A colleague recommended EngageBay, which is designed for small businesses and startups like yours.

That leaves you with three viable options for driving your small business success. You have to narrow down your choices, but how?

In this blog post, we’ll help with your dilemma.

First, we’ll review HubSpot, Mailchimp, and EngageBay individually before comparing the features of each respective email marketing software.

Finally, we’ll discuss pricing so you can choose the best tool for the money!

Before we proceed, here’s a quick feature/plan comparison table that will give you a clearer glimpse of the details discussed below:

What Is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a premier inbound marketing software with service and sales features.

Their products include a CMS (content management system) Hub, Service Hub for customer service software, Sales Hub with CRM, and Marketing Hub with automation.

Their CRM is available for free.

Here is a closer look at what’s in the Marketing Hub:

• Analytics dashboard with conversion and traffic analytics
• Content creation tools, including for a blog
• Social ads and other tools
• Live chat
• Video management and hosting
• Contact management
• Automation
• Email marketing

The services available from HubSpot are for businesses of all sizes, including startups and small companies.

What Is Mailchimp?

Since 2001, integrated marketing platform Mailchimp has been a trusted choice for creating winning email marketing campaigns.

Their platform includes services like audience management with lead segmenting, behavioral targeting, CRM, and signup forms.

Mailchimp’s creative tools are email campaign templates, subject line assistance, dynamic content, and their AI-driven Creative Assistant. You can also expect marketing automation and analytics through Mailchimp.

Uncover the landscape of HubSpot competitors with our comprehensive guide. Get detailed insights on pros, cons, and pricing.

HubSpot vs Mailchimp: A Comparative Analysis (2025)

What Is EngageBay?

Founded as a more affordable solution to HubSpot, EngageBay is an all-in-one support, sales, and marketing software that, too, has CRM.

They offer four products in the same vein as HubSpot: the Service Bay with custom tickets and helpdesk, the CRM & Sales Bay with lead scoring and sales CRM, the Marketing Bay (which we’ll discuss in just a moment), and the All-in-One Suite, which has a mix of the above services.

So which features are included in EngageBay’s Marketing Bay?

Here’s a quick overview:

• Bulk SMS marketing
• Email templates
• Contact segmentation
• Push notifications
• Site messaging
• Inbound marketing
• SMS marketing
• Webforms
• Landing pages
• Email sequences
• Email marketing
• Marketing automation

EngageBay Tutorial For Beginners | How To Use EngageBay

HubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay Comparison: Features, Pricing, Automation

With those introductions out of the way, we next want to home in on certain features among the three marketing tools.

These features include email templates, form builders, automation, CRM, and integrations.

Let’s talk about where HubSpot, Mailchimp, and EngageBay excel so you can start to get a clearer idea of which tool your small business will use.

HubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay feature comparison table

Email templates

HubSpot includes a free email template builder as part of its marketing automation software, but these emails are more sales-based than marketing-minded.

You can also select from more than 80 business templates, but these aren’t emails.

Instead, the included areas are project management, receipts and invoices, reports, CRM, and branding, among others. That will leave you mostly with HubSpot’s free email template builder for sales emails.

According to HubSpot, you can send these emails from within your HubSpot inbox.

If you find a template you like, it’s usable in Gmail and Microsoft Office 365 as well as Outlook.

business

HubSpot has metrics within their software that indicate how well your email templates perform.

When you find a winning template, you can easily send it among key members within your sales and/or marketing teams.

Mailchimp outdoes HubSpot in the templates department, as they give you 100 different templates to choose from.

Their templates include education messages, follow-ups, newsletters, announcements, and product sales emails. With drag-and-drop editing, Mailchimp’s email templates come together in minutes.

You can select the size of the templates, with some examples included in the image below.

Mailchimp has dozens upon dozens of email template themes you can work with too.

Some of these are stationary, photography, events, featured, and holidays.

If you’d rather, you can also code your own email templates from scratch in Mailchimp.

EngageBay’s Marketing Bay is home to their email templates. Many template themes are available, all of which have rich designs that are sure to appeal to your various audience segments.

Like Mailchimp gives you the option to code your own email templates from scratch, you can do the same in EngageBay CRM should you want to.

Landing page and form builders

HubSpot’s form builder is free to use.

According to their website, it takes mere seconds to create the kinds of forms your small business needs to excel.

You can make custom forms as well if that’s more up your alley. Since HubSpot’s form builder relies on drag and drop features, even those who don’t want to custom-build a form should be able to figure out how to make their own form.

Their landing page builder works in much the same way with drag-and-drop features.

HubSpot offers landing page templates, each mobile-optimized. A/B test your landing page before it goes live, then analyze its performance within HubSpot’s platform.

On its own, Mailchimp doesn’t have any landing page or form builders, but the apps or tools they integrate with might.

EngageBay’s landing page and form builders are very simple to use.

You can insert elements one by one with drag and drop, including images, copy, social media links, CTA buttons, and more.

EngageBay’s lead capture forms include pop-ups.

You determine when the pop-up appears so you can generate lead interest at just the right moment, possibly even changing a customer’s mind so they don’t abandon their cart!

Automation

HubSpot’s sales automation tools include some marketing features as well.

You can automate the following areas:

• Email follow-ups
• Email personalization
• Predictive lead scoring
• Sales call queues
• Meetings
• Email scheduling
• Email sequences

Where Mailchimp didn’t have much in the landing page or form-building departments, they more than make up for that in automation.

Their automation services take into account customer journeys and send-time optimization.

Here’s how you can use Mailchimp’s automation:

• Email personalization
• Email scheduling
• Email follow-upsHubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay: How Do They Differ?
• Custom triggers

You can also choose from automation types in Mailchimp, including date-based automation or behavior-based automation.

EngageBay’s automation features are nothing to sleep on either.

Like HubSpot, EngageBay has a mix of sales and marketing automation workflows to select from.

Here’s what you can automate:

• Email personalization
• Customer segmentation
• Lead scoring
• Email sequences
• Trigger events
• Email sending
• Email follow-ups
• Sales reporting
• Lead prioritization
• Missed call reassignment
• Team manager notifications
• Automated tasks

Here is a guide on how you use EngageBay’s automation workflows.

CRM

HubSpot’s CRM software is one of their only free features, so it naturally earns the company a lot of acclaim.

Within HubSpot’s CRM, you can do the following:

• Live chat
• Schedule meetings
• Track prospects and deals
• Receive email notifications
• Pipeline management
• Review a reporting dashboard

Mailchimp’s CRM is centered around marketing.

Here are the features:

• Mobile app connectivity
• Personalization
• Behavioral targeting
• Contact profiles
• Reports, including revenue, engagement, and growth reports
• Segmentation
• Audience dashboard insights

EngageBay’s sales and marketing CRM is also free forever like HubSpot’s (Mailchimp’s CRM is not free).

This is what you get:

• Custom reporting
• Sales gamification
• Analytics
• Email automation
• CRM Telephony
• Appointment scheduling
• Lead nurturing
• Contact management
• Lead scoring
• Email CRM integration

EngageBay CRM Review: 12 Things You Need To Know

Integrations

The HubSpot Marketplace is a comprehensive view into the full extent of their integrations.

With hundreds and hundreds of options available in areas like finance, customer service, productivity, sales, and marketing, we’ll list a few such integrations here.

• Gmail
• HubSpot for WordPress
• Zapier
• Facebook Ads
• Outlook
• Google Ads
• Zoom
• Mailchimp
• Slack
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• PieSync
• Calendly
• Instagram
• SurveyMonkey
• WooCommerce
• Typeform
• Shopify
• Eventbrite
• PandaDoc
• Salesforce
• Canva
• Stripe

MailChimp has nearly as many integrations, including the following:

• Vimeo
• Patreon
• LinkedIn
• Calendly
• Eventbrite
• OpenTable
• Hootsuite
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google Analytics
• Adobe Photoshop
• Canva
• WooCommerce
• Stripe
• LiveChat

We also must compare EngageBay’s Integration Library, which is quickly becoming just as robust as HubSpot’s or Mailchimp’s, with these options:

• Pabbly
• PieSync
• JotForm
• LinkedIn
• reCAPTCHA
• DocuSign
• BulkSMS
• Plivio
• Gupshup
• VivaConnect
• Exotel
• Twilio
• JustCall
• RingCentral
• MightyCall
• QuickBooks
• Stripe
• Amazon SES
• Shopify
• Xero
• Mandrill
• Mailgun
• SendGrid
• Zapier

Read also: HubSpot vs GetResponse: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

Comparing HubSpot, Mailchimp, and EngageBay Pricing

Now that you have a much clearer idea of which services are included among HubSpot, Mailchimp, and EngageBay, as well as how these three software platforms differ, it’s time to discuss the pricing for each.

Here is where you’ll really make the choice on which tool gels with your small business.

HubSpot pricing

With HubSpot, you get three CRM Suite Bundles: It’s aptly named Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

This table shows the basic pricing information:

The Starter plan offers a plethora of features for small businesses. You get 1,000 marketing contacts, email marketing, list segmentation, Live Chat, and shared inboxes. 

When paid annually, this plan costs $50 a month. If you have 5,000 contacts, you have to pay $88.

A fair price for the features it offers, right?

But what happens when you scale your business? Let’s take a look.

The Professional plan costs $1,780 for just 2,000 contacts.

If you go for the Enterprise plan, you must dish out $5,000 for 10,000 marketing contacts. For an annual subscription, you pay out a mind-boggling amount of $60,000 a year! Plus, you must pay a mandatory one-time onboarding fee of $12,000, bringing the cost to…

…seventy grand a year!

That’s a crazy figure — especially when you factor in the initial amount you had to pay: $50/month. 

HubSpot 2024 pricing update

In March 2024, HubSpot introduced a major update to its pricing model. This new change can both directly and indirectly increase the cost of the platform, especially for multi-user plans.

Here’s the gist.

HubSpot moved to a seats-based approach, adding two new seats: View-Only and Core. The View-Only seats are free and unlimited and offer view-only access to all the data and tools of a particular tier. The Core seats cost extra, and offer edit access to all the tools of that particular tier.

The catch?

The paid ‘Core’ seats are nothing new. It was previously offered for free under HubSpot’s free plan. Put bluntly, free users (managers, team leads, and CEOs) who enjoyed edit access for free should now pay to get access.

The following table can help you understand better.

Note: This update currently affects new users. Existing users may be moved to the new plans during the next renewal at the discretion of HubSpot.

Here are some features of the Starter plan:

• Form follow-up emails
• Ad retargeting
• Email marketing
• Email health insights
• List segmentation
• Forms
• Conversation bots
• Live chat
• Ad management

The Professional plan adds these extra features:

• Custom reporting
• Calculated properties
• Web traffic analytics
• Video management and hosting
• Ad optimization
• A/B testing
• Social media and SEO
• Company and contact scoring
• Smart reporting and content
• Marketing automation

The Enterprise plan has everything above plus:

• Predictive lead scoring
• Behavioral event triggers
• Programmable chatbots
• Webhooks
• Adaptive testing
• Field-level permissions
• Hierarchal teams
• Partitioning

Here’s a more detailed comparison:

HubSpot 2024 pricing update: In March 2024, HubSpot introduced a major update to its pricing structure by moving to a seats-based approach. Two new seats were added, namely View-Only and Core. The View-Only seats are unlimited and free and offer only view access. On the other hand, the paid Core seats offer edit access for all the data and features of that particular subscription. The catch is that the paid Core seat functionality was part of the previous free plan.

This table can help you understand better: 

Want to find a more affordable solution to HubSpot? Our article on the top HubSpot alternatives will help you make the right choice.

Mailchimp pricing

Their three paid plans include the Essentials plan at $13/month (for 500 contacts), the Standard plan at $20/month (for 500 contacts), and the Premium plan at $350/month (for 10,000 contacts). Pricing scales up with your contact tier.

Contacts included to start: Essentials and Standard include 500 contacts; Premium includes 10,000 contacts. Send limits are roughly 10× contacts (Essentials), 12× (Standard), and 15× (Premium) per month.

The Free plan comes with features such as:

• Up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends/month (max 500/day)

• 1 audience, 1 seat (Owner)

• Basic email templates (limited selection)

• Abandoned cart email and one-click welcome email

• Basic reporting, plus the ability to try landing pages and forms

The Essentials plan adds:

• 3 audiences, 3 seats (Owner/Admin)

• 10× monthly email sends (vs. contact tier)

• All email templates

• A/B testing

• Single-email automations and Automation Flows (up to 4 steps)

• Scheduled emails

• 24/7 email & chat support and SMS add-on

With the Standard plan, you can use the above features and these:

• 5 audiences, 5 seats (Owner/Admin/Author/Viewer)

• 12× monthly email sends

• Expanded Automation Flow capabilities & templates

• Advanced segmentation & pre-built segments

• Dynamic content (Standard or higher)

• Send Time Optimization (Standard or higher)

• Custom-coded templates

• Multivariate testing (Standard or higher)

• Comparative Reports, Personalized onboarding, SMS with MMS (US/CA)

• 24/7 email & chat support

The Premium plan includes everything from Mailchimp, such as:

• Unlimited seats and unlimited audiences

• 15× monthly email sends

• Priority phone support (plus chat & email), cobrowse support

• Extended personalized onboarding and access to customer success (on eligible custom plans)

• Advanced segmentation at scale and full multivariate testing

Not happy with Mailchimp’s pricing? See our top picks for the best Mailchimp alternatives in our comprehensive article.

EngageBay pricing

EngageBay’s Marketing Bay has four plans to choose from, including one Free plan.

The other three plans are the Basic for $14.99 a month per user, the Growth plan for $49.99 a month per user, and the Pro plan for $119.99 a month per user.

The Free plan boasts:

• Live chat
• Custom fields
• Email templates
• Lead grabbers
• Email broadcasts
• Video marketing
• Autoresponders
• Landing pages
• Sequences

With the Basic plan, you can add on these features:

• Tag management
• SMS marketing
• Landing page builder
• All integrations
• Lead scoring

The Growth plan includes everything above as well as:

• Marketing automation
• Landing page A/B testing
• Email broadcast A/B testing
• Custom domain
• Landing page custom coding
• Site messages

The Pro plan is the most comprehensive plan from EngageBay, with the above features and:

• Unlimited contacts
• Phone support
• Dedicated account manager
• SSO
• Uptime SLA
• Custom reports
• Web analytics

HubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay: The Winner

The time has come to select which marketing tool is worth the money: HubSpot, Mailchimp, or EngageBay. As a small business, you don’t exactly have a lot of funds to go around, at least not yet.

You need to make a careful, conscientious decision about your software and many other elements of your business.

That means HubSpot is out, as their software is simply too expensive for startups on a budget. Mailchimp seems affordable until you realize you only get 500 contacts for what you’re paying.

Is that such a big deal at the beginning of your small business journey?

No, but it will be sooner than later.

EngageBay offers affordable prices and features that are competitive to both HubSpot and Mailchimp.

They’re made for small businesses and startups and it shows in their pricing. For what you get for the money, EngageBay is absolutely worth it!

Ready to Choose?

Compare HubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay today to find the perfect balance of cost, features, and scalability for your business. HubSpot offers a powerful all-in-one CRM and marketing suite, Mailchimp excels at intuitive email marketing, and EngageBay delivers a budget-friendly, all-in-one platform tailored for small businesses and startups.

Learn more in our related comparison: HubSpot Vs EngageBay

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Sign up with EngageBay for free

Related reading: 

• The best CRM Tools for Small Businesses
• The 14 Best CRM Automation Software in 2024
• 15 Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
• Is HubSpot Worth It? In-Depth Review for Small Businesses

The post HubSpot vs Mailchimp vs EngageBay Comparison – Best All-in-One Email Marketing Tool? appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

The CRM you choose for your company is a very important decision. That’s doubly true if you’re a small business or startup owner, as you’ll rely on this software to further your business during those critical early days.

HubSpot, while an attractive CRM to many, is far from your only option as there are many HubSpot alternatives around today. ActiveCampaign is a well-ranking CRM, and EngageBay has emerged as a worthy contender and HubSpot alternative.

In today’s post, we’ll tell you how to pick a winner in the great battle of HubSpot vs. ActiveCampaign vs. EngageBay. To do that, we’ll cover the features, pricing, and pros and cons of each respective company’s CRM software.

Marketing Madness: HubSpot vs EngageBay Face-Off!
 

By the time you’re done reading, you should feel confidently able to decide which company’s CRM will best support your small business needs.

HubSpot CRM – Features, Pricing, and Pros and Cons

HubSpot is one of those companies that needs no introduction, but we’ll do it anyway. Founded in 2006, HubSpot has since topped other marketing and sales software to sit firmly on top.

The company’s software solutions include a CMS Hub, Service Hub, Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and its CRM.

Features

• • Reporting dashboard to oversee relationship management, track leads, review tasks in-progress, and more
  • Email marketing, including personalization
  • Deals, including active and closed deals
  • Forms for lead generation that don’t require coding knowledge
  • Customer support tickets so the appropriate members of your team can see and address the tickets
  • Prospect tracking for identifying and understanding a prospect’s online behavior
  • Pipeline management for a clear-cut view of your sales pipeline from beginning to end
  • Integrations with other software, including more than 300 options and counting
  • Productivity tools to keep the whole company motivated to get more done
  • Reports, including time-to-close reports and tickets-closed reports to aide customer service reps
  • Preset email templates that save time in sending and responding to emails
  • Conversation inbox that records interactions with your customers, including across multiple members of your team
  • Chatbots and live chat so your customers can get their questions answered quickly
  • Ad management for tracking the success of your advertisements in progress
  • Landing page builder for creating professional-looking landing pages
  • Chatbot builder for customizing the chatbot to your small business’ needs
  • Email notifications and tracking so you know when customers opened your emails and which ones
  • Meeting scheduling so curious prospects and customers can sit down and talk with your sales team when they’re ready

EngageBay vs HubSpot – Which is Better for CRM?

Pricing

HubSpot pricing for their CRM is always free. This may appear pretty great on the surface, but things are not as they seem.

Since HubSpot’s pricing is based on a sliding scale, we’ll first show you the starting price of each plan and then go into the details of each plan: 

Pricing for HubSpot Starter

• 1,000 contacts: $50/mo ($18/mo for new users)
• 10,000 contacts: $440/mo
• 50,000 contacts: $2,040/mo
• 100,000 contacts: $4,040/mo

Pricing for HubSpot Professional

• 2,000 contacts: $1,780/mo
• 10,000 contacts: $2,280/mo
• 50,000 contacts: $4,080/mo
• 80,000 contacts: $5,180/mo

Pricing for HubSpot Enterprise

• 10,000 contacts: $5,000/mo
• 50,000 contacts: $5,400/mo
• 100,000 contacts: $5,850/mo
• 1,000,000 contacts: $11,750/mo

You see, to make the most of HubSpot’s features as included in the CRM, you need to pay for their services.

Sure, for brand-new small businesses and startups, these limited features might suffice. As you grow and need more though, you’re forced into paying for at least the Starter plan, which is $50 per month per user.

Maybe that’s not bad, but having to jump a tier to the Professional plan will set you back $1780 per month per user. You better have a sizable sales, marketing, and CRM budget at that point!

HubSpot’s 2024 pricing update explained

HubSpot’s already expensive plans have undergone a major change in 2024, increasing the pricing further. While we won’t go into detail, this table shows the new changes: 

After the revised pricing structure, many users saw a 5x-60x increase in annual costs for the same set of features. That’s a huge bump in pricing!

While you could argue that the Starter plan for $50/month is enough for you, many users found themselves needing to upgrade to a higher plan much faster than anticipated. That is because once your business needs even basic automation or analytics, you’ll be forced into expensive professional and Enterprise plans. 

Some users even said that they needed just one custom report and basic automation and ended up paying $1780/month because it was not available in the Starter plan. 

Even fundamental features like tracking MRR (monthly recurring revenue) are locked behind the Enterprise plan.

Pros and Cons

One of the biggest upsides to using HubSpot is their name recognition. Since they’re trusted by so many salespeople and marketers, you know you’d make a solid decision when you use their services.

The wealth of integrations HubSpot offers is also to its benefit. Further, that its CRM is always free is enough to entice even small businesses and startups to try HubSpot’s services.

As I said though, you’re quite limited with what you can do in your HubSpot CRM unless you buy the Starter plan. Even then, if you want to make more comprehensive landing pages, use more than 10 reporting dashboards or more than one conversation inbox, or make more than 25 segmented lists, you have to pay for the Professional plan.

The cost of the Professional plan–$1780 a month–is too far out of reach for most businesses. If you had five people using HubSpot’s Professional CRM, that’s $8,900 per month you’d have to pay!

Forget it.

Value for Money

HubSpot delivers an expansive feature set—spanning marketing, sales, service, and CMS hubs—making it a powerful all-in-one platform. However, this comes at a steep cost, particularly as businesses scale. Paid tiers, onboarding fees, and contract commitments can quickly drive the monthly rate into hundreds or thousands of dollars. While rich in capabilities, HubSpot’s value can diminish unless you have the budget to fully leverage its advanced offerings.

ActiveCampaign CRM – Features, Pricing, and Pros and Cons

Founded in 2003, ActiveCampaign actually predates HubSpot by three years. Their products include sales automation, marketing automation, email marketing, CRM, and more.

Now that you’re well-acquainted with HubSpot’s CRM, next, I want to discuss the CRM offered by ActiveCampaign including ActiveCampaign’s pricing vs features

Features

Labeled as a sales CRM, ActiveCampaign’s solution should also suit marketers, business owners, and customer service reps. Here’s an overview of those features:

• Email notifications so your sales team gets notifications on following up in their nurture campaigns and sales automations
• Lead scoring for tracking sales-qualified and marketing-qualified leads
• Lead segmentation that’s automated depending on lead behavior so you get more scored and sorted leads
• Deal notes so you can write down the contact info and share other pertinent data about a lead or customer with others on your team
• Assigning tasks automatically or manually to relevant team members
• Deal updates, which are also automated, and display info like the value of the deal, how many deals your sales team lost, how many they won, and at which stage the deal is at
• Marketing automation for the sales funnel to continue campaigns to their completion
• Win probability predictions so your sales team knows which leads are worth pursuing and can go after them
• Sales reporting, which includes single sales reps as well as the collective efforts of the whole sales team
• Integrations with more than 280 tools and apps like Calendly, Unbounce, Facebook, and Zendesk
• iOS app for calling, task management, updating lead contact information, and progressing deals even when your sales team isn’t at the office

Pricing

Unlike HubSpot, ActiveCampaign’s CRM is not free. Here’s a glimpse into ActiveCampaign pricing.

• For 1,000 contacts, the Lite plan is $15 a month, the Plus plan is $49 a month, the Professional plan is $79 a month, and the Enterprise plan is $145 a month
• For 2,500 contacts, the Lite plan is $39 a month, the Plus plan is $95 a month, the Professional plan is $149 a month, and the Enterprise plan is $255 a month
• For 5,000 contacts, the Lite plan is $79 a month, the Plus plan is $145 a month, the Professional plan is $205 a month, and the Enterprise plan is $375 a month
• For 10,000 contacts, the Lite plan is $149 a month, the Plus plan is $189 a month, the Professional plan is $375 a month, and the Enterprise plan is $589 a month

The Lite and Plus plans are pretty affordable until your small business gets to around 5,000 contacts, but that’s a moot point. You don’t even get CRM access until you pay for the Professional plan, and that’s regardless of how many contacts you have.

By that point, you’re spending $149 a month on a CRM, and at most $255 a month. At least you get 50 users for the Professional plan so your money is better allocated.

Are you curious about the alternatives to ActiveCampaign? Our article on the best ActiveCampaign alternatives is a must-read.

Pros and Cons

HubSpot and ActiveCampaign have some obvious differences between them.

The biggest is how HubSpot’s CRM is free, but remember that’s at least on the surface. Ultimately, you’d pay less money to add more users with ActiveCampaign’s CRM. Plus, they’re upfront about their pricing, not masquerading it as free.

ActiveCampaign, although it doesn’t have as many integrations as HubSpot, still offers a lot of the same features in their CRM, plus others it appears HubSpot doesn’t have. For instance, you can get win probability predictions when you pay for ActiveCampaign’s CRM.

Despite that it has services for marketers and customer service reps, ActiveCampaign’s CRM is largely catered towards salespeople. Thus, your company might find it somewhat limiting, which is certainly its biggest downside.

Value for Money

Despite offering robust automation and CRM tools at competitive prices, ActiveCampaign stands out as offering significantly better value than HubSpot. As one independent comparison notes, ActiveCampaign is a “clear winner due to its excellent automations and much more reasonable prices”. It’s frequently cited as a budget-conscious alternative to HubSpot with strong functionality for marketing-focused businesses

Not happy with HubSpot? Take a look at our blog post introducing the top HubSpot competitors.

EngageBay CRM – Features, Pricing, and Pros and Cons

The third CRM that might be the ideal solution for your company is EngageBay. A newer company, EngageBay was founded in 2017 as an all-in-one sales and marketing solution for small businesses and startups on a tight budget.

As a viable HubSpot alternative, EngageBay has a variety of products in its Service Bay, CRM & Sales Bay, Marketing Bay, and the All-in-One Suite.

Here’s an EngageBay CRM review from G2:

“I cannot recommend EngageBay highly enough!” — Stephanie P., Marketing Consultant (Small Business)
“EngageBay is an almost completely featured CRM and email marketing SaaS solution but at a fraction of the cost of all the dominant players. And EngageBay’s support team deserves all the awards! They are real humans, are highly responsive, and really seem to care about solving any problems users might come up against. What a refreshing experience!” (G2)

Features

According to EngageBay, their CRM is tailored for small businesses and startups, a consideration that both ActiveCampaign and HubSpot definitely appear to have ignored.

Here’s what you’ll find in EngageBay’s CRM:

• Contact management and organization for targeting your campaigns and personalizing your communications with your leads and customers
• Pipeline visualization for seeing which deals are in progress, which are nearly closed, and which deals are closed
• Appointment scheduling with the sales team via their individual or team calendar so leads can get in touch with the right parties they want to talk with
• Contact management, including a rich and detailed history of every past interaction with a lead or customer
• Integrated tools for both sales and marketers to use so they can sync and send crucial information to one another
• Task creation and assignments so your sales and marketing teams can follow up with a lead when necessary to increase your chances of conversions
• Automated data entry so your sales team and marketers waste less time on data logging
• Comprehensive sales reporting on an individual and team level to inspire future successes and discover areas to be learned from
• Gamification and leaderboards to motivate your sales team to perform at their best every time
• Syncing between CRM and email with CRM Email Integration, a two-way email system that makes a copy of the email within the CRM for your company’s records
• Lead scoring for finding qualified leads who are more likely to become customers
• Call integration via CRM Telephony to log call records and provide transcripts that can come in handy for other members of your sales and marketing team who may interact with that same lead or customer later

Pricing

If EngageBay’s CRM seems more suitable to you as a startup or small business owner, you’re undoubtedly going to worry about pricing.

Worry you won’t have to, as EngageBay’s sales and marketing CRM is always free. This isn’t conditional like HubSpot, where you get hardly any features until you pay an arm and a leg.

EngageBay has a free plan that lets you send 1,000 branded emails and add 1,000 contacts. You also can use live chat, a helpdesk, a landing page builder, lead grabbers, and sequences. Further, you can broadcast emails and take advantage of EngageBay’s inclusive email marketing features.

The Basic plan costs only $12.74 per user per month if you want to take things one step up. Now you can send 10,000 emails­–all branded–and add 15,000 contacts.

Further, you’ll gain access to the tag manager, social suite, SMS marketing, lead scoring, web pop-ups, and email templates.

Pros and Cons

EngageBay arose out of a need to provide a more affordable alternative to HubSpot’s services. That’s why their CRM is always free, no strings attached.

As you’re surely aware by now, you don’t get that same guarantee with HubSpot, far from it.

Although you’re not paying for EngageBay’s CRM, you don’t have to skimp on features, not in the least. You’ll find many of the same features as what you’re paying upwards of $100 a month to use as part of HubSpot or ActiveCampaign’s respective CRM options as well as unique features only available through EngageBay.

If your small business grows, EngageBay keeps its pricing plans affordable. Even the Growth plan with 50,000 contacts and 25,000 branded emails costs $49.99 per month per user and the Pro plan with unlimited contacts and 50,000 branded emails is $79.99 per month per user.

Value for Money

EngageBay earns top marks for value for money. The comparison blog emphatically declares it the winner in terms of cost-efficiency and scalability, especially for small businesses and startups. Across various industries—including finance and banking—EngageBay is frequently praised for delivering a comprehensive suite of tools (marketing, sales, support) at a much lower price point than competitors like HubSpot. Its simple pricing model and rich features package make it a standout for businesses focused on affordability without sacrificing capability.

Read also: HubSpot vs GetResponse: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

Which CRM Is Right for You: ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, or EngageBay?

The debate between ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, or EngageBay regarding which CRM is the best for your business doesn’t have to be a major head-scratcher.

HubSpot has a free CRM to lure you in, but it’s inefficient on its own, making you pay for one of their expensive monthly plans. That would knock HubSpot out of contention, we’d say.

Bar chart comparing value-for-money: EngageBay offers lowest cost per feature vs ActiveCampaign and HubSpot

ActiveCampaign doesn’t try to pretend its CRM is free, but they’re not exactly scalable either. As your company expands, ActiveCampaign’s prices go steeply up, which doesn’t make them a very suitable option for a growing small business.

That leaves EngageBay. When EngageBay says its CRM is free, they mean it, with no underhanded tactics to try to lure you into spending more money.

Comparison table of ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and EngageBay: pricing, automation, CRM, helpdesk, integrations

You also have enough free features that your small business won’t feel like it’s lacking anywhere. With EngageBay’s CRM, you can get a comfortable start promoting your business through marketing and growing it with sales.

The scalability of EngageBay is also pretty fantastic. You can jump to 15,000 contacts and 10,000 branded emails by spending only $12.74 a month per user, keeping your CRM prices manageable.

If your company ever needs to log 50,000 contacts, that comes at a price jump of about $40 to $89.99 a month per user. Remember, HubSpot’s Starter plan is $50 a month, then their Professional plan costs $1780. That’s a $1730 jump, which is astronomically high!

EngageBay gives you more CRM features at a better value pound for pound. By paying more elsewhere, you’re only doing your small business or startup a disservice.

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

Conclusion

Pondering over which CRM is right for your small business or startup doesn’t have to leave you in agony any longer. As promised, we had a winner emerge between HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and EngageBay.

The winner is, hands down, EngageBay, especially if you care about saving money and scalability.

If you were wondering if your small business should choose ActiveCampaign or HubSpot for your CRM or if EngageBay is your safest bet, hopefully you’re now able to answer that question.

The post ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: Which CRM Wins in Features & Value? appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

But when you compare HubSpot vs GetResponse pricing and features, you will see that they both different pricing models and unique features that set them apart and differ in how easy they are to use.

So, I signed up for both platforms to see how they compare. And in this detailed HubSpot vs GetResponse guide, you’ll learn:

• The key differences between HubSpot and GetResponse
• The pricing difference between the two platforms
• How the HubSpot vs GetResponse CRM features look and feel differ 
• A more affordable, smarter alternative

Quick Comparison: HubSpot vs GetResponse at a Glance

Feature	HubSpot	GetResponse
Entry-level price (1 k contacts)	Starter plan – $20 / mo	Email Marketing plan – $19 / mo
Email send limit (same tier)	5 × contact tier per month; free tools capped at 2 000 sends	Unlimited monthly email sends
Built-in CRM & shared inbox	Free CRM + omni-channel shared inbox	No CRM (marketing platform only)
Webinar hosting	Not included natively	Built-in live & on-demand webinar studio
eCommerce promo codes & AI product recs	Basic (via integrations)	Advanced native toolkit
Social Ads Creator	Not offered	Built-in video/banner Ads Creator
Account-based marketing (ABM)	Native ABM workflows & company scoring	Not supported
Free-plan contact limit	1 000 contacts	500 contacts
Support on entry plan	Email + chat; phone from Pro tier	24/7 email + chat; no phone

HubSpot vs GetResponse: Main Differences

Both platforms have similar features that’ll help you attract an audience, convert them into leads, and engage with customers. 

Such features include landing pages, forms, marketing automation, email marketing, social media management, ad manager, live chat, and a website builder.

But there are key things that set the two platforms apart. Here are the main differences: 

Comparing HubSpot vs GetResponse

We’ll compare both platforms and review them based on seven factors – ease of use, pricing, email marketing, CRM integration, landing page creation, marketing automation, and analytics.

HubSpot vs GetResponse: Ease of use

In this section, we’ll review the customer support and UI, and look at the resources available to help you get started.

HubSpot 

HubSpot is an all-in-one tool, but it’s easy to navigate through the different hubs. All the hubs are on the top navigation bar, with specific features in each hub available in the drop-down menu. This makes it easy to navigate to the main features in HubSpot Marketing Hub with only a few clicks.

But to some, this all-in-one nature isn’t relevant to them. As Kaitlin Hay, a Digital Marketing Specialist, says:

“There is a lot on the site that I don’t use, there seems to be a lot of extra bells and whistles that aren’t essential to running a marketing program.”

But in terms of using its marketing tools, HubSpot is user-friendly, as Kaitlin explains:

“Setting up automated drip workflows is user-friendly and they really do think of everything! Its intuitive and easy to use, makes creating drip campaigns easy. Also love the email analytics and how easy it is to create grey list and blacklist email lists to remove old subscribers to improve the open rate.”

Customer support includes email and in-app chat support for the starter plan (we’ll review the pricing next), and the professional and enterprise plan includes phone support. They also have a multilingual support team that caters to international customers. 

You can also ask questions in the community center and get in-depth answers from certified HubSpot partners. When you need instant answers for common tasks, you can use the extensive knowledge base to find answers.

GetResponse

It has a clean UI since it’s only an email marketing platform. All the features are a click away and include in-app step-by-step guides to help you get the most out of each feature.  

I also found the tutorial videos and the help center to be resourceful. But HubSpot has more in-depth and useful step-by-step guides related to each feature, unlike GetResponse. 

Customer support includes email and chat support but lacks phone support. Overall, GetResponse is easy to use, and you can run your marketing campaigns in no time with the help of customer support. 

Here’s how Richard Tunnah, CEO of Redman Capital, summed up his experience:

“GetResponse is easy to get started with as they offer help videos and support to get you through the difficult first email campaign set up. I have tried a few of the leading email campaign companies including Aweber, Constant Contact and Mailchimp, GetResponse was the easiest to set up your first campaign.”

Ease of use verdict

Both platforms are easier to use. However, according to customer ratings on G2, HubSpot is easier to use and has better customer support compared to GetResponse.

HubSpot: Pros and Cons in a Nutshell (2025)

Read also: The Best HubSpot Alternative

GetResponse vs HubSpot: Pricing

This is the major difference between GetResponse and HubSpot. It could be the deciding factor. So, let’s review their pricing.

How much does HubSpot cost?

HubSpot’s pricing varies depending on the type and number of contacts you have. It has two types of contacts:

• Marketing contacts: These are the normal contacts you can send emails to, target with ads, and run automations on. They count towards your pricing plan.
• Non-marketing contacts: These contacts don’t count toward your paid plan. You can’t send marketing emails or target these contacts with ads.

All the plans include 1 million free non-marketing contacts. You can store these contacts in the free CRM.

HubSpot offers various suites/plans:

• HubSpot Marketing Hub
• HubSpot Sales Hub
• HubSpot Service Hub
• HubSpot CRM Suite

Each has three paid plans and one free plan:

Starter plan – Pricing starts at $20/month

This plan suits small teams and individuals. It includes the main features that’ll help you attract and engage with leads. 

Features in this pricing plan include: 

• Email marketing
• Forms
• Landing pages
• Live chat 

This price includes 1,000 marketing contacts. Here’s the pricing structure for additional contacts:

• The first 1,000 contacts are included in your monthly starter plan
• 1,001 to 3,000 contacts – $20/month per 1,000
• 3,001 to 5,000 contacts – $18/month per 1,000
• 5,000+ contacts – $16/month per 1,000

One thing to note: HubSpot limits the number of emails you send per month. In the starter plan, your account limit is 5X your marketing contacts.

Professional plan – Pricing starts at $890/month

This plan is best for you if you have a bigger team and want to expand your marketing efforts beyond just emails, landing pages, and forms. 

Key features in this plan include:

• Teams (you can organize users into teams based on various criteria such as product line and region)
• Omni-channel marketing automation
• Email marketing campaigns
• Custom reporting 
• Social media
• You also get additional features and increased limits on features in the starter plan.

It includes 2,000 marketing contacts. Additional contacts are priced as follows:

• The first 2,000 contacts are included in your monthly professional plan
• 2,001 to 22,000 – $250/mo per 5,000
• 22,001 to 42,000 – $225/mo per 5,000
• 42,001 to 62,000 – $200/mo per 5,000
• 62,001 to 82,000 – $175/mo per 5,000
• 82,000+ – $150/mo per 5,000

Two things to note:

• Your email send limit in this plan is 10X your marketing contacts. 
• Mandatory onboarding is required with a one-time fee of $3,000

Enterprise plan – Pricing starts at $3,600/month billed at $43,200/year

This plan is billed yearly, and you must commit to it for a year. It’s suited for enterprise companies or large teams. 

Key features include:

• Hierarchical teams. It helps you manage users much better
• Partitioning which gives you the ability to give teams different permissions on features and marketing assets
• Custom behavioral events that let you track actions visitors take on your website 
• Custom objects that let you store data only relevant to your business

It includes 10,000 contacts, and additional contacts are priced as follows:

• The first 10,000 contacts are included in your enterprise plan
• 10,001 to 50,000 – $100/mo per 10,000
• 50,001 to 100,000 – $90/mo per 10,000
• 100,001 to 200,000 – $80/mo per 10,000
• 200,001 to 500,000 – $70/mo per 10,000
• 500,000+ – $60/mo per 10,000

Two things to note:

• Your email send limit in this plan is 20X your marketing contacts
• A one-time onboarding fee of $6,000 is mandatory

HubSpot 2024 pricing update

In March 2024, HubSpot introduced two new seats: View-Only and Core. Here’s a breakdown of the new changes: 

• The View-Only seat does not offer any edit access. All plans offer unlimited View-Only seats. 
• The Core Seat offers users edit access to all the features in their subscriptions — useful for CEOs, team leaders, and managers.
• The catch: The free edit-access seats that HubSpot was offering previously no longer exist – they are now the paid ‘Core Seats’. This means that those who enjoyed having free edit access previously should now purchase at least a Core seat to continue editing (or do away with a View-Only seat).

This table can help you understand better: 

Not happy with HubSpot’s pricing? See our top picks for the best HubSpot alternatives in our comprehensive article.

How much does GetResponse cost?

GetResponse has four pricing plans: Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, eCommerce Marketing, and Max plan. The Max plan is a custom-built plan specific to your needs, so we’ll only review the first three plans.

But two things to note about GetResponse pricing that are different from HubSpot: 

• • GetResponse has unlimited monthly email sends. You are not charged for the number of emails you send per month.
  • When an email address is allocated to several lists, it will be considered as separate contacts and charged accordingly.
  • GetResponse charges based on the number of contacts in your list.

Email Marketing plan – Pricing starts at $19/month 

This plan suits you if you need an email marketing platform to capture and nurture an audience. 

Key features include:

• Email marketing. You can run basic functions like sending unlimited newsletters, A/B testing, and click tracking.
• Autoresponders to automatically send out welcome emails.
• Basic segmentation based on contact details, tags, contact action, and lead magnet. No segmentation based on scoring and events.
• Website Builder
• Landing pages and signup forms
• Access to only the automation templates
• Limited live chat

Here’s the pricing structure for the Email Marketing plan:

• 1,000 contacts – $19/month
• 2,500 contacts – $29/month
• 5,000 contacts – $54/month
• 10,000 contacts – $79/month
• 25,000 contacts – $174/month
• 50,000 contacts – $299/month
• 100,000 contacts – $539/month

Marketing Automation plan – Pricing starts at $59/month

This plan suits you if you need to scale your marketing operations. Features in this plan include all the features from the previous plan plus:

• Marketing automation. You can access the automation builder and additional automation features like contact scoring, drip campaigns, and event-based automation.
• Live webinars
• Limited web push notifications
• Fully unlocked live chat
• Advanced segmentation

Here’s the pricing structure for this plan:

• 1,000 contacts – $59/month
• 2,500 contacts – $69/month
• 5,000 contacts – $95/month
• 10,000 contacts – $114/month
• 25,000 contacts – $215/month
• 50,000 contacts – $359/month
• 100,000 contacts – $599/month

eCommerce Marketing Plan – Pricing starts at $119/month

This plan suits eCommerce brands because all the additional features, when compared to the Marketing Automation plan, are eCommerce based. 

Features in this plan include:

• eCommerce tools like order confirmation automation, abandoned order recovery, quick transactional emails, synced promo codes.
• eCommerce segmentations
• Additional webinar features like on-demand and paid webinars
• Unlimited web push notifications and automation
• eCommerce and product recommendation reports

GetResponse’s Advanced eCommerce toolkit—AI product recommendations, promo-code generation, Social Ads Creator—gives sellers growth features HubSpot only offers through add-ons.

Here’s the pricing structure for this plan:

• 1,000 contacts – $119/month
• 2,500 contacts – $139/month
• 5,000 contacts – $169/month
• 10,000 contacts – $199/month
• 25,000 contacts – $299/month
• 50,000 contacts – $444/month
• 100,000 contacts – $699/month

Pricing verdict

GetResponse is cheaper than HubSpot. HubSpot locks key features under a paywall, so you have to upgrade, and the steep price jump from the starter plan to the pro plan is a deal breaker for many. 

GetResponse selectively provides key features in each plan and doesn’t force you to upgrade to a higher subscription like HubSpot.

GetResponse Free Plan: A Comprehensive Overview

Read also: HubSpot Pricing and Comparison with Affordable Alternatives

GetResponse vs HubSpot: Email Marketing

Both platforms have powerful email features that’ll help you target campaigns to a specific audience or run A/B tests to optimize your email campaigns. We’ll look at how each email marketing tool performs and give you a review of each.

HubSpot 

Its drag-and-drop email builder is powerful yet user-friendly, with simple navigation. However, you may be limited by the few templates and design options. 

As Kaizer Ahmed says:

“While the (HubSpot) platform offers a lot of customization options, some users may find that they are limited by the available templates and design options.”

The smart content and personalization tokens in HubSpot help you create a more engaging experience for your audience. Your email’s content will change based on people’s interests and behavior. Examples of personalization tokens in HubSpot include job function, last engagement date, last marketing email click date, last page seen, lifecycle stage, and many more. 

After creating your email, you can add it to marketing and sales automation right before sending the email. These workflows automate what happens after a contact engages with your email. 

GetResponse

GetResponse has a ton of email templates compared to HubSpot. Although most of the templates are for eCommerce brands, they are a great choice for those who don’t have the time or resources to start from scratch.

Its email editor is simple and easy to navigate. But it’s less easy to navigate when compared to HubSpot. It’s too simple and lacks certain features like automatically creating a web version of the email or creating an A/B test directly from the email editor like HubSpot. 

Email marketing verdict

HubSpot is by far better compared to GetResponse. It has more email automation features to engage with your audience, like smart content, and its editor is designed to save you time.

Read also: Marketing Automation Software for Small Businesses

GetResponse vs HubSpot: CRM Integration

It’s important to choose an email marketing automation platform that integrates with your CRM because you’ll have more automation options, such as targeting new leads added to your CRM. You’ll also use data from your CRM to improve your leads scoring system.

HubSpot 

HubSpot has a native CRM since it’s an all-in-one platform. It provides seamless integration with your customer data, advanced lead management options, and marketing automation capabilities.

The direct HubSpot integration gives you more lead-scoring options and contact management features. For example, the smart contact database lets you view a lead’s entire interaction with your company, from social media and emails to tickets raised. You can also set automations triggered by events in the CRM.

Free CRM + omnichannel shared inbox let teams see every contact, deal, email, chat, Messenger thread, and form submission in one place.

HubSpot also integrates with popular CRMs like Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Close, Copper, Bitrix24, Freshsales Suite, Insightly, Sugar CRM, Nimble CRM, Redtail CRM, Freshsales (classic), Nutshell, Bigin, Salesmate, Vtiger CRM, Ontraport and many more.

GetResponse

GetResponse lacks a native CRM like HubSpot. So you won’t get the advantage of a seamless data transfer and more customization options. But it natively integrates with popular CRMs like:

• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Sugar CRM
• Zoho CRM

You can also connect to other CRMs like HubSpot, Capsule, and Salesflare. 

CRM Integration verdict

HubSpot has more integration options than GetResponse. This makes it effective to create more personalized email campaigns and improve your marketing and sales efforts.

Read also: Free CRM with Marketing Automation

GetResponse vs HubSpot: Landing Page Creation

Creating landing pages within your email marketing software saves you time and improves user experience. However, the creation process has to be easy and intuitive, and the marketing automation tool should have the right features. In this section, we’ll look at what both platforms have to offer.

HubSpot 

The landing page builder is really easy to use. You don’t need any coding experience to create a page, as it’s all done through a drag-and-drop interface. There are also a couple of pre-designed templates to choose from, which you can customize to fit your brand and messaging. 

You can add forms, calls-to-action, and other conversion-focused elements to the page to encourage people to take action, and then run A/B tests to see which version of the page performs better. 

Smart content modules display different versions of your content based on categories like ad source, device type, country, preferred language, lifecycle stage, or how they found your site.

GetResponse

It has over 100 design templates available. You can choose from popular categories like Download, Discount, Optin, and Webinar Invite. You can also build a landing page from scratch.

One downside to its builder is the outdated design and few customization options compared to HubSpot. 

Here’s how Meriah Kruse summed up the landing page builder:

“Although I appreciate the landing page maker, I am also still hoping for some improvement in the landing page construction functions, which I find stodgy and finicky.”

You can also personalize the sign-up form on your landing page by adding custom fields and customizing the text on the button. And if you want to organize the content of your page with sections or add videos, it’s easy – just drag and drop the video placeholder into the workspace and paste a link to a video URL.

GetResponse: Built-in webinar studio (live, on-demand, YouTube/Facebook streaming, polls, CTAs) comes at no extra cost.

Landing page creation verdict

HubSpot has a better landing page builder compared to GetResponse. Its UI is more user-friendly, and it lets you optimize your pages for SEO.

Read also: Is HubSpot Worth It? An In-depth HubSpot Review for Small Businesses

HubSpot vs GetResponse: Marketing Automation

Marketing automation allows you to send targeted and personalized emails to your subscribers based on their behavior, interests, and preferences. Both platforms have automation capabilities, but which one is intuitive, easy to use, and more powerful?

HubSpot

You can create a new workflow from scratch or use a template to guide you. When creating a workflow from scratch, you can select from different objects like Contacts, Companies, Deals, and more. Once you’ve chosen your object, you can then select the type of workflow you want to create, like a Blank Workflow or a Scheduled Workflow.

HubSpot’s Native ABM workflows with company scoring and automation help target high-value accounts—capabilities GetResponse lacks.

If you prefer to use a template, you can search for one that aligns with your goals and explore different automation options. Once you’ve selected a template, you can edit, add, and remove actions in the editor.

After selecting your object and type, you can set enrollment triggers to automatically enroll records in the workflow based on certain criteria. You can configure triggers, conditions, and actions to deliver the most effective emails to the most relevant recipients at optimal times. 

The advanced segmentation in HubSpot ensures that only the appropriate contacts are enrolled in your workflows. And by integrating data from your CRM, you can personalize your emails for maximum effect.

It’s important to note that the actions available to you depend on your subscription, and locked actions require an account upgrade to use. Once you’ve added your actions, you can clone or move them to streamline the workflow-building process.

Read also: The Best GetResponse Alternatives (Features, Pricing)

GetResponse

It allows you to create targeted, personalized campaigns that are triggered by specific user actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, landing page visits, or abandoning a shopping cart. This is different from HubSpot, which lets you create triggers not only from contacts but also from company details, deals, quotes, and tickets.

The GetResponse email marketing software has a ton of automation templates to choose from. They range from different categories such as welcome emails, engagement and retention, post-purchase, abandoned cart, online courses, webinars and events, and affiliate marketing. 

Marketing automation verdict

HubSpot is more powerful and has more features compared to GetResponse. But choosing between the two depends on your needs. GetResponse offers automation in cheaper plans than HubSpot but is geared towards small businesses, while HubSpot is expensive and suitable for large teams.

Read also: GetResponse Vs TinyEmail — In-Depth Analysis With Key Differences

EngageBay: A More Affordable and Powerful Alternative

HubSpot is a more powerful all-in-one CRM and email marketing platform. It’s user-friendly and better in most aspects compared to GetResponse. But it’s not suited for small teams or individuals who want an affordable and simple email marketing platform.

Showdown: HubSpot vs EngageBay

GetResponse is a cheaper alternative with similar features. It has more unique features like webinars and more eCommerce tools, but its interface is not user-friendly, and it’s a bit expensive compared to other email marketing platforms.

That’s where EngageBay comes in. It’s cheaper than both platforms and has all the essential features. 

For example, the $49.99/month plan allows you to run marketing automation. It includes additional features such as push notifications, site messaging, a dedicated account manager, and free onboarding sessions, which are not available in GetResponse’s marketing automation plan ($59/ month).

You can also automate your lead scoring process. Simply add triggers that will change lead scores based on their activities, such as link clicks and website visits. You can also run email sequences, SMS marketing, site messaging, and create landing pages and web forms.

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Sign up with EngageBay for free

Wrapping Up

So, when we compare HubSpot vs GetResponse pricing, features, and other aspects, we see that HubSpot suits you if you have a big team or need a platform that will grow with you.

It’s better than GetResponse but it’s expensive.

GetResponse is cheaper and good for you if you need to run simple email marketing activities. But when compared to other platforms, it’s expensive and less easy to use.

As for the HubSpot vs GetResponse CRM features are concerned, HubSpot scores higher as well.

Check this simple comparison that clearly shows which platform is the best for small businesses:

EngageBay is a great alternative since it’s cheaper than both platforms, has similar and additional features, and is easier to use.

Related reading: 

• The best CRM Tools for Small Businesses
• The 14 Best CRM Automation Software in 2024
• 15 Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
• Is HubSpot Worth It? In-Depth Review for Small Businesses

The post HubSpot Vs GetResponse: Head‑to‑Head Comparison (2025) appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

But how often does a platform cater to the needs of small and medium businesses? Small businesses have small marketing budgets, and you need a versatile, all-in-one CRM solution for your business. 

With so many out there, choosing the right one can be pretty hard. That’s why we’ve compared the three best CRM software in this blog post: Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay.

We’ve compared their pricing, pitted their CRM functionalities against one another, and measured their relevance to your business. 

Zoho is great for small businesses looking for a simpler solution, while EngageBay is the best platform for SMBs looking for an affordable yet complete marketing, sales, and customer service solution.

This makes EngageBay an excellent Zoho alternative. 

HubSpot is expensive and is geared towards larger businesses with deep pockets. 

Keep reading to know more!

TL;DR — Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay

Pricing matters for small businesses. That’s why we’ve broken down the pricing for each platform — and determined the winner.

Let’s take a look.

Zoho Pricing

Let’s start with Zoho.

Zoho offers four pricing plans: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. 

The Standard plan starts at $20 per user and offers account deals, customer relationship management views, and tasks.

The Professional and Enterprise plans cost $35 and $50, respectively. While the Professional plan offers sales forecasting, email insights, and macros, the Enterprise plan adds custom signals, wizards, and picklist history tracking. 

The ultimate plan costs $65 per user per month and gives you a handful of advanced tools, including unlimited custom list views, 100 active blueprints, and enhanced feature limits.

What’s more, Zoho offers a free plan, too. You can set up the email marketing software for up to three users, and it is perfect for home business owners.

Want to find a Zoho alternative that’s better suited to your needs? Check out our article on the top Zoho alternatives.

HubSpot Pricing

With HubSpot, you get three CRM Suite Bundles: It’s aptly named Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

This table shows the basic pricing information:

The Starter plan offers a plethora of features for small businesses. You get 1,000 marketing contacts, email marketing, list segmentation, Live Chat, and shared inboxes. 

When paid annually, this plan costs $50 a month. If you have 5,000 contacts, you have to pay $88.

A fair price for the features it offers, right?

But what happens when you scale your business? Let’s take a look.

The Professional plan costs $1,780 for just 2,000 contacts.

If you go for the Enterprise plan, you must dish out $5,000 for 10,000 marketing contacts. For an annual subscription, you pay out a mind-boggling amount of $60,000 a year! Plus, you must pay a mandatory one-time onboarding fee of $12,000, bringing the cost to…

…seventy grand a year!

That’s a crazy figure — especially when you factor in the initial amount you had to pay: $50/month. 

HubSpot 2024 pricing update

In March 2024, HubSpot introduced a major update to its pricing model. This new change can both directly and indirectly increase the cost of the platform, especially for multi-user plans.

Here’s the gist.

HubSpot moved to a seats-based approach, adding two new seats: View-Only and Core. The View-Only seats are free and unlimited and offer view-only access to all the data and tools of a particular tier. The Core seats cost extra, and offer edit access to all the tools of that particular tier.

The catch?

The paid ‘Core’ seats are nothing new. It was previously offered for free under HubSpot’s free plan. Put bluntly, free users (managers, team leads, and CEOs) who enjoyed edit access for free should now pay to get access.

The following table can help you understand better.

Note: This update currently affects new users. Existing users may be moved to the new plans during the next renewal at the discretion of HubSpot.

Is HubSpot Free? What You Get & What You Miss Out On!
 

Read also: 14 Surprisingly Awesome HubSpot Alternatives

EngageBay Pricing

How does EngageBay stand against Zoho vs HubSpot?

EngageBay offers four different plans for its All-in-One Suite: Free, Basic, Growth, and Pro.

The Free plan is free forever and offers 250 contacts and 1,000 branded emails. You also get many features, including:

• List segmentation
• Email broadcasts and sequences
• Drag-and-drop builder
• Predictive lead scoring
• 360-degree customer view
• Live Chat
• Social Suite
• Tag management
• Appointment scheduling

This free plan is great for businesses that have just set up and need a simple yet comprehensive all-in-one CRM solution.

Once your business grows, you can easily upgrade to a paid plan. 

The Basic plan costs $14.99 a month and offers 3,000 branded emails, 500 contacts, custom deal milestones, ticket macros, canned responses, and all the features of the free plan.

The Growth plan offers the best bang for your buck at $64.99 a month for startups and growing businesses. You get 5,000 contacts, 25,000 branded emails, advanced marketing automation, custom deal tracks and landing pages, and more. 

For larger companies with a bigger customer base, the Pro plan offers the best choice, with unlimited contacts and 50,000 branded emails. 

And the price tag? A mere $119.99!

You also get web analytics, custom reporting, a dedicated account manager, APIs, and phone support. These features and pricing make EngageBay the best HuSpot CRM alternative for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs.

Annual cost comparison for a 5-user team

HubSpot: From Dorm Room Startup to $15B Powerhouse

Pricing: Winner

EngageBay wins here by a mile!

Though EngageBay and Zoho have similar pricing, EngageBay offers a lot more tools for its Pro plan. EngageBay’s free plan lets you add up to 15 users, while Zoho only offers up to 3 users. 

Both Zoho and EngageBay are great for small and medium businesses, though the intuitive interface and clean software give EngageBay a clear advantage over Zoho.

HubSpot, on the other hand, is geared towards larger establishments with bigger marketing funds. As you can see, the pricing becomes pretty expensive quickly, with just the onboarding fee for its highest plan priced at $12K. 

With this amount, you can buy EngageBay’s annual Pro subscription and still have money left!

That’s why EngageBay is a fantastic HubSpot alternative. 

Explore the most potent HubSpot competitors in our insightful blog post. Understand their strengths, weaknesses, and pricing. Dive in today!

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: CRM Functionality

Having a great pricing plan is useless if the platform does not offer the functionalities you need. You need a solution that fits your budget and gives you the tools needed to scale your business.

Let’s find out which platform wins this category, shall we?

Zoho CRM Functionalities

Again, let’s dig into Zoho CRM functionality. 

Zoho has a great drag-and-drop email template builder and a decent collection of templates. 

Zoho’s customization feature is both a boon and bane. While the customizations give you more control and flexibility, it comes with a steeper learning curve, making Zoho more complicated than HubSpot vs EngageBay.

Though Zoho had a clunky and old-fashioned user interface, it has had a face-lift and sports a more subtle and minimal UI. That’s great news for would-be Zoho subscribers! 

Zoho also lets you manage your leads easily, with lead identification, ROI measurement, lead nurturing and engagement, and analysis. Zoho even offers smart web forms for lead capture. 

Zoho makes it easy for you to engage with your social audience, with tools to connect Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook with your CRM so that you can track and manage everything without ever leaving your CRM software. 

Also, Zoho’s ‘Zia’ lead enrichment functionality helps you acquire more information about each lead, thus enriching lead nurturing.

Zoho works with a myriad of applications, including GSuite, Slack, Shopify, and Facebook Ads. 

Read also: An In-Depth Comparison of Zoho vs EngageBay

HubSpot CRM Functionalities

What about HubSpot CRM functionality? Let’s see how HubSpot compares against Zoho vs EngageBay. 

HubSpot’s drag-and-drop landing page builder lets you build stunning landing pages quickly. By connecting the landing page with CRM, you can also offer a personalized touch and targeted CTAs — thus improving your conversion rate while also reducing bounces. 

Through HubSpot’s A/B testing, you can tweak and test your landing pages and publish the ones that offer the best results. 

Similar to Zoho, HubSpot has excellent email marketing tools. Tools like email tracking, email health reporting, contact management, email campaigns, and A/B testing help you put out the best email marketing campaign and bring in leads. Oh, and you get search marketing, too. 

HubSpot’s dashboards let you track various metrics. These include open and bounce rates, subscribers, clickthroughs, and even insights on a page-to-page basis. What’s more, HubSpot’s lead management is one of the best in the market today, with tools to track, nurture, and convert them. 

Plus, you get access to hundreds of integrations, including Zapier, Mailchimp, Zoom, and Google Ads. 

Read also: An In-Depth Comparison of HubSpot vs EngageBay

EngageBay CRM Functionalities

How does EngageBay CRM functionality fare against HubSpot vs Zoho? Let’s take a look. 

Just like HubSpot, EngageBay’s drag-and-drop functionality lets you build landing pages and email forms with ease. You also get access to a plethora of templates for quick creation; you can tweak them according to your needs. It also connects with the CRM, meaning you can populate it with personalized content. 

For complete customization, you can also import code and use rich text formatting. How cool is that!

But above all, it’s EngageBay’s workflow management and automation tools that stand out. 

You can send out event details, newsletters, upcoming promotions, and renewal reminders through EngageBay’s email sequencing tool with just a few steps.

Need to send out automatic emails? You don’t have to fret anymore, as autoresponders can do just that. Automated birthday wishes, subscription reminders, and even welcome messages can make your customers’ day and positively impact brand perception. 

You can also send out one-time messages through the email broadcast feature. 

EngageBay’s customer-centric approach means you get a complete view of each customer. Plus, the visual workflow automation builder is an incredible tool, allowing you to set up various actions and controls to automate deal pipelines, lead scoring, task management, and customer support. 

All the CRM functions EngageBay offers are neatly segmented into four different sections, called ‘Bays.’ This makes using the CRM platform super easy. Each bay has marketing and sales dashboards with various reports and metrics — offering you a bird’s eye view of your team’s performance. 

The game-changing ‘Social Suite’ CRM functionality lets you keep track of all your social media accounts — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — and even engage in social listening to enhance audience understanding. 

Finally, EngageBay has a great collection of integrations. You get Zapier, Exotel, Twilio, DocuSign, CallHippo, and so much more. 

Read also: SharpSpring vs Hubspot vs EngageBay — Which CRM Software is the Best?

CRM Functionality: Winner

When it comes to the number of CRM features, HubSpot takes the crown. But for small businesses, HubSpot’s pricing may be too high. 

EngageBay offers similar tools at a fairly reasonable price. In fact, EngageBay is so good that top influencers and award websites have recommended EngageBay as one of their favorites. 

EngageBay doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket, and it doesn’t skimp on features. What more do you need?

Read also: HubSpot vs GetResponse — A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay Feature Matrix

Quick reading guide

• ✓ = native capability in the main product family (may require a higher plan).

• Add-on = available through a sibling Zoho/HubSpot hub or extension.

• Limits such as calling minutes, users, or contacts scale with paid tiers.

Bottom line:

• EngageBay groups the essentials (marketing, sales, help-desk, chat, telephony) in one low-cost stack, making it a “Swiss-army CRM” for lean teams.

• Zoho CRM wins on deep customization, process governance (Blueprint/Canvas), and modular add-ons for firms wanting to build their own suite.

• HubSpot layers AI and best-in-class UX across marketing, sales, and service—but watch the usage caps and rapid price jumps as you scale.

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: Customer Support

Having great customer support and onboarding is indispensable — the vendor that offers the best cares the most about their customers.

Zoho Customer Support

We’ve seen the pricing and the main features of CRM. Now let’s check out how Zoho supports its users.

Zoho has outdone itself here. The knowledge base offers hundreds of articles on all of its tools. Through the Zoho Academy, you can learn the basics of marketing, launching a business, and even scaling your current venture. 

Zoho also has a fairly decent community with over 100,000 members where you can discuss queries and post thoughts. 

Through ‘Zoho Cares,’ you get various support plans based on your company’s needs. 

Basic Support is available for all plans, while the Classic plan is available from the Standard plan. If you need more robust support, you can go for the Premium and Enterprise paid support packages. 

HubSpot Customer Support

How does HubSpot compare against Zoho and EngageBay? Let’s find out.

No cons here! HubSpot offers great customer support. You get how-to articles for sales automation, customer service, marketing, and CRM through its knowledge base. You also get step-by-step solutions for getting the software ready. 

HubSpot also has an amazing onboarding service. That said, it is pretty expensive. The mandatory onboarding fee for the Enterprise plan costs an unbelievable $12,000!

You also get an active community where you can discuss your problems with a panel of experts and interact with other users. For developers, HubSpot does offer detailed documentation.

You can also get yourself and your team certified through HubSpot’s academy. 

If you go for HubSpot’s paid plans, you have chat and email support. For phone support, you need to be subscribed to either the Professional or the Enterprise plans. 

EngageBay Customer Support

How does EngageBay look against the other two?

EngageBay has a good knowledge base with step-by-step solutions for all its features. You can also watch demos on setting up and using the tools through the official YouTube channel. 

What’s more, the website is populated with blog posts and how-to resources written by experts and developers. 

All plans offer 24/5 chat and email support. The Growth plan adds a dedicated account manager and onboarding services, while the Pro plan unlocks phone support. 

Before subscribing, you can have a 30-minute demo with your developers to assess the product. 

Customer Support: Winner

All three offer great customer support. 

That said, EngageBay’s customer support comes free, but you have to pay a hefty amount to avail of advanced customer support packages for HubSpot and Zoho. 

Also, many users have complained about Zoho’s customer support. 

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: User Reviews

User reviews don’t lie: they show the true face of any software.

Let’s see what customers have to say about each platform.

Zoho User Reviews

Pros

Cons

HubSpot User Reviews

Pros

Cons

EngageBay User Reviews

Pros

Cons

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: Business Relevance

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

Though both Zoho and EngageBay are geared towards SMBs and startups, EngageBay is the best choice. That’s because EngageBay lets you scale easily and offers a host of features and incredible customer support. Oh, and it’s pretty easy to use — while Zoho has a steeper learning curve. 

On the other hand, HubSpot is the best choice for large companies looking for highly advanced features.

Read also: What Makes EngageBay the Best CRM for Small Businesses?

Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: Ultimate Winner

We’ve compared Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay, and figured out the winners in each segment: pricing, CRM functionality, customer support, and business relevance.

It’s time to choose one. 

All three of them are fantastic CRM solutions for your business needs. 

Choosing any one of them will help your business grow and aid you in the marketing, sales, and customer service processes. However, it’s smart to pick one that offers all the features you need and is still priced well within your budget. 

If you are a small business, EngageBay is the best choice for you. That’s because EngageBay does it all, offers a free-forever plan, and has transparent, fixed pricing. 

That’s incredible, ain’t it?

In fact, it’s so great that we are loved by over 80,000 small and medium businesses globally — take a look at some of our 5-star reviews

Sign up now and take your business to new heights!

Here’s a demo of the product for you: 

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Sign up with EngageBay for free

Related reading: 

• The best CRM Tools for Small Businesses
• The 14 Best CRM Automation Software in 2024
• 15 Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
• Is HubSpot Worth It? In-Depth Review for Small Businesses

The post Zoho vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: 2025 Price & Feature Showdown appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

• HubSpot’s pricing gets expensive quickly, especially after the 2024 pricing changes. Essential features like automation and custom reports start at $800/month, with some users reporting a 5x–20x increase in costs for the same features.
• One of HubSpot’s advantages is that it is great for mid-sized companies that can afford to pay for deep integrations and customization
• Annual contracts lock you in, with no early cancellation or refunds. Even if you’re unhappy with the product mid-cycle, you’re still billed for the full term.
• CMS comes with vendor lock-in risks. HubSpot’s CMS is less flexible than WordPress, and migrating out of it is time-consuming and complex.
• One of the striking HubSpot drawbacks is that their Free and Starter plans are heavily restricted, offering limited automation, no A/B testing, and capped reporting features. Most users outgrow the free plan quickly.
• There are more affordable HubSpot alternatives with similar features.

TL;DR – HubSpot at a glance:

If you want (1) an all-in-one growth suite uniting CRM, marketing, sales, service and CMS, (2) enterprise-grade automation with visual workflows and analytics, and (3) a vibrant ecosystem of integrations, templates and certified partners, HubSpot can supercharge scale.

But fear (1) costs that jump from free to four-figure monthly bills as contacts, users or hubs stack up, (2) rigid 12-month contracts and $1.5k+ onboarding that block easy exits, and (3) feature gaps in Starter—no A/B tests, custom reporting or live support—then lighter, pay-as-you-grow CRMs like EngageBay deserve a look.

Compare carefully to save big.

When it comes to finding the right automation tools to manage your marketing, sales, and customer service, you have too many options — and they all come with their pros and cons.

One such familiar name is HubSpot, which offers a free CRM with limitations, email marketing, workflow automation for multichannel marketing, and even customer support tools.

In this blog post, we will dive deep into HubSpot’s pros and cons so you can decide if it’s the right fit for your business.

Here’s what we’ll look at: 

1. Pros of HubSpot
2. Cons of HubSpot
3. A better alternative for SMBS

What Is HubSpot Good For? A Look at the Pros of HubSpot

The advantages of HubSpot: 

• HubSpot is a truly all-in-one solution
• HubSpot offers powerful marketing features
• HubSpot has an integrated CMS
• You can easily scale HubSpot

HubSpot CRM pros: 1. A truly all-in-one solution

It’s truly an all-in-one platform for everything and anything: marketing, sales, service, content, operations, and commerce, all in one place.

It includes a free CRM software for your sales team, inbound marketing tools, email marketing, campaign management, social media management, and customer service as well.

This makes it versatile, and many companies use HubSpot for more than just one function.

From building your website on the platform to blogging and sending emails or running social media ads for your leads, HubSpot can help you do it all.

HubSpot CRM pros: 2. Powerful tools for marketing

HubSpot’s marketing automation streamlines repetitive tasks, including email campaigns, customer journey management, social media marketing, email personalization, and more.

HubSpot also offers automated and data-driven insights, which empower businesses to create revenue-generating campaigns.

You can further leverage your CRM analysis by integrating HubSpot data into BigQuery for complex analytical operations powered by ML.

HubSpot CRM pros: 3. Integrated Content Management System (CMS)

HubSpot’s user-friendly CMS eliminates needing a separate content management tool or third-party agencies. Diverse templates, modules, themes, and designs help businesses attract customers easily. 

HubSpot CRM pros: 4. Scalable software for businesses

HubSpot’s scalability offers a safe harbor for businesses that are rapidly growing, as the agile and flexible nature of HubSpot’s solutions means businesses can scale their marketing, sales, and support processes as needed. 

EngageBay vs HubSpot – Which Is Better for CRM?
 

Why is HubSpot not a Good Fit? Top HubSpot Cons Explained

The cons of HubSpot:

HubSpot CRM cons: 1. It gets expensive—quickly

Let’s get this one out of the way since it’s often a deal-breaker.

We were looking for something that wouldn’t drain our budget and EngageBay felt like a steal compared to other CRM’s like Hubspot or Salesforce. The all-in-one aspect is what drew me in.

Victoria V. – Founder – Small-Business (G2 review)

However, while at first glance, HubSpot’s offerings seem appealing, but the costs add up as businesses quickly outgrow these free tools.

HubSpot has three plans:

• Starter
• Professional
• Enterprise

Each plan is available across five HubSpot hubs: Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, and Operations. They also have a Commerce Hub that has no monthly fee but relies on a consumption-based model.

The HubSpot Starter Customer Platform for individuals and small teams is just $20 a month if you choose the monthly plan. For an annual plan, it goes down to $15 a month. This gives you access to the starter versions of its five hubs. 

However, there are a few caveats: this pricing is per seat, meaning per user. For every additional user, you’ll need to pay another $20. 

The marketing hub comes with 1,000 contacts, and if you want to increase the number of contacts, they are available for a tiered pricing of:

So, if you opt for 5,000 marketing contacts, the first 1,000 will be included in the $20. You’ll be charged $50/mo per 1,000 for the next 2,000 contacts and $45/mo per 1,000 for the following 2,000 contacts, bringing your total to $190/mo.

This is all excluding tax. 

Moreover, even with the higher-tier plans, you’ll also need to pay for add-ons to increase reporting limits, API usage, SMS limits, etc., depending on your business needs.

HubSpot offers very limited features in its free version, so you’ll only be able to use it for the most basic things. Moreover, as your business grows, the prices you will need to pay will also rise quite steeply. 

Unlock the Truth About HubSpot’s Free Tools
 

If you want to upgrade to the Professional Customer Platform, the cost jumps significantly to $1,300, which is 65 times more than the Starter plan!

Finally, the Enterprise Customer Platform will set you back $4,300, excluding taxes and onboarding fees.

Customizable HubSpot bundles

Good news about the HubSpot advantages is, if you don’t want all its features, you can create customized bundles where you choose your desired version of a hub. 

So, if you need the Professional Marketing Hub but a starter version of everything else, you can do that. BUT, once you choose a professional version of any hub, you’re locked into a yearly plan that includes a whopping $1,500 onboarding fees that you usually can’t opt out of!

For example, this is the price breakdown if I choose the professional marketing hub and starter version of other plans.

 The onboarding fee doubles if you just choose Marketing Hub Professional alone.

HubSpot’s 2024 pricing update explained

HubSpot’s already expensive plans have undergone a major change in 2024, increasing the pricing further. While we won’t go into detail, this table shows the new changes: 

After the revised pricing structure, many users saw a 5x-20x increase in annual costs for the same set of features. That’s a huge bump in pricing!

While you could argue that the Starter plan for $15/month is enough for you, many users found themselves needing to upgrade to a higher plan much faster than anticipated. That is because once your business needs even basic automation or analytics, you’ll be forced into expensive professional and Enterprise plans. 

Some users even said that they needed just one custom report and basic automation and ended up paying $800/month because it was not available in the Starter plan. 

Even fundamental features like tracking MRR (monthly recurring revenue) are locked behind the Enterprise plan.

HubSpot CRM cons: 2. Their contracts aren’t flexible

While we’re on the topic of flexibility, here’s another one that many businesses frown on. Except for the starter plan, you’ll have to commit annually to every plan you select, which is one of the most discussed HubSpot drawbacks.

So, even if you choose to pay monthly, you will still have to agree to an annual contract! 

This is a major HubSpot con, especially for small businesses. 

There are no early cancellations or refunds. If you don’t use your maximum number of contacts or realize you don’t like a specific tool, it doesn’t matter.

You will continue to be billed (even if it’s on a monthly basis) until you’ve fulfilled the entire contract cost.

While this might be all right for businesses whose strategies and processes fit well with HubSpot’s features, this isn’t practical for businesses that are still in more of a testing period.

If you decide to try out the platform and you realize that it’s not a good fit for your organization, you’ll still have to pay for it until your annual contract with HubSpot ends.

Many (if not most) platforms are completely doing away with contracts.

While we won’t argue that HubSpot is a pretty remarkable marketing automation tool, you better be 100% certain that you’re in love with it before you drop that kind of money.

In addition, many users have reported confusing terms and conditions, sudden surges in costs, and upselling pressure during renewals. 

HubSpot CRM cons: 3. It’s difficult to use NOT as an all-in-one tool

If you want to experience HubSpot’s full benefits, running everything through its platform is the recommended course of action. This includes building your website using their own CMS.

If you’ve already built your website in another CMS like, say, WordPress, and if you’re quite satisfied with it (which a lot of businesses are), you can imagine the extra work this would entail.

The HubSpot CRM, inbound marketing automation, sales, and service tool is designed to be an all-in-one solution—and in terms of that specifically, it does a good job. However, and this is important, many businesses cannot run on one platform alone.

If you’re only wanting to use a few select features within HubSpot, you’re likely better off going elsewhere. Plain and simple, this isn’t the best way to use HubSpot.

One user commented that they needed a reporting feature and ended up buying two more hubs. What they thought would be a $5,000/year tool is now costing them $20,000/month.

Plus, you won’t be getting as much “bang for your buck.” There are more affordable alternatives.

HubSpot CRM cons: 4. Email limitations

HubSpot’s email tool has a few drawbacks that might hold you back:

• Limited email customization: Not as flexible as Outlook and Gmail, and team signatures does not have personalization. 
• No native email forwarding: Requires switching to external platforms like Gmail and Outlook. 
• Limited number of templates: Limited selection and variety in HubSpot’s template library, even in paid plans. 

HubSpot CRM cons: 5. There’s no A/B testing on lower packages

Split testing, or A/B testing, is an effective way to determine the best strategy for improving performance. It’s when you compare two different versions of something to determine which produces better results for your business.

For instance, you can split-test two Facebook ads with different images or two landing pages with different headings to see how each looks and performs and use the results to optimize your future campaigns. 

Unfortunately, if you’re on HubSpot, you don’t have access to A/B Testing feature on the Starter plan. You’ll have to purchase their Professional package, which starts at $800 per month (not including the taxes and onboarding fees), to take advantage of this feature.

For businesses using HubSpot’s Starter plan, the lack of A/B testing could limit their ability to fine-tune campaigns, forcing them to upgrade to the Professional package just to access this must-have feature.

HubSpot CRM cons: 6. Reporting is limited

Another of the HubSpot drawbacks is that its advanced reporting and analytics features are only available on the Professional and Enterprise plans, which start at $800/month (annual contract). This leaves users of the Starter plan with no choice but to upgrade or look for an alternative. 

HubSpot provides custom reports for Professional and Enterprise users, but there are limits to the number of reports and dashboards you can create based on your plan. 

To increase these limits, HubSpot offers a Reporting Limit Increase Add-On priced at around $200/month. Businesses with extensive reporting needs will need to factor in this additional cost.

HubSpot CRM cons: 7. You have to pay for additional technical support

Besides the expensive onboarding fees (ranging from $1,500 to $7,000 for higher-tier plans), businesses may still need to pay $1,800 to $3,200 for just 5 hours a month of ongoing technical consulting to handle more complex requirements.

Even after paying thousands of dollars for onboarding and tech support, many users were still told to read the help center and join community forums for solutions. 

Many users also complained that HubSpot told them to either upgrade or pay a partner when asked for help on certain tasks.  

Imagine this as a small business with a minimal budget for a CRM software. Is it really feasible to use HubSpot?

HubSpot CRM cons: 8. There are plenty of HubSpot marketing and sales features with cheaper alternatives

So much of this conversation is going to come down to the cost. Like we said in the very beginning, you have so many options. And here’s the bad news for the HubSpot CRM, sales, and marketing automation platforms.

There are more affordable options that will essentially do the same thing.

Let’s be honest: We’re all mindful of our budget. And why wouldn’t we be? Running a business isn’t cheap, and every dollar matters.

Understandably, you want to know that your money is being put to good use.

Here’s the thing. Some of HubSpot’s features have free or cheaper alternatives that are equal in functionality and quality.

Some businesses prefer these other options over HubSpot CRM because it enables them to pick and choose what they like best from various platforms.

As we mentioned earlier, because HubSpot is best utilized as an all-in-one tool, it’s much more difficult to ‘pick and choose.’

It’s simply not in your best interests.

Read also: 8 Surprisingly Awesome HubSpot Alternatives

HubSpot CRM cons: 9. More cons of HubSpot

While we’ve covered all the key cons of HubSpot, there are more pain points that should be addressed: 

– Basic CRM features missing: Even after paying hundreds to thousands of dollars a month for a CRM that claims to have it all, you still will be shocked to realize that HubSpot may miss some core functions, including deal duplications and deal cloning. These are standard features in most CRM tools, even in free ones. 

– Vendor lock-in for CMS: For those using HubSpot’s CMS, there’s a real concern around vendor lock-in, as migrating your website out of HubSpot can be a complex issue. HubSpot’s website builder is also limited in functionality compared to WordPress and Wix. Costs can also be higher due to feature-gating. 

– Not SMB-friendly at all: While HubSpot touts itself as a software for SMBs, it’s anything but. In fact, many users feel misled by HubSpot’s “small business-friendly” marketing. You cannot set up HubSpot properly if your monthly budget is anywhere below $500/month!

– Biased reviews: HubSpot has a strong network of affiliates, partners, and marketers who earn a hefty commission from successful referrals. They write reviews and content that seem to praise HubSpot, and new users/users looking for marketing automation software are often misled by these biased online reviews. 

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

So, What’s the Best Value Option for SMBs?

The right CRM really depends on your business type, needs, goals, and budget. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution as every platform has its strengths and trade-offs. 

If you’re looking for a powerful, all-in-one tool and can comfortably spend tens of thousands of dollars a month, HubSpot is a great fit. But for many SMBs, pricing is a key factor–making alternatives like EngageBay a more practical and budget-friendly choice. 

HubSpot vs EngageBay: Side-by-Side at 10k Contacts (2025)

A more detailed comparison between HubSpot CRM Suite Professional and EngageBay All-in-One Pro plans:

Metric	HubSpot CRM Suite Professional	EngageBay All-in-One Pro
Monthly software cost (10 k contacts)	US $2,280/mo (includes 5 paid users)	US $101.99 per user/mo ⇒ ≈ US $510/mo for 5 users; covers up to 50 k contacts
One-time onboarding fee	US $3,750 mandatory	US $0 – free assisted onboarding sessions
Contacts included before overage	10,000 marketing contacts (overage charged in tiered blocks)	50,000 contacts (room to grow 5× before upgrade)
Seats included / pricing	5 core seats included; extra seats = US $80 each	Pay-as-you-add — US $101.99 per extra user; no seat limits
Contract terms	Annual contract required; early exit still bills remaining months	Cancel anytime — monthly, yearly or biennial billing; no mandatory lock-in
Automation & workflows	Advanced visual workflows, branching logic	Full-stack marketing, sales & service automation
Support channels	24/7 phone + chat + email (Pro & above)	Phone, live chat, email + dedicated CSM from Growth tier upward

Snapshot: Running a midsize stack on 10 k contacts with five team members costs ~4.5× more in HubSpot before add-ons or overage. EngageBay’s flat, cancel-anytime model strips out onboarding fees and contract risk while leaving headroom for another 40 k contacts.

1. More affordable pricing options

Pay monthly. Pay yearly and save a little cash. It’s up to you. Either way, you can get access to an awesome CRM along with EngageBay’s marketing automation and helpdesk for just $60 a month.

Important note: This is for the all-in-one package. You can opt for the Marketing Bay, CRM tool, or service suite with a free live chat. Flexibility is the name of our game, so pick whatever makes the most sense for you.

2. Grow your email list on your own terms

Even using just the free plan for marketing automation, you can start growing and nurturing your email list. Email marketing is crucial because it’s got an ROI unparalleled by any other type of marketing.

We know that if you’re a smaller business or new to the game, HubSpot’s subscription and onboarding costs can be overwhelming. Do it with EngageBay for free and get the ball rolling.

3. Better value compared to HubSpot

When you use EngageBay, you’ll never be locked into anything.

You can change your plan at any time, including upgrading, downgrading, and deleting it. We have no cancellation fees. After your current billing cycle, you’ll never be billed again.

Plus, you can pay for ‘extras’ as needed. For instance, if you get through your email quota, you can quickly and easily add more. We offer customizations that other CRM platforms don’t, meaning that we’ll work with you to meet your needs.

EngageBay CRM is the best choice for your sales team, support agents, and even marketers. 

Features	EngageBay ‘Pro’	HubSpot ‘Starter’
Marketing automation		𐄂
Landing pages		𐄂
Email & landing page A/B testing		𐄂
Multi-user access		𐄂
Sales deal pipelines	Unlimited	2 deal pipelines/account
Segmentation	500 dynamic lists	50 active lists
Emails	50,000 emails/month	50,000 emails/month
Contacts	Unlimited	10,000 contacts
Price (for 10,000 contacts)	$119.99/month	$410/month

We know you have a lot of options to consider with their own share of pros and cons, and it can be really hard to narrow down the selection.

That’s why we’re inviting you to try EngageBay as the perfect and easy-to-use alternative to HubSpot CRM for free.

Sign up for free today and see what all the buzz is about.

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Create my free EngageBay account now

Related reading: 

• The best CRM Tools for Small Businesses
• The 14 Best CRM Automation Software in 2025
• 15 Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
• Is HubSpot Worth It? In-Depth HubSpot Review for Small Businesses

The post HubSpot Pros and Cons (2025): Key Wins, Deal-Breakers for SMBs appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

Note: now rebranded as Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM

In today’s times, you only have seven seconds to make a first impression! 

That’s awfully short. If you can’t attract customers that quickly, you’ll lose them to your competitors. 

That’s why you need an integrated and versatile all-in-one CRM solution for your business. It can help you understand your customers better, streamline your marketing and sales processes, and offer exceptional customer support. 

In today’s technology-savvy world, cloud-based CRM solutions are taking center stage. And dozens of them are popping up, promising you the sky.

All of this can overwhelm you. That’s why we wrote this blog post for you — to compare just the best with the best: SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay. 

We’ve broken down their pricing, explored their features, and taken a look at their relevance to your business. 

SharpSpring is the best for agency-specific CRM requirements. HubSpot is great for larger companies with advanced features and powerful customizations. 

EngageBay offers the best value for your money and is an excellent HubSpot and SharpSpring alternative. You get a marketing, sales, and customer service suite, along with a powerful integrated CRM.

Interested? Let’s dive in…

EngageBay – #1 HubSpot Alternative

SharpSpring vs HubSpot vs EngageBay: Key Stats at a Glance (Aug 2025)

SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay: The Cost

SharpSpring Pricing

As of today, SharpSpring no longer exists as a stand-alone brand. Constant Contact, which acquired SharpSpring for $240 million in September 2021, has folded the platform into its portfolio and renamed it “Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM. (PR Newswire)

Right off the bat, SharpSpring’s basic plan is quite pricey. See for yourself: The ‘Small Business’ plan starts at $449 a month for 1,000 contacts. 

That’s pretty expensive!

The good thing though is that you get a host of email marketing automation features like workflows, forms, landing pages, social listening and engagement, SharpSpring Ads, Blogs, and Chatbots. 

For sales automation, SharpSpring offers customizable CRM, lead scoring, pipeline management, smart mail, meetings, and video calls. 

You also get access to custom reports, asset tracking, campaign tracking, and multi-touch attribution. 

But what happens when you slide the scale and increase the number of contacts?

For 10,000 contacts, you need to dish out $999 a month. Have 20,000 contacts? Well, prepare to pay a whopping $1,449 a month. 

If your company requires more than 20,000 contacts, you have to go for either the Enterprise or Agency plans — both of which are custom priced (which means more $$$!).

With the Enterprise plan, you get additional features, including a sales dialer, a private IP address, and a rebrandable interface. 

The Agency plan offers you a suite of agency-specific tools: agency pricing, client license packages, strategic onboarding, client management, and billing, and more. 

Related Blog: SharpSpring Alternatives: EngageBay, ActiveCampaign, Drip & More

HubSpot Pricing

Marketing Automation Showdown: HubSpot vs SharpSpring (2025)

HubSpot CRM offers three plans for its CRM Suite bundles: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. 

Since the March 2024 HubSpot pricing update, here are the new prices for HubSpot:

• Seats model now universal (effective 5 March 2024): every Hub and tier (Starter, Pro, Enterprise) moved from “all-user” access to a seats-based structure that aligns price with the number of editing users. 

• New seat types introduced:

  • Core Seat – required for any user who needs edit/AI access across hubs.

  • View-Only Seat – free and unlimited for read-only users. 

• Starter pricing reset: extra Core Seats now cost $20 per month across all Starter hubs (Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations). 

• Professional/Enterprise add-on costs: additional Core Seats are $50 (P-tier) and $75 (E-tier) each; Sales or Service “Paid” seats that unlock advanced hub features are $100 (P-tier) and $150 (E-tier) per user. 

• Seat minimums scrapped: the old 5-seat (Pro) and 10-seat (Enterprise) minimums for Sales & Service Hubs have been removed, letting teams start with a single seat. 

• Bundled seats still included: Pro bundles ship with 3 Core Seats (e.g., Marketing Hub Pro at $890/mo); Enterprise bundles include 5 Core Seats, with overages billed at the above rates. 

• Legacy customers grandfathered—for now: the changes apply immediately to new portals; existing customers remain on legacy pricing until their next renewal, when a migration-related uplift of ≈5% or less may occur. 

Well, that’s where it gets crazy. The professional plan costs $1,780 a month for 2,000 contacts! That’s $44.500 per month for 50,000 contacts. 

The Enterprise plan sets you back $5,000 per month (billed at $60,000/year) for 10,000 contacts. For 100,000 contacts, you about $50,000 per month. 

This means you pay an annual fee of $600,000! 

For a marketing software that initially cost $50, this price tag is completely nuts!

Related Blog: HubSpot Pricing and Comparison with Other Alternatives

EngageBay Pricing

So, where does EngageBay stand against HubSpot and SharpSpring? 

Let’s have a look. 

EngageBay offers four plans for its All-in-One Suite: Free, Basic, Growth, and Pro. 

With the forever-free plan, EngageBay’s free CRM 500 contacts, 1,000 branded emails, a host of email marketing features, Facebook Ads, Live Chat, social media integration, 360-degree contact view, and so much more. 

The cool thing about this plan is that it offers a robust set of usable features to help small businesses get started. 

If you need more, you can move to the Basic plan. 

This costs $14.99 a month and offers 1,000 contacts, 3,000 branded emails, 1 GB of cloud storage, custom deal milestones, and all the tools from the Free plan. 

For medium-sized companies, the Growth plan offers the best value with its $64.99/month price tag. You get 50,000 contacts, 25,000 branded emails, advanced marketing automation, custom landing pages, A/B testing, custom deal tracks, and so much more. 

The Pro plan offers unlimited contacts and 50,000 branded emails at $111.99/month. This plan unlocks access to web analytics, custom reporting, APIs, phone support, and a dedicated account manager. 

Unlike HubSpot, EngageBay’s onboarding sessions are entirely free. You also get free migration services and CRM on all of the plans. 

But wait, there’s more savings!

The annual subscriptions get a 20% off, neat. 

Want an even sweeter deal? We have it!

Get the biennial subscription and take 40% off on any plan — no questions asked  

Looking for any HubSpot competitors? Our detailed analysis introduces nine strong alternatives. Check it out now!

Winner: Pricing

Hands down, EngageBay is the clear winner here.

Both HubSpot and SharpSpring have sliding scale pricing models that can take up a huge chunk of your marketing budget in the long run. 

EngageBay’s pricing, on the other hand, is fixed. 

Though HubSpot offers hundreds of features, the pricing is too high, especially for small and medium businesses. 

For example, let’s say you have 100,000 contacts.

For SharpSpring, purchasing the Enterprise or agency price can be quite expensive if you purchase from them directly. Even if you go through a partner reseller, the cost may add to tens of thousands of dollars per annum. 

For HubSpot, the onboarding session alone costs $3,000 apart from the pricing mentioned above. That makes it more expensive than both Sharpspring and EngageBay combined.

Coming to EngageBay, you only have to pay $1,223.88 per year for 50,000 contacts (Biennially). 

That makes HubSpot 900% costlier! 

In a nutshell, the pricing makes EngageBay a superb and affordable HubSpot alternative. 

Read also: HubSpot vs EngageBay: A Side-by-Side Comparison

SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay: Main Features

SharpSpring Features

Let’s start with SharpSpring. 

SharpSpring offers a drag-and-drop landing page builder to help you quickly build functional and impressive websites. 

What’s more, you have access to templates, WYSIWYG editor, and HTML builder for the coding geeks. You can also integrate webinar applications into your page. 

You also get a host of email marketing tools. You can use social listening to capture and find out what people are talking about you (or your competitors). You also have visual form builders, email tracking, and smart email automation. 

Dynamic forms can auto-populate content while sending out emails so that you can add a layer of personalization. 

SharpSpring’s ‘Life-of-the-Lead’ tool helps you understand your customers on a deeper level using advanced analytics and tracking, including email opens, clickthroughs, and a host of others. 

SharpSpring lets you connect with hundreds of third-party applications, including Google Sheets, Mailchimp, Unbounce, Shopify, and Zapier. 

Portability: SharpSpring offers an iOS application to help you manage your customers on-the-go. Unfortunately, there’s no Android application. 

HubSpot Features

HubSpot, undoubtedly, has the highest number of features. 

Like SharpSpring, HubSpot has a robust landing page builder with drag-and-drop functionality. Using CRM integration, you can populate the landing page with personalized content and appropriate CTAs for maximized conversions. 

Also, HubSpot’s split testing lets you test out and optimize up to five pages at a time. 

HubSpot has powerful email marketing tools, too. You get email tracking, email health reporting, A/B testing, forms, email campaigns, contact management, and more. You also get search marketing.

HubSpot offers dashboards that let you track a plethora of valuable metrics and then make informed decisions. You can measure your traffic on a page-by-page basis, quantify clickthroughs, open rates, bounces, subscribers, and log everything in the CRM. 

HubSpot’s CRM logs all interactions and conversations and develops a holistic view of your customers. This can help you quickly build and launch powerful drip campaigns, tweak your content, and personalize your products. 

It also offers lead generation, allowing you to track deals, nurture them, and ultimately improve overall performance. 

With HubSpot’s marketplace, you can connect to hundreds of third-party applications, including Zapier, Google Ads, Zoom, Mailchimp, Slack, Facebook, and hundreds more. 

Portability: With HubSpot, you get both iOS and Android mobile CRM apps, which allows you to collaborate efficiently with your team, plan ahead, and access the CRM database. 

EngageBay Features

Finally, let’s look at EngageBay.

EngageBay’s drag-n-drop landing page and form builder offers a WYSIWYG editor. 

All you have to do is drag elements, drop them, and build your dream landing page. EngageBay’s growing collection of templates can also come in handy when you want to launch quickly. 

You also get rich text formatting options for maximized customization. 

At its heart, EngageBay offers a fantastic collection of automation tools. In fact, it’s so good that top influencers like Neil Patel are recommending it — check out his list of marketing automation favorites here.

You get email sequences that let you send out important emails, newsletters, timely promotions, and subscription reminders — all with very little manual effort.

Using autoresponders, you can automatically send out birthday and anniversary wishes, cart abandonment alerts, and welcome messages to new subscribers. If you’d instead send emails out to your customers once, you can take advantage of EngageBay’s email broadcast tool.

EngageBay has other tools up its software ‘sleeve.’ 

You get a visual workflow builder with an incredible set of conditionals and actions to automate manual tasks, predictive lead scoring, sales pipeline automation, and lead management and tracking. You also get a holistic view of your customer through EngageBay’s 360-degree customer view. 

G2 users rate EngageBay 4.5/5 stars across 500+ reviews. 

EngageBay neatly tucks its features into four Bays: Marketing, Sales, Service, and Live Chat. Each Bay has a dashboard with reports and analysis results to help you gauge your performance from one place. You can add custom reports, too. 

With EngageBay’s Social Suite, you can keep track of all your social media accounts — LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter —  in one place. 

EngageBay has a sound library of integrations: You get Stripe, Twilio, Quickbooks, DocuSign, Zapier, and dozens more. Oh, and the list keeps growing every month. 

Portability: EngageBay offers full-fledged mobile applications for both Android and iOS for all plans. This makes EngageBay a fantastic SharpSpring competitor for growing businesses.

Winner: Main Features

If we have to choose a platform solely based on its features, we’d have to pick HubSpot. It’s an amazing CRM software to use, with lots of advanced features. 

Unfortunately, it comes with a hefty price. 

That’s why we recommend EngageBay for SMB. You get most of the features that HubSpot offers at a controversially low price tag! EngageBay was carefully crafted with small businesses and their marketing budget in mind. 

That’s why EngageBay is the best SharpSpring and HubSpot competitor. 

SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay: Customer Support

Read also: HubSpot vs GetResponse: A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

SharpSpring Customer Support

SharpSpring has decent customer support. You can get your queries answered through the SharpSpring community or through the various channels through the software itself.

SharpSpring’s customer support is available five days a week, from 8:30 AM to 8:00 PM ET. It also offers video training through Virtual Classrooms and a knowledgeable base through the Zendesk portal. 

What’s more, you can communicate with SharpSpring’s members through the Live Chat feature. This option is not available for all plans, though. 

HubSpot Customer Support

What about HubSpot’s customer support? 

Well, HubSpot is great here. It offers a knowledge base with how-to articles for CRM, sales, marketing, service, and detailed articles on setting up the software. 

Through its community, you can discuss problems with experts and other users and arrive at solutions. HubSpot also offers advanced documentation for developers. 

You can also watch videos through HubSpot’s academy and get certified. 

You also get access to chat and email support starting from the ‘Starter plan.’ However, if you need phone support, you need to be subscribed to the Professional or the Enterprise plan. 

EngageBay Customer Support

EngageBay, too, doesn’t hold back when it comes to customer support.

 Through its website, you get a fairly detailed knowledge base that offers step-by-step solutions to all of its tools. EngageBay also has a YouTube channel with product demonstrations and even guides on CRM and automation written by experts. 

You get both email and 24/5 chat support on all plans.

 With the Growth plan, you get a dedicated account manager and free onboarding support. The Pro plan adds phone support to its list of customer support resources.

You can also book a 30-minute demo with our developers if you are interested in our products. 

Winner: Customer Support

It’s a tie here, as all three of them offer excellent customer support. 

Interested in switching from Keap? See our Keap (Infusionsoft) Alternatives for well-rounded alternatives.

SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay: Relevance

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

Here’s where it gets tricky. 

Though HubSpot’s pricing is pretty low initially, it quickly shoots up as you get more contacts or if you need more features. SharpSpring’s starting price in itself costs a couple hundred dollars. As your contact list grows, so does SharpSpring’s pricing.

That’s not the case with EngageBay. 

It’s designed to remain affordable even as you scale your business. This makes EngageBay the best CRM software for small and medium businesses, startups, agencies, and firms. 

For larger enterprises with a humongous marketing budget that require advanced tools, HubSpot can be the perfect solution. 

But if you are a small business with limited funding, EngageBay is clearly the way to go. 

SharpSpring vs. HubSpot vs. EngageBay: Wrapping up  

Who’s the Winner?

Now that we’ve explored SharpSpring, HubSpot, and EngageBay, it’s time to get started. 

Which one will you choose?

All three of them are leading marketing, sales, and service software in the CRM market. Each of them have their own merits and drawbacks, so you have to choose a software that offers the features you need, within your budget. 

That said, both HubSpot and SharpSpring operate on a sliding scale model. 

The more contacts you have, the costlier the plans get. You might be tempted to choose them based on their initial pricing, but it’s a trap. 

Soon, the pricing will go way over your budget, and you’ll be forced to migrate to a more affordable option. 

That’s why we recommend EngageBay for small and medium businesses. 

The pricing is transparent, you get free onboarding and migration services, and even if you have 100K subscribers, you only have to pay $80 a month — and that’s for the top-end Pro plan!

EngageBay is loved by more than 30,000 small and medium businesses globally, and the family is growing. 

In fact, the popular software reviews platform SourceForge called EngageBay a Top Performer in its category, because their users loved it just so much. Check out the user reviews here.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for the free plan now, and see what the buzz is all about. 

If you need to learn more about our product, watch the video first: 

The post SharpSpring vs HubSpot vs EngageBay (2025): The Ultimate CRM Cost & Feature Showdown appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

Every HubSpot alternative content ever starts the same way. By singing HubSpot’s praises–’a market leader,’ ‘founder of the inbound marketing movement,’ ‘35% market share!’ – before bringing up the inevitable ‘but’: it’s way too expensive. 

And they’re right. HubSpot is an extremely powerful and popular tool. That’s exactly why a lot of businesses start with the free plan, thinking, ‘Hey, it’s HubSpot! What could go wrong?’

But then reality hits: upgrading costs a fortune, mandatory onboarding is expensive (to the uninitiated, onboarding starts at $3,000), and making it work its magic requires training, resources, and even consultations. 

We’ve also heard it straight from our own customers who switched from HubSpot: Great software–if you have a bottomless piggy bank. 

So here’s the deal. CEOs, sales professionals, freelancers, SMBs, startups, and solopreneurs are looking for HubSpot alternatives, and you should, too. 

Sure, you might not get the shiny HubSpot logo, but you will keep your money from burning for a ‘designer-like’ tool–money that can be better spent growing your business. After all, lead management is lead management, irrespective of which software you use. How you use it matters, too. 

Great! Now that you are searching for the best HubSpot alternatives in 2025 that work just as well, if not better, and without the sticker shock, let’s get started: 

Prefer Video? Get the Highlights

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

In this detailed guide: 

• Best HubSpot alternatives at a glance
• Best HubSpot alternatives for all-in-one solutions
• Best Sales CRM HubSpot alternatives
• Best HubSpot alternatives for customer support
• Frequently asked questions

17 Best HubSpot Alternatives at a Glance

Why People Seek HubSpot Alternatives (Where HubSpot Wins & Falls Short)

We’ll have to give credit where it’s due. When a CRM sells as well as HubSpot does, we have to ask: what makes it so successful?

Though HubSpot is not perfect, it has carved out a strong market presence and offers key features many businesses swear by. 

Our goal with this blog post is not to hype up HubSpot or tear it down. We’re here to give you an unbiased and transparent look at HubSpot and its alternatives so that you can make an informed choice. 

An amazing free plan

We like HubSpot’s free plan, as it allows you to have unlimited users and add 1,000 contacts. You can also send up to 2,000 emails per month (but with HubSpot branding). 

You can also use email templates, live chats, landing pages, and newsletters–but they are not fully unlocked.

HubSpot is great for businesses with over $10M in ARR

For businesses with over $10 million in annual revenue, HubSpot becomes a strategic investment. At this level, businesses need a scalable solution with centralized customer data and a single source of truth, which HubSpot is designed to handle. 

HubSpot is particularly useful for companies that have outgrown entry-level CRMs but aren’t yet ready for the complexity and expenditure of truly enterprise-grade platforms like Salesforce. 

While platforms like Zoho and EngageBay are all-in-one CRM tools, others are point solutions, which may cause inefficiencies that come with juggling multiple disconnected platforms. 

HubSpot is an amazing all-rounder CRM

One of HubSpot’s biggest strengths is that it’s an all-in-one CRM, bringing marketing, sales, and customer support under one roof. 

As one user pointed out:

“If you’re using three to four different tools for marketing, sales, and service, your data is going to be a mess. Your customers will feel the disconnect between teams, and you’ll struggle to scale your business due to workflows all siloed among teams.”

While smaller businesses can profit from a scattered tech when it’s cost-effective, as it begins to scale up, the hidden inefficiencies pile up. This is where all-in-one CRM tools like HubSpot shine.

Great for a revenue-based business model

Again, this pertains to having a connected system. But we’ll look at it from a different angle. 

Most businesses operate nowadays with revenue teams instead of the usual sales, marketing, and support teams. For such a team, it makes more sense to have a proper all-in-one CRM instead of having multiple disconnected solutions and then trying hard to integrate them all (which again takes time, resources, and money). 

+1 to HubSpot here, too. 

You see a pattern here, right? 

The verdict: If you’re an established company, HubSpot may be a no-brainer. But if you’re an SMB, HubSpot can be quite expensive, but you still need to choose an all-in-one CRM solution regardless. 

Fortunately, there are many good HubSpot alternatives in the market.

17 Best HubSpot Alternatives at a Glance

17 Best HubSpot Alternatives: An In-Depth Look

We took an in-depth look at each of the HubSpot alternatives and competitors to help you choose the best solution for various needs. 

The best all-in-one HubSpot alternatives

1. EngageBay

Best HubSpot alternative for an all-in-one solution

EngageBay was built to give small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs the same all-in-one experience as HubSpot, but without the expensive markup or steep learning curve. 

Yes, HubSpot is powerful, but for small businesses, it often feels like paying for enterprise pricing for tools you barely get to use.

Basic features like marketing automation, custom reports, and A/B testing are locked behind expensive upgrades ($800/month!), and even onboarding may cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

EngageBay gives you everything you need to market, sell, and support–in one simple, affordable platform. You can build email campaigns, set up marketing automation, and manage contacts, all from one dashboard. 

The visual automation builder makes it easy to create drip campaigns and personalized journeys without needing to be tech-savvy. 

EngageBay also includes a built-in CRM, landing pages, hundreds of prebuilt email templates, appointment scheduling, AI live chat, and a full helpdesk. 

	EngageBay	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one
Free plan
Free trial	15 days	30 days
Annual discount	8%	10%
G2 rating	4.6	4.4

What you might like about EngageBay

• All-in-one platform for email marketing, sales, automation, and customer support
• Visual automation builder to streamline lead nurturing, follow-ups, and many other workflows
• Generous free tier
• Unlimited contacts in the Pro plan
• Free, 1:1 onboarding for all paid users
• Award-winning customer support
• Though there are expensive apps like HubSpot, EngageBay is one of the very few all-in-one solutions under $120.

What you might not like about EngageBay

• You get custom reporting and SSO only in the Pro tier
• No marketing automation in the free plan

EngageBay pricing

EngageBay’s All-in-One Suite has four plans: Free, Basic, Growth, and Pro.

• Free: This plan is free forever for up to 15 users and offers 500 contacts, 1,000 branded emails, email marketing, lead generation, autoresponders, email broadcasts, sequences, lead grabbers, landing pages, helpdesk, and Live Chat. This makes EngageBay a top choice among free HubSpot alternatives.
• Basic: This plan costs $13.79 a month and adds a tag manager, social suite, third-party integration, SMS marketing, conversational inbox, AI-based predictive lead scoring, landing page builder, web pop-ups, and email templates. You also get 500 contacts and 3,000 branded emails.
• Growth: This plan costs $59.79 a month and adds proposals, service automation, email form builder, call records, custom domain, A/B testing, site messages, push notifications, and inbound marketing automation features. You can send 25,000 branded emails a month and store 5,000 contacts with this plan.
• Pro: The Pro plan costs $110.99 a month and adds phone support, uptime SLA, a dedicated account manager, custom reporting, goals tracking, employee role management, and SSO. You also get proposal analytics, web analytics, marketing automation, 50,000 branded emails a month, and unlimited contacts.

You also get an 8% discount on annual plans and a 15% discount on two-year plans. This affordable pricing makes EngageBay one of the best HubSpot CRM alternatives.

EngageBay vs HubSpot (2025) – Which CRM Gives You More Value?

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Sign up with EngageBay for free

2. Brevo (fka Sendinblue)

Best HubSpot alternative for omnichannel marketing

Our next pick for an all-in-one software to try over HubSpot is Brevo (fka Sendinblue). A digital marketing resource, Brevo (Sendinblue) has served quite a few businesses for more than a decade.

	Brevo (Sendinblue)	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	10%	10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

What you might like about Brevo

Brevo (Sendinblue) can help with your Facebook advertising, landing pages, signup forms, CRM, email & marketing automation, SMS marketing, and email marketing — making it one of the most versatile HubSpot alternatives. For Facebook Ads, landing pages, and web forms, you can use Brevo’s (Sendinblue) customizable templates and drag-and-drop editor.

CRM

• Segmentation and transactional email design to personalize your messages.
• Chat support.
• Contact management to identify sales opportunities and target leads.

SMS marketing

• Transactional SMS features, including Sendinblue’s (Brevo) API.
• Review KPIs and other metrics.

Email marketing

• Templates for email, drag-and-drop builder.
• Personalized, dynamic content.
• No limit on contacts and lists.
• A/B tests.

What you might not like about Brevo

• Free plan has a limited number of features.
• The BrevoPlus plan has a few useful features over the Business plan and can get pricey for small businesses.

Brevo (Sendinblue) pricing

Sendinblue (Brevo) has four marketing pricing plans: Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise.

• Free: The Free plan lets you work with unlimited contacts but limits the emails to 300 per day. It doesn’t offer any other features. This is a great free alternative to HubSpot for small businesses. 
• Starter: The Starter plan for $8.08 per month is recommended for new marketers, with email volume starting from 5,000 emails, no daily sending limits (within your plan limits), basic reporting and analytics, and email support. 
• Business: The Business plan is $16.17 a month and offers an email volume starting at 5,000 emails, marketing automation, Facebook Ads, landing pages, multi-user access, and telephone support.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and adds priority support, a dedicated account manager, and features like retargeting ads, chat, send-time optimization, sub-account management, advanced integrations, tailored onboarding, and personalized support. 

Read also: 5 Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternatives

3. Zoho

Best HubSpot alternative for customizability

Zoho is a great affordable solution for SMBs as it offers a complete business solution. In addition to a comprehensive CRM solution, they offer other products, too – from event management, webinars, eCommerce, loyalty management, and more. 

	Zoho	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one
Free plan
Free trial	15 days	30 days
Annual discount	Up to 34%	10%
G2 rating	4.0	4.4

What you might like about Zoho

Zoho CRM makes it easy to integrate multiple products easily, offering a truly integrated solution. Let’s take a look at the key features of Zoho.

Field management

• Mobile application
• On-field representatives
• Field management
• Easy-of-use

Sales Intelligence and Automation

• Logic, rules, and triggers
• automates both operational and data entry tasks 
• Creating and updating tasks
• Automatic lead routing based on various factors 

Pipelines

• Deal management
• 360-degree customer views
• Account management
• Intuitive dashboards

Team management

• Admin control
• Documentation library 
• Meeting scheduler
• Restriction management
• Easy management and collaboration 

What you might not like about Zoho

• Customer support may not be as comprehensive
• Each product of Zoho has to be paid for separately, and the integrations may not always work

Zoho pricing

Zoho offers four plans: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

• Standard: Zoho’s Standard plan starts at $14/month and offers pipelines, sales forecasting, templates, task management, email insights, and other standard features. 
• Professional: The Professional plan is a popular Zoho plan and starts at $23/month for webhooks, email relays, macros, assignment rules, and custom reports and dashboards
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $40/month for advanced features, including email parsers, custom functions, segmentation, developer sandbox, and advanced dashboard components.
• Ultimate: The Ultimate plan costs $52/month and offers advanced features, scalability, and dedicated BI capabilities. 

Read also: EngageBay vs HubSpot vs Zoho

4. Salesforce

Best enterprise-grade CRM

Salesforce offers ‘Salesforce Business CRM’ developed specifically for small businesses. Rated the #1 CRM in the world, Salesforce offers a plethora of tools – from lead management, data insights, and more. 

	Salesforce	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial		30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	—	4.4

What you might like about Salesforce

Let’s take a look at the key features of Salesforce:

• Lead management
• Lead conversion
• Social insights
• Social media engagement
• Real-time sales forecasting
• AppExchange marketplace
• Customized sales, marketing, and customer service

What you might not like about Salesforce

• Quite expensive compared to other HubSpot alternatives
• Expensive add-ons
• Complex setup
• Steep learning curve

Salesforce pricing

Salesforce Small Business CRM offers two plans: Starter Suite and Pro Suite.

• Starter Suite: starts from $25/month.
• Pro Suite: starts from $100/month.

Which Is The Best Free Salesforce Alternative?

The best HubSpot alternatives for marketing

5. ActiveCampaign

Best HubSpot alternative for advanced marketing automation

Our next pick for HubSpot alternatives is ActiveCampaign. A marketing automation service with small business CRM and email marketing, ActiveCampaign has a large customer base and has been recognized well. It’s designed for sales, marketing, customer service teams, and verticals like higher education, software as a service or SaaS, eCommerce, and bloggers.

	ActiveCampaign	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount		10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

What you might like about ActiveCampaign

The ActiveCampaign CRM solution offers a decent set of features and hundreds of integrations — making it one of the best HubSpot alternatives when it comes to sheer numbers. These include machine learning, messaging, CRM & sales, inbound marketing automation, and email marketing.

Machine learning

• Predictive sending based on email response behavior.
• Win probability feature to predict the chances a lead will close a deal.

Messaging

• Templates for early stages of the customer journey.
• Facebook custom audiences.
• SMS marketing with automation, notifications, and reminders.
• Email marketing with personalization.

CRM & sales

• Deals CRM app for changing deals, calling leads, tracking tasks, and generating contact information on the go.
• Sync with Gmail and Outlook via ActiveCampaign Chrome extension.
• Automated segmentation, win probabilities, and lead scoring.
• Sales process management.
• CRM and sales automation for a hands-off approach.

Marketing automation

• Split testing or A/B testing.
• Attribution across the customer lifecycle.
• Goals tracking.
• Advanced reporting.
• Mitigation services to merge contacts, forms, emails, and automation.
• Automated sign-up forms.
• Site tracking to know who visits your pages and for how long.

Email marketing

• Email scheduling.
• Automated email funnels.
• Email autoresponders like lead magnets and welcome emails.
• Triggered emails based on customer behavior.
• Broadcast emails.

What you might not like about ActiveCampaign

• Once you get past the $49 Plus plan, it gets pricey quickly.

ActiveCampaign pricing

ActiveCampaign is an excellent HubSpot competitor because of its pricing. It has four paid plans: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise.

• Starter: This plan costs $15 a month for three users. You also get email and chat support, marketing automation, newsletters, email marketing, and unlimited emails. This makes ActiveCampaign a great alternative to expensive CRM like HubSpot.
• Plus: With the Plus plan, you add SMS marketing, training, custom branding, a custom domain, and custom user permissions for $49 a month. You also get deep data integration, lead and contact scoring, sales automation CRM, unlimited email sending, and support for up to 25 users.
• Pro: The Professional plan costs $79 a month and adds win probabilities, predictive sending, attributions, site messaging, and unlimited email sending.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan starts at $145/month and adds uptime SLA, phone support, social data, design services, and onboarding support. There’s also a dedicated account rep, a custom mail server domain, custom reporting, and unlimited message sending.

EngageBay vs ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: A comparison

6. GetResponse

Best HubSpot alternative for webinar marketing

Among the most popular HubSpot alternatives is GetResponse. This is a marketing software product catering to small businesses.

	GetResponse	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	30 days	30 days
Annual discount	18%	10%
G2 rating	4.3	4.4

What you might like about GetResponse

GetResponse offers a wide range of marketing solutions — similar to HubSpot — including webinar support, autoresponders, landing pages, and a conversion funnel.

GetResponse’s webinar features make it one of the best HubSpot alternatives for companies that require a marketing tool without high pricing.

Autoresponders

• Drag-and-drop editor for autoresponse messages.
• Advanced timing controls.
• Unlimited daily messages.

Website support

• SSL-encrypted webinar URLs with password protection.
• Customizable webinar URLs.
• Webinar platforms to stream and record your webinars.
• Webinar analytics, including conversions, survey vote responses, time spent watching the webinar, and the location of viewers.

Marketing automation

• Automated communication with scoring and tagging.
• Visual workflows with filters, actions, and conditions.
• Drag-and-drop visual workflow builder.

Conversion funnel

• Webinar funnels, lead funnels, sales funnels.
• Automated tracking of the customer journey.

What you might not like about GetResponse

• Not a full-fledged CRM software.
• Costly for small businesses with a large contact database.

GetResponse pricing

GetResponse has five plans: Free, Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, eCommerce Marketing, and GetResponse MAX. Pricing is based on the number of contacts.

• Email Marketing: This plan starts at $15.6/month and offers unlimited newsletters, autoresponders, website builder, landing pages, templates, among other features.
• Marketing Automation: This plan costs $48.4/month and adds features like event-based workflows, push notifications, and predictive email delivery.
• eCommerce Marketing: This plan starts at $97.6/month and includes eCommerce-specific features like abandoned cart recovery, transactional emails, and product recommendations.
• GetResponse MAX: Finally, the Max plan offers custom features like priority support, dedicated IP, SSO, SMS marketing, and unlimited users for $1,099/month.

Read also: The Best Free GetResponse Alternatives

7. Drip

Affordable email marketing software

The next pick for the top HubSpot competitors to try for your next campaign is Drip. This eCommerce CRM platform (ECRM) provides marketing automation services. Drip offers an enhanced email marketing automation system and improved customer data and insights with its ECRM.

	Drip	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing tool
Sales automation	𐄂
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.4	4.4

What you might like about Drip

Drip’s features come under four categories: customer data, personalization, engagement, and optimization.

Customer data

• Integration with several other data apps.
• Track customer journey with your website and brand.
• Custom fields for personalization and engagement.
• Tags to divide your audience into segments and your tasks for priority.

Personalization

• Send segmented deals and messages like price-drop notifications.
• Behavior-based email outreach.
• Custom fields for segmentation of contacts.

Customer engagement

• Instagram and Facebook advertising based on customers’ shopping behavior.
• Visual email builder.
• Automated email campaigns.

Optimization

• Analytics to track metrics like revenue per subscriber, rate of unsubscribes, clicks, and opens — a boon for your marketing team.

What you might not like about Drip

• Services are mostly limited to the ECRM or CRM sphere.

Drip pricing

Drip’s pricing plan is based on a sliding-scale model:

• For 2,500 contacts: $39 a month.
• For 5,000 contacts: $89 a month.
• For 10,000 contacts: $154 a month.
• For 50,000 contacts: $699 a month.

Read also: 5 of the Best Drip Alternatives

8. Mailchimp

Best HubSpot alternative for email marketing and campaign management

Mailchimp is a well-rounded alternative to the HubSpot Marketing Hub that lets you run powerful email campaigns without the learning curve. 

What we like about Mailchimp is its simplicity. Users can build beautiful, mobile-optimized emails using the drag-and-drop editor and personalize campaigns based on user signals, behavior, and tags. 

Mailchimp also offers detailed insights into how each campaign performs, including open rates, clicks, and conversions. 

What you might like about Mailchimp

• Easy-to-use email builder with lots of professional templates
• Prebuilt customer journeys and marketing automation
• Integrated landing pages, signup forms, and ads. 
• Strong analytics and A/B testing

What you may not like about Mailchimp

• Limited automation and A/B testing on the free version
• Though Mailchimp offers CRM features, it’s not as robust as HubSpot’s

Mailchimp pricing

• Free: $0/month for 500 contacts
• Essentials: $8.94/month for 500 contacts
• Standard: $13.36/month for 500 contacts
• Premium: $267.13/month for 10,000 contacts

9. Marketo Engage

Best HubSpot alternative for enterprises

Adobe Marketo is a marketing automation platform solely for enterprises and is touted as the ‘world’s largest marketing automation’ platform. The platform combines the power of automation, content, account-based marketing, and lead development to help enterprises engage with customers. 

	Adobe Marketo	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.1	4.4

What you might like about Marketo

For enterprises, Adobe Marketo is the way to go. It’s feature-rich and is designed from the ground up with enterprise-grade features and security. Let’s take a deep dive into the features of Adobe Marketo Engage.

Cross-channel marketing

• Coordinate engagement across channels
•  Social media marketing with personalized messages, campaigns, and sweepstakes
• Email marketing tool with impactful email campaigns
• Real-time behavior analysis

Sales and marketing

• Sales insights through sales intelligence tools
• Account profiling using AI-powered workflows
• Target account management
• Lead and account-based audiences

Data and insights

• Marketing Analytics
• Advanced journey analytics
• Multi-touch attribution

What you might not like about Marketo

• Not suitable for SMBs, startups, and solopreneurs
• Expensive plans
• Limited analytics and reporting capabilities

Marketo pricing

Adobe Marketo offers four plans: Growth, Select, Prime, and Ultimate. All plans are custom-priced. 

• Growth: This plan offers 10 users, 20,000 API calls/day, lead and account database, native CRM integration, audience segmentation and targeting, advanced dynamic content, advanced personalization, and more. 
• Select: The Select plan offers 50,000 API calls/day, campaign user roles, intelligent cross-channel nurturing, scoring, email marketing, and dynamic chat. 
• Prime: The Prime plan offers target account management, predictive audiences, advanced journey analytics, sandbox, and more. 
• Ultimate: The Ultimate plan offers 25 users, 50,000 API calls/day, 50 assets for predictive content, workspaces, partitions, and discounted pricing for Marketo Measure.

Which HubSpot Alternative Should You Try? Read here!

The best sales CRM HubSpot alternatives

10. Freshworks

Best HubSpot alternative for AI-powered sales automation

Freshworks offers Freshsales, a unified CRM to help businesses align their marketing and sales teams all from a single platform. While Freshworks CRM offers multiple platforms – Freshmarketer, Freshsales, and Freshdesk, we’ll focus on Freshsales.

	Freshsales	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	21 days	30 days
Annual discount		10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

What you might like about Freshworks

Freshsales is a great solution for both SMBs and startups as it offers a clean interface. Key features of Freshsales include: 

Sales management

• Sales campaign automation
• Automated scheduling
• Deal tracking
• Deal management
• Follow-up workflows
• Goals and milestones

Deal management

• Freddy AI
• Ability to recognize high-value prospects
• Deal win probability

Profile enrichment

• Automatic data and lead information capture
• CRM sync
• Data organization

Advanced filters

• Territory management
• Automatic contact assignment
• Advanced filters and criteria

What you might not like about Freshworks

• Quality of integrations may not be good, as mentioned in some of the reviews
• Reports may not be as robust as some of the competitors

Freshworks pricing

Freshsales offers three plans: Growth, Pro, and Enterprise.

• Free: The Free plan offers sales dashboards, email templates, Kanban boards, and more for up to 3 users
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $9/month for sales sequences, deal management, contact management, and so much more. 
• Pro: The Pro plan starts from $39/month and offers territory management, time-based workflows, 3,000 bot sessions per month, sales pipelines, and more. 
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan starts at $59/month for advanced CRM, custom modules, a dedicated account manager, AI-based forecasting insights, and more. 

Read also: 15 Freshworks Alternatives for Great Customer Support

11. Pipedrive

Best HubSpot alternative for sales-focused CRM

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM software designed specifically for sales teams. Its visual sales pipeline feature is one of the best in the industry and helps you track leads through streamlined workflows.

This makes Pipedrive an ideal sales CRM for both small and medium-sized businesses and offers a multitude of integrations. 

	Pipedrive	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	17%	10%
G2 rating	4.2	4.4

What you might like about Pipedrive

If you want a sales-first CRM, Pipedrive is the way to go. With numerous features and a tightly integrated toolkit, Pipedrive offers everything your sales reps need to close deals smoothly — one of the best HubSpot sales alternatives. This includes: 

Managing leads and deals

• Customizable pipelines and fields to add your own spin
• Deal management for smooth deal closure
• Deal rotting feature to let you be aware of idle/dead deals
• Activity management to keep tabs on everything that goes on in your sales team
• 2-way email sync for improved productivity

Automation

• Sales assistant that offers intelligent insights and advice to help win more deals
• Workflow automation to set up a consistent sales workflow process and reduce manual work and errors

Reporting and insights

• Activity reports
• Visual dashboards
• Revenue reports
• Team management

What you might not like about Pipedrive

• Report configuration can be hard sometimes, according to user reviews
• Not an all-in-one CRM solution

Pipedrive pricing

Pipedrive offers five plans: Essential, Advanced, Professional, Power, and Enterprise.

• Essential: The Essential plan costs $14/month with a daily open deal limit of 3,000. The plan also offers lead and deal management, inbox, deal rotting, people management, AI sales assistant, and deal reports — an excellent HubSpot replacement.  
• Advanced: The Advanced plan costs $34/month for a daily open deal limit of 10,000. You also get 2-way email sync, customizable email templates, customizable signatures, schedulers for emails, meetings, and video calls, and more. 
• Professional: The Professional plan costs $49/month with a daily open deal limit of 100,000. The plan also offers advanced formula fields, contacts timeline, document tracking, workflow automation, team management, and more. 
• Power: The Power plan starts at $64/month and offers project planning, phone support, CRM, account permissions, and more. 
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $99/month for unlimited open deals. It is essentially the Professional plan with unlimited access and enterprise-grade security and features.

Read also: The Best Free Pipedrive Alternative

12. Insightly

Best HubSpot alternative for project management

Insightly is a unified customer relationship management software that aligns marketing, sales, and project teams around a single view of your customers. The platform is great for entrepreneurs and small business owners executing campaigns, managing contacts, and growing their audience list.

	Insightly	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan
Free trial	𐄂	30 days
Annual discount	𐄂	10%
G2 rating	4.2	4.4

What you might like about Insightly

Insightly has a clean and intuitive user interface, making it the best alternative to HubSpot for people looking for a leaner CRM. In addition, it offers social media management and various products for specific marketing requirements.

Lead management

• Lead management, assignment, and routing.
• Outbound email scheduling.
• Web to lead capture.
• Automatic social profile enrichment.

Customer relationship management

• Contact and organization management.
• Task and event management.
• Relationship linking.

Sales features

• Opportunity management.
• Customizable sales processes.
• Sales teams assignment.
• Batch update records.
• Event activity sets.

Project management

• Integrated project management.
• Milestones and associated task tracking.
• Calendar synchronization.
• Configurable project processes.

What you might not like about Insightly

• Customer support is not reliable.

Insightly pricing

Insightly CRM offers four plans: Free, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise.

• Free: The Free plan offers Insightly CRM and other basic features for up to 2 users. 
• Plus: Costs $29/month and offers company collaboration tools, integrated project management, calendar synchronization, and more. This cost-effective pricing makes Insightly better than HubSpot. 
• Professional: Costs $49/month for lead management, email templates, social profile enrichment, opportunity management, and more.
• Enterprise: Costs $99/month and adds relationship linking, task and event management, complete workflow automation, custom validation rules, and configurable profiles.

Insightly vs HubSpot: Pricing, Functionality, Features & More

13. SharpSpring

Best HubSpot alternative for agency-friendly automation

SharpSpring was acquired by Constant Contact in 2021, and has since been rebranded as ‘Lead Gen & CRM’. 

For more information, click here. 

What you might not like about SharpSpring

• Too costly

SharpSpring pricing

SharpSpring, acquired by Constant Contact, now offers one plan: Lead Gen & CRM. 

• Lead Gen & CRM: This plan starts at $449/month and offers lead gen, lead scoring, marketing automation, CRM, pipeline management, sales automation, and analytics. 

Pros

• Features customized for industry verticals.

Read also: 9 Affordable SharpSpring Alternatives For SMBs [With Pricing, Features]

14. Ontraport

Best HubSpot alternative for referral management

Next, we’ve got Ontraport. It has attracted a relatively large customer base and has good reviews.

	Ontraport	HubSpot
Marketing automation
Email marketing
Sales automation
All-in-one	𐄂
Free plan	𐄂
Free trial	14 days	30 days
Annual discount	2 months free	10%
G2 rating	4.5	4.4

What you might like about Ontraport

With Ontraport, you get a host of solutions. There are referral programs, membership sites, business process automation, marketing analytics, CRM, landing pages, eCommerce, email marketing, sales force automation, and marketing automation.

Referral programs

• Stash referral program data in a referral management system.
• Integrate with other referral programs you might have with Ontraport’s WordPress plugin (PilotPress).
• Make your own partner center on WordPress for commissions, sales, and traffic management for your partners.
• Share partner promotional tools for referrers, each with its own tracking.
• Generate partner sales reports.
• Use automated promo tools like emails, links, lightboxes, and banners for promoting referrals.

Membership sites

• Web forms for your WordPress website.
• Customizable templates.
• Web forms and landing pages.
• Automation for membership levels.

Business automation

• Customer onboarding automation.
• Resources and content automation like welcome emails.
• Predictive results, lead management.
• Sync data to a single dashboard.
• Fulfillment lists that go out every month or week.
• Automated customer follow-ups.
• Automated tasks.

CRM

• Business card-style contact organization.
• Interaction tracking based on communication and behavior.
• Contacts grouping by job title, demographics, and other data.
• Email campaign assigning automation.
• Tags based on behavior.

Landing pages

• Add responsiveness and mobile optimization to your landing pages.
• Include one-click upsells or order bumps to your sales page.
• Share lightbox pop-up forms that come pre-filled.
• A/B testing for landing page elements.
• Review landing page success with detailed analytics.

eCommerce

• Keep a limited purchase data cache for customers to buy again.
• Provide an add-on or upsell on the thank-you page.
• Provide secure payment processing through secure gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, etc.
• Share group or individual coupons for event promotions, holidays, birthdays, etc.
• Ontraport Forms to make your own order forms branded to your company.

Marketing automation

• Automate appointment reminders, thank-you messages, greetings for holidays and birthdays, etc.
• Text reminders for appointments.
• Text-based opt-ins.
• Response and bounce tracking.

Marketing analytics

• Split testing for emails.
• UTM variable data lead source report filtering to track revenue, leads, etc.
• Customizable analytics.
• Conversion stats, such as time taken to finish surveys, open emails, etc.

Sales force automation

• Weighted Random to assign more leads to the top salespeople.
• Round Robin to distribute leads evenly to all salespeople.
• Lead score degradation on older leads.
• Follow-up funnels with automation.
• Review of expected win percentages and deal values.

What you might not like about Ontraport

• Steep pricing.

Ontraport pricing

Ontraport offers four different plans: Basic, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise.

• Basic: This plan costs $29 per month and can support one user. You get unlimited emails and 1,000 contacts.
• Plus: The Plus plan costs $83 a month, adds a second user, and offers 2,500 contacts.
• Pro: With the Pro plan, you can have three users and 10,000 contacts for $124 a month. You also get email consultations and unlimited emails.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan supports five users, more than 20,000 contacts, and 200,000 monthly emails for $249 a month. You get a personal account rep, email consultations, and Ontraport account set up.

They also offer free trials for all the plans.

Read also: The Best Free Ontraport Alternative

The best HubSpot alternatives for customer support

15. Zendesk

Best HubSpot alternative for omnichannel customer support

You might be overwhelmed by HubSpot’s complex support tools and pricing. If you’re looking for a simple, omnichannel customer support tool, Zendesk is a great option. We tried Zendesk, and we loved it!

With Zendesk, you can easily handle emails, chat, social media support, and even voice support, all from a single platform. 

What really stood out to us is the automation. Many customers were able to set up macros, SLAs, and workflows that saved their agents so many hours every week. Zendesk also offers robust analytics, helping them monitor agent performance and support quality. 

For teams that want to move from HubSpot Service Hub, Zendesk’s marketplace and integrations ensure nothing breaks in your workflows. 

What you might like about Zendesk

• Omnichannel support across email, chat, phone, and social
• Powerful automation and ticket routing for faster resolutions
• Fully customizable help center and KB
• AI-powered chatbots to answer common queries automatically and reduce agent load

What you might not like about Zendesk

• Though simpler than HubSpot, Zendesk might still be overwhelming at first
• Some core features, like SLA management and reporting, are locked behind higher tiers. 

Zendesk pricing

• Suite Team: Starts at $55/month 
• Suite Growth: Starts at $89/month
• Suite Professional: Starts at $115/month
• Suite Enterprise: Custom-priced

Which Is The Best Free Zendesk Alternative?

16. Help Scout

Best HubSpot alternative for growing teams 

Help Scout is a great HubSpot alternative if you’re looking for something more personal for customer communication. 

What we love about HubSpot is how it blends the functionality of a helpdesk and the ease-of-use of email. It feels like we’re communicating through Gmail, with all the team collaborations and support tools baked right in, like private notes, collision detection, and saved replies. 

The shared inbox system also makes it easier for a lot of teams to stay aligned and respond faster. Also, Help Scout’s knowledge base helps reduce ticket volume by giving customers instant answers. 

What you might like about Help Scout

• Simple, clean interface that mimics personal email tools
• Shared inbox with internal notes
• Integrated knowledge base

What you might not like about Help Scout

• Reporting is not as comprehensive as HubSpot or Zendesk
• No built-in chat transcript history

Help Scout pricing

• Free: $0/month for up to 50 contacts per month
• Standard: $50/month for 100 contacts per month and unlimited users
• Plus: $75/month for 100 contacts per month and unlimited users
• Pro: Custom priced, starts with 1,000 contacts

17. Freshdesk

Best HubSpot alternative with scalable customer support

Freshdesk is a customer support platform that gives you enterprise-grade support without the enterprise-level pricing. 

If you’re currently using HubSpot Service Hub and need something simpler and more affordable, Freshdesk is worth giving a shot. 

Freshdesk offers a powerful ticketing system with features like team collaboration, SLA management, and canned responses. We checked the reviews and were impressed with how easy it was to set up automation that routed tickets to the right agents instantly. 

Freshdesk also includes gamification features, like leaderboards and badges, and the free tier is surprisingly generous. 

What you might like about Freshdesk

• A free forever tier with ticketing and knowledge base
• Omnichannel support (email, chat, phone, socials)
• Built-in automation and intelligent ticket routing

What you might not like about Freshdesk

• Automation and advanced reports are only available in paid tiers
• Some UI elements may feel outdated compared with newer, sleeker tools

Freshdesk pricing

• Growth: Starts at $18/month
• Pro: Starts at $59/month
• Pro + AI Copilot: Starts at $94/month
• Enterprise: Starts at $95/month

Read Also: Top Freshdesk Alternatives For Superior Support

Our Selection Criteria for the Best HubSpot Alternatives

Affordability: The major reason users look for HubSpot alternatives is price. If HubSpot was affordable to SMBs, there’d be no demand for alternatives to it, because almost everything else is just great. In this list of CRM and marketing solutions, we’ve prioritized the most affordable ones. 

Feature set: Most people mistakenly believe that HubSpot charges a premium because its features are amazing. HubSpot is undoubtedly good, but it charges a premium because it has market dominance. Several all-in-one CRM alternatives offer essential features like marketing and sales automation, customer support, and more without breaking the bank. 

Scalability: SMBs can grow rapidly, and their marketing and sales tech stack must keep up. Imagine adding a new contacts list only to be told you’ve exceeded the limit. Your CRM should have enough room to grow with your business needs and provide options when you outgrow your current plan.

User-friendliness: Responsive support is great, but intuitive software is even better. Ideally, you should be able to use, update, and maintain your CRM data without help from the software vendor. So, we signed up and tested the user-friendliness of each software mentioned in this listicle to recommend the most user-friendly alternatives to HubSpot.

Marketing Madness: HubSpot vs EngageBay Face-Off!

Which HubSpot Alternative Should You Try?

While the HubSpot CRM software is a leader in the marketing and CRM automation niche, it is not suitable for small businesses and startups.

You may think that the platform is quite affordable when you’ve just started, as the Starter Customer Platform only costs $15 a month for 1,000 contacts. But what happens when your company grows, and you need to store more contacts and have better features? That’s where the pricing becomes unaffordable.

The cost of HubSpot’s Starter Customer Platform jumps up to $758 a month for 25,000 contacts

If your business has boomed and you need advanced features, you must choose the Enterprise plan. The pricing? HubSpot costs a whopping $3,600 a month for 10,000 contacts in the Marketing Enterprise plan. Add to this the mandatory onboarding fee of $7,000, and your annual billing exceeds $50K!

That’s why small businesses need more affordable HubSpot alternatives, and we have done the homework for you. You might wonder, ‘What can I use instead of HubSpot?’. It depends on your business size and requirements. For enterprises, we recommend choosing Salesforce or Adobe Marketo.

For businesses needing complete customer experience automation with a lot of integrations, it’s better to go for ActiveCampaign. Small businesses that need an affordable all-in-one marketing, sales, and support solution can try EngageBay.

EngageBay is built from the ground up with affordability and ease of use in mind. 

You get a forever free version, the Basic plan only costs $14.99, and the Pro plan with a plethora of advanced tools — and unlimited contacts — costs just $102 a month! Try it today

The post HubSpot Alternatives: 17 Top Competitors for 2025 appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

Both platforms are all-in-one CRMs with powerful marketing and sales features. Although SharpSpring (now rebranded as Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM)  is cheaper compared to HubSpot, but at what cost?

Choosing between the two is difficult, that’s why in this article we’ll compare the two platforms and you’ll learn: 

• The main difference between the two platforms
• In what ways are the two platforms different and similar?
• The pricing difference between the two platforms
• A more affordable and better alternative

HubSpot vs SharpSpring Features Comparison (2025)

The main difference is that SharpSpring is cheaper compared to HubSpot but offers almost similar features. However, there are few details that make HubSpot superior to SharpSpring. For example, its reports are advanced and richer in data than those of SharpSpring.

You would also have access to a vast number of integrations and workflow templates compared to SharpSpring.

HubSpot – An all-in-one CRM for marketing, sales, and support teams

HubSpot’s suite of tools is designed to work together seamlessly and share a single database. This makes it super easy to get real-time insights from your various digital marketing campaigns and quickly access your company’s data.

It’s not just one tool, but a collection of different hubs, each with its own set of features:

• HubSpot Marketing Hub: This one has a ton of features to help you with your marketing efforts. Think marketing automation solution, landing pages, email marketing, live chat, social media management, and more.
• HubSpot Sales Hub: It has features like pipeline management, email tracking, sales automation, conversation intelligence and more to help you close deals.
• HubSpot Service Hub: This one’s all about customer service. It helps reps serve customers with all the context they need by connecting to the CRM. You’ll find features like shared inbox, helpdesk and ticketing, customer portal, and omnichannel messaging.
• HubSpot CMS Hub: This Content Management System (CMS) hub comes with everything you need to build a great website. Dynamic content, drag-and-drop site builder, web hosting, custom domain connection, and CRM integration.
• HubSpot Operations Hub: This one is all about making your work easier. It integrates apps, syncs and cleans customer data, and automates business processes. Workflow extensions, programmable automation, data sync, and data quality automation are just a few of the features you’ll find here.

Read also: What is HubSpot? Definition, Features, Pricing, Who it’s Best for

SharpSpring – A cheaper all-in-one marketing and sales CRM platform for small businesses

As of today, SharpSpring no longer exists as a stand-alone brand. Constant Contact, which acquired SharpSpring for $240 million in September 2021, has folded the platform into its portfolio and renamed it “Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM.” (PR Newswire)

The rebrand, announced in March 2023, aligns the product with Constant Contact’s email-marketing heritage while keeping SharpSpring’s automation and CRM functions intact. (cultivize.com)

Users will see a refreshed UI, tighter integrations with Constant Contact’s email designer, and all updated documentation and support resources under the new name, but pricing and features remain unchanged. (Constant Contact Knowledge Base)

When comparing HubSpot, look for “Lead Gen & CRM” in Constant Contact’s lineup

SharpSpring is an all-in-one platform just like HubSpot. But it only unites the marketing and sales teams because it lacks service features like ticket automations in HubSpot or EngageBay. 

Its main selling point is the low price compared to HubSpot while offering almost the same set of features. You can use the email designer to style your emails and drag and drop elements to create the perfect email or choose from the list of pre-built templates.

Its visual automation builder lets you create comprehensive marketing and sales automation. For example, you can set a drip campaign for when a user visits a specific page on your website.

Its sales CRM allows you to view your pipeline in one dashboard, attach reminders to deals so you don’t miss on anything, view your contacts’ history with the company, and add notes in each of your opportunities. 

Overall verdict

HubSpot is great for you if you need a complete product to meet the needs of your marketing, sales, and support teams. Its feature set is a bit more comprehensive compared to SharpSpring. It’s also suitable for you if you have a big sales team because of its extensive sales reports.

SharpSpring is a great cheaper alternative since it has most of HubSpot’s functionality at a fraction of the cost. But little details of the features set the two marketing platforms apart. As Gareth Roberts, a campaign and marketing manager says:

“SharpSpring doesn’t quite live up to HubSpot in terms of the intricacies of its features. But what it does, when compared to the cost of using other premium marketing automation systems, it does well to help meet marketing objectives.”

Read also: What’s The Best HubSpot Alternative?

Comparing HubSpot vs SharpSpring

We’ve put both of these platforms to the test. We took a close look at their features and evaluated each one based on eight important factors. By the time we’re done, you’ll have all the information you need to pick the best-fit software.

Ease of use

Both HubSpot and SharpSpring have some learning curves for new users. But they both have extensive resources and customer support to help you. Their user interfaces are a bit different though.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s design is more intuitive and user-friendly. The platform is easy to navigate, with each hub leading to different functions within its category. For instance, the service hub leads to tickets, a knowledge base, and all other service-related tools.

In the community center, you can seek answers to your questions from certified HubSpot partners, who provide in-depth responses. The extensive knowledge base is also available for you to quickly find answers to common questions. For immediate customer support, you can choose from email, chat, and phone support, depending on your subscription level.

HubSpot is famous for its academy offering certification programs in the areas of sales, marketing, and customer service. They also have a library of helpful video tutorials to show you how to fully use the product suite. 

SharpSpring

It has a bit of a generic user interface. Its dashboard and the overall interface look more like Zoho CRM or Insightly but it still does its job well. 

That said, It has one of the best knowledge bases in the industry. Instead of having to reach out to customer support for every little thing, you can quickly find answers to questions and solve problems on your own. It’s a real time-saver. 

It also ranks above average on G2 for ease of use, quality of support, and ease of setup. This means most customers can get up and running quickly and start using it immediately and customer support is quick to offer assistance.

Ease of use verdict

Both platforms have some learning curves because of their all-in-one nature. But the resources and customer support available make it easy to get going with the products immediately. So it’s a tie.

Read also: What’s The Best SharpSpring Alternative

Pricing

The pricing is the main factor that sets the two platforms apart. HubSpot offers both individual and bundled pricing, while SharpSpring has a single pricing plan, which is cheaper than HubSpot.

In this comparison, we’ll analyze HubSpot’s bundled pricing and compare it to SharpSpring’s plan to provide a detailed overview of the benefits each offer. 

How much does HubSpot cost?

• Seats model now universal (effective 5 March 2024): every Hub and tier (Starter, Pro, Enterprise) moved from “all-user” access to a seats-based structure that aligns price with the number of editing users. 

• New seat types introduced:

  • Core Seat – required for any user who needs edit/AI access across hubs.

  • View-Only Seat – free and unlimited for read-only users. 

• Starter pricing reset: extra Core Seats now cost $20 per month across all Starter hubs (Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations). 

• Professional/Enterprise add-on costs: additional Core Seats are $50 (P-tier) and $75 (E-tier) each; Sales or Service “Paid” seats that unlock advanced hub features are $100 (P-tier) and $150 (E-tier) per user. 

• Seat minimums scrapped: the old 5-seat (Pro) and 10-seat (Enterprise) minimums for Sales & Service Hubs have been removed, letting teams start with a single seat. 

• Bundled seats still included: Pro bundles ship with 3 Core Seats (e.g., Marketing Hub Pro at $890/mo); Enterprise bundles include 5 Core Seats, with overages billed at the above rates. 

• Legacy customers grandfathered—for now: the changes apply immediately to new portals; existing customers remain on legacy pricing until their next renewal, when a migration-related uplift of ≈5% or less may occur. 

Is HubSpot Really Free? Hidden Costs Explained

Let’s review HubSpot’s CRM suite pricing plan in some more detail:

Starter–$50 per month

It includes starter plans from all the hubs. So you get the essential features in marketing, sales, service, CMS, and operations. This plan is most suitable for small businesses.

Professional–$1,780 per month

This plan offers an increase in limits and additional features from all five hubs’ pro plans. It’s suitable for you if you are looking for one marketing tool that connects your entire team and a platform that meets your growing needs. You can scale your sales process, create custom reports, and run marketing automation.

Enterprise–$5,000 per month (billed at $60,000/year)

This plan includes features suitable for established businesses that have a hierarchical organizational structure with multiple levels of management. It includes features such as more custom reporting options, the ability to add more teams, custom permission sets, predictive lead scoring, and more marketing and sales automation workflows.

But a quick glance at their pricing structure reveals a few things:

• The steep price jump from the starter plan to the professional plan–$50/month to $1,780/month–makes it hard to upgrade when you only need one feature which isn’t in the starter plan.
• you have a 12-month commitment plan whether you pay monthly or annually. This locks you into paying for the software for the whole year. 
• The starter plan by default starts with 2 users, the professional plan 5 users and the enterprise plan starts with 10 users.
• If you want to add additional users, the starter plan costs $25/month/user, the pro plan $100/month/user, and the enterprise plan at $120/month/user.

HubSpot has a free plan but once you outgrow the free features it gets expensive fast. 

Here’s how one of its users summed up its pricing:

“Pricing-wise can be a little pricey compared to some other CRMs out there, and a lot of the features that make it useful are not accessible unless you pay for the premium accounts.”

HubSpot has also introduced major changes to its pricing plans in March 2024, making the already expensive plans even more costly.

How?

HubSpot added two new seats, the View-Only and Core seats.

The View-Only seat, as the name suggests, does not offer any edit access for any of its features. On the other hand, the Core seat offers users edit access, making it a great option for managers and other team members.

You get unlimited View-Only seats for free. The paid Core seats were previously part of the free plan!

This means those who enjoyed having free edit access previously should now purchase at least a Core seat to continue editing.

This table can help you understand better:

How much does SharpSpring cost?

Its pricing is based on the number of contacts you have. Here’s its pricing when on an annual contract:

• 1,000 contacts – $449 per month
• 10,000 contacts – $999 per month
• 20,000 contacts – $1449 per month

All plans include:

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited support
• Dedicated onboarding specialist
• A $1,999 onboarding package fee
• Access to most of its marketing automation, email software, and CRM

Pricing verdict

SharpSpring has a better pricing structure compared to HubSpot. It’s cheaper and offers almost the same features as HubSpot. 

As Raymond Leffelaar, a marketing automation specialist, puts it:

“It’s like HubSpot but then with 1/3 of their pricing”

Update: The pricing plans have changed the acquisition by SharpSpring. It is now rebranded as “Lead Gen & CRM’. 

This plan starts is custom-priced and offers lead generation, lead scoring, marketing automation, CRM, pipeline management, sales automation, and analytics tools.

This is a long article. If you don’t have the time to read, you can watch our video on HubSpot vs SharpSpring:

Marketing Automation Showdown: HubSpot vs SharpSpring (2025)

Customization and pipeline management

Both products are customizable to your needs. We’ll look at what you can customize with each software.

HubSpot

With HubSpot, you can customize your reports and forecasts. There’s a range of templates available, and you can create custom fields for deals, contacts, quotes, and products. 

But if you want to make custom objects that are specific to your needs, you’ll have to sign up for their enterprise plan. It’ll cost you $5000 a month or $60000 a year, which isn’t cheap. 

As for the pipeline management, you can set multiple pipelines, edit and delete stages, and assign tasks to reps when deals are ready. The only weak spot is the user interface design, which could use some work.

Read also: SharpSpring vs Hubspot vs EngageBay — Which CRM Software is the Best?

SharpSpring

When creating a form, it’s not just about inserting fields – you can also customize the look and feel of your form using the Visual Form Styler. 

It allows you to see your design changes in real-time. There are different categories within the Visual Form Styler, each covering a specific portion of the form, where you can configure various design aspects of the form.

You can also create personalized lead-scoring parameters that fit your business needs. For example, custom rules can modify points for page visits or create entirely new custom attributes and configure leads based on custom fields.

SharpSpring’s custom reports provide a comprehensive view of your sales progress. The reports are built using a library of widgets that display different types of information on key components of your business. You can mix and match these widgets to create either granular or high-level reports tailored to your needs.

You can have multiple pipelines for different sales types, but only one if you’re a CRM user.  Stages can also be edited or deleted, but be aware that the default Sales Pipeline cannot be edited or erased. Once you’ve created opportunities, you can view, export, and delete them based on your needs.

Customization and pipeline management verdict

Both platforms have a lot of options for customization, but SharpSpring is the better choice because it allows you to customize things in all of its plans.

Looking for a more flexible solution to SharpSpring? Our article on the top SharpSpring alternatives will help you find the perfect fit.

Marketing and campaign management

SharpSpring’s acquisition by Constant Contact made it compete toe-to-toe with the best email marketing and automation software such as HubSpot. Let’s look at how they compare.

HubSpot

You can use HubSpot to draw in the right audience using tools such as blogs, SEO optimization, ads, live chat, social media, and video. You can then engage with your audience using the email marketing feature where you can run A/B test campaigns or automate drip campaigns using the automation feature.

One useful feature is campaigns, which integrate all your marketing assets in one central location, enabling you to track the effectiveness of your entire marketing effort, including ads, landing pages, forms, and emails, for any campaign you create.

Read also: HubSpot vs Keap — Is HubSpot Really a Better Product?

SharpSpring

Much like HubSpot, SharpSpring lets you attract potential customers using ads, campaigns, landing pages, forms, and emails. 

From the ads dashboard, you can break down campaign data by date or individual metric, and export campaign information as reports. 

One unique feature is the media center. It allows you to create trackable resources such as white papers, coupons, and contracts that can be used in emails or workflows. When leads view these resources, you can track their interactions with them and follow up with them in a meaningful way. This is a great way to keep tabs on important content and see if your leads are actually engaging with it. 

SharpSpring also shares one feature with HubSpot that most CRMs lack–the campaign feature. Campaigns are a way to track marketing initiatives, including landing page traffic and social media tracking. You can manage and view your campaigns based on attributes such as status ( active or inactive), the channel being tracked ( email, social media, etc), date range, tags, and attribution level.

Marketing and campaign management verdict

They both have similar features, but SharpSpring includes its features in all the plans, unlike HubSpot.

Read also: SharpSpring Pricing, Features, and Top 3 Alternatives

Integrations

This is one of the main differences between the two platforms since HubSpot offers more integration options than SharpSpring.

HubSpot

It has over 1,000 native integrations spanning different categories like HR, productivity, billing and invoice, e-commerce, and many more. You can find new integrations as your business grows and connect HubSpot with your existing tech stack with ease. 

I have noticed, however, that some customers are having difficulty connecting to Salesforce. 

For example, here’s what Heather Bakire, a Content Marketing Manager at Revenue.io had to say:

“One downside is the Salesforce integration, which is less than perfect. The fields aren’t always 1:1 and the metrics don’t always transfer properly.”

SharpSpring

SharpSpring lacks a lot in terms of the number of integrations available. Most of its integration is through Zapier, unlike HubSpot. It lacks native integration with even basic apps like Gmail, Facebook ads, and Google ads. Most of the integrations you’d have to build for yourself using their API. 

Integration verdict

HubSpot has a better app marketplace because of the extensive native integrations and API access.

Read also: HubSpot Pros And Cons — A Candid Assessment

Sales automation

Both HubSpot and SharpSpring allow you to build visual workflows that save you and your team’s time. But SharpSping’s automations lack templates, and it’s more difficult to use.

HubSpot

You can create a workflow from scratch or use a template. When creating a workflow from scratch, select an object and workflow type that fits your goals, such as contacts, companies, deals, quotes, or tickets. 

After that, you can set up enrollment triggers to automatically enroll records and choose actions that execute once the record is enrolled. Depending on your subscription, you may have access to different actions. 

When finished, HubSpot lets you add additional enrollment triggers or actions if needed. You can also use a template to create a workflow that aligns with your goals, and then customize it to fit your specific needs. Once you’ve created a workflow, you can enable re-enrollment, clone or move actions, and add comments for reference.

You can also A/B test emails in a workflow. HubSpot will gradually distribute the email variations across enrolled records, ensuring that the 50/50 split is achieved over time as the number of recipients increases.

SharpSpring

SharpSpring’s Visual Workflow Builder is a powerful tool that lets you create and visualize the journeys of your leads. It can be used to build simple or complex automation workflows that help control the paths your leads take toward conversion.

Once you have created a visual workflow, you can add branch content to it. Branch content includes actions, filters, delays, and action groups that make a workflow function. A yes/no branching filter is an optional part of automation that evaluates if specified criteria are met or not, then filters down the automation tree. This is common among most CRMs and automation software. 

Sales automation verdict

HubSpot has a better sales automation feature because it’s easy to navigate, provides templates and pre-built sequences, and it’s generally easier to use.

Read also: 9 Amazing Marketing Automation CRM Software [Comparison Table]

G2 Snapshot (July 2025) (G2)

*Formerly SharpSpring

Reporting

One of the main factors that separate the two platforms is their reporting functions. HubSpot has more advanced and comprehensive reports than SharpSpring, and in this section, we’ll look at how they compare.

HubSpot

Two features in HubSpot enable you to create and manage reports:

• Dashboards
• Reports

Dashboards are used to organize related reports in one view. You can create new dashboards for different reporting purposes, share them with other users in your account, and clone or delete existing ones to stay organized. 

HubSpot makes it easy to manage your reports by providing templates. For example, the sales manager dashboard includes 8 reports that focus on your team’s performance, such as deals open by the close date of this month and deals closed won all time by the rep.

You can also customize your dashboards and choose who can access them. 

You can also create individual reports, filter the report list and manage existing reports from the report feature. The types of custom reports you can create depend on your subscription level. 

These include single-object reports that let you analyze deals, quotes, custom objects, payments, etc. You can also create funnel reports to measure conversion rates between specific stages in a customer’s lifecycle or deal pipeline.

Read also: CRM Showdown — HubSpot vs Zoho Review and Comparison

SharpSpring

It offers a variety of reports for you, such as:

• Pipeline Value report which displays all opportunities expected to close within a specified time period. 
• The Opportunity Health report allows you to monitor the performance of your pipeline opportunities. 
• For a specified date range, the Conversion Analysis report presents the current stage of each created opportunity.
• The Won/Lost report provides information on all opportunities won or lost across all pipelines during a given timeframe.
• The Sales Optimizer Tasks report generates a detailed report on the number of automated tasks per individual user and sales team.
• The Activity report displays important tasks, notes, and statuses for a filtered set of opportunities. 
•  The Follow-Up report shows the number of calls or emails that should have been sent alongside the actual calls and emails sent.

But it lacks detailed reports making it hard for you to draw meaningful insights. 

Here’s how Grant Eggleston, summed up his experience with SharpSpring’s reporting:

“Reports can lack depth and detail, making it difficult to draw meaningful insights from the data. In addition, the lack of queries based on custom field values limits the ability to perform granular analysis. These issues call into question SharpSpring’s effectiveness as an analytics platform and need to be addressed for satisfactory performance.”

Reporting verdict

HubSpot has a better reporting function than SharpSpring. Its reports are diverse, comprehensive, and easy to understand. It’s built for mature companies that need a better way to view, manage, and share reports.

Read also: An In-Depth Look At HubSpot vs Pipedrive

Lead management

Both platforms offer lead management features, but they differ in how easy they are to use.

HubSpot

HubSpot CRM lets you view the communication history with your leads, manage and prioritize them, and even score them to determine their level of engagement.

Its smart contact database takes it a step further by allowing you to track everything from conversations to social media posts and email interactions. This means you can get a deeper understanding of your contacts and tailor your communication to their specific needs.

With forms, live chat, automation, and chatbots, you can engage with leads right from the start. And once they are in the system, the universal conversation inbox ensures that your sales, marketing, and support teams can all interact with your leads and customers in one central place.

So, you can easily keep track of all the interactions, and make sure that none of the leads slip through the cracks.

Read also: EngageBay vs HubSpot — Market Leader or Emerging Powerhouse?

SharpSpring

It covers the basics of the lead management process. You can use forms, landing pages, and chatbots to capture leads and use automation, although not as comprehensive and easy to use as HubSpot, to nurture and engage with leads.

You can also personalize how you score leads based on what interactions are important to you. Custom attributes like tracking pages or media assets can help you to attribute point values.

It also lets you group leads based on their score value and categorize them with different colors, which is helpful for reps to quickly see which leads are hot and which are not.

One handy feature is the life of the lead. It shows all the interactions a lead had with your website and marketing materials. You can see the history you have with a lead and understand how they engaged with your company even before they became a lead.

This is equivalent of the ‘smart contact’ in HubSpot, which performs similar functions.

Lead management verdict

HubSpot has better lead management functionality. It includes all your leads’ touchpoints from marketing, sales, customer service, and operations in one place. Its lead nurturing automation is also comprehensive and easier to use compared to SharpSpring.

Read also: SharpSpring vs Hubspot vs EngageBay — Which CRM Software is the Best?

EngageBay: A More Affordable and Powerful Alternative

HubSpot is a great option, but it can be pretty expensive. It has a lot of advanced features and can replace standalone apps like marketing automation software, but the cost may not be worth it for some. 

On the other hand, SharpSpring is cheaper and offers almost similar prices at half the price. But its reporting features are limited and lack depth, its UI is a bit harder to navigate, it has few native integrations, and lacks automation templates.

That’s where EngageBay comes in. It’s cheaper than both platforms and has all of the advanced marketing, sales, and support features that HubSpot has. It’s the best of both worlds. 

Here’s how Nadeem Ahmed summed up his experience with EngageBay:

“It is a helpful tool for small and medium-sized businesses, providing a range of automation and workflow features for sales, marketing, and support. The platform is easy to use and offers good customer service, including the ability to quickly implement new features upon request. Its all-in-one solution and affordable price point make it a good choice for startups and small businesses.”

You can create specific pipelines for each of your products and run all sorts of automations with multiple triggers. Plus, you get a big-picture view of all the different touchpoints in your customer’s journey, so you can gain valuable insights into their behavior.

You also have the ability to run drip campaigns, create forms and landing pages, automatically score leads, and segment your customers based on their actions.

And if you want to provide contextual customer support, the platform also comes with free help desk and live chat software. You can chat with your customers in real-time and provide relevant support.

Plus, you can run ticket automations, assign tasks to your team, and view all customer interactions with your company in one convenient dashboard.

Learn more about EngageBay:

• Compare EngageBay with HubSpot
• Visit our website
• Request a demo with our experts
• Check pricing

Exciting HubSpot Alternatives to Watch in 2025

Sign up with EngageBay for free

Wrapping up

HubSpot suits you if you need a CRM that provides detailed reports, integrates well with your tech stack, is easier to use, saves reps time, and has an advanced automation builder.

SharpSpring suits you if you need a tool that costs half the price and offers almost similar features. However, the lack of integrations with popular apps and its simple reporting features might not be suitable for big teams. 

EngageBay is a better alternative; it packs a punch like HubSpot, is easier to use, and is much easier to afford

Related reading: 

• The best CRM Tools for Small Businesses
• The 14 Best CRM Automation Software in 2024
• 15 Best Marketing Automation Tools for Small Businesses
• Is HubSpot Worth It? In-Depth HubSpot Review for Small Businesses
• 9 Affordable SharpSpring Alternatives For SMBs [With Pricing, Features]

The post HubSpot vs SharpSpring (2025): Features, Pricing & Best-Fit CRM Guide appeared first on EngageBay - All-in-one marketing, sales, and service.

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM. Its unified product suite includes CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service software. The products connect seamlessly to align customer data across the support, sales, and marketing teams. Your teams will have a shared understanding of the entire customer journey all in one app.

But is its ease of use and unified system worth the steep price increase between the plans?

Insightly is a CRM with separate marketing and customer service platforms. You can automatically route leads to the best-performing reps, automatically assign tasks when triggers are met, or send bulk emails to your contacts directly on the app.

But its poor customer support and expensive support plans might be a deal breaker.

I signed up for the free trials of both platforms to test the core features and went through hundreds of user reviews of both tools, so you don’t have to.

In this detailed HubSpot vs Insightly comparison article, you’ll learn about:

• HubSpot vs Insightly differences
• What makes the two platforms different and similar in various categories
• The pricing difference between HubSpot and Insightly
• A more affordable and better alternative

TL;DR: HubSpot vs Insightly at a Glance

CRM Wars: HubSpot vs Insightly – The Heavyweight Showdown!

What Is the Difference Between HubSpot and Insightly?

HubSpot includes all its products in one package while Insightly is only a CRM with separate marketing and sales software.

However, Insightly recently launched its unified platform which includes all three products in one package. 

HubSpot – An all-in-one CRM 

HubSpot is built for growing teams. With its all-in-one CRM, you get tools that you will gradually use as your business grows.

This suite of products brings together the marketing, sales, and support teams into one platform. It includes:

• HubSpot Marketing Hub: It helps you attract an audience and convert them into customers. Some features include a landing page builder, marketing automation, email marketing, and social media management.
• HubSpot Sales Hub: It helps your sales team engage with customers and prospects and close more deals. Some features in this hub include email tracking, sales automation, document management, live chat, and pipeline management.
• HubSpot Service Hub: It helps your service team work efficiently by bringing customer service tools and data from multiple sources into one app. Some features in this hub include a knowledge base, shared inbox, customer feedback surveys, and integration with the customer relationship management software.
• HubSpot CMS Hub: This hub helps you create web pages directly on HubSpot. It replaces CMS like WordPress and Wix. Some features include website themes and integration with the HubSpot CRM.
• HubSpot Operations Hub: This hub connects your apps, syncs your customer data, and automates business processes. It ensures all your data mirrors each other across the different connected tools.

Insightly – A sales-oriented CRM 

It has all the essential features you’d expect to find in a CRM. You can use its workflow to automate simple and complex functions like updating records, sending emails when triggers are met, or updating contacts when leads fill in a web form. 

One of its most helpful and unique features is its record-linking capabilities. It gives you and your team a shared 360° view of a record’s connection. For example, when you view a contact card, you’ll see the opportunities, organization, and projects related to that contact.

It also has a project management feature. It lets you manage all other tasks that aren’t part of your sales process. You can manage tasks such as onboarding and internal activities and basically any other task outside of sales.

Overall verdict

HubSpot is suitable for you if you are looking for all-in-one software. This will save you money as it bundles a suite of products into one platform. So you don’t have to switch between apps and you get to view your marketing, sales, and support data in one place.

Insightly suits you if you only need a CRM for your sales team. Its pipeline management, workflows, and project management are great for sales teams.

Comparing HubSpot vs Insightly

I used the two platforms to give you a detailed and first-hand review of their performances. We’ll look at how each tool stacks up against the other based on eight key factors.

Ease of use – HubSpot vs Insightly

Your team will be more productive and efficient if they can get started with the CRM system faster and with ease. So, when comparing HubSpot vs Insightly:

• Evaluate how difficult it is to configure the CRM to your needs
• Test their customer support on the free trials to see if they are fast enough to respond to issues
• Create automations and play with their features to see if they fit your needs

HubSpot

HubSpot’s interface is designed with usability in mind. The navigation makes it easy to access each hub with only a few clicks. Each hub also has a dropdown menu for its main features. For example, when you hover over the marketing hub button, the drop-down menu includes ads, email, landing pages, social, and campaigns.