Whether you are working in the marketing department of a big corporation, trying your hand at a tech start-up, or creating a small business, you will have come across software like HubSpot in one way or another.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that has tools and integrations that are needed for managing inbound marketing (including social media marketing and SEO), sales, lead generation, web analytics, customer service, and content initiatives needed in a business.
As an owner of nearly a third of the marketing automation market globally and considered the champions of inbound marketing, it is no wonder that HubSpot is the chosen platform for most businesses.
They also provide a ton of free resources (including a very comprehensive and detailed blog) and even have an online course on how to use HubSpot to its full potential in your business.
They also provide a free CRM to use which offers a lot of features and is easy to use however, many small businesses and start-ups never progress past the free plan as the monthly cost for more is just too expensive and so it is no wonder that business owners are in search of more cost-effective alternatives that offer the same value as HubSpot does without the exorbitant cost.
We have put together a summary of the pros and cons of keeping your CRM with HubSpot below:
HubSpot Pros
Free Stuff
The free CRM plan offered is quite generous in features and you have the ability to add an unlimited amount of users (which is really handy for a small business where a few people may need access as many people wear different hats) and you can also add up to a million contacts.
It allows you to integrate Gmail and Outlook, set up forms, newsletters and create goals and tasks for your team. The free online course and blog that was mentioned earlier in this article.
CRM Features
Through using their free plan you can see the complete activity of a given lead such as the source of the lead, which pages they visited etc. Sales pipelines and user journeys can also be set up and organized to track visitors to your site.
Support Services
HubSpot has put together a plethora of useful resources and their customer support agents are extremely helpful, responsive, and know what they are talking about. Their customer support is offered in 6 languages- English, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Mobile App Service And Integrations
As mentioned above, HubSpot is easily integrated with Gmail and Outlook, and other third-party applications. It also has a mobile app which makes doing business on the go that much simpler.
HubSpot Cons
Some Crucial CRM Features Missing
The CRM lacks the features to add in multiple contact details to a single customer and you cannot merge multiple subdomains of the same company onto the CRM.
Reporting features in the free trial are limited and very generalized. An add-on would need to be purchased at a monthly cost to create customized reports and multiple dashboards which are key critical to understanding customer behavior.
Recurring tasks cannot be scheduled. Meaning if you have daily or weekly tasks that need to be added to the Task Queues, you will have to manually add them- which is a deal-breaker for some. Tasks also do not sync with Google Calendar which is a real letdown because it defeats the purpose of having tasks.
Limited Templates
Although HubSpot does have a selection of landing pages and email templates, they are not the best around. There is an Asset Marketplace where you can purchase templates for landing pages and the like but seeing as you are already paying such a high fee for the plans it seems like a bit of a rip-off.
Price
Although the free CRM plan has a lot of useful functionality, there are some features missing. So if you want to move up to one of HubSpot’s paid plans, it can become really costly, very quickly. Even their starter plans are a massive extra expense for small businesses. If you want to access their pro features, you will need to pay even more and as stated earlier, any templates need to be purchased as monthly extras.
Some of the plans require a 12-month sign-up contract so you cannot just use it for a couple of months and cancel your subscription.
On top of that, there are very pricey onboarding fees- these are a once of cost but they will make a dent in the budget.
HubSpot may be the leader in CRM tools but it has its limitations and may not be all that it is cracked up to be. So what of alternatives to HubSpot?
Well, luckily, there are many all-in-one solutions available on the market that do not cost a fortune. The key is to know what exactly you are looking for and not pay additional fees for features you don’t actually require.
This article highlights several of those alternative products out there and are varied in their offerings and are all reasonably priced.
Aritic PinPoint – Stack Pricing Model Without The Crazy Price Tag
Aritic PinPoint offers a full-stack automation platform. This means that, like HubSpot, their pricing model is divided into different stacks.
The first stack “PinPoint ” is a complete marketing solution which covers everything on the front of automation features you need to design and implement the successful marketing automation campaigns that make the customer journey smooth, lead generation convenient, lead management easy, and transform leads into happy, returning customers.
The next stack “Sales” involves services around CRMs with deals, pipeline and stage management, task and project management, workflow automation, and scheduling. The third stack offered is “Desk” which is a platform used to manage ticket management, agent portal translations, real-time chat, time accounting, SLAs, and knowledge base management.
Though very similar to HubSpot in its offering, Arctic is more generous with the features included in their paid plans and is, therefore, better value for money overall.
Key features included in their offering include lead profiling, lead behavior tracking, segmentation of leads, and automation. All the expected email marketing, landing page, SMS, and social media campaigns are also included and offer transactional emails with over 50 themes included which is more than what HubSpot gives.
Where HubSpot Performs Better:
Intuitive and more user-friendly
Some of the software included with Aritic is not as intuitive as HubSpot’s and some of the elements and buttons are not easy to find. The user flow of their interface can feel clunky when comparing it to HubSpot.
Third-party app integrations
HubSpot has more native integrations than Aritic.
Why You Should Get Aritic PinPoint:
Impressive features and better value for money.
They have a free trial which you can try out and get demos of their different stack options.
GetResponse
Around for over 15 years, GetResponse are global experts in the field of inbound marketing, their reach extending to over 183 countries with their services available in 27 different languages.
What is unique about GetResponse is that they have Conversation Funnel, a feature added in 2019 which takes care of traffic generation meaning that you do not have to build your own sales funnel, they create it for you.
You can use their opt-in funnels to get new leads on your landing page, use their lead magnet funnels which share valuable content in exchange for an email address- thereby expanding your contacts.
Alternatively, you can make use of their sales funnels which promote, sell (as an online store) and deliver products online, effectively. Most uniquely is that you can use their webinar funnels which allow you to build free or paid webinars and connect with customers.
Depending on your needs, you can use a combination of or all of the features of the Conversation Funnel, and everything is automated so you do not have to do much heavy lifting.
With GetResponse’s Conversation Funnel you can use their pre-built templates to create landing pages, forms, emails and you can process payments through payment gateways such as Stripe, Square, or PayPal meaning that you can build an online store into the funnel.
There are over 180 responsive landing page templates which you can A/B test to get desired results and are available on all plans.
In terms of their plans, although the Pro Plan is on the pricey side, the features are a bit more advanced with a capacity for 1000 subscribers, a built-in CRM, and unlimited webinars and sales funnels. Also included in the Pro plan is the functionality to host a webinar with up to 300 attendees.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Free Plan
GetResponse does not do a free plan. Depending on what your needs are, using HubSpot’s free CRM is a good option.
Social Media Features Including SEO
HubSpot has far more to offer in terms of social media marketing but at a huge expense.
Why You Should Get GetResponse
Great for eCommerce businesses or if you are hosting webinars.
As far as automation and templates are concerned, GetResponse is a stellar option. Try their free trial here.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue launched almost 10 years ago and currently has over 80,000 users that send out over 100 million emails every single day. With Sendinblue you get all the usual suspects: a comprehensive CRM, email automation, transactional emails, SMS features, landing pages, and Facebook (Meta?) ads.
They offer a free plan, like HubSpot which offers unlimited contacts, a built-in CRM, marketing automation, and web tracking. But as with most things, it is all about what you get when you pay for it.
If you are just starting out or have a small business, Sendinblue offers a lot of the features HubSpot does but their paid plans are much much cheaper-instead of a canyon of distance in price between the free and first paid plan, with Sendinblue it is more like a small hop.
Sendinblue charges per email sent rather than per contact, making it an affordable solution for those companies with a massive contact base but only send a couple of emails out per month.
Sendinblue has an editor that is easy to use and is equipped with a wide selection of templates, even in the free plan (which HubSpot does not cater for in their free plan and to move up to the next plan in HubSpot, just for templates would be insane as the cost is just too high!).
As mentioned previously, Sendinblue does transactional emails which are all invoices, order notifications, sign-up emails. This is useful to keep track of orders sent out and who your contacts are. HubSpot does not offer this feature at all.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
CRM Features
If you are looking solely at CRM features, then HubSpot beats Sendinblue a thousand percent.
It’s true that Sendinblue has unique features like allowing you to assign different contacts to different users (making account management super easy) and set deadlines to tasks per each customer profile but HubSpot’s deal tracking and pipeline management features discussed earlier on are so much more streamlined and sophisticated.
Why You Should Get Sendinblue
If you are a business looking for an all-in-one solution that fits all your needs and into a tight budget, then Sendinblue is the one for you.
Sendinblue is the ideal solution for any eCommerce business that is starting out or working on a tight budget. You can sign up for their free plan here.
EngageBay
With its offering of email marketing, landing pages, live chat/helpdesk, appointment scheduling, contact management, and ticketing, EngageBay is a close match to HubSpot in terms of service offerings. As a bonus, it is also a user-friendly platform.
The free plan is almost identical to what HubSpot offers in terms of features but the contrast between EngageBay and HubSpot comes in with the differences in paid plan options.
EngageBay is reasonably priced especially for the number of features and services offered and what’s more, is that there are no extra onboarding costs associated with any of their plans.
EngageBay also allows you the capability to store as much information as you like in the form of notes, documents, email lead history, chat history with users, etc. which is a really useful tool to have if you want everything in one single place.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Contacts
In their free plan, HubSpot allows you to add up to a million contacts whereas EngageBay only allows you to add a thousand.
Integration
HubSpot has far more integration options available than EngageBay currently.
Why You Should Get EngageBay
If you are a startup or small-to-medium-sized business, EngageBay is an affordable all-in-one solution to marketing.
It is the most comprehensive offering out there and you can sign up for their free plan here.
Ontraport
Ontraport is a powerful and simplistic software that has become popular the world over serving thousands of businesses in over 60 countries across the globe. When you are building out your marketing strategy and campaigns, it can get a bit overwhelming.
You have to make sure you get emails, landing pages, forms, and social media adverts on point and keep on track with all your efforts.
That’s where Ontraport comes in. It allows you to integrate all of the above into complete, automated funnels, giving you a holistic view of all your marketing efforts and keeping track of which campaigns work and which do not.
They also include what feels like an unlimited list of free automation templates meaning you can create extremely specific in your automation by personalizing the buyer experience and user journey for each individual that visits your site.
They also have a large selection of responsive landing page templates which you can easily edit and conduct split tests on.
All this, plus any information on leads and existing customers are kept in their CRM. Additionally, any payment processing, order forms, coupon code information, recurring payments, and cart abandonment, and sales automation are all available with Ontraport.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Language availability
HubSpot is available in and supports 6 languages with support teams covering these regions. Ontraport on the other hand is only available in English and Spanish currently.
Dashboard interface
The Ontraport dashboard is quite clunky and is not very visually appealing as it does not have any graphs or charts.
Why You Should Get Ontraport
With all its features, it is a good value for money even though it is not the cheapest alternative to HubSpot on this list. If you are looking for software that allows you to set up affiliate programs, then Ontraport is the software for you.
They offer a free 14-day trial which is an easy setup and you get free use of all Ontraport’s best features. Try it here.
Freshworks
Freshworks is a sales and marketing multi-suite platform that comes with everything from customer service and live chat to CRM and marketing automation.
When compared against HubSpot, Freshworks has a simpler pricing structure and the price gaps between plans are not that big and they have a free plan for those small businesses or startups just starting.
Freshworks has a ticketing service, Freshdesk, which is a really useful tool to use to respond to queries and questions from users of your services, and their comprehensive CRM system is fully customizable and has an easy-to-use interface complete with a drag and drop pipeline view.
This option gives you the relevant information you need at a single glance and includes tags such as “At risk” and “Warm Lead” which allows you to categorize your potential leads. Leads are given scores which allows for further analysis on which users to focus on, on a deeper level.
Another feature included with Freshworks is the ability to use AI Chatbots to interact with visitors to your website in real-time. Additionally, you can capture visitor information using customizable Web Forms and get to know your visitors through tracking actions and page visits on your site.
Freshworks also offers 24×5 support and a mobile app, like HubSpot, even on the free plan.
There are three plans to choose from with Freshworks: Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Customer-For-Life. Customer-For-Life is a combination of Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud and is a good deal price-wise and allows you to add up to 1000 contacts.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Reports
HubSpot offers detailed reports which are available on their free plan, whereas Freshworks does not offer reporting features on their free plan.
Contacts
HubSpot offers a million contacts which are very generous in comparison to Freshworks’ 1000.
Why You Should Get Freshworks
It is a reasonably priced CRM software suitable for small businesses just starting out. However, it is recommended to go for the Customer-For-Life plan as you will get a ton of features to help grow your business at no extra cost than the monthly fee.
This reasonably priced software is available for free- check it out here.
Zoho CRM
Zoho’s known for its more popular services which include email hosting, CRM software, and website creation, is a very good alternative to HubSpot. It will also offer you accounting software so you can keep track of transactions, customer service, and project management software which is great to keep track of tasks relating to customers.
Zoho allows you to add 3 users for free on their free plan and when you upgrade to one of their reasonably priced paid plans, you can add the features you need and only pay for those features accordingly.
Zoho is best suited for an agile way of working as the CRM has 3 different views, whereas HubSpot only has 2, Zphp’s view includes a kanban project management style view, canvas, and tubular view which can be used to manage contacts, leads, accounts, and deals.
It boasts a unique “Activities” section which allows you to filter by activity type to manage tasks and projects effectively. There are many filters to choose from which allows for an effective and efficient way to search for things.
Zoho also generates a wide range of reports and the analytics section is extremely detailed and easy to interpret. The dashboard is also customizable, as with HubSpot.
Where HubSpot Performs bBetter
Support
Hubspot offers live chat support that has rapid response times, Zoho does not offer support like this.
Features and look and feel
Features like SMS marketing split testing, and event management are not offered on Zoho CRM. Zoho is a little less easy to navigate than HubSpot but not massively
You Should Get Zoho CRM Because
It is suitable for businesses- small and big alike. There are no setup fees and pay for what you need pricing model makes for a great alternative to HubSpot. Try Zoho CRM for free here.
ActiveCampaign
As far as email marketing tools are concerned, ActiveCampaign is the best of the best. The most notable feature of ActiveCampaign is the automation feature which allows you to automate follow-up marketing campaigns.
Email automations also have an extremely high deliverability rate-making marketing campaigns easy as pie. It also allows you to edit multiple conditions and many more CRM-focused activities all within their user-friendly flowchart-style editor.
Their robust CRM system is a wonderful tool to make automating assigned tasks between sales and marketing teams a swift and effective exercise. The interface features a simple drag and drops card-based pipeline which is similar to project management tools like Trello.
Other features included as part of ActiveCampaign include the lead/contact scoring feature which is essentially a number that goes up or down based on how contacts interact with your business. Their Plus plan offers a landing page editor and a modest offering of templates.
If you do not require a CRM system or landing page editor and only need to focus on email marketing, automation, reporting, and support then you can get away with paying a relatively small fee for the service offerings- by contrast, if you were wanting to extract the same value out of HubSpot you would have to pay way more for the less of the same.
If you are an ecommerce business and are interested in data integrations, ActiveCampaign allows you to import oders into your account and is available at the morment for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Square. When looking at them side by-side, ActiveCampaign’s standard reporting features far surpass that of HubSpot’s.
The type of reports available with ActiveCampaign include campaign, automation, contact trend metric reports (which basically allows you to track your contacts’ growth over a time period), conversation reports (these are linked to live chat and email support features respectively) as well as goal-based reports where you can measure your own progress on certain metrics.
Depending on your type of business, ecommerce reports are also available.
What is glorious about ActiveCampaign is that it allows you to sync calendar tasks from Google, Outlook and Apple Calendars so that tasks show up within the CRM which is something unavailable with HupSpot currently.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
More robust dashboard customization features.
Although this feature is really expensive to purchase with HubSpot, ActiveCampaign has very limited dashboard customization capabilities.
HubSpot offers a free plan whereas ActiveCampaign does not.
However, all things considered, ActiveCampaigns cost is really low considering all the features that are included in it.
You Should Get ActiveCampaign If
You have an ecommerce business as you can personalize your email marketing based on purchasing and order data behavior and see when and why users abandoned shopping carts.
All business sizes can benefit from the premium features included in ActiveCampaign’s affordable starter plan.
In summary, ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one marketing solution with better automations and reporting without the exorbitant cost. If you are interested in ActiveCampaign, there is a free trial available.
Wishpond
With their simple and modern aesthetic, Wishpond is an all-in-one marketing solution like no other and is a great alternative to HubSpot.
The Canadian company offers a user-friendly platform that allows you to create landing pages, pop-ups and even social media contests along with email marketing, automation software and a CRM.
While the templates from HubSpot are a little lackluster, the ones Wishpond has on offer are simple and modern and are also really easy to set up.
Even though Wishpond is not as cheap as some of the other HubSpot alternatives on the list, they are still a cheaper alternative to HubSpot with the same features.
You can get unlimited landing pages, social contests, pop-up, email campaigns, marketing automation, 1000 leads, and unlimited user account access in their “Starting Out” plan.
You can also trial each type of their plans for 14-days without commitment to decide if Wishpond is the software you need.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Free Plan
Wishpond does not have a free plan like HubSpot and their “Starting Out” plan is not as cheap as some of HubSpot’s offerings.
Mobile App
Wishpond does not have a mobile app currently and this may be something you require depending on how your business operates.
You Should Get Pipedrive If
You need a sustainable solution for a growing business on a tight budget as you will get access to a ton of CRM features without having to pay the same price points as with HubSpot.
The CRM software is directed primarily towards sales teams and is a great tool for small-to-medium businesses. Paired with this bevy of customization options and dashboard features is an easy-to-use and navigate interface, making this a great alternative to HubSpot.
Honestly, there really aren’t many differences between the two- both have wonderful features and capabilities especially in regards to reporting and support.
The real difference comes in with the pricing of the plans- Pipedrive is far more reasonably priced compared to HubSpot. With Pipedrive, you also have the option to pay for a single user and then pay incrementally for more users as you grow as a business. Pipedrive also offers discounts if you pay annually.
Where HubSpot performs better:
Free Plan
HubSpot’s free plan provides forms and landing pages as well as email features such as conversations inbox where users can view, manage and reply to conversations from customers in one place. So if you are looking for those solutions and are not in the position to spend money, then HubSpot trumps Pipedrive here.
Integrations
HubSpot offers a wider variety of direct integrations with third-party tools.
You should get Pipedrive if:
You need a sustainable solution for a growing business on a tight budget as you will get access to a ton of CRM features without having to pay the same price points as with HubSpot.
Pipedrive is easy to use and is comprehensive. When put head-to-head against HubSpot, it pretty much covers all the bases you would want in a CRM software, but without the exorbitant cost. Pipedrive has a free 14-day trial so if you are interested, check it out here.
Drip
Since launching 8 years ago in 2013, Drip has quickly become a favorite in the sales and marketing industry. Drip’s key focus is on the “human side of eCommerce” and so it only makes sense that they have attracted over 6,500 eCommerce customers to use their software.
Advanced automation is Drip’s key feature to their offerings. They have an automation workflow editor which is well-designed and flexible to your needs.
With Drip you can build any type of automation to fit your needs and you can include a host of triggers such as link clicks, page views, tags assigned, or tracking purchases in your online store. The interface makes use of icons and bright colors making it fun to use as well.
While you can customize your automation until you are blue in the face, their eCommerce automation is the shining star of all their offerings. With this automation, you can not only set up abandoned cart automation but you can trigger the automation that shows you when customers create a checkout basket without necessarily completing the checkout.
This gives you a lot of information on which products, deals, and time of the month customers are wanting to buy items. This feature may also bring insight as to why they are not completing the checkout process.
Another feature that is unique to Drip is their tagging system which allows you to categorize your contacts with characteristics or filters such as the source of the lead, if they are an existing customer or whether they visited only specific pages on your site. Then you have the option to apply these tags through Drip’s “Rules” function or in an automation workflow.
For example, you can tag leads that have visited a specific page and then set it up so that a specific marketing campaign is sent directly to these customers.
Additionally, all your contact data is stored within the eCommerce CRM and Drip assigns a single lead score to each contact, giving you a sense of a potential customer’s engagement on your site and how likely they are to purchase through your online store.
Where HubSpot Performs Better
Spam and design testing
Although Hubspot also does not include spam testing (i.e. whether or not your marketing campaigns will go to a customer’s spam), they do have the capability to test your design on a host of email clients.
You Should Get Drip If
You are looking for a solution for your eCommerce business. Drip’s direct integrations with third parties and automation for the most intricate and minute triggers will save you a lot of time and potentially help you make more money.
Drip has a free trial that you can access and their plans are reasonably priced if you are interested in extending your trial.
The Bottom Line
To summarize, if you are looking for the best software for automation, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, or Ontraport are the best for you. If you are looking for user-friendly tools that still offer the best features then try out Freshworks, EngageBay, Pipedrive, or Drip.
If you need a solution that works well on a tight budget then Freshworks, Zoho, EngageBay, Pipedrive, or Sendinblue will work best for you.
Choosing the right solution for your business can be daunting and hopefully, this list has helped you in making your decision on which software is the best alternative to HubSpot; not only in terms of price but also in terms of features too.
Hi, my name is Mark Matthews, and I help to run several businesses through managing their mailing services.
I have a clear and good understanding of what a company or person should consider when choosing between options. I also have a lot of experience when it comes to managing businesses in general, from the best organizational and scheduling apps to use, to teaching owners how to create engaging emails.
