HubSpot Review – Pros & Cons [2023]

Top Features of HubSpot CRM

HubSpot is a unique platform, that packs endless features to make business operations effortless. HubSpot is “freemium” software, which means you can get started for free, and slowly pay for additional features and capacity as you grow. HubSpot markets their different feature sets as “hubs,” for various functions.

Marketing Hub

From attracting visitors to converting them to customers, HubSpot has the ability to handle a number of marketing functions.

• Ad Tools – The data you gather with this CRM tool can be fed into ad tools to create relatable ads. So, you can run targeted ad campaigns and get detailed insights to take the marketing to the next level.
• Publish Blogs – Having a blog related to your business helps a lot to drive more traffic to the business. For that, you don’t need any additional tools. HubSpot’s integrated tools will handle blogging tasks pretty easily.
• Marketing Analytics – Whatever campaign you run should always be under the radar to view the performance of the campaigns and change plans accordingly. With built-in analytics tools, you get all the valuable insights right on the dashboard.
• Landing Page and Form Builder – Landing pages are crucial for collecting leads. You can create professional landing pages to attract your visitors and collect leads using creative forms. But creating landing pages or online forms might need a bit of time for beginners.
• Lead Management and Tracking – Managing leads is as important as collecting them. With lead management and tracking tools, you can create centralized databases so that you can organize leads for efficient use.
• Chatbot Builder – Chatbots can do a number of tasks on your websites. Be it booking a meeting or verifying leads; chatbots are of great help. You can build your own chatbot on HubSpot.
• Free Email Marketing Tools – Creating marketing emails won’t require professionals anymore, as HubSpot offers plenty of tools to create and personalize your marketing emails.

CMS Hub

Managing content is a big part of the responsibility of marketers and developers. HubSpot has versatile tools to handle content management.

• Dynamic Content – When you run multiple marketing channels, maintaining brand identity while delivering a variety of content is crucial. HubSpot lets you dynamically manage content on various channels, making the process faster.
• Website Builder – You can use the drag-and-drop builder to create various business websites. Though the platform has some cool themes, we didn’t find the customizability so satisfactory. It offers optimized hosting so that you can create web applications. Third-party web hosting isn’t needed if you choose to fully utilize HubSpot.

Sales Hub

While marketing gets your business in front of leads, it’s important to have a sales process in place to convert them to customers. HubSpot’s Sales Hub includes tools to manage the sales process.

• Sales Pipeline Management – Sales pipelines or sales funnels are extremely important to guide traffic through a narrow path. You can now build such pipelines and manage them efficiently. But it will require a bit of prior experience with sales funnels.
• Business Insights – Every little detail of the sales process should be visible to the management team to make informed decisions. HubSpot provides you with key insights into the process on the dashboard.
• Sales Tracking App – The app tracks and analyzes every movement of traffic inside the sales pipeline to give you a better picture of how things are going and what needs improvement. With this data, improving strategies and boosting sales become a lot easier.
• Easy Payments – Accepting payment from customers is straightforward, thanks to the native payment gateway. It reduces hassle in various steps of payment. But there could be more integrations on the platform.
• Meeting Scheduling – Going back and forth to schedule a meeting might discourage customers easily. HubSpot lets you share meeting scheduling links with customers so that they know when you are free and schedule meetings accordingly. Meetings are then automatically added to everyone’s calendar.
• Document Sharing and Tracking – Sharing documents across teams requires only a few clicks. And you can easily track the source of any document on the platform.

Service Hub

HubSpot offers a number of customer service features that help you maintain a healthy relationship with your customers.

• Customer Portal – Customers can solve minor issues on their own with the help of this portal. And when they reach the support team, customer service agents can have a detailed look at the service history of customers.
• Service Automation – In most cases, manual processes in customer service can take a long time. You can bring some automation to resolve issues faster and return happy customers.
• Support Ticket System – Instead of handling a mob of customers, you can use support tickets to maintain discipline through the process. Create and organize support tickets to address the right customer at the right time.
• Issue and Service Tracking – As all the issues customers raise are organized in a centralized platform, taking a look at previous issues of a specific customer is relatively easy. And their service history guides the support team to deliver quick support to maximize efficiency and customer retention.
• Customer Feedback – Collecting customer feedback can be effective in learning their expectations and coming up with strategies to meet new demands. HubSpot offers tools to collect customer feedback and analyze them for future use.

Operations Hub

Syncing all the processes and achieving the desired operation pace is challenging. But HubSpot has multiple features to help businesses.

• Programmable Automation – Most platforms offer built-in automation to scale businesses. You can program the automation required for your business. But it requires expertise in JavaScript, so it might not be the right solution for people with no coding experience.
• Data Synch and Quality Check – HubSpot offers two-way data sync features to keep all the customer data organized in one central database. You can modify the data whenever you want to sort, filter, or defrag and maintain a quality database for the future.

Pros & Cons of HubSpot

While HubSpot is an impressive CRM solution, it also has some drawbacks. Here are the pros and cons of the platform.

HubSpot Plans & Pricing

With so many features – from startup to enterprise – HubSpot’s pricing can be confusing. Here’s a rundown of the pricing of their entire CRM suite (which includes all of their Hubs). If you don’t need all of their features, pricing will be lower.

• Starter – starting at $45/mo
  • 1,000 marketing contacts
  • 1 shared inbox
  • Two users for Sales and Service
• Professional – starting at $1,600/mo
  • 2,000 marketing contacts
  • Up to 100 shared inboxes
  • 1,000 custom properties per object
  • 5 users for Sales and Service
• Enterprise – starting at $5,000/mo
  • 10,000 marketing contacts
  • Up to 200 shared inboxes
  • 50 dashboards and 30 reports per dashboard
  • 1,000 custom properties per object
  • 10 users for Sales and Service

Our Take on HubSpot CRM

Without a doubt, HubSpot is the best CRM software for most businesses. It is an all-in-one platform equipped with marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operational tools to manage businesses of any size. From creating stunning websites, blogs, or landing pages to attracting site traffic, HubSpot offers every possible tool to grow your business. Besides, it has analytics tools to monitor all of your critical metrics and present them nicely in organized reports. You can also easily collect leads and efficiently organize them. Email marketing tools are also available to reach your target audience and build sustainable customer relationships. While you can get started for free, the Professional and Enterprise pricing tiers can get expensive, which is something you should be aware of before signing up. HubSpot’s Starter plan costs only $45/mo.

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