If you’re a digital marketer, sales rep, social media manager, or just in business generally, then there’s a chance you’ve heard about Marketo and HubSpot. Both brands have built solid reputations in the marketing software space and it can be hard to tell which one is better for you.
In this article, we will be comparing both platforms based on their features, similarities, and differences.
Hubspot and Marketo: Overview
HubSpot is a cloud-based business and marketing software that helps scaling businesses grow better with sales, service, marketing, and content management tools.
It is a suite of four business products: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and CMS Hub.
Marketo is an account-based marketing automation system with a focus on lead management, content personalization, and lead nurturing automation.
It delivers powerful performance for businesses of any size, with tools like SEO, email sequences, and integrations with third-party CRMs like Salesforce. Marketo was acquired by Adobe in September 2018 and integrated into Adobe Experience Cloud.
Let’s look at their features:
Hubspot or Marketo: Simplicity and User Experience
Marketo specializes in providing solutions for enterprises and larger businesses with advanced features and customization options.
However, because the software was built for advanced marketers, it requires more IT knowledge to operate.
HubSpot was originally built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), so it prioritizes ease of use.
HubSpot doesn’t offer as many features as Marketo but the platform has enough tools to remain a powerful staple for marketing teams. Also, it has incorporated more enterprise-level functionality.
Hubspot or Marketo: Which Software Is More Afforadable?
Marketo comprises seven main modules: lead management, email marketing, consumer marketing, customer-based marketing, mobile marketing, revenue attribution, and account-based marketing. Users can purchase these modules individually, as bundles, or all together as one.
Marketo doesn’t include specific pricing information about their plans but it groups them into tiers. It has four plans: Select, Prime, Ultimate, and Jumpstart.
Select is for smaller companies and teams looking for basic automation and measurement options. Prime is a good fit for growing account-based marketing organizations looking for advanced AI personalization.
The Ultimate plan is a great fit for businesses that want to automate complex processes and experiences. The Enterprise plan, on the other hand, is for enterprise-level brands handling multiple teams.
Even though Marketo isn’t transparent about pricing, research shows that Marketo plan pricing ranges from $960 per month to over $7,000 per month. It all depends on the size of your database and the features and modules you purchase.
Hubspot Pricing and Plans
Hubspot, on the other hand, offers a free CRM plan that gives users access to features. You can use this plan for contact management, company insights, integrations with Gmail, Outlook, and Facebook Messenger. You can also use it for app marketplace integrations, basic reporting, and dashboards, storage for up to 15 million overall contacts, etc.
READ MORE: HubSpot vs Pardot Features and Pricing: Which Is Better?
Users interested in a more advanced Hubspot CRM package have the option of three paid plans – Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. The Starter plan costs $45 monthly and comes with all the free features the basic CRM package offers. It also comes with email marketing, chatbot, landing pages, website traffic analytics, multi-language content creation, list segmentation, shared inbox, etc.
The Professional plan costs $450 per month and comes with smart content and reporting, dynamic personalization, e-signatures, phone support. Subscribers can also access the features available on the Starter plan.
The Enterprise plan comes with a higher price of $1,200 each month and allows users to extend administrative controls through advanced permissions, sales analytics, playbooks, predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence, increased support, etc. Users on all Hubspot CRM platforms also enjoy a 10% discount on an upfront annual payment.
Marketo is likely to be more expensive due to the pricing being based on how many modules you purchase. On the flip side, HubSpot offers a much more inclusive package. Not only are all of the tools available in one solution for seamless functionality, but users also get more value for less.
HubSpot vs Marketo: Integrations
If your most important software doesn’t integrate with at least some of the tools and apps you already use, you’ll struggle to centralize your business information. HubSpot and Marketo come with many native integrations but they diverge in terms of options. HubSpot’s app directory lists over 100 native integrations with customer service tools, email marketing tools, and sales tools. The platform also features integration with popular tools like Gmail, WordPress, and Google Calendar.
Marketo has an edge over HubSpot offering over 500 integrations with tools like Microsoft, Zoom, Gmail, MailChimp, etc. The integrations cover a wide range of tools like productivity, sales, and webinar platforms among others.
CRM Integration
Marketo doesn’t have a built-in CRM module but it was built using the Salesforce platform. It offers one of the most innovative Salesforce integrations in the industry. It also provides native integrations with leaders in CRM software – Microsoft Dynamics and SAP. Marketers using this platform aren’t missing out on any CRM essentials.
HubSpot on the other hand is a CRM platform through and through. Marketo’s CRM integrations are more advanced and may offer more in-depth coverage, HubSpot is much more user-friendly because its core function is as a CRM platform.
It offers a suite of products that can be built on top of the CRM and can integrate with popular systems including Salesforce, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, and more.
Hubspot vs Marketo: Reporting and Analytics
HubSpot’s built-in analytics tool allows you to analyze your website’s performance using key metrics and track your marketing funnel from acquisition to closing among other features. As an advantage, users can access all this information from a single dashboard.
On the flip side, Marketo monitors customers browsing and search history that it has access to. The platform uses this data to interpret it and alert sales/marketing to where that lead is in their buyer’s journey.
Marketo also allows companies to generate sophisticated reports from Google AdWords and Analytics. As a bonus, generated reports can be customized using visual elements like charts and graphs. These functionalities put Marketo ahead of Hubspot in terms of reporting and analytics.
Which Software Offers Better Customer Support: Hubspot or Marketo?
Hubspot offers basic support for all users, but Professional and Enterprise users enjoy email and phone support. Hubspot also has a help forum for users to get help from other users. In its turn, Marketo has a very active customer community, but it doesn’t measure up to HubSpot because the platform has a penchant for consumer marketing.
Both platforms also have online resource centers to help users get the most out of the platforms. HubSpot’s online university, HubSpot Academy, offers top-notch training from in-house professors, external agencies, and expert users to help onboard and up-skill your team. The Academy is totally free and courses are not just tailored to the Hubspot platform alone.
Marketo Education, on the other hand, is not free and its training is not as expansive as its HubSpot counterpart.
Account Based Marketing (ABM)
With account-based marketing, marketers can concentrate marketing and sales efforts on target accounts by creating personalized content and marketing campaigns for each account to generate maximum positive results.
Marketo ABM offers a unified solution to combine account-based marketing and lead management activities by using AI-based target account lists to help you streamline your marketing efforts.
Hubspot recently came out with their new ABM offering that allows users to run their ABM strategy alongside current policies and compare their efficacy using a single tool. However, Marketo remains the first choice of the two for its ABM tool.
HubSpot vs Marketo Features and Pricing: Which Is Better?
Both platforms come with features that overlap for the most part and are powerful tools to automate and optimize your online content for more effective inbound marketing. However, both platforms are distinct in their way.
Marketo is an advanced tool built with tech-savvy marketers in mind. Larger companies with access to dedicated IT support would love this platform as it offers great value for niche customization.
Even though Marketo offers comprehensive customization features capable of coping with large quantities of complex data, if you’re new to marketing automation, or you just need a solution that gives you access to a wider range of generic marketing tools from day one, then HubSpot is arguably a much better option.
In a nutshell, Marketo is a marketing automation machine that fits senior-level marketing experts or experienced business owners. HubSpot is much more suitable for an entrepreneur looking to quickly scale their business.
READ MORE: Hubspot vs MailChimp Features: Choose a Marketing tool
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