HubSpot CRM review
If you're looking for the perfect CRM, you're about to find out if Hubspot is the CRM for you!
Not sure what a CRM is ? Then head over to find out why you need a CRM! 🤗
What is Hubspot?
Founded in 2005, Hubspot provides inbound marketing, sales management, and customer service software.
With more than 158 000 customers in 120 countries worldwide, Hubspot is now defined as a CRM platform particularly suited for growing companies. Hubspot is rated 4.5/5 among more than 3500 reviews on Capterra. An international reputation that makes it one of the leading solutions.
So is Hubspot right for you? Discover the features of this CRM, its advantages and disadvantages, its price, and our general opinion.
Who is Hubspot CRM for?
Hubspot is a very complete solution that meets the various needs of a small to medium sized company in development. Simple to use, the platform offers many features that are relatively easy to learn. You really don't need to be an expert to use it.
Hubspot is particularly well known for its comprehensive marketing tools compared to other CRM platforms available on the market. It is therefore an ideal solution if you are looking for a multifunctional tool, focusing on lead generation and communication.
If you've never used a CRM and want to test it without investing time and/or money, Hubspot has the advantage of offering a free version since 2014. Of course, this version includes "light" functionalities, so it's much less advanced than the paid versions. But it's still a great way to take your first steps with a CRM tool without breaking the bank!
Hubspot's main features
Contact management with Hubspot
Your Hubspot contact database is available to all your teams (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, etc.). Like a giant address book, each contact is indexed in cards containing all useful information :
- Last name and first name
- Current position
- Email address
- Phone number
- Company
- etc.
Hubspot contact records also include news, as well as the history of exchanges with your contacts and their companies. This information is shared with all internal teams using Hubspot CRM to facilitate information sharing and collaboration.
With the free version of Hubspot, you can add up to 1 000 000 contacts to your CRM. Pretty cool 😍
A Hubspot database also includes company records. These include the company's website, sector of activity, address, number of employees, annual revenues, etc.
How to import your contact database into Hubspot?
Hubspot allows you to easily import your contacts from a professional email system, such as Gmail or Outlook.
You can also import your contacts via a .csv document (but you won't be able to include your task and action history this way).
Otherwise, Hubspot can make it easy to migrate your contacts if you import them from another CRM, either directly through the CRM or by using a third-party tool (Import2, Data2CRM, etc.).
🧹 Take the opportunity of importing your contacts to give your database a clean sweep! Dropcontact natively integrates with Hubspot and allows you to clean and enrich your CRM data.
Hubspot CRM for salespeople: Sales Hub
Hubspot offers a must-have tool for sales teams: a hyper-powerful sales hub. Sales Hub offers many features to optimize the sales process.
- Sales funnel management: The Pipeline view provides all the information you need to convert your leads into customers. Each deal in progress is sorted according to its status (e.g.: Initial contact, Demo, Quote sent, Conversion, etc.) which allows you to prioritize accounts and track their development. Pipelines are customizable according to your sales process, and you can have up to 50 different pipelines in your Hubspot CRM.
- Email tracking: Gmail / Outlook integration not only allows you to add a contact to your CRM directly from your email, but also to track email correspondence, to know if your messages have been opened (and how many times), to know if your recipient has clicked on a link, etc.
- Appointment scheduling: Thanks to the synchronization of your Google and Outlook accounts, you can schedule your appointments directly in your CRM according to the availabilities in your schedule.
- Task automation: Save time every day by relieving your teams of repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Schedule calls, send reminders, sequence emails, etc. The possibilities are endless, especially since Hubspot integrates thousands of third-party applications that you can connect to create automated workflows.
- Detailed Reporting: Hubspot's reports make it very easy to access a team's performance, as well as get key insights into deal forecasting. This way you know where to put everyone's focus and better organize yourself regardless of the size of your team.
Hubspot CRM for Marketing: Marketing Hub
The Marketing Hub is, as its name suggests, a suite of features specifically dedicated to lead generation and communication.
- Lead generation: Hubspot allows you to create forms to be integrated into your website's pages. The contacts who sign up through this process are then automatically integrated into Hubspot's CRM. Too easy!
- Email sequences: You can also program email sequences that will be sent automatically according to a certain logic to be defined. An essential feature for cold emailing or for sending onboarding emails.
- Sending email campaigns: In its free version, Hubspot's email marketing software allows you to send up to 2000 bulk emails per month (premium versions will allow you to increase the number of monthly sends). The editor allows you to customize the layout of your campaigns to give them a look of your own ✨
- Advertising and social networks: The platform allows you to connect your Google, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts. This way you can create, manage and track the results of your ad campaigns from Hubspot, and retrieve your leads directly into your CRM. And that's not all! You can also create and publish classic social media posts.
- Reporting: As with commercial reports, Hubspot allows you to track communication campaigns, website traffic performance, ad performance, etc.
Hubspot CRM for Customer Success: Service Hub
Designed to optimize customer satisfaction, the Service Hub allows your Support Department to respond more effectively to the problems encountered by your users.
- Support ticket management: You can create tickets and associate them directly with contacts in your CRM. You can then assign these tickets to the different members of your Customer Service department, and follow their evolution in dedicated dashboards.
- Communication tools: Hubspot provides support teams with several tools to communicate more effectively with those who need your help. Live chat, conversational chatbots, email templates, phone support, etc. You have all the tools you need to improve customer satisfaction!
- Customer satisfaction surveys: Following the resolution of a ticket, you can send satisfaction surveys to your users/customers. This way, you can easily identify the points of friction, the areas for improvement, and you send a positive message to your interlocutors who feel truly considered.
Why integrate customer service management into your CRM? By sharing the data from your communications with your various departments, you can better respond to the requests and needs of your contacts and thus build customer loyalty 🤝
Integrating your tools into Hubspot
Even in its free version, you can connect many third-party applications to Hubspot to further boost your CRM.
👉 Communication: Gmail, Outlook, Mailchimp, Zoom, Facebook Messenger, Calendly, etc.
👉 Automation: Zapier, Make, etc.
👉 Project and team management: Slack, Trello, Asana, etc.
👉 Advertising campaigns: Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.
👉 Website management: Wordpress, Shopify, Typeform, Google Search Console, etc.
If you can't find your favorite tools among the 1,250 apps offered on Hubspot's marketplace, don't panic! You can also use the APIs to connect them 🔗
Pros and Cons of Hubspot CRM
✅ An all-in-one platform: As we have seen, Hubspot is a very complete solution. The advantage of a multi-functional tool is that it considerably lightens your team's tool stack. The downside is that in case of a technical issue, all your software is impacted.
✅ Marketing tools: Hubspot is without a doubt the CRM solution that offers the most powerful marketing tools. Even in its free version, the platform will allow you to save precious time and centralize your entire communication strategy. If you are looking for a tool that promotes cohesion between your sales and marketing teams, Hubspot is the ideal solution.
✅ Numerous automation: Automation is life! How much time could be saved every week by not having to deal with repetitive and time-consuming tasks? Automate e-mails, reminders, customer service management, etc. All your teams gain in time and efficiency.
✅ Hubspot Academy: This is a training platform created by Hubspot, which is open to everyone. It provides online courses for sales, marketing, and customer relationship professionals. Even if you're not a CRM customer (or user), you can still benefit from these modules and continue to learn about your business. Hubspot Academy offers certifications that recruiters highly value.
❌ Price: If you choose the free plan, you will quickly be confronted with the limitations of the basic options. For example, the free version does not allow you to merge duplicate contact and company records. And yet... Even if you unlock this feature, you'll have to do it by hand (unless you integrate Dropcontact which does it automatically 😉 )
❌ Support for paid users only: Unfortunately, Hubspot Customer Service is not available to users of the free version. To get help, you must have a subscription or do your own research. Good to know: Hubspot's help center is particularly well-stocked and you can usually find answers to your questions there.
Dropcontact x Hubspot integration
Hubspot becomes even more powerful with Dropcontact 💚
Dropcontact updates your contact and company records, enriches them and merges duplicates. Automatically and without any intervention from your side.
When you know that a salesperson spends an average of one hour per day updating data in their CRM, Dropcontact is really the ideal solution to save time and productivity. You can finally stay focused on your sales.
And that's not all! Dropcontact is 100% RGPD compliant. Indeed the tool does not use any database to enrich yours. It works thanks to an algorithm, which allows it to always provide the most up-to-date data. No obsolete data in your CRM, it's a life changer!
The integration is done in no time, via your personal API key. No complicated code, no developer intervention.
Once Dropcontact is connected in your Hubspot CRM, watch the magic happen:
💚 Automatic enrichment of contact and company records when added to your CRM (Enrichment of the verified email address, business phone number, civility, LinkedIn profile, etc.).
💚 Consolidate data already present in your CRM by retrieving the information included in the email signatures automatically in order to copy them to the corresponding contact sheets (mobile phone number, direct line, job title).
💚 intelligent and automatic detection and merging of duplicate contacts and companies in your CRM
💚 Cleaning of your contacts' and companies' data present in your CRM (inversion of name/first name, addition of capital letters, deletion of emojis or special characters, information in their corresponding fields).
So go ahead and try Dropcontact for free for 14 days in your Hubspot CRM!
Hubspot's plans and pricing
Hubspot pricing depends on the features and hub you choose, as well as the number of licenses or the number of contacts in your CRM. Yes, it's a bit complicated. But don't panic, we'll break it down.
Free Hubspot Tools
Hubspot's CRM is free, with no time limit, for up to one million contacts and companies! Pretty cool, right?
In addition to contact management, Hubspot offers many tools for free:
- Marketing tools: creation of forms, email campaign management, ad management, landing page design, shared inbox, etc.
- Sales tools: Sales pipeline tracking in a customizable dashboard, live chat, conversational bots, customizable quotes, detailed reports updated in real-time, etc.
- Customer service tools: Ticket creation, email scheduling, dashboard, reports, etc.
- CMS tools: drag-and-drop editor, responsive design, blog, SSL certificate, etc.
- Operational tools: Data synchronization, history synchronization, default field mapping, etc.
Yes, all this... 100% free! But keep in mind that these are "light" versions of the paid tools, so if you want to benefit from their full power you will have to opt for the paid plans sooner or later.
Bundled packages
The free version of Hubspot is a great way to test the tool and will help you gain productivity. However, if you want to take advantage of the full power of Hubspot, you'll have to put your hand in the wallet and take out a subscription.
The CRM Suite is a package including all the tools offered by Hubspot. It is available on several levels, depending on your needs:
- The Starter Plan: Starting at $27/month, this subscription includes 1000 marketing contacts, 2 users for the Sales Hub feature, and 2 users for Service Hub.
- The Professional plan: Starting at $1600/month, it includes 2000 marketing contacts, 5 users for the Sales Hub feature, and 5 users for Service Hub.
- The Enterprise plan: Starting at $5000/month, it includes 10,000 marketing contacts, 10 users for Sales Hub and 10 users for Service Hub.
Prices by product
Every company is different and has specific needs. For a customized solution that fits your needs, you can also opt for an à la carte selection.
Hold on tight. Each tool is available individually, or can be combined with one or more other hubs. In addition, each hub is offered in more or less complete versions, at different prices. That's a lot of variables!
For instance, the Marketing Hub:
- Starter: from $18/month for 1000 marketing contacts and basic features including form and email automation, removal of Hubspot branding on your items, more available support.
- Pro: from $800/month for 2,000 marketing contacts, as well as more automation and personalization, optimization tools for your campaigns, creation of personalized reports, etc.
- Enterprise: from $3600/month for 10,000 marketing contacts, for all the marketing features offered by Hubspot.
👉Learn more about Hubspot's pricing.
You can also create your own bundle to build your own hyper-customized version of Hubspot. This custom solution allows you to create a combination of tools to suit your needs. If you wish, you can for example take the Marketing hub in Pro level, as well as the Sales hub and the Service hub in starter level. It's up to you to make your own!
CRM alternatives to Hubspot
Our full review of Pipedrive CRM
Our full review of Salesforce CRM
