CRM Showdown: Comparing HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM

When many businesses begin, they operate off of spreadsheets, random docs, and emails. As you grow, you begin to implement new platforms, like CRMs (Customer Relationship Management software), to keep your data secure and organized. For growing businesses, the choice of a CRM platform is a key decision that can help or hinder your team. The right tool can help teams quickly view the right data and communicate across departments. The wrong tools can block work flow and add a burden to their daily tasks.

Whether you're choosing a new CRM or you're ready to switch from an existing one, finding the platform that fits your needs can be a daunting task. With so many options available, it can be difficult to know which one is best suited for your team and budget. While Glances supports many CRMs, we've chosen three to compare today: HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM. Each CRM will be evaluated for the following:

• Ease of use: How easy is it for your employees to use? Can it be quickly implemented and adopted across required teams? Does it work for more than one team?
• Pricing: How much does the CRM cost? Can we purchase different levels to get just what we need and reduce modules we don't need? Does pricing allow for scalability?
• Reporting: Being able to view reporting and analytic data is key to growing your business and addressing problems.
• Connected Apps: CRMs that display data from your favorite workplace platforms allow you to be more efficient.

Ease of Use

HubSpot

HubSpot is well-known for being intuitive and accessible. The HubSpot team focused on simplicity of use while maintaining the power of the product. In many areas of the platform, such as content creation, landing pages, forms, and emails, users simply drag-and-drop. Users of HubSpot report that learning HubSpot was comparable to other CRMs and wasn’t overly complicated.

Salesforce

Salesforce is incredibly powerful and customizable. Users report that Salesforce takes a bit more time to set up and there is more to learn due to the complexity of use cases it can handle, but that it is easy for teams to use beyond implementation.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM prides itself on a simple, modern design. The interface itself is customizable so you can build your CRM in a way that works for your team to reduce friction and burden of implementation.

Pricing

HubSpot

Has a free plan. Paid plans start at $30/month with 2 users. HubSpot uses a more modular approach to pricing, allowing you to pick and choose the solutions you need. Because there are so many options, be sure to research and select just the features you need.

Salesforce

Does not offer a free plan. Plans begin at $25/user/month depending on the features and solutions you need access to.

Zoho CRM

Has a free plan. Paid plans start at $14/user/month. They offer flexible contracts and don’t lock you into a contract or pricing plan.

Reporting

HubSpot

HubSpot seeks to make data available to everyone, while still allowing for advanced permissions for reports when needed. HubSpot allows teams to create and view marketing, sales, and service data within their reporting dashboard. Custom reports are available to help companies make data-driven decisions. Teams can save up to 300 custom dashboards to monitor metrics across teams.

Salesforce

With pre-build forecasting tools and deal insights, Salesforce offers agile reporting options. Salesforce reporting is top-of-the-line and offers various insights, including one consolidated view and real-time analytics to monitor progress. Salesforce offers advanced forecasting tools to identify trends and is one of the first CRMs to offer the power of AI.

Zoho CRM

Zoho offers pre-built and custom reporting for paid plans. Drag-and-drop fields (with their visual builder) allows teams to view the right data in reports. Reports can be saved, shared, and scheduled. Custom dashboards allow teams to track progress over time and create advanced forecasting reports.

Connected Apps

All three options are compatible with Glances, your go-to hub for customer insights and personal tasks. Use Glances to view data and complete tasks across apps without the hassle of formal integrations. With Glances you can view contacts, leads, invoices, notes, and more as well as create estimates, payments, new customers, etc. See what else Glances can do at glances.com or chat with us about your specific use case.

Overall, all three CRM solutions offer strong options and unique features and capabilities. While Salesforce is known for its ability to handle complex use cases and is highly customizable, HubSpot and Zoho CRM are both user-friendly and simple to set up. The best CRM software depends on your unique needs, preferences, and budget.

Now sure what CRM to ultimately choose? Learn more about selecting the best CRM that works for your team in our two-part series.

Integrate your CRM and all your apps, using Glances

Start your free trial to connect your favorite business apps and access your data in one easy click, from any app or webpage. You can find and connect CRMs like Saleforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, and many others when you are logged in to your Glances account.

More helpful steps

Schedule a demo to see the time-saving benefits of Glances in action or ask our team questions.

If you need to connect a specific app or platform with Glances that is not currently available on glances.com, please send your requests to hello@glances.com.

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