HubSpot vs Zoho CRM (2024 Comparison) – Forbes Advisor
Pricing
Both HubSpot and Zoho CRM offer limited-feature free plans, which is helpful for those on a tight budget. HubSpot’s paid plans start at $15 per month to 3,600 per month when billed annually but scale higher depending on the number of users you add to your plan. Zoho CRM’s paid plans are much more budget-friendly, ranging from $14 to $52 per user, per month, when billed annually.
Monthly billing plans are available for HubSpot and Zoho CRM, although you’ll pay anywhere from 10% to 35% more when paying monthly.
HubSpot Plans
Zoho CRM Plans
Zoho CRM also offers an Ultimate plan which starts at $52 per user, per month and adds advanced business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools in addition to other features.
Contact and Lead Management
Both HubSpot and Zoho CRM make it easy to gather and organize contact and lead information and critical sales data, such as call logs, contact notes and sales signals. In addition, the paid versions of both CRMs allow you to add scoring data to leads so you can prioritize which leads offer the most promise.
Having duplicate contacts and data in your CRM can be problematic. HubSpot comes up short with duplicate management as that feature is only available on HubSpot’s high-priced Professional and Enterprise plans. Zoho CRM de-duplicates data on its top three-tier plans.
Email Marketing
HubSpot offers a variety of email marketing tools with its CRM, though the features offered vary by plan. For example, even the free plan includes 1:1 email, team email, email scheduling, email reply tracking and five email templates. Paid plans come with all the free features plus 5,000 email templates.
HubSpot email send limits vary based on each email’s provider limit. For example, Gmail free maxes out at 350 emails daily, while Office 365 allows 1,000 emails daily. If you connect a hosted inbox to your HubSpot conversations box, you can send up to 500 emails per day with a free account or up to 5,000 emails per day with a paid plan.
Email features with Zoho CRM vary by plan, too. The free plan permits 10 email templates, the Standard plan allows up to 100 and the higher-tier plans offer unlimited email templates. Email notifications range from 50 per day, per user license (or 150 total emails a day, whichever is lower) on the free plan to 1,000 per user license (or 50,000 total emails per day, whichever is lower) on the Ultimate plan.
Reporting
With a free HubSpot account, you can have up to three dashboards with 10 reports per dashboard. Paid plans range from 10 dashboards with 10 reports per dashboard to 50 dashboards with 30 reports per dashboard. Custom reports are only available on HubSpot’s top-tier plans. With the Professional plan, you can create up to 100 custom reports while the Enterprise plan lets you build up to 500 custom reports.
Zoho CRM provides standard customer reports on all plans. In addition, the Zoho Standard plan comes with 100 custom reports while the three highest-tier plans offer unlimited reports. All paid plans allow you to schedule reports, so they’re ready when you want them.
Sales Forecasting
Most sales leaders and business owners want to have a good handle on what sales might look like in the future. HubSpot offers customized sales forecasts for its Professional and Enterprise plan customers. Lower-tier plans do not have access to sales forecasting features.
Zoho CRM offers basic sales forecasting data on all of its paid plans. In addition, the Enterprise and Ultimate plans have access to the Zia prediction builder and artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which offer several sales management tools, including prediction models.
Featured Partners
Starting Price
Free; $9 per user per month for basic features
Starting Price
$25 per month per user for basic features
Starting Price
Free; $15 per user per month (billed annually)
Starting Price
$14 per user per month (billed annually)
Bottom Line
When you need a CRM solution for your business, the best choice for you comes down to your specific needs. Forbes Advisor picks Zoho CRM as the best CRM overall for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). Zoho CRM is affordable, offers essential features and is flexible enough to use in nearly any industry requiring customer relationship management software.
HubSpot is an exceptional CRM, too. If you are looking for a free CRM, it’s a coin toss between whether you should go with Zoho CRM or HubSpot. Our advice is to try them both and see which you like better.
There are times when HubSpot is the better choice. HubSpot stands out not just for its CRM capabilities but rather for all the marketing features that come with it. HubSpot will be the better choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one CRM with an impressive suite of marketing tools. It’ll cost you more than Zoho CRM but the added functionality may be well worth the investment.
