removed from live chat, email marketing, forms and landing pages. Records can have 1,000 custom properties, and you get 10 dashboards, each of which allows 10 reports. You get 50 active lists and 1,000 static lists, payment processing, form and email automation and email retargeting tools. You can have two deal pipelines from the Sales suite as well as document storage, sales content analytics and sales automation. However, much functionality is still missing with this package.
• Professional – From $1,170 a month for five users: There is a significant leap in price between the Starter and Professional tiers. However, the Professional level has robust features, including custom reporting, social media, contact create attribution, deal and company scoring, dynamic personalization, campaign management, forecasting, A/B testing and SEO analytics. Each additional user costs $45 a month.
• Enterprise  From $4,300 a month for seven users: This level includes everything in the Professional package, plus 10,000 marketing contacts, advanced AI features, custom objects and additional tools. Each additional user costs $75 a month.

Additional Costs and Considerations

Although there are no setup or CRM implementation fees with HubSpot, consider the following additional costs and options: 

• Annual vs. monthly payments: You must commit annually for the Professional tier; the Starter level requires a rolling monthly commitment. You can pay monthly with an additional premium of around 20 percent on the Professional tier and 40 percent on the Starter package. 
• Extra users: When you add users, the costs can multiply — but this is essentially the same pricing model most CRM providers use.
• Onboarding packages: HubSpot offers onboarding packages that cost up to $24,000. The company doesn’t promote this charge. However, customers have reported online that onboarding costs can be as little as $750 or run into five figures, depending on the product, tier, number of users and desired configuration.
• Application programming interface (API) calls: You must pay $500 monthly if you make more than 1 million API calls per day. 
• Breeze Intelligence add-on: HubSpot offers AI-powered data enrichment for contact and company records. You can buy one of the packages, containing 100, 1,000 or 10,000 credits per month, with each credit allowing you to fetch information for one record. However, the credits reset each month, don’t roll over, and you will be automatically upgraded to the higher tier package if you exceed your limit. Package prices range between $30 and $700 per month. 
• Additional record costs: The Starter suite includes 1,000 marketing contacts — people you can send promotional emails to five times a month. You’ll pay an additional $50 monthly for every 1,000 records, which gradually reduces to $40 for the more contacts you have. So, if you have 10,000 records, you’ll pay an extra $4,320 yearly.
• Additional Professional-level charges: When you move up to the Professional tier, dedicated IPs, list limit increases, transactional emails and WhatsApp conversations attract extra charges. This can make it challenging to understand how much you’ll spend upfront.

Limitations 

HubSpot is a full-featured CRM with many upsides. However, we identified some limitations: 

• Lower levels lack features: While the number of features in the Starter level is good, you need access to the Professional tier to get full functionality and the best value. 
• Pricing is relatively high: HubSpot’s per-user pricing is more expensive than that of other providers we evaluated. Although HubSpot can provide significant value by aligning your sales and marketing teams, it requires a major financial commitment. 
• Some charges aren’t apparent: You may encounter unexpected charges with HubSpot if you use the Professional package — $3,600 a year for a dedicated IP for your marketing emails and $7,200 a year for transaction emails. That’s more expensive than most specialist business hosting providers or email platforms.
• The Starter tier doesn’t include phone support: Although the Starter package is a good value, we think paying customers of any tier should be able to speak to a customer service rep.

Methodology

When evaluating the best CRM software, we pinpointed platforms with the necessary features to enhance sales, marketing and customer support. Our review process included reaching out to company representatives, testing features and functions, assessing pricing and reviewing company tutorials and support materials. When looking for the best CRM for sales and marketing integration, we focused on contact and deal management, sales enablement, reporting and analytics, workflow and process automation, team management features, e-commerce modules and available integrations. Our goal is to help you choose the right CRM for your business.

Bottom Line

We recommend HubSpot CRM for …

• Businesses that want to generate more leads and convert them into sales.
• Companies that want to drive more business from their website, social media marketing and email marketing campaigns.
• Marketing and sales teams that want better visibility into and control over the customer journey.

We don’t recommend HubSpot CRM for …

• Small and microbusinesses that are looking for a full-featured CRM on a limited budget.
• Companies that don’t want to keep track and be charged for overages.

Mark Fairlie contributed to this review.