HubSpot vs Salesforce
 HubSpot |  Salesforce | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 37/100 | 21/100 |
| Rank in category | #2 | #4 |
| Rated comments | 36 | 24 |
| Best for | Teams that want marketing and sales on one database; Companies relying on many third-party integrations; Growing SMBs with someone who can own CRM setup | Larger sales orgs with an in-house admin to own the system; Companies with complex custom objects, permissions and integrations; Teams that want the CRM with the widest consultant and integration ecosystem |
| Skip it if | Very small teams that only need a simple sales pipeline; Budget-sensitive teams that will need Pro or Enterprise features; Companies with heavy custom-object models | Small teams of under about 20 users without a dedicated admin; Buyers who want to change fields and workflows themselves without consultants; Budget-sensitive teams that need API access or heavier automation on lower tiers |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | The pricing page served to us was localized in GBP (US pricing may differ): free plan for up to 2 users; Starter £7/seat/mo billed annually (shown as a limited-time 65% discount, up to 10 users); Professional £81/seat/mo; Enterprise £155/seat/mo, all billed annually with a monthly option. Paid plans include monthly HubSpot Credits for AI features. | Free Suite at $0; Starter Suite $25/user/mo (billed monthly or annually); Pro Suite $100, Core $195 and Advanced $395/user/mo billed annually; Max $550/user/mo through sales. Free trials on Starter through Advanced. |
Independent users see HubSpot as the broadest all-rounder for small and mid-sized companies: sales and marketing data in one place, integrations with nearly everything, and easier to learn than Salesforce. The recurring complaint is cost. Repeated price rises, features locked behind Professional or Enterprise seats and a bill that jumps as teams grow are pushing long-time customers to ask what comes next, and several say it has become bloated and needs a dedicated owner to stay clean. About one in five remaining mentions were pitches for rival CRMs (Attio most often), HubSpot partners and add-on tools, even after the corpus filter removed well over a hundred promoter comments.
Users like
- Brings marketing and sales data together, and users who left or compared rate its marketing automation (such as nurture campaigns) above lighter sales CRMs like Pipedrive[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Integrates with almost everything; a 15-year user calls it about as good as it gets for integrations, and another says the Claude integration made the data far easier to work with[1][2][3]
- More intuitive and easier to customize than Salesforce, and the free tier is usable for basic tracking or learning a CRM[1][2][3]
- List price is negotiable: users report a 35% discount on a two-year commit for 50+ seats and other large discounts by pushing back[1][2]
Users complain about
- Expensive and getting more so: long-time customers cite repeated price increases, and several moved to tools costing about half as much[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Key features sit behind higher tiers and seat types, so the bill can jump sharply (one user says it triples) when a team needs Pro seats, Operations Hub or Enterprise-only scoring[1][2][3][4]
- Complex and increasingly bloated; small teams report abandoning it because it is too much to configure, and it gets messy without a dedicated owner[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Renewal and exit friction: a user says HubSpot quietly buried its own 'don't block the exit' pledge, and another says reps make you think you have no choice at renewal[1][2]
Independent users treat Salesforce as the most capable and customizable CRM but rarely as the right choice for small teams: of 24 non-promotional comments with an opinion, most describe it as overkill, expensive at the tiers that unlock automation and API access, and dependent on paid admins or consultants for routine changes. Its defenders are mostly people who have administered or implemented it alongside Dynamics or Zoho and found it easier or more complete, and several warn that leaving a heavily customized org is slow and costly. The corpus is heavily seeded: 39 of 100 comments were promotional, mostly agencies, freelance admins and rival CRM or custom-build vendors pitching in r/CRM threads from teams trying to leave Salesforce.
Users like
- Users and implementers describe it as able to model almost any process, with more depth than Zoho or HubSpot when heavily customized[1][2][3][4][5]
- People who have administered or implemented both Salesforce and Dynamics 365 say Salesforce is easier and more intuitive to work in[1][2]
- Seen as the mature, industry-standard choice, and a team that moved to Zoho says Zoho does most of the same things less smoothly[1][2][3]
- One user reports Salesforce still gives sizeable discounts and that admin work can now be done through the CLI with AI coding tools, cutting consultant hours[1]
Users complain about
- Widely called overkill for small teams, with admin overhead that forces the business to wrap itself around the tool[1][2][3][4][5]
- Expensive, and the price climbs steeply when a small team needs a higher edition; one 18-person team cut CRM spend from about $90k to under $25k a year by leaving[1][2][3][4][5]
- Routine changes often require a paid consultant; one team reports $200 per hour and three-week turnarounds for small edits[1][2]
- Leaving is slow: users report months-long migrations, painful exports of attachments and email history, and custom flows that must be rebuilt rather than copied[1][2][3]