If you're looking for customer relationship management (CRM) software, you've probably come across the two biggest players in the industry - Zoho and HubSpot.
Feature Comparison: Zoho vs. HubSpot
Lead Management Comparison: Zoho vs. HubSpot
Automation Comparison: Zoho vs. HubSpot
Reporting Comparison: Zoho vs. HubSpot
Which CRM Is Ideal for Your Business: Zoho or HubSpot?
Both HubSpot and Zoho offer robust and feature-packed CRM systems, but which one is right for your business?
In this article, we'll give you a comprehensive comparison of the two tools, including their key features, pricing, ease of use, and more.
HubSpot |
Sales Hub - Free |
Sales Hub - Starter |
Sales Hub - Professional |
Sales Hub - Enterprise |
Starting Price |
Free |
$45 per month, paid annually |
$800 per month, paid annually |
$3,600 per month, paid annually |
Deal Pipelines |
One |
Up to 2 |
Up to 15 |
Up to 100 |
Mobile App |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
Email & Prospect Tracking |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
Shared Inboxes |
One |
One |
Up to 100 |
Up to 100 |
Dashboards |
Up to three dashboards with 10 reports each |
Up to 10 dashboards with 10 reports each |
Up to 25 dashboards with 30 reports each |
Up to 50 dashboards with 30 reports each |
Custom Reports |
Up to 100 |
Up to 500 |
||
Calling Minutes |
0 |
Up to 500 |
Up to 3,000 |
Up to 12,000 |
Accept Payments |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Automatic Lead Rotation |
✔ |
✔ |
||
Duplicate Management |
✔ |
✔ |
||
Predictive Lead Scoring |
✔ |
|||
Customer Support |
Live chat |
Email and in-app support |
Phone, email and in-app chat support |
Phone, email and in-app chat support |
ZOHO |
Free |
Standart |
Professional |
Enterprise |
Starting Price |
Free |
$14 per user, per month, paid annually |
$23 per user, per month, paid annually |
$40 per user, per month, paid annually |
Contacts, Leads and Workflow Rules |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
Calendar Booking |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Third-Party Integrations |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Analytics Mobile App |
✔ |
✔ |
✔ |
|
Sales & Vendor Quotes |
✔ |
✔ |
||
Email Limits |
Up to 50 emails per user license or 150 emails a day, whichever is lower |
Up to 100 emails per user license or 5,000 emails a day, whichever is lower |
Up to 200 emails per user license or 10,000 emails a day, whichever is lower |
Up to 50 emails per user license or 25,000 emails a day (whichever is lower) |
Email Templates |
10 |
100 |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Reports and Dashboards |
Standard reports |
Up to 100 custom reports and 10 custom dashboards |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Groups |
0 |
20 |
30 |
50 |
Data Storage |
10 MB |
200 MB |
10 GB |
Up to 15 GB |
Customer Support |
Email only |
Email only |
Email only |
Email only |
At first glance, when comparing Zoho and HubSpot platforms, it may seem like they both offer similar features - and they do. However, once you start digging deeper, you'll find that these CRM solutions are far from identical. Read on to find out exactly how these two tools differ from each other.
While HubSpot is widely known as a free CRM software, its features are limited. If you want to use the full potential of the platform, you need to upgrade to a paid plan. To ensure a fair comparison, we will evaluate the paid versions of HubSpot. This will give us a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of how HubSpot and Zoho stack up against each other.
HubSpot's user interface is not only visually appealing, but also well-designed, making it easy to navigate. This CRM is equipped with all the basic features like lead management, sales automation, reporting and email marketing. In addition, individual parts of HubSpot, such as the Sales Hub, can be seamlessly integrated with other HubSpot tools such as Marketing Hub, Service Hub, CMS, and Operations. The ability to bring different plans together can lead to significant savings for your business.
In summary, HubSpot is an excellent choice for medium and large businesses that need a robust CRM system with a wealth of features and are willing to make the financial investment to acquire cutting-edge software.
Despite its strengths, HubSpot may not be ideal for every business due to some distinct drawbacks. For example, the extensive range of features offered may not be necessary for small businesses, especially those looking for their first CRM system.
To access more advanced features such as sales forecasting or analytics, you need to upgrade to premium plans. However, the price of the second level plan is ten times the price of the basic plan, so these upgrades are quite costly over time.
The Zoho platform is a direct competitor to HubSpot. It offers CRM software forever-free, which makes it an attractive choice for a wide variety of businesses. However, as with HubSpot, the feature set of Zoho's free CRM software is limited and may not be sufficient for the needs of many users.
However, Zoho's user interface is not as sophisticated as HubSpot's, and its navigation layout may not be as intuitive. In addition, its feature sets are also not as advanced compared to HubSpot. Still, it includes all the basic features like lead management, sales automation, reporting, and email marketing. In addition, Zoho CRM integrates seamlessly with other Zoho software products such as Zoho Marketing, Projects, Desk (customer support), Analytics, People (HR), One (operating system) and more.
Overall, Zoho is an excellent choice for small and growing businesses looking for CRM software that is reliable and offers a balance between functionality and affordability.
While Zoho's cheaper plans are an attractive option, they also have their drawbacks. For example, the user interface isn't as sophisticated as HubSpot's, and the onboarding and setup process can be quite challenging for some users. In addition, Zoho CRM's design seems to be more focused on project management than on providing a complete sales solution, which is consistent with its simpler approach. Additionally, users looking for a robust CRM system may find Zoho's less advanced feature sets to be lacking.
Effective contact and lead management software is a key component of any CRM tool. It facilitates the growth of a potential customer base, minimizes lead loss, highlights weak points in the sales process, segments customers for email marketing campaigns, and provides many other benefits.
HubSpot CRM offers many options for contact management, including more sorting and grouping options than Zoho. However, if you want access to advanced contact rating features, you'll need to upgrade to the more expensive Professional plan.
Zoho simplifies the process of adding, importing and editing leads and contacts. While not as sophisticated as HubSpot, it still provides comprehensive options for filtering and evaluating leads that should meet the needs of many businesses.
Our preferred option is HubSpot, primarily due to its more advanced lead management capabilities. While Zoho's features may be sufficient for most small businesses, HubSpot's comprehensive tools can significantly help companies with a high volume of inbound leads. The ability to effectively identify and nurture the most promising leads can be critical to maximizing sales opportunities.
HubSpot offers two types of marketing automation - sequences and workflows - with prebuilt options for both, or you can create your own from scratch. However, a custom option may require a certain amount of experience, which is why users can benefit from watching HubSpot Academy tutorials. While automation is available in the basic plan, the number of instances is limited, so if you require extensive automation, you'll need to upgrade.
Zoho allows you to automate routine tasks and free up your team's time to focus on other important areas. However, creating custom workflows can require a certain amount of learning, as users say you need to have a comprehensive understanding of the platform before you can take full advantage of the level of detail provided. If you require marketing automation suggestions, you will need to subscribe to the Ultimate plan, the highest tier. However, all paid plans offer access to unlimited automation rules.
When it comes to marketing automation, Zoho is our preferred option. While both HubSpot and Zoho offer automation features that require a certain level of expertise to master, Zoho has the advantage of not having a limited number of workflow rules in its base plan, while HubSpot requires upgrading to the Professional plan for an unlimited number of rules. As a result, Zoho has a slight advantage in automation capabilities.
Accurate reporting and analytics are essential for evaluating sales rep performance, identifying areas for improvement, and creating sales forecasts. Both easy-to-use preconfigured report templates and custom reports are essential for tracking the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your team. Without these important features, it can be challenging to gain visibility into your sales activities and optimize sales strategies.
HubSpot provides a number of different report templates that you can replicate or customize, and of course you can create your own reports. However, the custom reports feature is only available on the Professional plan, which can be prohibitively expensive for small businesses. Still, once you get access to it, setting up the custom reporting feature is fairly simple.
Like HubSpot, Zoho offers many preset reports to choose from. However, custom reports are available in all Zoho paid plans, including the basic plan, which we consider a plus. However, custom reports can be more difficult to set up compared to HubSpot, so you'll need to allow more time to learn them.
When it comes to customized reports, HubSpot and Zoho are tied. Although HubSpot's customized reporting feature is better, we don't like that you have to subscribe to a significantly more expensive plan to access it. On the other hand, Zoho's customized reporting, while less user-friendly, is much cheaper and still meets the needs of most small and mid-sized businesses trying to track marketing performance and improve sales forecasts.
When comparing Zoho and HubSpot, we found that both platforms offer a range of features for managing contacts and leads. While HubSpot's filtering and rating features are more sophisticated than Zoho's platform, using them requires upgrading to a more expensive plan.
HubSpot offers a more comprehensive set of features, but you have to pay for significantly more expensive pricing plans to access them. HubSpot is therefore a better option for larger companies with large sales and marketing teams that can justify investing in a CRM tool of this caliber.
While the feature set of the Zoho platform is not as extensive as HubSpot's, its capabilities are more than sufficient for small and growing businesses. In addition, Zoho provides a number of cost-effective plans that are more feasible for most small business budgets.
If you're not sure whether HubSpot or Zoho is right for your business, take a look at our 2023 CRM software guide to see what other CRM system might be more suitable for you.
Software that helps companies manage customer interactions and relationships.
A cloud-based CRM software that offers tools to manage customer relationships and automate sales processes.
A cloud-based CRM software that offers tools for customer relationship management, sales process automation, and customer data analytics.
Zoho is known for its affordability and flexibility, while HubSpot is known for its marketing automation features and user-friendly interface.
Free plan and paid plans starting at $14/user/month.
Free plan and paid plans starting at $45/month.
For smaller companies with limited budgets, Zoho is a better choice.
For larger companies with larger sales and marketing teams, HubSpot is a better choice.