Mythbusting: HubSpot vs Salesforce

A clash of titans; HubSpot vs Salesforce. Despite being Salesforce’s main competitor, HubSpot’s solid reputation as a marketing tool undercuts its other equally excellent CRM offerings. In this blog, we bust the top four myths that lead to people underestimating HubSpot’s value.

For many businesses, there are only two choices when it comes to choosing a cloud-based CRM — Salesforce and HubSpot. But some old school business leaders might be puzzled by this. After all, isn’t HubSpot purely a marketing tool?

Not exactly.

While Salesforce has established itself as the reliable go-to choice in the CRM space, HubSpot has rapidly evolved to become the trendy elephant in the room. Along with its marketing platform, HubSpot helps businesses to grow through its sales, service and content management software, with a free, powerful CRM at its core.

With HubSpot’s rise, companies need to consider if HubSpot can better meet their needs by delivering a single customer view across the entire business. As we’ve written about in another post, no one ever got fired for buying Salesforce, until now. 

But despite being Salesforce’s main competitor, HubSpot is still plagued with myths about its power, usability and scalability. How do these myths hold up? Keep reading to find out. 

Myth 1: HubSpot is marketing software

Saying that HubSpot is marketing software is like being given a strawberry-covered ice-cream sundae on a bed of brownies and saying, “Thanks for the strawberries.” While there are strawberries in the mix, there’s so much else to dive into.

Likewise, HubSpot is more than marketing software. It’s a powerful ecosystem that brings sales, service, marketing and content management software together. For example, with clear visibility of the conversations customer service teams are having with customers, marketers can focus their content creation efforts on assets that solve problems for their audience.

See a comparison of HubSpot and Salesforce features here.

If you want to know which is the better CRM platform, view our Salesforce vs HubSpot resource page.

Myth 2: My business can’t grow using HubSpot

HubSpot’s slogan is “Helping millions grow better,” and for good reason. The platform offers service packages that scale alongside your business, where each tier is designed to solve the pain points that frustrate business growth.

Smaller teams will benefit from automated workflow processes, content management systems and lead tracking. On the other end of the spectrum, Hubspot’s Enterprise CRM feature list can more than handle the nitty-gritty of managing huge multinational teams with its SSO security integration, content partitioning and advanced reporting.

To find out more about HubSpot’s Growth Suite and what it can do for your business, read our post, Is HubSpot Suitable for Enterprise Companies?

Myth 3: HubSpot’s all-in-one solution leads to a weak tech stack

When building your tech stack, surely you want to pick the best-in-class providers to meet each specific need? That’s one approach. But most operations and IT managers don’t enjoy the headache that comes with making different tech products play nice with each other. The other approach is to go with an all-in-one solution, which is what HubSpot provides.

As we see it, HubSpot’s CRM tools easily match their competitor’s segment-specific solutions. Another bonus, HubSpot’s all-in-one solution saves you the resources that you would otherwise spend on fixing tech integration issues. In the end, who cares if a hodgepodge of tech solutions is 5% better at managing tasks if it takes you weeks or months to get them up and running and costs far more?

What’s more, HubSpot has a growing integrations library, and established relationships with some of the more prominent third-party solutions, so even if you're tied to something, HubSpot can most likely accommodate.

Myth 4: It will take ages to move my team from Salesforce to HubSpot

Answering how long it takes to switch from Salesforce to HubSpot is like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” It all depends. This also means that if you have a simple process in place to make the switch, there’s no strong reason that it’ll take ages. Plus, you’ll have help. HubSpot offers a guide on moving to HubSpot from Salesforce.
A common worry when migrating to a new CRM is how long it takes to learn the system.

Although it might seem like an insurmountable task, if you use a phased migration approach, making the move from Salesforce to HubSpot can be seamless. The most important thing here is to ensure each phase is completed carefully and thoroughly so that there’s minimal disruption to your business along the way.

Our team of specialists have guided many companies through the process of moving from Salesforce to HubSpot with outstanding results. We’ll ensure all data, contacts and objects are moved over as effectively as possible, so you and your team can hit the ground running with HubSpot in no time.

HubSpot — myths busted

As a cost-effective, scalable and intuitive business solution, HubSpot has earned its place as Salesforce’s first real competitor. The CRM also boasts a rich ecosystem of apps and partners who can help you get the most out of HubSpot’s powerful offerings — at Huble Digital we’re experts at transforming businesses using the HubSpot platform.

With so many excellent CRMs out there, you might find that HubSpot doesn’t match your needs. And that’s okay. But if someone tells you that you can’t grow with HubSpot or that it has a weak tech stack, then you can confidently reply, “Shun the myths. Believe the hype.”