07/12/2022

HubSpot CRM Review: Can It Be Trusted?

Insights

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You’ve probably seen HubSpot CRM highly recommended if you’re looking for a new CRM . You aren’t alone if you still have questions about whether this CRM is right for you.

This blog post will provide you with the most recent information about HubSpot CRM. You will be able to make an informed decision about whether this is the right choice for you.

Let’s get started!

What is HubSpot CRM?

HubSpot CRM Customer Relationship Management is an integral part of the HubSpot ecosystem. It is an inbound marketing SaaS that helps businesses of all sizes to attract more customers, convert them into paying clients, get more leads and close more deals.

HubSpot CRM combines marketing functions with data from other areas of your business (e.g. email). You can store all of the sales tools and information that you need in one place. You can then focus on the human side of your business by eliminating repetitive tasks.

HubSpot provides a complete CRM system with all the tools you need to create a website, landing pages that convert well, email marketing, sales acceleration, customer service optimization, and more.

HubSpot CRM key features 

HubSpot CRM has more than 50 features. The most notable are:

Contact management

This HubSpot CRM feature streamlines your sales efforts and gives you more flexibility to close deals.

HubSpot CRM lets you create up to 1,000,000 company and contact records. Quickly add contacts to your database by simply entering a prospect’s email address. You can also pull contact information directly from your inbox, or via form submissions. HubSpot CRM automatically enriches data records with data from over 20 million businesses.

You can also send emails, make phone calls, assign tasks and take sales notes.

The contact management feature in HubSpot CRM provides a complete overview of all interactions with prospects. It then gives you the tools to create better campaigns and close more sales.

Pipelines and stages for deals

Deal pipelines are a way to predict revenue and spot any potential roadblocks during your selling process. Deal stages will show your team the progress of a deal and its closeness to closing.

This feature allows you to drag and drop deals along your sales process. As your sales progress, this will allow you to move from one stage to another. HubSpot CRM includes a default sales pipeline that has 7 stages, but you can modify it to suit your business’s needs.

Task management

Task management is a great way to manage your daily tasks and recurring responsibilities. It takes very little time and effort. HubSpot CRM allows you to manage all your tasks from one place. You don’t have to switch between multiple systems in order to complete them.

Simply go to a contact or company to create a task in the CRM. Click “Create task” and you’re done. After creating your task you can assign a due date, task type and reminder to it. You can also designate the task owner.

Email templates

HubSpot CRM offers a variety of email templates that have been proven to work. You can also save and reuse the best emails you send and share them with your team so that you can communicate with prospects more efficiently and effectively.

Personalized sequences

This feature allows you to send multiple emails at once without having to go back and schedule each message individually.

You can use a variety of sequences to engage your prospects. 

  • A nurturing email sequence to introduce prospects to your company
  • Email sequence for building rapport with prospects through engagement emails
  • Conversion email sequence asking for something from your prospects
  • A follow-up email sequence is an email that contacts prospects after they have completed a sequence

Personalization tokens allow you to customize each email so that it connects with your prospects. Personalization tokens can be used to personalize emails by adding company information and contact details to the CRM. This allows you to add details about a company and contact to make it more personal.

Form builder

Forms are a great way to generate leads. HubSpot allows you to quickly create forms that can be added to HubSpot pages and external sites.

HubSpot CRM allows you to choose from a blank or premade template. This is useful in case you’re short on time or have no ideas. There are many types of forms you can create, including standalone, embedded, pop-up and embedded.

Each prospect who fills out the form will automatically be added to HubSpot CRM. You can then add additional steps like setting reminders, calling new prospects or sending personalized emails to them.

Meeting scheduling

You can add the meeting scheduling tool directly to your CRM to reduce the hassle of meeting scheduling. Meetings can sync with your Office 365 calendar or Google calendar so prospects can see the most recent availability and make a call.

You can also embed the calendar directly on your website without any programming required.

Ad management

HubSpot allows you to target and track online advertising campaigns using the CRM platform.

Connect accounts from social networks such as Facebook or Google to your HubSpot account and you will see which ads work best. The ROI (Return On Investment) can be measured for each ad campaign. You can also use ad data to guide your lead scoring strategy and email marketing strategy.

You can create and manage up to $1,000 per month in ads using the free ads tool. This includes two connected accounts.

Reporting

HubSpot provides a comprehensive view of your sales metrics through its extensive reporting features.

You can access over 90 important reports with your free account.

  • Deal Forecast Reporting displays the revenue forecast for each deal stage
  • Funnel Reports can help you see how your contacts are progressing through different stages and how deals are progressing
  • Sales Activity Reports track sales team productivity, rep performance, and other metrics.

Subscribe to HubSpot Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise paid plans to unlock the power and flexibility of custom sales reports

Chat live

Prospects want immediate information and being able to contact them as soon as they land on your site can make a difference in whether or not they decide to stay.

HubSpot allows you to have a live chat with visitors. This will allow you to establish better connections and foster stronger relationships. It is easy to personalize your chat widget to reflect your brand and to create welcome messages for different pages.

HubSpot’s chat can be fully integrated with a chatbot creator that you can download for free. Chatbots are a great way to reduce the workload of customer service staff. They can help them book meetings, qualify leads, and answer common questions. Chatbots automatically store conversations in your conversation inbox, so your entire team can see every interaction.

Mobile CRM app

The mobile app allows you to access your CRM from anywhere you are. You can create reminders, send email, update contacts, use the microphone to dictate notes and get real-time notifications.

Mobile CRM apps are available for both Android and iOS.

Easy use of HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is easy to use, according to many users.

It doesn’t really matter if your business is new or you have a large number of leads and tickets. Don’t be concerned about duplicates or messy data. HubSpot CRM will de-duplicate any data you import, so your content is ready to go right from the beginning.

Importing your data into HubSpot CRM takes just a few mouse clicks if you already have leads, tickets, or deals. If you have specific needs, you can upload your data and work with HubSpot API.

Integrations with HubSpot CRM

Modern businesses will need a variety of software. HubSpot CRM allows you to connect to other tools that you enjoy using to unify your tech stack. With new partners joining each month, the App Marketplace contains more than 200 integrations.

Some of the most popular tools that HubSpot integrates are Pipedrive, Zendesk and Salesforce.

HubSpot CRM customer support

The customer service at HubSpot CRM is good. Although the chat function is better than many, it can be difficult to ask questions that go beyond sales information.

HubSpot clearly wants users to use its online resources to make decisions, rather than contacting customer service. This may work for those tech-savvy users who have lots of time. It can be frustrating for those who want to communicate more directly.

Sign in and you can always press the help button. You can also connect to HubSpot support to choose the preferred communication method (phone, email, or live chat). It’s easy to attach images to help tickets with HubSpot to clarify problems. However, some users may have trouble describing technical questions or problems in writing and may receive slow responses.

HubSpot CRM pricing plans

HubSpot CRM offers a totally free plan. HubSpot CRM is free! While many CRMs have monthly fees, it offers a comprehensive bundle of features.

The platform also offers three additional paid plans if you need more advanced features. Let’s take a look at four pricing options for HubSpot CRM.

PlanPricing/ month (billed monthly)The key features
No cost$0All CRM features are free Chat live – Very limited conversational bots – Team email Calling for 15 minutes – Email scheduling – 200 email notifications per month 1 conversation inbox – 5 email templates – 5 canned snippets – 5 documents per account Link to 1 Personal Meeting – Three dashboards with 10 reports each – 1 deal pipeline per account – Limited Messenger integration – 10 custom properties
StarterStarting at $50Everything included in the Free Plan plus: Calling Hours: 8 hours Unlimited email open and click notifications – 1,000 email templates 1000 canned snippets – 1,000 documents per account Links to 1,000 team and personal meetings – 10 dashboards, 10 reports per dashboard – 2 deal pipelines per account Custom properties up to 1,000 – Limitless goals – 5 currencies SDK Calling – Email & in-app support – Conversation routing – Simple automation – Stripe accounts are required – Email notifications and trigger tasks based on deal stage – Task queues
For professionals    Starting at $500Everything included in the Starter Plan plus: Additional chatbots – 100 quotes per deal Calling hours: 16 hours Inbox for 1,000 conversations – 25 dashboards, 20 reports per dashboard – 15 deal pipelines per account – Additional Messenger integration – 30 currencies – 300 workflows Performance of rep productivity – Workflow extensions 1000 sequences, 500 emails/user/day – 10 signatures/user/month Phone Support Smart send times – Mandatory fields 100 Custom Reports Video creation in 1:1 – 5 scoring properties – 5 Calculated Properties – Reporting and forecasting for default and custom forecasts Account Overview Sales analytics
EnterpriseStarting at $1200All the Professional Plan plus: 33-hour calling – 50 dashboards, 20 reports per dashboard – 50 deal pipelines per account – 200 currencies – 30 signatures/user/month 500 Custom Reports 25 properties with scoring potential 200 Calculated Properties Forecast across all team hierarchies Playbooks up to 1,000

HubSpot CRM: The pros and cons

Pros:

  • Plan with no cost
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Strong marketing automation capabilities using contact data
  • Various email templates
  • There are many integrations
  • Great mobile app
  • HubSpot active community

Cons:

  • High-paying Plans
  • There are very few customization options
  • It can be difficult and confusing to create workflows
  • Inadequacy of reporting skills

Alternatives to HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a great tool, with many benefits. We are sure you will find it to be the right fit for your needs. There are other great CRM platforms available. It’s worth looking at all of them and choosing the best.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based platform that can provide everything you need for your business to run smoothly. SaaS (Software as a Service), apps and online productivity tools will give you powerful marketing and sales features.

Zoho CRM is a CRM that helps businesses manage their contacts, market and sell to customers. This platform can be used to integrate with marketing tools already in use, capture leads via social media networks, segment audiences and provide support through built-in chat.

Pricing plans for Zoho CRM

  • No Cost Plan
  • Standard Plan: $12/user/month (billed annually).
  • Professional Plan: $20/user/month (billed annually).
  • Enterprise Plan: $35/user/month (billed annually).
  • Ultimate Plan: $45/user/month (billed annually).

Pipedrive CRM

Pipedrive CRM software is user-friendly and designed to be easy to use. You can keep track of all aspects of your sales process with its pipeline management feature.

You’ll also have email integration, forecasting and sales reporting, as well as mobile apps that allow you to access the software from anywhere. Pipedrive does not offer segmentation but it is easy enough to identify leads, and to maintain relationships.

Pipedrive CRM pricing plans:

  • Essential Plan: $9.90/user/month (billed annually).
  • Advanced Plan: $19.90/user/month (billed annually).
  • Professional Plan: $39.90/user/month (billed annually).
  • Enterprise Plan: $79.00 per user/month (billed annually). 

Drip CRM

Drip, the most popular CRM, is simple to use and powerful enough for any business. It is easy to create automation workflows and send out email campaigns using the platform. You can choose to generate your email using a text or visual builder.

Drip also offers segmentation, conversion tracking and content optimization. You can track everything about your customers’ stories with tags, events and custom fields.

This platform was created to help you generate leads, manage contacts, convert them into long-term customers, and ultimately increase your bottom line.

Pricing plans for Drip CRM: Starting at $19/month for 100 users in your account

The bottom line

HubSpot CRM is an established name in sales and marketing. The answer to whether or not it’s worth the investment depends on the type of your business.

HubSpot CRM is a great CRM solution for small and mid-sized businesses. It may not work well for large enterprises that require more complex and robust solutions than the basic HubSpot CRM features.

We hope you found our HubSpot CRM review useful! We would love to hear from you! We are always happy to hear from our customers!

About the author

Kobe Digital is a unified team of performance marketing, design, and video production experts. Our mastery of these disciplines is what makes us effective. Our ability to integrate them seamlessly is what makes us unique.