Mor MesterHubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. They’ve been in business since 2006 and are serving over 135,000 customers in 120 countries.
If you’re interested in inbound marketing, you probably heard about HubSpot. When choosing a CRM or marketing automation software, HubSpot seems like an obvious choice. But are you sure it’s going to be the right tool for you? After all, its hubs don’t come cheap! And some of the functionalities they offer may be a little too advanced for an average marketing campaign.
That’s why today we are here to help you answer the ultimate question: What is HubSpot? And can the software exceed expectations that are already sky-high?
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform that covers most things a business needs to succeed online. HubSpot has 5 different products they call hubs. The functionality of these hubs ranges from marketing and sales to operations and customer service. It can be fully tailored to your specific needs.
HubSpot helps companies with all the essentials. It lets you:
- attract visitors,
- launch marketing and sales campaigns,
- and automate core organizational processes.
The top Hubspot competitors most often mentioned are Zoho CRM, Salesforce Pardot, Marketo Engage, ActiveCampaign, and Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Here are some stats and facts about Hubspot:
- Hubspot was founded in July 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.
- In 2012, HubSpot launched Inbound, a conference for marketers and HubSpot customers and partners. It attracted 2,800 attendees in its first year. It’s been growing strong ever since, more than 26,000 people attended the 2020 conference.
- As of 2021, HubSpot has 5895 employees, 135,000 global customers, and over $1.3 billion in revenue. Hubspot has customers in over 120 countries.
- According to recently published financial statements, Hubspot has a current valuation of $25.29 billion.
- Hubspot consists of five products, they call Hubs — Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub.
- Hubspot’s headquarters are in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2021, Hubspot won 17 awards including the Best Company for Diversity, Best Company for Women, and Best Sales Team.
- HubSpot has free products with limited features for HubSpot CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub.
This all-in-one approach allows you to tackle every challenge at once, without extra custom integrations. HubSpot products are designed to work together and achieve all your marketing goals at once.
And if you are searching for specialized software, HubSpot offers dedicated hubs.
Marketing Hub
The HubSpot Marketing Hub is an all-in-one marketing suite. So you’ll have all the essential marketing features and tools. Think of it as a single platform for all your marketing campaigns and assets. Thanks to this bundle you can effectively capture and convert leads into customers.
HubSpot Marketing Hub has these core inbound marketing features:
- Email marketing
- Ad management
- Landing page editor
- Chatbots and live chat
- Dynamic personalization
- Social media management
- And more
You can use some of the basic features of HubSpot Marketing Hub for free with their free plan. Get started for free here. Unlock more automation and email marketing functionalities with the Starter plan. Pricing starts at $45/mo if you opt for an annual subscription.
Sales Hub
The Hubspot Sales Hub is a fully-featured sales CRM software. It includes sales engagement tools, quote and CPQ functionality, reporting and analytics, and over 1000 integrations.
Thanks to the HubSpot Sales CRM software you can organize your data better and bring in more revenue, faster. With HubSpot sales hub you can manage client data more efficiently and bring in more revenue with automation.
Your sales team will appreciate these features:
- Meeting scheduling
- Sales analytics
- Multiple currencies
- Sales automation
- Predictive lead scoring
- And more
Prices for the Sales Hub start at $45/mo if you choose an annual plan. Or sign up for free here to get started.
Service Hub
The Service Hub is customer service software that includes conversational tools, a shared inbox, help desk automation, a knowledge base, survey tools, reporting, a customer portal, and more.
Provide multichannel support, automate answers to the most frequent questions, gather customer feedback, and more. All tools in the service hub make for more efficient customer service.
Here are the most critical features of Service Hub:
- Ticket pipelines and automation
- Meeting scheduling
- Team and 1-to-1 email
- Knowledge base
- Customer surveys
- Email, in-app chat, and phone support
Add HubSpot CRM suit to the mix and benefit from inbound marketing and align sales and service processes. Check out this full HubSpot review for more details about the Sales, Marketing, and Service Hubs.
HubSpot Service Hub pricing starts at $45/mo for 2 users with an annual subscription. Each additional paid user will cost you another $23. Get a taste of Service Hub for free here.
CMS Hub
The CMS Hub is Hubspot’s content management system. It includes hosting, themes, dynamic content, drag and drop page editor, and memberships. Unlike most marketing automation platforms, with this software, you can build a full site, not just a couple of landing pages.
HubSpot CMS features all the essentials, such as:
- Drag-and-drop website editor
- Smart content & dynamic personalization
- A/B testing
- SEO recommendations & mobile optimization
- Standard SSL protection
- Premium domain hosting
There isn’t a free plan for the CMS Hub, but there’s a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $23/mo for the Starter plan if you sign up for a year.
Operations Hub
The HubSpot Operations Hub is software that lets you sync and clean customer data and automate business processes. Set up integrations with over 100 popular tools on the market, including Sendinblue, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign, Mailerlite, Airtable, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Keap, and Freshdesk.
The Operations Hub integrations sync data both ways and are real-time. This can’t be said for the rest of the integrations in Hubspot App Marketplace.
The most important features of Operations Hub:
- Sync and clean data
- Multiple currencies
- Email and in-app chat support
- Custom reports
- Record customization
- Webhooks
There’s a 14-day free trial available for the Operations Hub. With the Starter plan for $45/mo, you’ll get full access to the 2-way data sync of Operations Hub.
Do I need a marketing platform like HubSpot?
HubSpot is awesome. But the real reason why you’re here is to learn if it is the best option for you.
HubSpot undoubtedly comes with some hefty perks:
- It’s a full suite. If you’re after an all-in-one software for marketing, sales, and service, check Hubspot out.
- HubSpot has great web analytics tools.
- It features a fair share of email templates and ready-made landing pages, which saves lots of time.
- HubSpot has perfected its inbound methodology to the “t”. This inbound methodology is baked into Hubspot products to help you grow.
- HubSpot has over 1000 integrations, connecting you to the most popular tools on the market, such as Eventbrite, Shopify, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and more.
If you need a real all-in-one business platform and don’t mind the price tag, Hubspot is for you.
Who is HubSpot for?
All the tools HubSpot offers build on each other. Their business model is made in such a way, that by getting the taste of it you will soon get hooked to a quite pricey deal. That’s why the HubSpot platform is rarely selected by small businesses.
Instead, it is liked by the bigger players with generous budgets. So don’t be surprised that a typical HubSpot partner works in one of these:
- Software and technology companies
- Banking and financial institutions
- Marketing and advertising agencies
It doesn’t mean that businesses from other backgrounds can’t access HubSpot’s software. The platform’s portfolio has customers from nearly every industry imaginable. There are more than 1,142,320 websites that are HubSpot customers.
What is HubSpot pricing?
HubSpot is expensive. And the difference between plans often comes down to one particular feature and hundreds of dollars.
You can generate leads, improve your sales processes with the free CRM, and unlock some help desk tools completely free. Sign up here to get started for free. Yet, if you want to run an A/B test or social media campaigns from HubSpot marketing hub, you need to pay an extra $750/month. See full pricing here.
HubSpot’s offer is robust and you can find some free tools, as well as an affordable CRM bundle. The question is: will they be enough?
Is HubSpot right for you?
If you ever had a chance to use HubSpot, it might be pretty difficult to go back. It’s very comprehensive, surprisingly user-friendly, and well-integrated with the most popular solutions on the market.
Yet, it’s also pretty expensive. Its pricing tends to get so high that a Sales Hub alone can cost your company more than your entire marketing department does. That is, of course, if you include all the upgrades, add-ons, and integrations to it. But, frankly, aren’t they why we turn to HubSpot in the first place?
If your budget allows you to allocate a couple of thousands of dollars to a perfectly synchronized CRM that your customer support, sales, and marketing teams will use together — by all means, choose HubSpot!
If, however, you are looking for a smaller solution dedicated solely to marketing and/or email automation as well as lead generation — there are plenty of less complicated platforms that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. For Hubspot alternatives, have a look at other guides:
Rukham Khan
