Customer relationship management (CRM) software combines multiple components of the user journey in a company’s sales and marketing framework. Two major providers are Zoho and HubSpot, which offer CRM platforms that cover operations like sales forecasting, reporting, analytics, and email marketing. Both platforms have advantages for enterprises, but one may fit your business’s needs better. Keep your organization’s specific needs in mind when reviewing our analysis and considering Zoho CRM and HubSpot. This review covers a few features of each platform and analyzes which businesses will benefit more from each solution.
What is Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM is a customer relationship management and analytics solution that belongs to the Zoho One enterprise platform. It integrates with the other products in the Zoho One platform, such as Zoho Books and Zoho Projects, which offer additional enterprise features. For small or medium-size companies that need a suite of products that work together, Zoho offers many business solutions.
What is Hubspot?
HubSpot’s CRM platform has five different hubs: sales, marketing, service, operations, and CMS. Its main draw is its equal focus on sales and marketing, as well as its easy-to-learn interface. The content management feature is a standout for businesses that want to smoothly integrate their CRM with their web page creation. If you’re okay without having WordPress as your CMS, HubSpot offers website theme templates and SEO suggestions, among other features, and allows businesses to keep their website linked to their CRM.
Comparing Zoho and Hubspot
Zoho vs. HubSpot: Sales forecasting
The enterprise edition of Zoho CRM includes artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities through Zia, Zoho’s virtual assistant that can take notes for users and prepopulate email conversations with leads. As a chatbot, Zia answers queries about revenue and leads, pulling information from Zoho’s database. The AI-enabled assistant predicts deal revenue based on a lead’s status in the funnel and when they’ll supposedly convert. Zia also detects sales anomalies so that teams can avoid unexpected drops in revenue.
HubSpot reveals each stage of the sales pipeline, supports customization for deal stages, and provides sales forecasting dependent on potential deals. Users can define exit criteria, the steps required for each stage of the pipeline to advance. Sales representatives can give each deal a confidence rating based on how likely it is to close, and teams can also choose to automatically close stale deals.
Also read: Most Important Benefits of CRM Software
Zoho vs. HubSpot: Reporting and analytics
Zoho CRM with Sales Analytics, a feature of the platform, allows users to filter reports based on deal stage, deal type, or sales cycle duration. Marketing teams can create pre-built reports and customize reports, too. Existing reports can also be converted to charts. Teams can embed dashboards on a website or share them in a Slack channel. Additionally, Zoho has a widget for identifying the differences between sales performance and what was initially predicted.
HubSpot has analytics built into its marketing hub, allowing companies to measure website traffic and page performance as well as contact and company properties. Users can incorporate custom object data into their reports and build dashboards with all relevant reports included. HubSpot also provides CTA design and insights on clicks, and it allows businesses to manage social media brand mentions and track engagement.
Image credit: HubSpot
Also read: Top Data Analytics Tools and Data Analysis Software
Zoho vs. HubSpot: Email
Zoho CRM‘s email parser pulls data automatically from lead emails, and the software sends notifications when a lead interacts with an email. Users can schedule follow-up emails, use templates, and filter emails by status or their location in the sales pipeline. For enterprise-level customers, Zia pulls and stores data from contacts’ email signatures to make contact information maintenance easier and creates activities based on events mentioned in emails and puts them on users’ CRM calendars.
Image credit: Zoho
HubSpot‘s email integration is part of the Sales Hub and allows CRM users to track open and engagement rates and send data from their email account to contact records within the CRM platform. Users receive notifications when a lead engages with an email they’ve sent. Sales departments can also use a team email address for this integration. Users have the ability to create a library of sales documents and to share those documents directly from their email. They can also convert successful sales emails to templates that the rest of their team can use.
Zoho vs. HubSpot: Customer support
Zoho CRM offers three different support tiers:
- Classic, with email, call, chat, or requests for remote assistance sessions
- Premium, which adds one-on-one onboarding sessions and 24-hour assistance
- Enterprise Support, which gives users access to a dedicated Technical Account Manager assigned to their company
When speaking about support, Zoho customers overwhelmingly noted that they received very slow responses.
HubSpot‘s customer support is very limited for users on the free plan, giving them access to a community discussion forum. All paid plan users have access to community resources, email, and chat support; Professional and Enterprise plans have access to phone support as well. User reviews of HubSpot are enthusiastic about the customer support team.
Also read: Challenges in CRM and How to Solve Them
Zoho vs. HubSpot: Pricing
Both Zoho and HubSpot have free plans with limited features, such as contact management and deal management. Using a free plan first offers the opportunity to test each platform and decide which your business prefers.
Zoho’s pricing is better for medium-sized businesses that are expanding and can afford to pay for more features. Very small businesses may struggle to find the features on Zoho’s free plan sufficient. However, its Enterprise pricing is more affordable than HubSpot’s, and it can be worth the cost for businesses who want more solutions within Zoho One than just the CRM: Zoho offers its One platform for $90/month per user. Zoho’s plans cost:
- $14 per /month per user for the Standard plan
- $40/month per user for the Enterprise plan
For smaller businesses, HubSpot‘s free plan offers many helpful features to get a startup off the ground, but the pricing for its paid plans accelerates quickly. HubSpot is ideal for businesses that are already large and can afford its prices from the start, rather than smaller businesses that are quickly scaling and finding themselves suddenly pressed by exponential charges. HubSpot Sales Hub costs:
$45/month for two users on the Starter plan
$450/month for five users on the Professional plan
$1200/month for ten users on the Enterprise plan
Also read: Most Important CRM Software Requirements
Zoho and HubSpot: The ideal user
Zoho offers built-in virtual assistance for teams that need increased automation for their emails and sales forecasting. Zoho is better suited to businesses that have an employee or team to implement the software because it has a higher learning curve and requires heavy customization to maximize. Because some users encountered slow response from customer support in the past year, companies that plan to purchase Zoho should plan to have development or tech experts on their team in case they need to troubleshoot or solve a problem quickly.
HubSpot is a good solution for medium and large enterprises that can afford to pay for its many features. It’s a well-rounded CRM, offering content management and operations solutions so businesses can house their customer-facing applications under one roof. HubSpot offers a wide range of customer support channels and gives customers plenty of email integration options.
Read next: Best CRM Software & Systems