HubSpot is a widely used sales and marketing platform that’s had a grip on the market for years. Despite the toolbox of features HubSpot boasts, many small and medium-sized businesses can’t justify the high cost of HubSpot’s paid plans and are forced to look for alternatives. 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 that can 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:
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 marketing reporting functions are still some of the best on the market.
Learn how to boost your team’s efficiency with automation in your CRM with our guide to sales and marketing automation.
Despite these benefits, there are several reasons why some companies may look for other options:
Now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s take a look at the best HubSpot competitors we’ve found:
Nutshell is a CRM-first solution that in recent years has focused on adding a powerful suite of sales automation and sales engagement features. Nutshell’s 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:
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.
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 also starts at just $16/month per user. With access to several types of reports, tons of email marketing automation features, and the ability to send up to 150 Nutshell Campaigns emails for free every month, you get excellent value on just the Foundation plan.
The next plan up, Nutshell Pro, costs just $42/user/month, and includes up to 10 customizable sales pipelines, unlimited click-to-call and phone recordings, advanced sales reports and user permissions, and other sales automation features.
You can also get good discounts for paying annually. Nutshell Campaigns is a tiered add-on that starts at $5/month for up to 100 contacts.
Annual license cost for a 10-person team
Pricing gathered from Hubpost.com and Salesforce.com
Email Sequences & Campaigns
Implementation costs
Source: BacancyTechnology.com
Full-time admin salary
Source: Talent.com
Live phone and chat support
Source: Salesforce.com
Fully functional mobile app
Source: G2.com
Data storage
One-click dialing and call recording
Year 1 Total
Let’s assume the average of the optional fees and one level of overage for 6 months of the year.
Year 2 and Beyond Totals
This assumes you don’t grow as a company and add more records…
$18,000
($150/user/month)
$34,680/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$10,000
(“one price fits all”)
$6,000 to
$38,400/year
(available, but not required)
$0
$0
$1,100/month
for going over 1 million total records
$50/month for 1,000 minutes
(3,000 minute limit)
$91,580
$78,580
$8,040
($67/user/month)
$4,680/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$0-$1,500
(available but not required)
$0 to
$18,000/year
(available to customers, but in no way required)
$0
$0
$0
unlimited storage at no extra cost
$0
On Pro plans and above
$22,470
$21,720
$19,800
($165/user/month)
$19,800/year
(For up to 50,000 contacts level)
$75,000 – $200,000
(has many factors)
$96,687/year
(if you’re lucky)
$5,940/year
(30% of software license)
$3,000
($25/user/month of software license)
$1,500/year
for every 500MB after the first 10GB ($125/month)
$3,600+/year
($30/month/user and an additional $15/month for every 1,000 minutes logged)
$284,452
$146,952
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. They seek 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:
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, enabling A/B testing within automations—not something HubSpot offers.
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.
Price may also be a concern for some businesses, as ActiveCampaign’s marketing plans start at $49/month for three users.
EngageBay explicitly seeks to provide small businesses and entrepreneurs with the same kind of all-in-one marketing system that HubSpot provides to larger businesses. They feature a CRM, a marketing automation solution, and a help desk offering. Some noteworthy features include:
EngageBay’s pricing is very impressive. For businesses with very small marketing budgets, EngageBay is really out here doing the work for less.
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’s basic marketing plan for $12.99/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.
Drip is a fairly unique take on growth software. Its foundation is a B2C CRM and is best suited to service ecommerce 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 a number of notable features such as:
Without question, Drip does eCommerce 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 eCommerce business and personalize your store’s marketing efforts.
Growth-focused eCommerce marketers with a holistic view of the customer journey will find Drip to be a great tool.
Drip starts at $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts, and listed pricing caps out at $1,899/month for up to 170,000 contacts.
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:
For the small business that doesn’t want to pay for multiple pieces of software, Ontraport is a solid all-in-one solution. Customers love that it provides a broad functionality to get their business off the ground.
A small team that doesn’t need deep functionality on any of the types of software that Ontraport offers will find it very useful to center all their data in a single location.
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.
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:
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.
Brevo is a great 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 offers a free plan for up to 300 emails sent per day. Paid plans start at $15/month for up to 20,000 emails sent in a month. Their highest established price is $550/month for 1,000,000 emails sent per month.
Built by the people at Infusionsoft, Keap is a CRM-first growth software designed for SMBs. Notable features include:
Unsurprisingly, Keap’s CRM functions are its best offering. Solopreneurs in reviews mention that Keap works great as a secretary.
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 starts at $159/month for two users and 1,500 contacts. Their established prices top out at $229/month for three users and up to 2,500 contacts.
Pipedrive CRM is a popular choice utilized by companies globally, offering an intuitive interface and robust sales management features. Notable features include:
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 manage multiple contacts, projects, and workflows effectively.
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 offers a basic version for $14.90 per month, while the minimum $49.90 version unlocks essential features necessary for effective CRM usage.
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, so 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 on top of their marketing automation features. The best alternatives will make collaboration between marketers, salespeople, and support teams easy.
Here are a few additional features to consider when comparing HubSpot alternatives:
These FAQs might provide some additional information that can help you choose the best HubSpot alternative for your team:
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.
There are many email marketing and CRM platforms on the market that 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.
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!
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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