Choosing a CRM: Salesforce vs. Hubspot

Choosing the Best CRM for Your Business: Salesforce vs. Hubspot

By Mark Beavers

For tech startups, choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a pivotal decision that can shape your quote-to-cash processes, team productivity, and long-term scalability. Whether you’re a very young startup, or a fast-growing mid-sized company, CRM selection is one of the most important choices you’ll make.

There are numerous CRM options available, but HubSpot and Salesforce are the two biggest - and safest - players on the market. (Any other CRM option carries added risks. Avoid unforced errors. Stick with Hubspot or Salesforce as your CRM.)

But how do you decide which one suits your business?

Let’s break it down.

Note: This blog discusses CRM options for B2B companies selling software (usually subscriptions) and related services. In addition to companies who sell software, companies that sell physical products and good (hardware, etc) may also find this article useful. B2C companies are sufficiently different in many ways, and are outside the focus of this blog.

Hubspot: First There Was Marketing Hub

HubSpot originally made its name with its marketing automation platform (called Marketing Hub). From there, it has grown into a powerhouse that now offers a solid suite of sales and marketing tools.

Initially, Marketing Hub was designed to meet the needs of marketing teams with the core, essential features that small B2B companies needed most. Arguably, its biggest appeal was its “minimum viable product” model - it was a lean, focused platform that was easy to configure, easy to maintain. Somewhat ironically, “less customizability” was one of its most attractive features.

Besides Hubspot Marketing Hub, other players in this space include Marketo (owned by Adobe), Eloqua (owned by Oracle), and Pardot (owned by Salesforce).

(In addition to these dominant players, there are other Marketing Platform products like Zoho, ConstantContact, and MailChimp that are less expensive, with relatively fewer features. Generally, these products appeal to a different, more cost-sensitive group of companies.)

HubSpot Sales Hub

With the success of Marketing Hub, Hubspot realized their customers frequently used Salesforce as their CRM. A savvy company, they strategically expanded into the CRM space by introducing Sales Hub as a well-integrated complement to Marketing Hub.

With the addition of Sales Hub, companies can manage the whole Demand Generation and Sales lifecycle, covering nearly everything from outbound marketing, lead management, to pipeline management and quote-to-cash.

The core of HubSpot’s appeal is its user-friendly interface. It's straightforward to configure and easy for your team to learn, making it a solid choice for young companies looking to implement systems quickly.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: The Dominant Player in CRM

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the behemoth of CRM solutions, widely recognized as the first choice for companies of all sizes. For businesses ranging from startups to massive enterprises, Salesforce provides an expansive toolkit developed over the last 25+ years, making it capable of supporting virtually any CRM requirement. The flexibility and extensibility of Salesforce is impressive.

However, its vast range of features can sometimes be overwhelming, especially for smaller companies that only require a basic CRM setup at the outset.

For the smallest companies, Salesforce’s pricing tends to be higher than HubSpot’s. Its implementation costs are typically steeper - due to the breadth of available features, far exceeding what Hubspot offers.

For startups on a lean budget, this initial expense may make Salesforce seem like overkill at first.

Having a knowledgeable Salesforce expert can help you to be wise when deciding what to implement. Key takeaway: Just because the menu is huge, don’t order everything. It’ll just give you indigestion.

But, as your business grows and your needs become more complex, Salesforce becomes ever more valuable. It’s a remarkably robust platform able to scale with your company - with features like automation, advanced reporting, and customized workflows. And if your business has specific needs such as international presence (multi-language, multi-currency support) Salesforce is a far better fit.

Hubspot Sales Hub vs Salesforce Sales Cloud

For very small companies, Hubspot CRM will be cheaper than Salesforce CRM, but the cost difference diminishes as a company grows
Salesforce CRM offers many more features - many unnecessary at the beginning, but valuable later.
Salesforce scales better to large companies
Switching costs can be significant – and can become far larger as a company grows

The Tradeoffs: HubSpot vs. Salesforce

Customization and Flexibility

HubSpot: HubSpot’s Sales Hub is (comparatively) easy to set up and use - but it has limitations in its customizability. For many startups, this is an advantage, as it keeps your systems from becoming overly complex. In fact, compared to Salesforce, HubSpot’s more modest list of features and extensibility can prevent the kind of “over-customization” that can become a burden as your business grows.
Salesforce: Salesforce is highly customizable, but with great power comes great responsibility. If you don’t have the right expertise, it’s easy to end up with a bloated, over-engineered system that’s hard to maintain. The key with Salesforce is knowing when to say no to certain customizations. If you don’t have a very knowledgeable Salesforce architect who knows what they’re doing, things can spiral out of control.

Planning for Future Growth

HubSpot’s Sales Hub CRM is attractive for young, fast-moving companies because it’s quick to implement and easy to use. However, as your business expands, you may encounter limitations, such as:

Scaling your sales team - adding more users, creating role-specific workflows and automations
Channel - enabling Resellers and Distributors; supporting multi-tier discounting
Adding products - with different pricing models, e.g., one-time products, subscriptions (user-based, feature-based, usage-based, etc.)
International expansion - multi-currency support, variable exchange rates, etc
Advanced controls like lead assignment rules, approval processes, and discount thresholds

When your business begins to require these features, Salesforce’s deeper capabilities become more valuable. Salesforce can accommodate complex sales processes, automate tasks, and scale as your business grows.

However, a caveat: Salesforce is a powerful tool, but it requires a knowledgeable Salesforce admin or consultant. If you don’t have the right expertise in-house, managing Salesforce’s complexity can be overwhelming.

Simplicity vs. Complexity

On the flip side, HubSpot’s easier configurability is an advantage for smaller companies that don’t yet need all of Salesforce’s advanced features. This simplicity can “save you from yourselves” by preventing your team from getting caught up in complex configurations too early. If you expect your business to remain relatively simple, HubSpot’s ease of use might be more than enough - but custom-built capabilities can have a cumulative drain on your org's ability to move quickly.

Switching Costs: HubSpot to Salesforce (And Vice Versa)

One important consideration when choosing between HubSpot and Salesforce is the cost and hassle of switching systems down the line. Moving from HubSpot to Salesforce is not an easy or cheap undertaking.

The costs of switching:

Subscription costs: Salesforce will almost certainly be more expensive than HubSpot, both in terms of the monthly/annual subscription and setup costs.
Implementation and customization costs: If you’ve made substantial customizations in HubSpot, migrating to Salesforce means rebuilding processes and systems from scratch, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Also, don’t forget the third-party integrations (Zoominfo, 6Sense, DocuSign, etc.) that may need to be reconfigured.

Advanced planning for the ways your business will grow is important. Don't over-spend (and over-configure) your CRM - but avoid waiting too long to implement the core features that will allow your business to grow:

Growth into international markets - Support for multi-currency deals, and dynamic exchange rates
Partner (Channel) deals - Handling inbound deal registrations from partners, and multi-tier discounting (Partner discounts and Customer discounts)
New Product Offerings - subscription products, usage-based pricing models, etc

Hubspot and Salesforce Skills

As your company grows, your CRM must also grow. There will be a daily stream of questions, requests, data imports, reports, and issues. Without someone fielding those needs, folks will stop relying on your CRM - and your platform will wither. Don’t let that happen.

Besides the routine care-and-feeding of your CRM system, you’ll sometimes also undertake projects to add significant new capabilities.

Plan accordingly. You’ll need an in-house resource, and occasionally you’ll also need external consultants to design and implement specific capabilities.

Because Salesforce has a substantially larger install base, there are more Salesforce-skilled resources available to hire (or rent). But, Hubspot resources are also readily available - but the marketplace of available resources will be different.

Happily, remote resources are an excellent option - you do not need on-premise resources to support your Hubspot or Salesforce platforms.

Third Party Tools

Any company that implements Hubspot or Salesforce will also want to add additional capabilities from third-party companies - such as dynamic web and email content, paid search management, webinars, e-sign, data augmentation, data hygiene, and more. Both Hubspot and Salesforce have large, thriving ecosystems of third-party tools and integrations.

Both platforms are rich with third-party options.

Wrap It Up, Mark: Which CRM Is Right for Your Startup?

Choosing between HubSpot and Salesforce comes down to understanding your current and future needs, and balancing the tradeoffs between pace-of-growth, implementation costs, and business velocity.

HubSpot is an excellent choice for startups in the early stages of growth that want a simple, user-friendly CRM with strong marketing automation capabilities. It’s easy to implement, and you can scale as your business grows, but it has its limitations when it comes to customization and advanced features.
Salesforce may be a preferable choice if you anticipate complex sales processes, need extensive customization, or expect rapid growth that will require advanced features like multi-currency support, international sales, and fuller reporting. But, it’s more expensive, requires a more knowledgeable admin, and can be daunting for companies without the right resources.

Ultimately, if you’re a fast-growing B2B tech startup, the key is to pick the CRM that aligns with your business’s immediate needs — and your plans for future growth. Consider your team’s technical expertise, your sales processes, and how you want to scale over time. Choose wisely, and your CRM will be an enabler for driving your business to the next level.

About This Blog:

Some species of piranhas are known to school together in large groups, sometimes numbering in the thousands, for better protection and hunting efficiency.

This blog was written by a team of people, not AI.

Page updated

Report abuse