Who Are the Competitors for HubSpot? 5 Promising Alternatives to HubSpot

A powerful CRM can be transformative for sales and marketing teams. It can help increase visibility and efficiency. It can lead to more sales. And it can even help improve your customer retention and forecasting.

Given the added value of a powerful CRM, it’s no surprise that there are seemingly countless platforms available on the market. Within the broad field of CRM and marketing automation solutions, there is one company that leads when it comes to name recognition: HubSpot.

Of course, HubSpot’s popularity doesn’t mean it’s the definitive best solution for every business. In fact, for many businesses, it may be wise to explore alternatives to HubSpot. Popular alternatives include:

1. Marketo
2. Salesforce
3. Adobe Marketing Cloud
4. Act-On
5. Wishpond

Here’s what you need to know about selecting the best CRM for your unique needs — plus overviews of some of the best alternatives to HubSpot:

Why companies choose HubSpot

It’s no fluke that HubSpot is one of the most trusted and widely-used CRMs. As an all-in-one growth tool, it’s one of the only CRM solutions on the market that can be used to connect your sales, run digital marketing, host your website, and help grow your brand all at the same time. 

HubSpot includes all the standard features you’d expect in a CRM solution. It offers inbound marketing automation software services with tools for social media marketing, web analytics, content management, and search engine optimization. It is also designed to help manage the full lifecycle of every customer, from lead to closed sale and beyond.

Further, HubSpot regularly introduces new value-adding features. Recent additions include:

• A revenue attribution feature that enables marketers to get credit for driving growth.
• Adaptive testing that empowers you to use AI to optimize conversion paths.
• Partitioning to ensure every user has access to the content they need.

With all these rich features, it’s unsurprising that so many companies select HubSpot as their CRM of choice. The tool’s shallow learning curve, extensive educational resources, intuitive design, and its ability to grow with your business make it a popular choice for any business seeking a powerful tool they can leverage without becoming a tech expert.

Why companies consider alternatives to HubSpot

Even though HubSpot is a great choice for many businesses, it isn’t the only option on the market — or even the best one, depending on your requirements. HubSpot has a number of pitfalls that can make it a suboptimal product for your business. Smaller businesses and startups in particular may find that HubSpot doesn’t fit their needs well. 

One major issue is that HubSpot can be quite expensive, and the platform’s contracts are binding. Even if you realize you don’t need the plan you signed up for, you can’t downgrade after the fact.

Another issue is that HubSpot’s reporting features leave a lot to be desired. Given the price of HubSpot’s software, you’d expect some of the best reports out there. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. If you want to make the most of your HubSpot data, you need to invest in an integration solution like Actiondesk that gives you greater flexibility to build custom HubSpot reports and dashboards — and compare side-by-side data from various sources.

What to consider when choosing a CRM solution

Depending on your needs, you may be inclined to find out: “Who are the competitors for HubSpot?” A few things to keep in mind when choosing your marketing automation software include: your budget, your company size, and your goals. It’s important to select a solution that fits your budget while offering the features you need most — without overloading you with features you’ll never use.

Who are the competitors for HubSpot?

1. Marketo 

Website: https://www.marketo.com/

Marketo is the software that is most frequently compared to HubSpot. Both products have high customer satisfaction ratings, strong reputations, and similar features. The biggest difference between the two is that Marketo was first created as a B2B enterprise solution. Even though B2C and mid-sized companies use the solution now, those roots are still apparent.

Strengths: 

• Extensive, customizable email marketing campaign tools
• Robust A/B email testing
• A highly engaged user community for troubleshooting
• Powerful mobile marketing tools
• Top-notch customer service

Drawbacks: 

• The solution’s more advanced tools and analytics options demand IT knowledge that smaller companies may not have
• It’s an expensive option due to its bundled pricing options

Pricing:

Marketo no longer lists prices on their website, but the last available numbers show prices ranging from $895-$3,195 per month. You can request a quote by contacting Marketo directly. 

2. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Website: https://www.salesforce.com/products/sales-cloud/overview/ 

Salesforce Sales Cloud is another top-tier HubSpot competitor. Like HubSpot, it tries to appeal to businesses of all sizes with a variety of pricing packages that offer quality features. While Salesforce delivers a huge number of features, taking advantage of them can be tricky without the right expertise. However, if you do have a Salesforce expert on your team, this platform can be a great choice.

Strengths: 

• Clear visualizations of your pipeline
• Good lead and contact management capabilities
• Automation of time-consuming admin tasks
• Great app marketplace 
• Detailed reporting and forecasting

Drawbacks: 

• Steep learning curve that can be overwhelming for those without CRM experience
• A cluttered and complicated knowledge base
• Unlocking full features can become pricey

Pricing: 

Sales Cloud has four tiered pricing plans. These plans run from $25 per user, per month to $300 per user, per month.

3. Adobe Marketing Cloud 

Website: http://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud.html

Adobe’s marketing automation solution is simple, but powerful. The program advertises eight unique solutions to help you support customers: Analytics, Audience Manager, Campaign, Experience Manager, Media Optimizer, Primetime, Social, and Target.

Strengths:

• Cross-channel marketing in a user-friendly format
• Highly customizable 
• Extensive support and educational resources
• Strong email marketing capabilities
• Seamless workflows across teams

Drawbacks: 

• There’s no bulk social media posting functionality
• Problematic analytics tool that truncates results 
• Doesn’t integrate well with other services

Pricing:

You need to contact Adobe for a quote, but the product is geared toward enterprises and its pricing reflects that.

4. Act-On 

Website: https://www.act-on.com/

Act-On is a good HubSpot competitor for small and mid-sized businesses looking for powerful CRM features at a lower price point. The tool delivers on its promise of helping you spend less time on the mechanics of marketing so you can spend more time focusing on customers and results. Act-On’s goal is to bring you the kind of all-in-one solution you get with HubSpot at a more reasonable price, making it one of the strongest HubSpot competitors.

Strengths: 

• Great, dependable customer service
• Flexible pricing 
• Intuitive experience that requires minimal IT knowledge
• API functionality across price tiers

Drawbacks: 

• The landing page builder can be challenging
• No social media insights or statistics 
• Template forms are dated

Pricing: 

The Professional Plan starts at $900 per month. The Enterprise Plan starts at $2,000 per month.

5. Wishpond 

Website: https://www.wishpond.com/

Wishpond may be a newer solution, but it’s quickly establishing itself as a serious HubSpot competitor. Wishpond describes itself as four tools in one: landing pages, pop-ups and forms, contests and promos, and marketing automation. Plus, Wishpond offers some unique products including Shopify marketing and payment tool integration. It’s designed to help you grow your business with ease — without any coding. 

Strengths: 

• Easy and intuitive with no technical knowledge required
• Attentive customer service (Wishpond can assist with setup) 
• Integrates with more than 30 popular marketing platforms
• Budget-friendly

Drawbacks: 

• Doesn’t host your website
• Templates are limited in terms of flexibility and can be difficult to customize 
• Designed more for marketers than for sales teams

Pricing: 

Finding information on Wishpond pricing can be a challenge — you’ll need to schedule a meeting with a representative to get a quote. 

Improving visibility into your data

Your CRM should help you improve visibility into your sales pipeline, boost productivity, and maximize the impact of your marketing efforts. Investing in a cloud-based data integration tool like Actiondesk ensures you enjoy all these benefits no matter which CRM you choose.

Actiondesk empowers you to leverage your data to better understand your sales funnel, your business growth, the effectiveness of your marketing, and much more. The solution marries the functionality of a cutting-edge BI tool with the user-friendly interface of a spreadsheet. Actiondesk enables you to automatically integrate data from multiple disconnected data sources — including HubSpot and many others — to help you achieve more meaningful insights. Even better, once you’ve integrated your CRM data into Actiondesk, your dashboards and reports will be automatically updated whenever any changes are made in the original data source. 

Try Actiondesk for free today to start making the most of your CRM data.