HubSpot and Zoho are CRM software with free plans and features like workflow rules and email integration. In terms of Hubspot vs Zoho, Zoho’s free tier and paid plans are a great choice for businesses wanting CRM with social integration while HubSpot is a good fit for organizations wanting a budget-friendly CRM with basic core features.
When to Use HubSpot CRM
HubSpot is for businesses and teams of any size that want a permanently free CRM with a basic set of core features like contact management tools and email templates. HubSpot is also right for sales teams just getting started with CRM, as it is a no-frills solution that’s intuitive and easy to learn.
When to Use Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is for sales teams that want an affordable CRM with a great combination of lead and contact management as well as other features like social integration tools for Twitter and Facebook. Zoho’s free tier includes all its core features and is a good opportunity to learn what the service offers before moving up to a paid plan with more advanced lead scoring capability.
When to Use Freshsales
Freshsales is a smart alternative for businesses wanting a customizable CRM with lead scoring capability that also offers easy to use, drag-and-drop navigation and a kanban-style sales pipeline to visualize every step of the sales process at a glance. It ranks high on our list of best CRMs for small businesses and offers a free plan and three paid plans priced from $12 to $49.
HubSpot vs Zoho at a Glance
| Pricing | ||
| Contact Management | ||
| Email Templates | ||
| Email Integration | ||
| Reporting | ||
| Live Chat | ||
| Workflow Rules | ||
| Inventory Management | ||
| Social Integration | ||
| Ease of Use | ||
| More Information |
How We Evaluated HubSpot & Zoho CRM
CRM software providers help organize sales teams with features and tools for lead capture and contact management. Many CRMs also offer reporting tools, configurable dashboards, and business app integration. CRM solutions should be affordable, easy to set up and use, and backed by reliable customer support.
Therefore, we evaluated HubSpot and Zoho based on:
- Price – We evaluated the pricing structure of both CRM providers and compared package costs on a per-user basis. We also compared the feature sets offered with both providers’ free plans to see how they stacked up.
- Ease of use – We assessed how easy and intuitive each CRM is to use.
- Contact management – We compared both CRM providers’ tools for creating, editing, organizing, and searching contacts.
- Reporting tools – We evaluated the tools that help managers and teams monitor the sales pipeline.
- Customization tools – We assessed features that allow users to customize dashboards, reports, and workflows.
- Add-ons and integrations – We evaluated add-ons and integrations offered by each CRM provider.
- Customer support – We evaluated the type of customer service support of each provider offers.
Organizations that want a budget-friendly, no-frills CRM should check out HubSpot. Based on our research, we believe Zoho is best for businesses wanting a full-featured CRM with tools for prospecting on social media.
HubSpot CRM Pricing
HubSpot’s pricing is free and supports an unlimited number of users. It includes contact management tools, business and social app integration, and a reporting dashboard. Paid plans with additional features are also available starting at $50 per month.
HubSpot CRM Features
HubSpot’s features include a number of sales, marketing, and customer service tools, like team email, external form tracking, and new contact activity history. Each account also offers email scheduling, email templates, a reporting dashboard, and one reporting dashboard. HubSpot accounts come with a limit of 1 million contact and company records.
HubSpot’s standout features include:
Contact Management
With HubSpot’s contact management tools, users can add contacts and company records, and automatically log sales activity. Sales teams can also track the first seven days of website activity for all new contacts, including page views, sales activities, and form submissions. Zoho offers similar contact management features but, unlike HubSpot, the number of users is capped at three on its free plan.
Business and Social Integrations
HubSpot integrates smoothly with several business social systems to access and capture contact information. For example, connect HubSpot with G Suite, Gmail, Outlook, or Office 365 for Windows to easily add contacts to the CRM. Users can also create lead ads for Facebook and Instagram to capture contact information that automatically syncs with HubSpot. Zoho’s free plan only offers integration with Gmail and Facebook.
Live Chat
HubSpot’s highly-rated free live chat feature connects sales teams with website visitors in real-time to provide customer support or convert new leads. The Live Chat feature is integrated with HubSpot’s conversational bots that qualify leads, book meetings, and create support tickets, freeing up sales agents for other tasks. While live chat is also a feature of Zoho SalesIQ, it may cost an additional fee depending on the plan selected.
Reporting Dashboard
HubSpot includes a comprehensive collection of sales reports customizable by viewer and date range. The reporting dashboard features a drag-and-drop interface and an option to send daily, weekly, or monthly recurring emails of dashboard views to teams.
Reports include:
- Deal forecast – The amount of projected revenue for deals in each stage of the pipeline.
- Sales performance – A summary of sales progress by contacts assigned and by the number of deals that have been created and closed.
- Productivity – The number of meetings, notes, calls, tasks, and emails a team has logged in a chosen time frame.
- Deals closed vs. goals – A plotted chart of revenue from closed deals against a team’s quota.
Zoho CRM Pricing
Zoho offers a free plan for up to three users that includes core features like email templates, reports, and workflow rules. Zoho also offers a Standard plan for $12 per user per month and a Professional plan for $20 per user per month. Additional included features are social integration, sales forecasting, and process management tools.
Zoho CRM Features
| Pricing | |||
| Users | |||
| Email Templates | |||
| Custom List Views | |||
| Reports | |||
| Workflow Rules | |||
| Social Integration | |||
| Zoho SalesIQ Integration | |||
| Custom Fields | |||
| Sales Forecasting | |||
| Configurable Dashboards | |||
| Email Integration | |||
| Inventory Management | |||
| Process Management |
Free
Zoho’s Free tier allows up to three users and includes 10 email templates, five custom views list per module, and one workflow rule per module. It also features standard reports and integration with Twitter and Facebook. The free tier offers integration with Zoho SalesIQ, an add-on tool with free and paid levels for providing live chat support to customers and tracking website visitors. This is similar to HubSpot’s live chat but doesn’t include the conversational bots.
This level also doesn’t offer features like sales forecasting or process management offered by Zoho’s upper tiers and doesn’t integrate with other popular social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, as offered by HubSpot. While this tier is free to use without a time limit, Zoho limits users to three, which makes it a good choice for solo business owners or very small teams that want to automate their sales process and integrate with social media.
Standard
Zoho’s Standard tier adds unlimited users and raises feature limits to 100 email templates, 50 custom views per module, and six workflow rules per module. This level adds 100 custom reports along with 20 schedulers per user, 10 custom fields per module, sales forecasting, and 10 custom dashboards.
This level lacks the email integration and inventory management features found in Zoho’s next pricing level. At $12 per user per month, this tier’s pricing is about the same as other CRMs on the market with similar features. Zoho Standard is a good choice for sales teams with three or more members and businesses that want greater customization options than the Free plan offers.
Professional
Zoho’s Professional level adds unlimited email templates, custom list views, and custom reports. It raises workflow rules to 20 per module and custom fields to 150 per module. This level features email integration and process management tools, along with a set of inventory management tools for creating sales quotes, sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, and more.
While Zoho does feature reports and lists of information, it lacks the option to visualize the sales pipeline in a kanban-style format, as offered by HubSpot and other fuller-featured CRM providers like Freshsales. However, if that’s not a deal-breaker, this tier’s pricing is on par with the upper-level pricing of other popular CRM software. Zoho Professional is a good match for teams wanting a high degree of customization and built-in inventory management tools.
HubSpot vs Zoho CRM: Ease of Use
CRM software should work quietly in the background to support sales teams, keep them organized, and improve productivity. They should also be easy to use, and not slow agents down with a clumsy interface or counterintuitive workflows. As we evaluated HubSpot and Zoho, we assessed each provider for their overall ease of use, and HubSpot emerged the winner as the easier CRM to use of the two solutions.
HubSpot CRM Ease of Use
HubSpot received mixed reviews on ease of use. Some customers say the service is extremely easy to use while others report it has a steep learning curve because it can take a while to read through the online learning materials.
HubSpot Lead Management
Zoho CRM Ease of Use
Zoho customers say the CRM software is easy to use, and that tools and buttons are typically where users would expect to find them without searching. This is particularly true of the Free and first tier plan. However, some users say it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the number of customization choices available with higher-level price plans.
Zoho Customizable Product Management
HubSpot vs Zoho CRM: Customer Support
Whether you’re using a paid or free version of CRM software, you want to know the system containing your important customer data is backed by a responsive customer service team. While comparing HubSpot and Zoho, we evaluated each provider’s customer support, and Zoho pulled ahead because it offers more service options.
HubSpot CRM Customer Service
HubSpot customer service for free account holders includes access to the HubSpot online community. It’s a forum hosted by HubSpot for users to share knowledge, ask questions, and gain insights from other professionals who also use HubSpot products.
Zoho CRM Customer Service
Zoho customer service includes phone support, an online knowledge base, how-to videos, free e-books and tutorials, and an online community where users can interact with each other. Customers who purchase the Professional plan also have access to an online support ticketing system.
HubSpot vs Zoho CRM: Customer Reviews
When evaluating CRM software, it’s important to get opinions from people familiar with how each product fares during everyday use. As we compared HubSpot versus Zoho, we took a look at what our users had to say about what each service does well and what it doesn’t. Our readers have a slight preference for HubSpot over Zoho.
HubSpot CRM Customer Reviews
Our readers give HubSpot good reviews, with an average four-out-of-five-star rating. Some users say email tracking is “superb” and the interface is intuitive. However, some customers report software updates can disrupt workflows and data. For more reviews, visit our HubSpot User Review Page.
Zoho CRM Customer Reviews
Our readers give Zoho mixed reviews with a three-and-a-half-out-of-five-star rating. Customers say Zoho is comprehensive and includes features for nearly every task a sales team could need. However, some say interactions with customer support can be slow and frustrating. For more reviews, visit our Zoho User Review Page.
Alternatives to HubSpot and Zoho
If your business needs some advanced features not offered by HubSpot or Zoho, there are other CRM alternatives on the market to consider, like Freshsales or Pipedrive. Both alternative solutions offer unique benefits, are easy to set up, and are backed by reliable customer support, making them good alternate choices for your CRM strategy if neither HubSpot nor Zoho fit your needs.
Freshsales, our choice for best CRM software for small businesses, is a good fit for companies wanting advanced features like call recording and customized sales processes. It also offers email tracking, web-to-lead capture, and opportunity management. Freshsales has a free tier for unlimited users and three paid tiers ranging in price from $12 to $49 per user per month. Visit Freshsales’ website to set up a free account or for a 30-day free trial.
Businesses with multiple sales teams might also consider Pipedrive. Pipedrive features personal, company, and team goal setting and tracking, and the ability to sort salespeople by teams. It also offers customizable visibility and permission settings to segment work areas and restrict who can view its data. Its pricing ranges from $12.50 to $49.17 per user per month and includes a 14-day free trial. Visit Pipedrive’s website for details.
Bottom Line
When comparing HubSpot vs Zoho CRM, it is important to note that both are quality contact management systems, with their own strengths. While HubSpot is good for teams on a budget that want a permanently free CRM with a no-frills set of core features, Zoho stands out for its affordable combination of features that also include social integration tools for Twitter and Facebook.
Businesses that want a free CRM for an unlimited number of users that’s intuitive and easy to learn should check out HubSpot. It’s free to register and set up an account. Visit HubSpot today.
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