Hi, and welcome to my Hubspot CRM review 2023 – What is hubspot, and should you use it?
In this review, I will focus on what hubspot is, the hubspot starter suite (since that's the plan I have tested and used), and discuss hubspot prices.
I will try to make this a short review, but I don't think it's possible. Hubspot is one of the largest CRM providers; the foremost problem is that they offer so much more. a Everything from marketing to creating your webpages using their own CMS systems ( like WordPress), but this system is integrated with their marketing hub, meaning when a visitor enters your homepage, hubspot can choose to show the landing page they believe that customer would be most interested in. So, this is going to be a long, short review.
Key Takeaways:
Hubspot has over 194.000 customers around the globe
Hubspot offers six hubs. These are the Marketing, sales, service, CMS, operation, and commerce hub. They offer seven since all these hubs are built as extra on their CRM system.
They have an academy where you can get certified in their products.
More than 1500 apps you can connect
Award-winning multiple times
Offer a lifetime free version. Including free crm tool, content management setup for marketing teams and best of all you get hubspot free.
CRM suite starter starts at $20 monthly and includes parts from marketing, sales, service, CMC, operation, and commerce hubs. NOTE: Some features are not available in all the hubs, but if you run a small/ medium business and only need a maximum of 2 people working with the Hubspot platform, then it's a great deal
If you need more expensive. Their business professional package costs $800 monthly and targets medium to larger companies.
You can check their prices here.
What is the HubSpot CRM short version?
HubSpot CRM is a platform for managing customer relationships that offer a wide range of features for sales, marketing, and customer service teams. Its primary purpose is to assist businesses in handling their customer relationships and enhancing their marketing strategies. This platform provides tools for lead generation, contact management, email marketing, and analytics.
Through HubSpot CRM, businesses can generate leads from sources. Directly store them in the system. Users can easily. Manage all their contacts with information and interaction history. The email marketing capabilities enable automated communication with leads and customers to cultivate relationships and drive conversions.
Furthermore, HubSpot CRM grants access to analytics. They are reporting features that allow businesses to assess the success of their marketing campaigns and sales efforts. With dashboard reporting templates and data visualization tools on the platform, gaining insights into performance becomes effortless, enabling data-driven decision-making.
“HubSpot CRM serves as a solution that streamlines business sales and marketing processes.”
Pricing and Plans
Hubspot has, as mentioned, many plans and add-ons.
The Free Plan: The free plan is free, and it's for life. So, if you want to test it and play around before buying, this is perfect for you.
The CRM suite starter starts at $20 per month. This is the one I use for one of my companies. It's perfect for small – to medium-sized companies looking for an easy and powerful CRM with marketing options and some extras. Two seats are included, meaning you can have two different logins to hubspot/2 people working simultaneously.
The Professional and Enterprise Plans: For businesses that require more, hubspot offers a professional deal at $1600. This is for the CRM professional bundle. You can customize your plan based on what you need. That's why CRM starter suite is brilliant. You start there and just upgrade once you know what you need.
How does Hubspot work, and their features
Hubspot features are industry-leading. As mentioned, you have the CRM, which is the heart of their product. The CRM system then has six hubs or extra products you can use to improve the total experience and workflow of the CRM system. This is where hubspot becomes powerful and one of the best CRM software. I will now dive into these six extra hubs, but before I do that, I want to mention that you can use their CRM system as a standalone. One feature you get from CRM that you can use in their free version is CRM, which stands for customer relationship management, a software system designed to help businesses manage and nurture their relationships with customers.
In the past, businesses kept customer contact information scattered across sources, like business cards, email records, and spreadsheets. However, as companies grow and evolve, it becomes crucial to have a database that consolidates all customer information
When your team is not aligned and lacks an understanding of your customers' needs and preferences, it can cause frustration for prospects and existing customers. They see themselves interacting with a company rather than different individuals or departments. Therefore, everyone on your team needs access to context about each customer's requirements, desires, and current status to continue conversations seamlessly.
< UNK> Having one centralized platform to organize all lead and customer details enables your team to gain insights into your business operations and foster stronger customer relationships.
Who would benefit from using a CRM?
If you're interested in gaining insight into your sales team's workflow and efficiency, or in need of a database to store lead and customer data, or if your customers frequently interact with individuals or communication channels, implementing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system would be beneficial for your business. If you answered affirmatively to any of these questions, it's worth considering implementing a CRM system. A CRM will help everyone from enterprises to small business.
When is the best time to implement a CRM system?
When is the best time to implement a CRM system? In general, most companies should adopt a CRM sooner than later. While it may be possible to manage without one for a while, it is often more advantageous to start using a CRM before you experience the limitations of a solution that no longer meets your needs.
Switching back and forth between data sources can be cumbersome. Hinder your team's productivity.
Fortunately, CRM implementation has become more accessible thanks to the HubSpot version of its Smart CRM. This allows teams like yours to test a CRM without committing to long-term contracts or making investments. You can assess whether a CRM suits your requirements without obligations or time constraints.
How CRM fits into growth
Customer relationship management's (CRM) role in business growth is crucial. In today's fast-paced business environment, where companies are increasing, and there are opportunities to connect with potential customers, keeping track of and monitoring interactions with prospects effectively becomes challenging. This challenge is further compounded when marketing and sales teams are overwhelmed with information and follow sales processes. Consequently, leads can slip through the cracks, and prospects may receive irrelevant information.
However, these growing pains can be addressed by implementing a CRM system. A CRM system helps by organizing details such as contact information, company data, and sales opportunities. It also. Contains interactions across communication channels. By utilizing a CRM system, marketing and sales teams in expanding organizations can enhance efficiency. Eliminate tasks.
Let's talk about their hubs and start with their Marketing hub:
What's cool about hubspot is that it's like a marketing hub. This tool lets us connect to their other hubs and integrates with Google ads. So, let's say you want to run a Google ad campaign. You set this up inside hubspot and connect hubspot and Google ads. Then, when visitors enter your homepage integrated with hubspot, the marketing hub can show the customer precisely the page hubspot believes is best.
Another example. You like to market Cars. You have three cars on your webpage: red car, blue and green car.
You set up a campaign with Google and use the keyword “Cars for sale.”
Then you use hubspot to set up 3 landing pages that look nice and have a contact form, one for each car. Red, blue and green car.
Once a Google search person sees your ad and clicks on cars for sale, Google knows what kind of cars this visitor likes the most. In this case, the blue car. If hubspot is integrated with Google, then hubspot will show the landing page with the blue car instead of your homepage.
This is just a simple example, but you can do this and much more.
Last example:
Since the hubspot marketing hub is integrated with all the other hubs, the person who landed on the blue car page was so interested that a contact form was filled out and sent. What happens next (depending on your preferred setup) is, for example, this person is created as a contact and a new lead. An automatic email is sent out, and this further contact gets assigned to the person handling your blue car sales.
As I said, this is a short example of a marketing hub. The most crucial part is that you can handle all your marketing inside hubspot. Even your Live chat that you get for free is integrated as a marketing tool where visitors become contacts, and automation inside hubspot sends this new contact to the correct person within your business. Hub Spot is like an all-in-one tool.
What else is fun? Let's talk about their sales hub
Once you have a new contact, you must do something about it. If hubspot did not have a sales hub, your team had to use something outside hubspot. Perhaps copy and paste emails back and forward, contact lists, product details copy and paste into emails, offerings added into Excel together with contacts, and then manually add everything into Hubspot.
Well, that sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and luckily, hubspot offers everything inside hubspot. You can automate many of your sales tasks, send emails back and forth inside hubspot (using your email account), create products or offers inside hubspot, and send them to your customers, and everything gets logged. As owner or CEO, you can use hubspot to see and track your team's work. Are they closing deals, or what kind of dialogue did they have with the potential customer? You can keep track and see everything. All in one place.
But it does not stop there. We have four more hubs to go….. this is the service hub.
Go and grab a coffee if you like; this page is going nowhere.
So, the service hub is your support center. From here, you can run your ticket system, run surveys, and create a knowledge base. Everything is handled inside the customer portal. This makes it easy for your support team to stay up-to-date with your customers and ensure everyone is happy.
If you think of it, do you need a support system, or do you want customers to send you an email to support@?
If you use this function, keep in mind everything is connected, so if a customer is not happy and uses the ticket system to let you know, then the sales team can also see this, so perhaps a discount coupon should be in place.
Let's move on to hubspot CMS hub.
Now, this is unique. Have you heard of WordPress? Well, WordPress is a CMS system. So when discussing homepage creation, you can always ask, “What kind of CMS system do you use? There is a big chance they replay, “We use WordPress”. Then they might ask you, what kind of CMS do you use? Your reply would be “Hubspot.”
To describe this is a simple way. Hubspot CMS can create your new homepage integrated with all the other hubs. That's kind of crazy if you ask me. Like WordPress, you can buy a theme to get started with your homepage or start from scratch.
There is one good and bad thing about this. The good part is you get hosting for free since it's hosted on Hubspot's servers. The bad part is you can't host your site anywhere else.
Next is their operations hub.
This is perhaps the most advanced feature.
HubSpot Operations Hub is a tool that helps you manage and leverage your customer's data effectively. It provides a platform to organize, refine, and synchronize your data, enabling integrations and streamlined automation. The main goal is to establish a perspective of every customer interaction, acting as a source of information for all your customer data. This creates opportunities for efficiency and valuable business insights.
This feature is perhaps meant for companies who want to sync all customer data and maybe have someone working on that.
The last hub is the commerce software.
This hub is all about creating invoices, payment links, and quotes. Basicly everything about getting paid.
It simplifies the way you work. Functions are self-explained and easy to use. The central part is that it's integrated with the rest of Hubspot hubs so you have everything in one place. Imagine if you have different subscriptions you want to handle, B2B checkouts, and flexible payment processing. With the commerce hub, you get everything you need. You might think it's part of the sales hub or CRM when you use it.
Best of all, you can automate everything, so you don't need much manual work. Another nice thing is you get all the reports you need; that's a handy tool. Instead of manually reviewing billing and payments, you get in one tool with all the reports you need.
Reporting and Analytics
HubSpot CRM provides powerful reporting and analytics tools to measure the success of marketing campaigns and sales efforts. Businesses can generate custom reports and dashboards to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and gain insights into their marketing and sales performance. The platform also integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics for more advanced reporting capabilities.
When evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and sales strategies, HubSpot offers tools for analysis and reporting. These tools enable you to monitor metrics and gain insights into the performance of your marketing endeavors. With dashboard reporting templates and data visualization features, HubSpot simplifies the process of comprehending and interpreting your data.
One standout aspect of HubSpot's analytics is its integration with Google Analytics. This integration allows you to delve deeper into your data and access reporting capabilities. Within the HubSpot platform, you can track website traffic, user behavior, and conversions, providing a view of your marketing efforts.
Website Traffic
Firstly, HubSpot enables tracking of website traffic. You can observe the number of visitors to your site, analyze which pages they view, measure how long they stay on each page, and identify their sources or referral paths.
This data holds value as it helps you understand which marketing channels generate traffic to your website and which pages are most popular among your visitors. This information lets you adjust your marketing strategies to achieve better outcomes.
Besides providing insights into website traffic, HubSpot offers user behavior information. This includes metrics such as the number of newsletter sign-ups ebook downloads, and contact form submissions. Such information proves invaluable when understanding which marketing campaigns result in conversions. With this knowledge, you can fine-tune your marketing efforts accordingly for results.
HubSpot also provides the ability to track conversions, including sales figures, leads generated, and other key metrics that reflect the success of your marketing endeavors. This data is crucial in understanding which marketing campaigns are driving the conversions. By leveraging this knowledge, you can make adjustments to optimize your marketing strategies for even better outcomes.
HubSpot Academy
This is where Hubspot is very different than many other CRM software. They run their own Academy where you have online training courses and can even certify by taking exams.
This is perfect for businesses that like the most out of hubspot. Setting up a plan with your employees can educate them in the hubspot environment. A win-win situation since your employees will get their certifications on their CVs. Hubspot offers more than 25 different certification courses. Each course takes about 1-10 hours to complete; I guess the average is about 5 hours and on top of that, some own research.
The price for every certification is less than $250 per course. It's free. All their certification is free, so if you are a business owner, sign up for hubspot and let your employees know that you would like to be on hubspot to get certified. Good for them, better for you.
They also have their own hubspot community where you can ask questions and read what other customers think.
HubSpot vs. Other CRMs
So, are there any other CRMs worth checking out?
Yes, and here is why:
After the CRM suite starter plan, things quickly get expensive. It's like going into a cafe. You see their offering and spot “Fantastic coffee for $1”. Brilliant, can I have one? Yes, of course. Do you want natural coffee cream on top that's produced out of the beans? YES! Do you want the beans to smell like fresh ones directly from Brazil? Eee, yes? Do you like it served in this warm glass cup? Yeah, sure. Ok, here you go; that's $24. Thanks. WTF??
You might not need everything hubspot offers. If you are a smaller company, other options might be better if you can't live with the accessible version of hubspot.
Hubspot is simple to use, but other options offer similar options and styles and are also easy to use for a cheaper price.
I recommend the following CRM software if you don't like hubspot:
Salesforce – One of the best sales CRM
Zoho CRM – Cheaper CRM solution with lots of functions
Monday – Based on customer reviews Monday is one of the best. I could have gone for Monday but ended up with Clickup and hubspot
ClickUp – looking for a CRM that's also a project management tool?
active campaign – something totally different and if you focus on email marketing and building your CRM around marketing and email then this is a must to check out
capsule – most accessible CRM and offers much more
You can find more reviews of CRM in one CRM/marketing/project tool on TestandReviews
Is hubspot right for you, and how do you begin
I believe hubspot is a platform you can grow with. No matter if you run a small store or have thousands of customers, hubspot will be an excellent product for you. If you are a smaller company and would like more options like project management, other tools can be better since Hubspot is built around CRM and is not a project management tool.
I strongly suggest you go to hubspot today. Create a free account. Log in and browse around. Talk with others in your team and have them browse around. Then make a decision. Hubspot is far from advanced, and you can start with little knowledge of using CRM systems.
Is that all?
Well, I can mention the hubspot marketplace. With over 1500 apps you can add to hubspot, you can truly customize how you like your Hubspot.
I will not write more about these apps, but apps let you increase hubspot functions. For example, Add the Gmail app to synchronize Gmail emails into Hubspot or Google Calendar. There is no end to how big your hubspot account can become.