HubSpot CRM

Avantages

HubSpot is super easy to use and it's relatively easy to add users with specific access. This is great if you have review processes like ours. The new email WYSIWYG is much simpler to use now and for that alone, I'd recommend this tool. My team especially likes the calendar view for scheduling Social posts. This, by itself, has allowed my team to plan and schedule social posts up to three months out. We could go further, but choose not to.

Inconvénients

If you have a lot of brands with corresponding websites and social channels, it is difficult to keep that all separate. HubSpot recently added subdomain functionality that is helping us with that, but it has not been extended yet to include social channels. I also wish we had the ability to tag items with multiple campaigns because occasionally I need to track two things (the brand associated and the event or promotion). Campaigns are one of the ways I use to distinguish between brands, especially with Social posts.

Avantages

My favorite aspect of HubSpot CRM is the ability to track all activities and link it to other documents. This aspect combined with how quick and easy is to set a reminder for a follow-up call or email, helps me guarantee success with prospects and customers.
The second best aspect, in my opinion, it’s the integration with the HubSpot marketing platform, since I can easily see the workflows that a potential client has had, the downloads that he has made and when he has made interactions in my websites.
But I know that for many people the fact that it is Free and that it connects to many 3rd party Apps, is it most important selling point. Though personally I’ve only connected it to WordPress websites and some Email Marketing platforms.
Lastly, something that I don’t see people talk a lot about, is that the sales pipelines helps close more deals with less work, as it organizes and tracks every aspect and helps it grow and develop in the right direction.

Inconvénients

Only two specific points comes to my mind.
The CRM lacks the ability to add multiple email addresses to a single contact record. Sometimes I start a conversation with a contact through a work email, but then sends some information through a secondary email address. Even though it is something small, I think it limits my capacity to contact.

And also the ability to merge companies would also be of great help, since HubSpot CRM does not have any tool to join the information of the contacts of different organizations.

Avantages

Hubspot is user-friendly, attractive, and useful for different levels of expertise. We use it for the website, blog, social media, email, and CRM.
The content around the software is fantastic, with active blogs for different user groups, detailed guidance for how to use functionalities and what you could use them for, and templates to help you tackle projects. They provide a lot of resources to help you get the best out of Hubspot, and if you're stuck, the customer support is responsive and helpful.
Something I particularly like about Hubspot is how actively they are developing it. It seems to be every month that we receive an update of new features, functionality or integrations. They have recently added the ability to manage multiple currencies, which people had been really actively asking for on the community forum, and I was so pleased to see this added. Hubspot clearly listen to the feedback and suggestions from the community.

Inconvénients

There are some things which are a bit inflexible. For example, the Industry field for Companies is very large and has a lot of industries which would never be relevant to us. I would like to be able to delete or at least hide features and information which we never use and would never use.
Our email is on Outlook Exchange, which unfortunately means we are unable to use some of Hubspot's functions, like being able to email from within the platform and the Meetings function, which I would love to be able to use.

Avantages

This software has made my life so much easier! With automatic email logging and the ability to make notes, log phone calls and other important documents, Hubspot keeps all of my important information in one place. Hubspot gives me the ability to store all my clients details, their company details and all my communication with them in one bit of software. This makes it easy to look back over whenever I need to and keep up to date with what's going on. Hubspot also has the ability to have multiple team members within one account. Although this isn't something I use currently, it is something I have used in the past. This feature is wonderful for all team members to see emails both incoming and outgoing from customers / clients and is a life saver for looking back over email / telephone communications say if a team member is off ill and their client needs looking after for a few days.

Hubspot has also been updated to comply with GDPR standards.

A key positive for Hubspot for me is the knowledge that my collected data will stay in Hubspot for as long as I keep the software. As I am looking to take on employees within the next year, these new team members will be able to learn about exiting customers / clients through the information stored in Hubspot.

Inconvénients

It can be a little pricy for individuals. Personally, I went back to the free plan after not feeling I got my moneys worth out of the more advanced plan.

Hubspot doesn't always integrate with other software you may have, or sometimes it will integrate but not as well as you would like.

I use Spark email for OS. Although Hubspot does still track my outgoing and incoming email, if I BCC clients into an email, this isn't tracked in Hubspot. This can be a little annoying but it's not a deal breaker for me.

Avantages

I love how everything about a contact is all in one place. From the first moment, they visit your website, to every conversion they've made on your website, all contacts with the company they've had, any meetings, calls, or emails. It's all right there in the Contact Record of the CRM.

This helps the marketing and sales team implement "Smarketing" in a seamless manner. Sales reps have all the marketing data in order to tailor their sales approach to a contact. Marketing has all the sales qualification necessities to add to their lead scoring system, so they can intelligently pass off marketing qualified leads to the sales team once they reach a specific score.

It tracks all the sales representative's performance, interactions, productivity and more. This helps sales managers know what their team is doing and how well they are doing at all times.

You also have a Deals section, where you can track all sales opportunities that have potential to become a customer and their path to either becoming a customer or a lost sales opportunity. That gives HubSpot the ability to better forecast your sales month-to-month for bottom line reports.

I love how you can call a contact directly from their contact record in the CRM, record it, take notes, and see all the information in front of you while you're speaking to them. That helps sales professionals increase their sales calls productivity and outcomes.

The HubSpot CRM can also integrate with your Gmail and Office 365.

Inconvénients

The downside to the CRM is the limitation of integrating with your Gmail or Office 365. If you do not have your email or business hosted by Google/Gmail or Office 365, then it cannot fully integrate into your email system. The ability to have all the features of the HubSpot CRM right within your Inbox saves a lot of time and hassle of having to open up the HubSpot CRM and perform your tasks and communications there with a SQL.

There's the option to use IMAP with Microsoft Exchange if your company is hosted by another platform but still uses Microsoft 16 Exchange for your email service. But the drawback to this is that it is a bumpy road to setting up, and you do not have all the features and capabilities that you would have normally with Office 365 and a Business Gmail Account.

The price is also a common issue. HubSpot offers a free CRM but there are great limitations to this free CRM. It forces you to pay for the Sales Pro which is costly to add on to your other costs for the HubSpot platform such as the HubSpot CMS, MAP & Marketing.

With that being said, there are other CRMs that integrate with the HubSpot platform as an alternative and cheaper solution to having a robust CRM. The best one I have seen accomplish this is the BlueCamroo CRM.