HubSpot is a widely used sales and marketing platform that’s had a grip on the market for years. But, its costly pricing has left many businesses searching for HubSpot alternatives.
Despite the toolbox of features HubSpot boasts, many small and medium-sized businesses can’t justify the high cost of HubSpot’s paid plans. Without the staff and time to maximize many aspects of HubSpot’s platform, you just might not get your money’s worth.
If you’re looking for a HubSpot alternative to help you automate your marketing processes and streamline sales, this list is for you. We’ve broken down the eight top HubSpot competitors and how they can benefit your business. We also crunched the numbers on HubSpot’s ambiguous pricing structure, and here’s what we found relating to what HubSpot really costs.
Before we dive into our top HubSpot alternatives, let’s see what HubSpot is really about and why businesses might look for other options. HubSpot consists of a marketing automation solution, a customer relationship management (CRM), a content management system (CMS), and a help desk solution. Some of their standout features include:
A visual automation builder
Cross-property reporting
A complete blogging suite
Ad automation
Sequences, which is their sales email automation tool
HubSpot has always been good at providing an intuitive platform for growth-minded digital marketers. They have historically been a leading brand in the inbound marketing world, and the marketing aspects of the software certainly reflect that. Their marketing automation software and reporting functions are still some of the best on the market.
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Reasons why businesses are choosing HubSpot alternatives
Despite these benefits, there are several reasons why some companies may look for other options:
Pricing: Each of HubSpot’s tools can be purchased individually, and a number of them are actually free to get started with. However, getting started with their Marketing Hub costs $50/month. Their highest listed price for the Marketing Hub is $3,600/month for the enterprise plan. After that, it’s custom pricing plus contracts and high onboarding fees.
Limited features: While HubSpot’s marketing features are world-class, its other segments are lacking. The free tools are very limited, for instance. Unlocking basic marketing capabilities costs $15/month per user. To unlock more advanced email automation for sales, it’s an increase of around 50 times that—$800/month for up to three users.
Report limitations: Reporting is crucial for any marketer who wants to see whether their strategies are working.Other things that the free and Starter HubSpot plans don’t offer include campaign and custom reporting. The reporting dashboards are also limited to 10 on Starter plans.
User interface challenges: HubSpot’s interface may be challenging for newcomers to CRM software, with many advanced features hidden behind paywalls, limiting usability.
Misreported activity: Integration issues have led to instances of misreported activity, particularly with integrated tools, potentially impacting data accuracy and analysis.
The 8 top HubSpot alternatives
Now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s take a look at the best HubSpot competitors we’ve found:
1. Nutshell
Nutshell is a CRM-first solution that has focused on adding a powerful suite of sales automation and sales engagement features in recent years. Its native email marketing automation tool, Nutshell Campaigns, allows users to design and send email blasts, newsletters, and drip sequences and create audiences with the help of Nutshell’s impressive filtering features.
Nutshell’s other standout features include:
A user-friendly interface that is intuitive to learn without extensive training
Nutshell’s powerful pipeline management lets marketers and sales reps simplify their workday by automating email marketing campaigns, lead advancement, and much more. Reviewers say that Nutshell is super easy to learn and that the software’s ease of use helps convince sales teams to adopt Nutshell more readily than other solutions.
Who should use Nutshell?
Comparing Nutshell with HubSpot makes it easy to see why it is a solid alternative. Growth-focused sales teams will find Nutshell helpful in improving their sales process, while marketing teams will find Nutshell’s marketing features excellent for covering the email marketing basics while staying in sync with their sales team.
Nutshell pricing
Nutshell also starts at just $16/month per user. With access to several types of reports, email automation features, and the ability to send up to 150 Nutshell Campaigns marketing emails for free every month, you get excellent value on just the Foundation plan.
For greater customization and sales automation features, businesses can opt for the Nutshell Growth plan at only $25/month per user.
The next plan up, Nutshell Pro, costs just $42/month per user and includes up to 5 customizable sales pipelines, unlimited click-to-call and phone recordings, advanced sales reports and user permissions, more sales automation features, and Nutshell scheduler.
You can also enjoy significant discounts when paying annually. Nutshell Campaigns is a tiered add-on that starts at $5/month for up to 100 contacts.
See how HubSpot pulls a bait and switch with their pricing model. Check out the real price of HubSpot.
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ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation-first solution. It seeks to help the customer-centric company grow further with a CRM and customer support offering rolled in.
Some of the noteworthy features ActiveCampaign boasts are:
Automating SMS messages as well as email
Automated win probabilities and lead scoring for contacts
Sales process management
A/B testing in automated marketing campaigns
Multi-touch attribution
Birds-eye view mapping of your complete automation system
What ActiveCampaign does well
ActiveCampaign excels in its marketing automation functionality. The fact that it includes a feature enabling you to take a birds-eye view of how all your automations interact at once is honestly incredible. As a marketing automation expert, this particular feature captured my heart during the demo.
The automation builder is also a very easy-to-use visual drag-and-drop tool that enables A/B testing within automations—something HubSpot does not offer.
Who should use ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is a top-notch option for marketing automation nerds who already have a good landing page and CMS solution. However, ActiveCampaign’s sales automation lacks the ability to auto-drip emails to contacts from work emails.
ActiveCampaign pricing
Price may also be a concern for some businesses, as ActiveCampaign’s marketing plans start at $15/month per user for up to 1,000 contacts.
3. EngageBay
EngageBay explicitly seeks to provide small businesses and entrepreneurs with the same kind of all-in-one marketing system that HubSpot provides to larger companies. They feature a CRM, a marketing automation solution, and a help desk offering. Some noteworthy features include:
A landing page builder that includes a drag-and-drop editor
Automated SMS marketing sends
Social media automation, with monitoring abilities
Predictive lead scoring
An easy-to-use visual automation builder
What EngageBay does well
EngageBay’s pricing is impressive. For businesses with small marketing budgets, it’s really out there doing the work for less.
Who should use EngageBay?
Engagebay is a solid option for experienced digital marketers with tiny budgets. EngageBay means you don’t have to settle for limited EMS functionality when you can make use of so much more.
EngageBay pricing
EngageBay’s basic marketing plan for $12.74/user/month with up to 500 contacts, with plans increasing from there. As a result, though, EngageBay’s feature set is often lighter than some users expect.
4. Drip
Drip is a fairly unique take on growth software. Its foundation is a B2C CRM best suited to service e-commerce marketing teams. The CRM and marketing automation systems are not as clearly defined from each other as other growth software solutions. Drip sees itself not as a suite but as a single solution that gathers contact data, customizes your storefront to that data, and then engages the customer where they are with email, SMS, and social media outreach.
Beyond the unusual perspective, Drip offers several notable features, such as:
Funneling your data from across your tech stack (like your Shopify store) into Drip, where you can analyze it all in one place.
Automating social media ads that complement campaigns you’re running, or pages the contact has just viewed.
Workflow split testing allows you to test not just email versions against each other, but different content types, like an email vs an ad.
Utilizing tracking events to trace your contacts’ behaviors
What Drip does well
Without question, Drip does e-commerce well. With more than 90 integrations, many of which can be reported on right from Drip’s dashboard, it’s easy to keep a singular view of your e-commerce business and personalize your store’s marketing efforts.
Who should use Drip?
Growth-focused e-commerce marketers with a holistic view of the customer journey will find Drip to be a great tool.
Drip pricing
Drip starts at $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts. Listed pricing caps out at $1,999/month for up to 180,000 contacts.
5. Ontraport
Ontraport is focused on providing a simple solution to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. The solution has a foundation of marketing automation with a CRM, a CMS, and an online payment processor built-in.
Some of their standout features include:
A membership site feature that enables you to run a subscription-based business.
Email and SMS automation
Drag-and-drop builder for website pages
Automate responses to your text messages based on keywords
Sales task automation
What Ontraport does well
For small businesses that don’t want to pay for multiple pieces of software, Ontraport is a solid all-in-one solution. Customers love that it provides broad functionality to help them get their businesses off the ground.
Who should use Ontraport?
A small team that doesn’t need deep functionality on any of Ontraport’s software types will find it very useful to center all their data in a single location.
Ontraport pricing
Ontraport’s Basic plan starts at $24/month for up to 500 contacts. Their highest established price is $524/month for their Enterprise plan for up to 10,000 contacts. After that, it’s custom pricing.
6. Brevo
Brevo bills itself as an easy-to-use marketing software system focused on SMBs (though they do have an enterprise offering). Its foundation is an email marketing system, though it features some lite marketing automation features and a CRM and customer chat. Its notable features include:
Automate retargeting ads.
Create landing pages and forms within SendinBlue
Send SMS messages with dynamic content
Drag-and-drop form builder
Quick set up for the CRM
What Brevo does well:
Brevo’s basic capabilities are great at helping beginners advance their digital marketing skills. It’s a well-priced solution that even expert marketers find useful to get the job done.
Who should use Brevo?
Brevo is an excellent growth marketing solution for a business without a dedicated marketer. Its ease of use makes it ideal for a marketing beginner to get a business rolling on modern digital marketing practices.
Brevo pricing
Brevo offers a free plan for up to 300 emails sent per day. Paid plans start at $8.08/month for up to 5,000 emails sent in a month. Their highest established price is $602.08/month for 1,000,000 emails sent per month.
7. Keap
Built by the people at Infusionsoft, Keap is a CRM-first growth software designed for SMBs. Notable features include:
Sales pipeline automation
The ability to send customers quotes
Send SMS messages from the CRM
Smartforms that make adding contact information easy
What Keap does well
Unsurprisingly, Keap’s CRM functions are its best offering. Solopreneurs in reviews mention that Keap works great as a secretary.
Who should use Keap?
SMBs with a sales team but no marketing person will find Keap a useful tool to set up some marketing functions for the company.
Keap pricing
Keap starts at $224/month for two users and 1,500 contacts. Its established prices for up to 2 users top out at $526/month, which includes up to 26,500 contacts.
8. Pipedrive CRM
Pipedrive CRM is a popular choice utilized by companies globally, offering an intuitive interface and robust sales management features. Notable features include:
Email sync
Email automation
One-click calling
What Pipedrive CRM does well
Designed by salespeople for salespeople, Pipedrive’s intuitive interface and customizable features facilitate efficient sales management. Users praise its thorough reporting capabilities and ability to effectively manage multiple contacts, projects, and workflows.
Who should use Pipedrive CRM?
Pipedrive is ideal for those seeking straightforward sales management. Its user-friendly interface and essential features make it suitable for businesses of any size. It helps sales teams reach their goals smoothly.
Pipedrive CRM pricing
Pipedrive offers a basic Essential plan for $14.00 per month per user, but you’ll need the Professional plan, which costs $49/month per user, to unlock the essential features necessary for effective CRM usage.
Criteria for selecting the best HubSpot substitutes
We compiled a list of core comparison criteria to determine the best software options worthy of our HubSpot alternatives list. These are the factors we felt were most important when looking for a great sales and marketing CRM solution:
User experience: Software that’s easy to implement and use CRM is an absolute must, as it leads to greater sales, marketing, and service success, as well as improved team adoption.
Pricing structure: Any alternative considered should be priced competitively according to the overall sales and marketing CRM market and offer a good selection of features for the price advertised.
Functionality: A HubSpot substitute must at least provide the absolute essential marketing and sales features, such as email sync, sales automation, lead management, email sequences, and reporting tools.
Reporting and analytics: Candidate applications should offer more than basic sales activity reports or at least allow users to access more advanced reporting and analytics at a reasonable cost.
Mobile accessibility: We looked for solutions with mobile applications on iOS and Android that would add value for teams on the go.
Customer support: A company’s level of customer support can make or break your customer experience, which is why we opted for CRM platforms with top-tier support and service-related reviews.
Scalability: We tried to source CRM solutions that allow you to expand the functionality you need as your business grows, eliminating the need to switch CRMs at a later stage.
Which HubSpot alternative should you choose?
When choosing an alternative to HubSpot, the best strategy is to look for the features you need. HubSpot may try to sell you add-ons and capabilities your business doesn’t really need, increasing your cost and weighing your platform down with additional tools. But plenty of options won’t do that, ensuring you only pay for what you’ll actually use.
While your company’s needs are the top priority, remember that HubSpot also provides a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, sales automation, and a customer support tool in addition to its marketing automation features. The best substitutes will streamline collaboration between marketers, salespeople, and support teams.
Here are a few additional features to consider when comparing HubSpot alternatives:
Frequently asked questions about HubSpot and possible alternatives
These FAQs might provide some additional information that can help you choose the best HubSpot substitute for your team:
Is HubSpot worth it?
Whether HubSpot is worth it depends on your company’s needs and budget. For many—if not most—small to mid-sized businesses, HubSpot’s inflated prices and features are just unnecessary.
What platforms are similar to HubSpot?
Many email marketing and CRM platforms on the market are comparable to HubSpot while being much more affordable. Each option is designed to meet different needs, although Nutshell offers robust email marketing tools along with its CRM for lead nurturing and pipeline management.
Is there a better CRM than HubSpot?
When it comes to usability, affordability, and power, Nutshell is a better CRM than HubSpot. With unlimited contacts and data storage, advanced automation, affordable pricing, and free live customer support in every subscription, Nutshell is one of the best CRM options on the market. Compare the two platforms to see for yourself!
Is HubSpot an ERP or CRM?
HubSpot is a CRM platform, not an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tool. However, HubSpot can communicate with a company’s ERP system via an ERP-CRM integration.
A CRM connects sales, marketing, and service teams, allowing them to manage and share information through a central database. An ERP connects the entire company, helping leadership better manage and control its business operations in various areas.
Is the free HubSpot worth it?
HubSpot’s free plan offers users basic tools with limitations. These are fine for a freelancer or solopreneur starting out, but as your business grows, you’ll soon need more robust solutions and fewer restrictions.
Starting with HubSpot’s free plan may seem like a win because it won’t cost you anything—until you need more features and functionality. Then, it can become incredibly costly.
What is HubSpot CRM best for?
HubSpot is best suited to enterprise-level businesses with a significant CRM budget and the need for sales, marketing, and customer service integration in one platform.
Choose a powerful CRM and email marketing combo
Whether you’re looking for a CRM-first or email marketing-first solution, there’s a good option for every growth-minded company in these top HubSpot alternatives. And while you’re here, start a free trial of Nutshell to see our email marketing and sales automation features in action.
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