A recent analysis of the marketplace revealed that CRM software is the fastest-growing market for enterprise software. Businesses require more automation for marketing processes so teams can focus on serving their customers better. This is probably because CRM systems can address four sectors of business through one useful platform. Whether it’s customer service you need, marketing, sales, or commerce, CRM platforms can do it all.
Zoho and HubSpot are CRM software that caters to these needs and in this article, we will be comparing how they overlap or differ in regards to how you can customize them for your business.
An Overview of Zoho and HubSpot
HubSpot is a SaaS platform that comprises several sectors or “hubs” targeted toward refining your business, such as HubSpot Sales Hub, HubSpot Marketing Hub, HubSpot Service Hub, and more recently, HubSpot Operations and CMS Hubs.
Zoho is a CRM software that serves as a single source of truth system to bring your sales, marketing, and customer support affairs all into one place.
Its interface features invaluable tools for sales teams, ranging from marketing automation to help desk support.
HubSpot and Zoho CRM are both customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions. They are designed to help businesses keep track of their relationships, manage leads, and identify opportunities for converting leads to sales. They achieve this by providing an in-depth look into all of your contacts, including notes, important dates, phone numbers, and email addresses.
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Pricing and Plan Features
HubSpot offers a “forever free” CRM solution as an easy way to optimize lead conversion and keep tabs on sales opportunities. This free solution gives users access to basic CRM features like contact management, company insights, integrations with Gmail, Outlook, and Facebook Messenger, app marketplace integrations, basic reporting and dashboards, and storage for up to 15 million non-marketing contacts, etc.
On the free plan, users also get five email templates, five documents, and one link for scheduling meetings.
HubSpot also offers a paid-for CRM bundle that features three plans: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. The Starter plan is priced at $50 per month based on an annual payment. The plan comes with access to all of HubSpot’s five hubs with basic functionality.
Users have increased customization on forms and emails, white labeling, and ad management. It also applies to a shared inbox, email list segmentation, live chat, integration with Facebook Messenger, email and chat support, etc.
The Professional plan has all the features of the Starter Plan and a significantly higher price tag of $1600 per month. It also features integration with Google Search Console, SEO optimization, multi-language content, quotes, reporting dashboards, snippets, phone support, etc.
The Enterprise plan costs $5000 per month and comes with email reply tracking, retargeting ads, video hosting, and management. You can also use it for website traffic analytics, SSO, video messaging, forecasting, etc. All plans in HubSpot’s CRM suite come with access to the individual hubs at the corresponding level of functionality.
Each plan also comes with an unlimited number of free users with roles and permissions granting them access to your CRM. They can view reports, set up tools, and more. The platform also has a one-year contract minimum for annual payments.
Zoho Plans and Pricing
Zoho offers a free plan as well. However, it is limited to only three users and comes with essentials like leads, documents, and mobile apps, making this plan a perfect fit for a home business.
It also has four paid plan options for users who need more functionality: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.
Zoho’s Standard plan costs $12 per user per month and comes with all the features of the free plan as well as scoring rules, workflows, multiple pipelines, bulk emails, custom dashboards, and canvas views restricted to one view per organization.
The Professional plan costs $20 per user monthly and comes with real-time customer notifications, access to online and offline business processes, inventory management, increased canvas views, validation rules, and ticket support. These are in addition to the features available on the Standard Plan.
Enterprise plan costs $35/user/month. You have access to an AI voice assistant called Zia, multi-user portals, custom mobile apps, advanced customization, personalized customer journey, etc.
The Ultimate plan has advanced BI (business intelligence) bundled with Zoho Analytics. It also has enhanced feature limits, increased canvas model views, and a 30-day free trial at the price of $45 per user monthly.
Zoho vs Hubspot Features: Which Is Easier to Use?
HubSpot was designed with a stress-free user experience in mind. The platform comes with a clean interface, easy-to-navigate dashboards, and tools to make setup and implementation smooth. Another feature that makes HubSpot a favorite is the ability to connect its CRM tool with the rest of the HubSpot ecosystem.
Zoho is a feature-rich platform that offers a lot of flexibility and customization. However, this means that the platform takes a long time to set up and implement. Users report that HubSpot takes a few days to a few weeks to implement while Zoho takes 30 days or longer to implement.
Zoho vs Hubspot Features: Sales Automation
HubSpot and Zoho are efficient sales automation platforms. They both provide sales modules like leads, contacts, accounts, and deals. The ability to log and track tasks, calls, notes, events and other unique records are not lost for either CRM system. However, only Zoho offers advanced features like scoring rules, assignment rules, and currencies.
Zoho vs Hubspot Features: Contact and Lead Management
HubSpot CRM lets you store up to one million contacts and company records. It automatically creates a company record as you add a contact from a new company by pulling company information from HubSpot’s proprietary business database. Users can also create email marketing campaigns, send emails, and call contacts without having to leave the platform.
However, Zoho offers more capabilities in its CRM suite than HubSpot. You can assign leads to sales reps on Zoho based on different criteria. You can also create personalized lead scoring rules, and convert leads to deals.
Zoho offers more than HubSpot in contact management allowing you to store up to 100,000 contacts no matter your pricing plan. On HubSpot, the most expensive plan limits you to only 10,000 contacts.
Users also enjoy access to multi-platform lead generation from different channels: web forms, mobile apps, live chat, and social media. Zoho also offers a social listening feature, so you can see in real-time whenever a contact reaches out via social media.
Zoho vs Hubspot Features: Customization Options
When it comes to customization, Zoho has an advantage. Its sales, marketing, and social media features are more extensive than those of HubSpot. On Zoho, you can extend workflow processes and macro suggestions, use voice commands to retrieve critical reports, and streamline extensive data entry processes with custom-built wizards.
HubSpot, however, has limited customization options available to users and more advanced features are locked behind the paywall of Professional and Enterprise plans.
Who Has Better Customer Support: Zoho or Hubspot?
Both platforms offer different levels of customer support like email, tickets, chat, and live agent support. They also come with a diverse knowledge base to help customers with simpler issues as a self-service option. However, Zoho offers more in terms of customer support. Users on all paid Zoho plans have access to email, live chat, and phone support but only Professional and Enterprise users enjoy phone support.
Unique Features
Order Management
With HubSpot, businesses can track inventory, manage sales, and track packages, ensuring that products get delivered to customers. This is especially helpful for companies that deal with physical products. HubSpot also has integrations for e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Square, which Zoho lacks.
Zoho doesn’t offer this tool on its platform. However, it is available as a stand-alone service called Zoho Inventory.
Open APIs
An API is a set of programming instructions that ensure different types of software can work together. Zoho offers a variety of software integrations, but if a tool you are currently using can’t be easily integrated with Zoho CRM, your development team can create an API to make it work.
HubSpot also offers a variety of integrations for other applications and an API for building app integrations. However, Zoho’s API goes so far as to let you create custom fields.
Generally, most small businesses prefer to use available software as customizing software to fit their specific needs can be expensive and time-consuming. Open APIs are more of a requirement for complex organizations with niche sales processes.
Bottom Line: Zoho or Hubspot?
Based on the features we have considered, Zoho is best for SMBs that require workflow automation.
Hubspot is great as well, but the pricing is not all that flexible. Though HubSpot’s free CRM lets many users enjoy the platform, the paid plans are more expensive compared to Zoho, with the most expensive plan (Ultimate) at only $45 a month.
HubSpot comes equipped with a lot of tools for non-paying users and this is a good option for those interested in basic CRM features. But overall, Zoho is much cheaper for those who want a full slate of software solutions as part of their CRM package.
READ MORE: Hubspot vs MailChimp Features: Choose a Marketing tool
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