HubSpot CRM Review

HubSpot
Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot
2006
Cambridge, MA
Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
Private
68,800+
Cloud
Yes

HubSpot CRM At A Glance

Good: Ability to add an unlimited number of users and up to one million contacts, no time limit, flexible methods for communicating with prospects/customers.
Bad: While it has many features, companies will have to upgrade to one of HubSpot's paid plans for advanced functionality.
Bottom Line: Free software version for companies that want to manage their sales, marketing and customer service activities without the robust features.

Product Overview

This review focuses on HubSpot CRM. If you’re looking for advanced marketing automation features, check out our HubSpot review here.

HubSpot CRM is a free plan that guides sales, marketing and customer service teams in tracking their tasks and communicating with customers more efficiently. It supports an unlimited number of users and stores up to one million contacts in the database. HubSpot CRM doesn’t have a time limit and has a lot of basic features, so companies can opt to use it long term or upgrade to the Sales, Marketing or Service Hub paid plans if they need advanced functionality.

The software’s tools can be used companywide. Sales managers can monitor pipelines and reps’ performance in real time, and reps can track all correspondences involved with deals. Marketers can generate new leads and send bulk emails, and the customer service team can manage all customer conversations and respond to them quickly.

As mentioned, HubSpot CRM isn’t just limited to sales, marketing and customer service teams. For example, operation managers can set up automated workflows and integration to third-party applications, and small business owners can successfully manage their contacts and sales and marketing activities.

Features

We’ve listed HubSpot CRM’s key features below.

Contact management – HubSpot CRM stores up to one million contacts that are automatically populated with data from over 20 million businesses. Users can view all the relevant information about each contact (e.g., company name, email address, communication history) in one place. They can also track the contact’s site activity, such as page views or form submissions.

Pipeline management – Sales reps can track each stage of the deal within their pipeline, prioritize certain deals and create task reminders. The software stores notes, emails and call records for easier access, so reps can find important information quickly. Sales managers can also track the health of the entire pipeline.

Email and live chat management – Users can create up to five email templates. HubSpot CRM integrates to Gmail, Outlook and Facebook Messenger, so messages can be sent or received directly in the software. Users can track emails and get notifications on email opens and click throughs.

Companies can enable live chat on their site as well as add a chatbot that guides site visitors to specific pages or routes them to the appropriate rep. Note that this feature is limited to creating tickets, qualifying leads and booking meetings.

There’s also a universal Conversations inbox that stores emails and live chats from multiple sources so that any rep can quickly respond to a customer’s message.

Calls – HubSpot CRM lets users call customers through the VoIP interface and automatically record and log calls to the contact record. Note that there’s a limit of up to 15 minutes of each call per user, per month.

Ticketing – Customer service managers can create incoming support emails as tickets that are then prioritized and assigned to the right rep. All tickets are then organized and tracked in a single place. With this feature, small IT teams won’t need to purchase a separate ticketing system.

Email marketing and list segmentation – Marketers can create personalized, mobile-optimized emails with the drag-and-drop editor. While they can send bulk emails, there’s a limit of 2,000 sends per month and they must use the HubSpot branding. HubSpot CRM also has a list segmentation feature for creating up to 25 static lists or up to five smart contact lists.

Landing pages and forms – This feature lets marketers add pop-up, embedded or collected forms to any web page on their site that are then used for gathering contact information. They can also create automatic emails that recipients get after filling out the form. Note that HubSpot CRM only supports up to one automated email per form.

Ad management – HubSpot CRM provides marketers the ability to manage their advertising campaigns by connecting up to two accounts from any supported ad network. This feature requires ad purchases through the individual network, and there’s a $1,000 spend limit for 30 days.

Other features – In addition to the features mentioned above, there’s a built-in analytics and reporting feature for measuring lead conversions, sales performances and other metrics. Users can track metrics on a single dashboard, and HubtSpot CRM provides up to 10 reporting templates. There’s also a meeting scheduler that allows users to send invites to prospects or customers, and there’s a canned snippets feature where users can create a FAQ bank for live chat or email communication so that customers can get fast answers (up to 5 snippets per account). Finally, users can store up to five documents in a library that’s shareable with team members or customers.

Target Market

HubSpot initially catered to small and medium businesses, and steadily grew to include larger companies in industries like automobile manufacturing, hospitality and education. We’ve listed some of its notable customers below.

  • Atlassian
  • DoorDash
  • Purple
  • Subaru
  • Wistia
  • ClassPass
  • VMWare
  • Oakland Harley Davidson
  • Randstad
  • University of Southern California

Implementation/Integration

New users can create an account in five steps on the HubSpot site or through their Google account. If a company wants additional implementation services, it must sign up for one of the paid plans.

 

Customer Service & Support

Users can browse the HubSpot Community to read articles or to participate in a forum and ask questions. They’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan if they require additional support.

Pricing

HubSpot CRM is free for all users. If a company wants additional features, they can upgrade to the Sales, Marketing or Service Hub. In this section, we’ll discuss the pricing for the Sales Hub, which has three paid plans. Note that each plan is billed annually.

Starter – The Starter plan costs $50 per month and is best for single users. It includes basic features like email tracking, calling, meeting scheduling, live chat connection with prospects, and tracking pipeline and rep productivity performances. Adding more users will cost an extra $50 per user, per month.

Professional – The Professional plan is $500 per month and intended for up to five paid users. It has everything from the Starter plan, plus automating sales workflows, personalized outreach features, multiple currencies and integration to Salesforce. Adding six or more users will cost an extra $100 per user, per month. This plan also requires a one-time $500 onboarding fee.

Enterprise – The Enterprise plan costs $1,200 per month and is for companies with up to 10 paid users. It includes everything from the other plans, plus predictive lead scoring, quote-based workflows, recurring revenue tracking, user roles, single sign-on, goals and playbooks, and call transcription. Adding more than 10 users will cost an extra $120 per user, per month, and this plan also requires a one-time onboarding fee of $3,000.

In addition, HubSpot offers advanced features, such as the HubSpot CMS ($300 per month), reporting ($200 per month), ads ($100 per month), a dedicated IP address ($500 per month), transactional email ($500 per month) and API integrations ($500 per month). There are also premium services, including inbound consulting ($350 per month), technical consulting ($650 per month) and marketing fundamentals training ($1,000 for a three-day in-person course).

Shortcomings

While HubSpot CRM has a lot of features, companies will have to upgrade to a paid plan for advanced functionality.

Screenshots

HubSpot Screenshot 1
HubSpot Screenshot 2
HubSpot Screenshot 3

About

HubSpot is the world’s leading provider of marketing automation and sales software. It was founded by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan in 2006 based on the realization that tried-and-true marketing tactics of the past (e.g., cold calls, direct mail, email blasts) weren’t effective anymore. HubSpot’s marketing automation tools includes integrated applications, such as social media, blogging, lead management, analytics, call-to-action search engine optimization and emails that enable companies to convert more visitors into qualified leads. Its mission is to make the world more inbound by transforming the way companies do marketing.

HubSpot filed for an IPO in August 2014 and got listed on the New York Stock Exchange with HUBS as its ticker symbol. Over 68,800 customers in more than 100 countries use HubSpot’s propriety technology to create personalized interactions with customers. HubSpot is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with offices in Singapore, Dublin, Sydney, Tokyo and Berlin.

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