This HubSpot review will uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the platform, which is a great option for growing businesses
HubSpot, utilized by over 200,000 businesses globally, is a versatile yet straightforward CRM platform. It acts as a central hub for sales, marketing, customer service, and operations teams, offering a multi-purpose free plan ideal for small teams with budget constraints.
While the free plan serves as an excellent starting point, Hub-Spot is best suited for companies seeking scalable software that can adapt to growth and staff expansion. Its advanced features, including generative AI, team goals, automation, A/B testing, and detailed sales forecasting, make it a preferred choice. Businesses using HubSpot are often better positioned to avoid the hassle of migrating to a new system when upgrading.
HubSpot Review: Key Features
HubSpot stands out among CRM tools for its cutting-edge features. One particularly exciting feature is its new generative AI tool, available on all plans, even the free one.
This tool assists with various tasks within the interface, such as summarizing conversations, replying to support inquiries, constructing emails, providing content recommendations, conducting SEO analysis, and more. Additionally, Hub-Spot offers automation capabilities to streamline mundane aspects of your team’s workflows. Below are the key features and hubs available in HubSpot, along with when you’ll use them during the setup process.
Setting up
Upon logging in to HubSpot, whether on a paid plan, free trial, or the free plan, you’ll initially encounter a blank interface. This interface includes optional introductory guidance, which we’ll delve into later. Following this, you can proceed to the “contacts” section to add your marketing contacts, customizing the columns as per your preferences.
While I initially struggled to grasp the optimal method for entering contact information, I soon discovered that the main table could be easily edited by clicking on various cells and columns.
Additionally, you can click on individual marketing contacts to modify the information in their profiles, which will automatically update in the table. Overall, navigating Hub-Spot’s interface is straightforward, and you don’t need to be an expert in CRM to quickly understand it.
Managing contacts
As mentioned earlier, one great feature of HubSpot is its ability to update the entire system when you make a change to information in one part of the interface. Additionally, all changes are automatically recorded in the change history of individual contacts, allowing you to retrace your steps if needed.
This functionality is especially beneficial in the sales hub, as lacking data on when a client was last contacted could result in a disjointed conversation where your team appears unprepared. Hub-Spot ensures that relevant information, including tickets and other details about a specific client or customer, is always easily accessible.
The free version of HubSpot also offers a unified email inbox, dashboards capable of storing up to 10 reports, and “custom properties” to connect specific types of data to marketing contacts and ongoing sales deals. These features demonstrate how Hub-Spot can save you time and help you utilize your stored data effectively.
HubSpot is a top choice for businesses looking to leverage the power of newsletters. It enables you to create visually appealing emails that drive traffic to your latest content and promotions. With its paid plans, you can A/B test different emails to determine the most effective ones and use the sequencing feature to automate multi-stage outreach campaigns.
Additionally, you can integrate your social media and Google ad campaigns with your HubSpot account to gain insights into how your ad spend impacts revenue. This integration allows you to track interactions with your ads and gather essential data for improving conversions and lead generation. As mentioned earlier, HubSpot’s AI tool can also adapt your content for various social media platforms where you’re running campaigns.
Managing sales leads
Handling sales leads in Hub-Spot is incredibly easy due to the existing setup, including the comprehensive “deal stage” column with various statuses. This setup eliminates any confusion about the progress of each lead for team members.
During my use of the platform, I found the “My Deals” tab, visible in the image below, helpful for distinguishing between deals I personally assigned and those assigned to my team members.
As mentioned earlier, despite having distinct “areas” or “menus” in the HubSpot interface, everything is seamlessly integrated. For instance
I can create tickets within a marketing contact or add a deal in the service hub. This integration allows for efficient data entry without the need to navigate through multiple menus. I found the organization of HubSpot to be intuitive, which made using it quite hassle-free.
Closing service tickets
HubSpot offers a “tickets” area in the “service” menu on all plans, allowing you to efficiently manage and resolve customer tickets. The free plan includes 1 ticket pipeline per account, while the Starter plan offers two and the Professional plan offers 15 per account. The Professional plan is ideal for businesses handling increasing volumes of support requests from clients and customers.
With HubSpot’s paid plans, you gain the ability to send out feedback surveys, providing valuable insights to enhance your approach to customer relationships. Additionally
you can create your own knowledge base, which is particularly beneficial for expanding teams handling rising support requests. By investing time and effort into building a knowledge base for your customer base, you empower them to resolve their issues without needing to contact you directly.
HubSpot: Test Results
I’ve personally tried out Hub-Spot’s free plan to experience the platform firsthand, and other members of the Tech.co team have done the same. This plan is often the starting point for many businesses, offering a fast and simple way to establish your contact base.
Overall, HubSpot is an excellent choice, featuring a simple yet visually appealing interface that isn’t overloaded with information, which was a pleasant surprise during my testing. However, as ambitious teams expand, they may find it beneficial to switch to a more tailored plan with advanced marketing, sales, and/or service features, such as A/B email testing and sequencing.
Additionally, we’ve evaluated various sales CRM tools using industry-specific criteria. Therefore, we’ll share insights from our Sales CRM tests, providing a useful comparison to gauge the value of Hub-Spot’s paid plans. This comparison is relevant even if the marketing or customer service-focused plans align better with your company’s needs.
How HubSpot’s free plan compares to other CRM systems
HubSpot’s free plan competes well with many popular paid plans in the industry, earning a perfect 5/5 for pricing. However, businesses looking to maximize the platform’s potential will benefit more from upgrading to a paid option.
For example, most businesses recognize the significance of having readily available customer support. However, Hub-Spot’s free plan offers minimal support, limited to access to the HubSpot community forum. Consequently, it received a low score of 1.5/5 in this aspect of the evaluation.
HubSpot’s usability is rated at 3.9 out of 5, with deductions for its limitations and feature constraints. The customization score is similarly low at 2.2 out of 5. Considering it’s a free plan, my expectations were not high. In comparison, Zoho CRM’s paid plans scored higher in usability at 4.5 out of 5 and offer more features. However, Zoho’s free plan has a three-user limit, unlike Hub-Spot’s free plan, which has no such limit.
HubSpot Sales CRM Test Results
In contrast to Freshsales, HubSpot offers an internal communication tool within the platform, along with a unified inbox for organizing customer communications. Additionally, HubSpot includes team KPIs and individual goal features to gamify the sales process and increase motivation for your employees.
HubSpot Plans Reviewed
HubSpot offers a variety of plans tailored to different stages of the customer relationship journey, each featuring “Starter,” “Professional,” and “Enterprise” versions. Here’s a sample pricing structure from the marketing hub pricing page:
In addition to the preset plans, HubSpot now offers the option to “create a bundle,” allowing you to mix and match plans of different levels to create a custom suite package tailored to your sales, marketing, or customer service team’s needs. The CRM Suite plan is also available, serving as an enhanced version of the free plan with more features.
For detailed information on these plans, refer to our HubSpot pricing guide, which includes costs, hidden fees, and onboarding costs. Alternatively, you can visit the Hub-Spot website directly if you’re ready to begin.
Free plan
HubSpot’s free plan provides essential marketing, sales, and service tools, along with integration for your team’s email platform to manage communications within the app. However, this plan does not allow for automation and lacks key features such as social media marketing and sales forecasting.
Sales Hub
Hub-Spot offers a sales-focused plan designed to manage a small pipeline of leads and deals, assign owners to clients/customers, and track entry changes. The Starter plan helps streamline your workday with task queues and automation, while the Professional plan allows you to create a sales playbook, aiding in employee training during onboarding.
Marketing Hub
HubSpot’s marketing hub is tailored for marketing teams managing hundreds or thousands of contacts. While the free plan requires the use of HubSpot branding, the paid plans allow you to remove it. Additionally, there are numerous customizable reporting tools to help you better understand how to engage with your contact base.
Service Hub
HubSpot’s free plan provides a fundamental ticketing system for tracking and resolving customer issues. However, the paid Service Hub plans offer more advanced features, such as customer feedback surveys and payment processing options. Additionally, you can remove the HubSpot branding from your live chat feature and automatically assign incoming customers to teams or individuals
Other Hubspot plans
Along with HubSpot’s more well-known sales, service, and marketing plans, the provider also has a CRM suite plan starting from $20 per month, and a CMS plan for websites. There’s now also an Operations team-focused plan and a commerce plan for teams or businesses building online stores and merch platforms.
Who Is HubSpot Best For?
To begin, it’s important to mention that the free HubSpot plan includes all the necessary features for a small to medium-sized team with a limited customer base to manage a basic marketing campaign or simple sales pipeline. However, when it comes to CRM solutions, HubSpot is unmatched for a growing business.
