HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Which CRM is Best? [Updated for 2025]

HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Who Owns The Best CRM?

HubSpot is an all-in-one platform for integrating their CRM into all your Marketing, Sales, and Service efforts. Some diehards will say that Salesforce's CRM is a "better" CRM, the price quickly increases as you add your necessary tools, making it harder to get the same bang for your buck.

So, ultimately, there is really NO such thing as “the best” CRM.

Many people would tell you that Salesforce is the best, and many others would tell you that HubSpot is the best CRM for developers and marketers. While we have a clear bias towards the HubSpot product ecosystem, we’ll also admit that the HubSpot CRM is not the right solution for everyone.

Related Read: What is HubSpot Used For? 7 Benefits and Uses for B2B Companies

The right CRM depends on your company size, structure, budget, talent, and other technology. For many large enterprises, Salesforce is the right company. For many small and medium-sized organizations (SMB), HubSpot is superior. Here are nine angles of comparison between the HubSpot CRM vs. Salesforce to guide you to the right decision. But first...

What is a Customer Relationship Management Tool?

Using the definition from Gartner, customer relationship management technologies enable:

• Sales and Customer Relationship Strategy
• Identifying Leads & Customers
• Manage Customer Relationships
• Provide Functionality for Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Digital Commerce

CRM technologies fill a big role in a company’s technology stack, and they’re not a small piece of software. Unlike the app on your phone that does one thing extremely well, like sizing images, CRMs have a lot of features and functionality.

Do I Need a CRM?

If you’re asking whether you need CRM software and your company is business-to-business (B2B) in focus, the answer is probably yes. In fact, it’s probably easier to define the use cases where a company doesn’t need a CRM.

Here are some rare instances where companies that meet most of the following criteria may not derive value from a CRM. If you fit the following, an investment in a non-free CRM may not yield returns:

1. You’re a sole proprietor
2. Your business generates very few leads, such as one per week or less
3. You have a short, simple sales cycle
4. You have very few (such as one) client
5. Your client’s business is also very small, or you don’t communicate with many of their employees

In short, if your business has almost no data about leads or customers or sales, you may not need a system to organize it. For most companies with any sort of scale, CRM can be a huge benefit.

And now for the comparison. 

1. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Pricing & Value

To kick things off, let's compare these two powerhouse solutions in terms of their pricing, value, and billing structures. 

HubSpot's Pricing Model

HubSpot's pricing structure offers exceptional value, starting with a genuinely free CRM that includes basic sales, marketing, and service tools. As your needs grow, you can add specific Hubs:

• Free CRM: Unlimited users, 1,000,000 contacts, basic features
• Starter ($20/month/seat): Removes HubSpot branding, adds automation and support
• Professional ($100/month/seat): Advanced reporting, forecasting, custom workflows
• Enterprise ($150/month/seat): Custom objects, advanced permissions, predictive scoring

Related Read: HubSpot for Startups: Is It Worth the $? (+ How To Get The Best ROI)

Salesforce's Pricing Model

Salesforce's pricing starts at $25/user/month for basic features. This sounds pretty straightforward, but your price quickly escalates when you add the features you need: 

• Starter Suite: $25/month/user
• Professional: $100/month/user
• Enterprise: $165/month/user
• Unlimited: $330/month/user
• Einstein 1: $500/month/user

Hidden Costs Comparison

No matter how straightforward pricing seems, there are always a few hidden fees and expenses. Let's take a look at where HubSpot and Salesforce fall on the hidden expense spectrum. 

Salesforce hidden costs:

• Implementation: $5,000-$80,000+ depending on complexity
• Knowledge user licenses: $600 each annually
• Additional data storage: ~$1,500 for 500MB annually
• Advanced support: 20-30% premium on licensing costs
• Consultant fees: Often required for customization

HubSpot hidden costs:

• Significantly fewer hidden fees
• Implementation costs are typically lower
• No additional charges for storage or basic support

Real-world example: A company with 15 users might pay $27,000 annually for Salesforce licenses alone, potentially reaching $32,400+ with support plans. The same company using HubSpot could achieve similar functionality at a fraction of the price.

Winner: HubSpot

2. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Implementation & Ease of Use

Once you compare these two solutions in terms of pricing, we have a clear winner. But pricing isn't everything! Next, let's compare HubSpot and Salesforce on their implementation and usability.

Both claim to be user-friendly... let's take a look:

Implementation Reality

Salesforce implementations are notoriously complex, often requiring months and significant resources:

• Average implementation timeframe: 3-6 months for mid-sized businesses
• Specialized Salesforce developers typically required
• Complex data migration processes
• Extensive training needs for effective adoption

HubSpot, by contrast, offers a significantly smoother implementation experience:

• Average HubSpot implementation timeframe: 2-8 weeks
• Intuitive interface reduces training requirements
• Streamlined data migration tools
• Step-by-step guided setup with an implementation partner

Winner: HubSpot

User Experience

According to Capterra reviews:

• Salesforce has a 4 out of 5-star average rating by 4,768 users on Capterra.
• HubSpot has a 4.5 out of 5-star average rating by 700 users on Capterra.

Real users consistently report that HubSpot provides a more intuitive experience with less technical overhead. This translates to faster adoption, higher utilization rates, and ultimately better ROI.

Winner: HubSpot

The Implementation Partner Advantage

If you're going to implement any advanced CRM, you will want to have some help. Even though HubSpot is user-friendly and possible to implement basic features solo, you'll still want to partner with a HubSpot Solutions Partner to get the best results from your HubSpot environment. 

Related Read: HubSpot CRM Onboarding Cheat Sheet: 8 Key Steps to Success

Some advantages of working with an implementation partner:

• Strategic setup: Aligning HubSpot configurations with your specific business processes
• Custom integrations: Seamlessly connecting HubSpot with your tech stack
• Data migration expertise: Ensuring clean, accurate data transfer from legacy systems
• Workflow optimization: Creating advanced automations tailored to your sales and marketing processes

If you're interested in migrating to HubSpot, you can schedule a call with our resident HubSpot expert to get a custom implementation roadmap - for FREE.

3. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: AI and Automation

No technology comparison post in the current climate would be complete without considering AI tools and automations. Both HubSpot and Salesforce have taken steps to create and integrate AI into their platforms. Let's take a look at how these two solutions stack up.

HubSpot's AI Approach: Accessibility First

HubSpot's Breeze AI suite is designed for practical application without extensive technical expertise:

• Breeze Copilot: Available even on free plans, providing content generation and data analysis
• Breeze Agents: Pre-built AI solutions for specific tasks (social media, content, prospecting)
• Breeze Intelligence: Advanced data enrichment and intent tracking
  
  

Salesforce's AI Strategy: Power and Customization

Salesforce Einstein and Agentforce offer powerful capabilities but with a steeper learning curve:

• Advanced predictive analytics
• Custom AI agent development
• Sophisticated natural language processing
• Higher implementation complexity
  
  

Who's the winner here? That's a tough question to answer. When it comes to AI features, Salesforce and HubSpot both have some punching power. Really, it comes down to what features you need from your platform.

Winner: It Depends!

4. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Customization

There are two ways to look at customization of technology, and we'll consider both.

1. Can you change it?
2. How easy is it to change?

Salesforce is highly customizable, and markets their product as the “most customizable CRM.” HubSpot is also customizable to your businesses processes and structure and offers an Open API, but is likely not too customizable to the same extent as Salesforce.

However, it’s complicated. A sales pro with average technical savvy can customize HubSpot deal stages, pipelines, and “views” of deals. This same person can leverage HubSpot CRM’s pre-built integrations with other software, but they’ll need a developer to use the Open API for custom integrations.

Salesforce Administrators can also customize processes, workflows, and users without IT help. It’s probably harder than HubSpot, but this is due to how many features are offered. However, there’s an entire industry of Salesforce Developers, who use relatively advanced tech skills like Java development to build custom functions, apps, and integrations in a cloud sandbox environment.

Winner: We'll call it a tie.

You pick the winner depending on what you mean by “customize” and how much customization you want.

1. If you want a product that makes it easy to adjust the software to fit the software your business fast, HubSpot wins.
2. If you want a product that allows customization to infinity and beyond, Salesforce wins.

5. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Integrations

Most businesses don't just use one tool to do everything... they have a full tech stack. So, let's take a look at how HubSpot and Salesforce compare related to their integration capabilities.

App Marketplace Comparison

Both platforms offer extensive integration options:

Salesforce AppExchange:

• Thousands of third-party applications
• More niche industry-specific integrations
• Higher average cost per integration
• More complex implementation requirements

HubSpot App Marketplace:

• Hundreds of carefully curated integrations
• Clearer presentation of integration capabilities
• More consistent user experience
• More straightforward implementation

HubSpot offers 11 internally-supported integrations, including integration with SalesForce, WordPress, SurveyMonkey, Zapier, Google Calendar, Chrome, and Wistia. Additional externally-built integrations are available. This list is expanding, and the open API offering allows companies to build their own custom integrations.

Related Read: HubSpot Migration Services: Key Considerations and Top Options

The Salesforce ecosystem is comprised of thousands of products and integrations, which can be explored in their App Exchange. Some of the most popular ways to use the exchange for extensibility, according to Kissmetrics' Sherice Jacob, include Cirrus for Google products, Marketo, and DemandTools. Custom integrations are also possible.

Winner: Salesforce offers a larger ecosystem of products and extensibility. If you want lots of options for out-of-the-box, plug-and-play connections with tools that you’re already using, you’re probably going to find it with Salesforce instead of HubSpot. If you're looking to build a fully-integrated tech stack from scratch, however, HubSpot might be your best bet.

6. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Adoption

There are some benefits to a product that has a lot of users, but it’s also definitely not the best measure of product quality. An active user community can help you find peer support, online content, and other similar resources.

As mentioned previously, Salesforce is used by nearly 20 percent of companies with installed CRM. That’s, according to their annual report data, 150,000 companies with an average of 25 users per company. In total, Salesforce has approximately 3,750,000 users worldwide.

HubSpot CRM is less-widely used and it’s also a lot newer since it was released in 2014. One estimate states it is used by 18,000 companies worldwide. Data was not available on the average number of users at each of these companies, but if you use Salesforce’s metric of 25 users, you can project that HubSpot CRM could have up to 450,000 users worldwide.

Who Wins? Salesforce by the numbers. With nearly four million individuals using the product globally, it’s got some serious adoption.

7. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Support

Salesforce licensing costs include limited support. According to a data sheet, the included free support features for an Enterprise license without any paid support upgrades include:

1. Read-only access to knowledge basis content
2. How-to Guides
3. Forums
4. eSchool Courses
5. Certification Tracks

HubSpot offers many forms of support for CRM users, much of which is freely-available without signing up for the product. Support products available to free users include:

1. Training Courses
2. Multiple Certification Tracks
3. Blogs
4. eBooks, White Papers, and Interactive Downloads
5. User Documentation
6. 24/7 Live Customer Support
7. Local, In-Person User Groups
8. Community Forums
9. The HubSpot Academy
10. Inbound.org

If you upgrade to paid HubSpot products like Marketing Hub, you gain additional access to 24/7 phone and email support.

Who Wins? HubSpot.

9. HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Features

Did we mention that Salesforce has a LOT of features? It really does.

For the purpose of brevity, we'll take a look at how these tools stack up on their offerings of 20 common features associated with CRM technologies, using data crowdsourced via 5,775 real user reviews on G2Crowd:

Additionally, in a recent update, HubSpot released all-new Enterprise Grade CRM Improvements including:

• Custom Objects
• Asset Partitioning
• Record Customization
• ABM

Moreover, with access to powerful Sales Acceleration Tools improvements including artificial intelligence, updates to the mobile application, updates to HubSpot sales engagement tools, and much more, Sales Hub Enterprise connects sales leaders with the right data.

Can Hubspot Replace Salesforce?

HubSpot CRM is not the right product for everyone, but neither is Salesforce. For many massive enterprises, Salesforce or another highly-extensible CRM is a necessity.

You may want to keep Salesforce if:

1. You have many types of sales professionals and user roles
2. You are selling products from many different brands in different countries.
3. You have an advanced need for sophisticated lead analytics and reporting
4. You need advanced features, such as templating

You may want to consider HubSpot if:

1. Marketing and sales need a shared technology
2. You can't afford Salesforce
3. Marketing needs more insight into sales and lead activity
4. Your budget for sales technology is limited
5. You have a relatively simple sales cycle or small sales team

Fortunately, it really isn’t a question of HubSpot vs. Salesforce, unless you want it to be.

HubSpot integrates with Salesforce and is made to be “stacked” on top of your existing CRM if needed. Customizations in HubSpot doesn’t impact your existing CRM, but the two systems can share data. It’s a great option, especially if you’re considering replacing Salesforce with HubSpot since you can test-drive both systems and see how they stack up yourself.

Is HubSpot PLUS Salesforce the Best CRM Choice for Me?

There are a lot of reasons why HubSpot plus Salesforce may be the ideal approach to CRM for more than just a short-term test-drive. Here are a few:

• Sales are used to using Salesforce
• Marketing and sales need a shared tool for tracking common goals
• Marketing needs sales intelligence for better full-funnel oversight
• Your company has some sales cycles that are more complex than others

HubSpot vs. Salesforce: Which is Best For Your Business?

Salesforce and HubSpot are both great CRM options, but they have significantly different strengths. Understanding how the features and other factors fit into your needs and budget can guide you to the right choice of Salesforce vs. HubSpot CRM vs. both.

HubSpot has evolved into a powerful, enterprise-ready CRM platform that offers significant advantages in usability, integration, and total cost of ownership. While Salesforce remains a strong option for certain use cases, HubSpot provides the ideal balance of functionality, ease of use, and value for many organizations.

If you're considering HubSpot as your CRM solution:

1. Assess your needs: Identify your core requirements and objectives
2. Explore HubSpot's free CRM: Test basic functionality at no cost
3. Consult with a certified partner: Get expert guidance on implementation strategy
4. Develop a migration plan: Create a roadmap for transition from existing systems
5. Invest in proper setup: Prioritize thorough implementation over rushed deployment

If you’re thinking about a HubSpot marketing and CRM stack, did you know you can save 60 percent on your first-year subscription? To learn how and see more tips and tricks for getting the most from HubSpot, check out our HubSpot Success Kit.