HubSpot vs Salesforce
Both are platforms rather than pipeline tools, but they start from opposite ends. HubSpot opens with a free plan and gets expensive as marketing automation and reporting are switched on. Salesforce is quoted per seat, arrives unconfigured and needs an administrator. Growing sales and marketing teams land on HubSpot; large sales organisations with complex territories land on Salesforce.
Tomasz WierzbickiData & Market Research
Niels Abrahamsen
Sebastiaan SmitsVendors can pay for visibility on this site; it never changes what we say about a product. How that works.
Choose HubSpot ifyou want sales and marketing in one system, would rather begin on a free plan than on a quote, and have the budget to move up the tiers as the contact list grows.
Choose Salesforce ifyou run a large sales organisation with complex territories, can fund an administrator and an implementation partner, and need a process modelled exactly rather than approximately.
HubSpot and Salesforce side by side
| HubSpot | Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|
| Our CRM rank | #10 of 14 | #12 of 14 |
| Established in | United States | United States |
| Pricing | Free plan; paid tiers per seat per month | Per seat per month, quoted |
| Free tier | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Self-hostable | — | — |
| Built for | A sales and marketing team that wants one system and has budget to grow into it | A large sales organisation with the budget and staff to configure it |
| Not for | A team that only needs a pipeline and will never touch the marketing side | A ten-person company that just needs deals in one place |
Both are reviewed in full in our CRM ranking: HubSpot and Salesforce.
Where they differ
HubSpot 2 · Salesforce 1 · open 1- 01
The first month
HubSpot is the easiest CRM in the category to begin with: a small sales team can work on the free plan indefinitely. Salesforce is closer to a platform that you configure into a product, so nothing arrives ready and the first build normally involves an implementation partner. For a team that wants to be logging deals quickly, the gap is wide.
Edge: HubSpot
- 02
What makes the invoice grow
The two grow in different ways. HubSpot charges per marketing contact once automation is in use, so a list full of people who never open anything costs the same as real buyers. Salesforce grows through add-ons that were not priced at signature, and Sales Cloud rarely stays alone. Neither bill stays where the first quote put it.
Depends on the buyer
- 03
Modelling a complicated sales process
Salesforce can model whatever a sales process requires, which is why it pays back for organisations with hundreds of sellers and complex territories. Our data on HubSpot describes a suite for a combined sales and marketing team and does not claim that depth of modelling. Where the process itself is the hard part, Salesforce is the safer choice.
Edge: Salesforce
- 04
People needed to keep it running
With Salesforce an administrator is not optional, and a partner is realistic for the first build. HubSpot asks for less standing staff, but it does ask for discipline: auditing the contact list before each renewal and budgeting for the tier above the one in the demo. A company with no dedicated CRM owner will cope better with HubSpot.
Edge: HubSpot
When neither fits
If the requirement is simply deals in one place for a handful of salespeople, both are more platform than the job needs. Pipedrive is built around moving a deal one stage and sets up in an afternoon, and Capsule CRM does contacts, pipeline and tasks and deliberately stops there.
HubSpot or Salesforce: questions
3 answersIs HubSpot cheaper than Salesforce?
At the start, yes: HubSpot has a free plan and Salesforce is quoted per seat. Over time it depends on what you switch on.
HubSpot's cost climbs steeply once marketing automation and contact-based pricing apply, while Salesforce adds implementation, an administrator and add-ons to the licence.
Can a small company use Salesforce instead of HubSpot?
It can, but our assessment is that Salesforce is an expensive answer for a team of about twelve and not the right fit for a ten-person company that only needs deals in one place.
HubSpot's free plan will run a small sales team without that overhead.
When does it make sense to move from HubSpot to Salesforce?
When the sales organisation has grown to the point where complex territories and a heavily customised process are the problem, and there is budget for an administrator and a partner.
Below that scale Salesforce is costly infrastructure, and HubSpot's combined sales and marketing suite is usually enough.