8 HubSpot Alternatives Worth Considering in 2022

HubSpot took the business world by storm after its release in 2006. As pioneers of inbound sales and marketing, HubSpot rocketed from just over a quarter of a million dollars in revenue in year one to over 15 million dollars by 2010. Today, HubSpot boasts a customer base of over 100,000 users and possesses a valuation north of $30 billion.

While HubSpot’s customer relationship management (CRM) tools remain some of the best on the market, the company’s frequent and significant price increases are leading customers of all sizes to look for more cost-effective solutions that meet their needs.

What is sales CRM software?

Let’s start with the basics of what CRM software is and the benefits it offers. The core purpose of CRM software is to enhance sales efforts and improve the customer experience. In particular, CRM tools:

• Store information about customers and prospects to empower sales teams to develop deep relationships.
• Streamline sales operations by automating time-intensive administrative tasks.
• Provide seamless access to critical resources like marketing campaigns, pipeline data, and training materials.
• Identify sales opportunities based on customer behavior.

Choosing the right CRM software can really pay off. In 2021, firms using CRMs increased their sales by an average of 29%, and experts project that CRM software systems will generate an additional $1.1 trillion for organizations this year.

8 HubSpot Alternatives to Consider in 2022

HubSpot has been the top CRM solution for quite some time, but in recent years, competition has begun to pick up in the SaaS CRM software space. New companies are reinventing CRM software and offering exceptional value as they increase their market share and brand awareness, so it’s time for a careful HubSpot CRM comparison with the alternatives.

Here are 8 CRM solutions to keep an eye on in 2022.

Inperium Sell

Inperium Sell is a serious HubSpot competitor thanks to its comprehensive, modern approach. With traditional CRMs like HubSpot, businesses have to purchase multiple solutions to manage their full sales cycle: an e-signature tool, a cloud-based phone system, a payment processing platform, and communication tools. This typically results in steep monthly SaaS fees and usually comes with various limitations.

With Inperium Sell, you can handle the full sales cycle in one easy-to-use SaaS platform. In fact, Inperium Sell includes contact and deal management, quoting, electronic signing of documents, and payment processing. Customers can easily create multiple pipeline views and define custom fields for storing additional customer information to drive sales and build long-lasting relationships.

Moreover, the platform provides extensive productivity and communication features that streamline prospect outreach and support customer retention. For example, sales reps often need to send the same email to dozens or hundreds of recipients. With traditional tools, that meant manually sending the emails one by one through their mail client or relying on complicated workarounds like Outlook’s mail-merge feature. Inperium Sell enables them to complete the job in just a few clicks. Even better, each email is delivered separately and comes from the rep’s email address rather than an email marketing tool, which can dramatically increase open and response rates. Moreover, flexible templates and re-usable text snippets speed up the message drafting process and make it easy to customize the message for each recipient. (For more details, see this blog post.)

Inperium Sell also provides a fully customizable and intuitive pipeline kanban board, perfect for focusing sales efforts on profitable pursuits and creating accurate sales projections and revenue forecasts. Detailed activity timelines make it easy to keep track of everything that is going on with leads and deals, measure sales rep performance, and improve productivity and collaboration.

Inperium offers its CRM software free for 10 days with no credit card required, making it hard to pass up for organizations looking to upgrade their CRMs but aren’t sure where to start.

Pros

Inperium Sell is a great HubSpot competitor thanks to its extensive feature set and transparent pricing plans. Customers can save both money and hassle by avoiding the need to purchase separate SaaS solutions for capabilities like quoting, e-signatures, and payment processing. Inperium Sell further enhances productivity with flexible group emails, the ability to create multiple pipeline views, and custom fields for storing additional customer information.

Cons

Inperium Sell is an outstanding CRM solution for entrepreneurs and startups, as well as medium and large organizations in any industry. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement: The system does not yet have many out-of-the-box integrations or native iOS and Android apps. However, those features are on the product roadmap for 2022.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM provides all-in-one sales management and a host of supporting tools designed to optimize the sales process. In fact, it offers not just CRM software, but email hosting, website creation services, and more for a nearly unbelievable price: free. Specifically, up to three individuals can use Zoho’s CRM software totally free; paid plans start at $20 per user per month.

Features worth mentioning include contact management, sales funnels, pipeline management, workflow automation, and customer support. Plus, Zoho CRM boasts powerful analytical capabilities and can generate a massive number of reports using its unique filter system.

Pros

The main benefits that users note are the automated sales workflows and lead management, forecasting of sales performance, customer search, and engagement via mobile and social networks.

Cons

Customers report that the user interface is not intuitive, which can slow down important sales steps; for instance, converting a lead into a contact can take up to 4 hours. Some also complain that customer support is not great.

Pipedrive CRM

Pipedrive offers a surprisingly high-quality sales and CRM solution considering its rock-bottom entry price of $18 per user per month. Indeed, Pipedrive CRM is no-brainer alternative software solution to HubSpot for startups and companies with lean operating budgets.

According to the vendor, Pipedrive CRM is a sales management tool built for salespeople by salespeople and is used by more than 50K teams around the world. The intuitive and customizable dashboard is easy to navigate and is optimized for sales enablement. The product provides a 360-degree view of the whole sales process, along with step-by-step guidance to keep everyone focused on the activities that drive deals to closure.

Pros

This CRM solution arranges the lead process into sections and enables users to manage the details about each lead. The reminder feature helps reps follow up in a timely manner. In addition, multiple users can be made administrators of the product.

Cons

Although you can see the progress of the whole sales team in one place, in order to actually close a deal, you have to purchase additional tools, since Pipedrive doesn’t offer crucial features like quoting and payments.

Pipedrive is pretty intuitive, but if you need a customer service consultation, you must sign up for an extended plan. For small accounts, support is limited, with no chat or phone support.

Freshsales

Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM) is another one of the open-source HubSpot alternatives. What are some CRM tools it offers? The multi-faceted sales CRM software includes built-in phone and email services, lead scoring, sales pipelines, automations, and mobile apps, so sales professionals do not have to switch between multiple tools to get their job done.

According to the vendor, the CRM system has an intuitive UI that minimizes onboarding time for sales teams. It provides a visual sales pipeline, and its sales reports and dashboards make it easy to accurately forecast your business.

Pros

The Freshsales CRM’s auto-profile enrichment and activity tracking helps sales reps get a 360-degree view of their leads. Users report that the AI-based lead scoring feature helps them better understand and prioritize their leads. Other benefits users notice include customizable forms and data input.

Cons

Users note that the interface can be confusing, especially for people who are not tech-savvy. They also complain that the reporting is not as robust as they would like it to be.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a cloud-based all-in-one customer support platform used by a broad spectrum of organizations, from large corporations to small startups. It can be an effective HubSpot replacement, especially for companies that deal with a high volume of customer inquiries and need to offer personalized support.

The Zendesk CRM system is easy to use, which helps business teams save their time and energy for closing deals. It mainly focuses on services that enhance productivity, sales processes, and pipeline visibility. For example, it provides information about behavioral triggers, live visitors, conversation ratings, file sending, and more.

Pros

Zendesk can be a solid alternative to HubSpot CRM, thanks to its combination of effective features and great customer support, including one of the best live chats on the market. It also enables you to save your visitors’ most frequently asked questions and easily create FAQs.

Cons

Users tend to characterize Zendesk’s interface as quite difficult to navigate. It’s not easy to grasp immediately.

Another important issue is that it’s a little pricey for small and mid-sized organizations, perhaps because it offers so many features.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a web-based CRM application that allows users to forecast revenues and track leads. A leading sales, service, and marketing app, it is designed to help companies connect with customers in new ways. According to the vendor, sales professionals using Salesforce see, on average, a 29% increase in sales from greater visibility; a 34% increase in sales productivity; and a 42% increase in forecast accuracy.

To help you pursue leads until they are converted, Salesforce includes lead management, marketing automation, sales data, email integration, and partner management capabilities. You can get insights from real-time customer data as well as generate critical reports, sales forecasts, and territory models. You can adjust the product’s settings to see the information most important to you. Salesforce also offers a mobile app that can boost sales teams’ productivity wherever they are.

Pros

Salesforce delivers detailed reports that can improve your sales funnel and help you visualize the results of your action plan. It automates various procedures to make your work easier.

Cons

Probably the most significant disadvantage of Salesforce is its price. It’s rather costly for most of the organizations, especially startups.

Reviewers also say that customer support is not always easy to navigate and that their queries do not always receive a prompt response. In addition, they report that it can be difficult to implement the management and integration functions and customize the system to a company’s unique needs; often, these tasks require consulting with a third party.

Salesflare

Salesflare is described as an intelligent CRM for small and medium sized B2B organizations that want to sell more with less work. Salesflare takes the hassle out of managing your contact details: it will automatically fill in people’s information for you and log all interactions nicely into one timeline.

Pros

Salesflare integrates with your email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail), which reduces juggling between apps. It also takes care of many tasks automatically, like importing contacts and managing meetings and calls. Plus, it provides an overview of the sales process and custom fields for individual accounts.

Cons

Users write that the system has multiple reminders instead of just one, which is confusing and sometimes irritating. And while the CRM works great for freelancers and small teams, as team size expands, it can be less useful. Finally, reviewers report issues with email syncing, with some messages missing until they reconnect their email to Salesflare.

Monday Sales CRM

Monday Sales is the CRM component of Monday.com, an open platform designed to help users run multiple aspects of their work. The solution combines CRM features with project management to take your sales to the next level: the CRM lets you manage customers, leads, and campaigns, while the project management tool tracks your projects, budgets, and teams.

Monday Sales is described as a tidy, colorful platform that is easy to understand and customize, making onboarding a snap. Monday.com offers a 14-day free trial, with no credit card required.

Pros

One of the benefits of Monday Sales is the great customer service: You can email them anytime with questions, and they are very responsive. Users also praise the flexibility of the platform, which offers many options that you can use as you see fit for your specific needs.

Cons

While the pricing is reasonable, you may have to pay for more users than you need. For example, one package level includes 5 users. If you add another team member, you have to upgrade to the 10-user plan; there is no plan for just 6 users.

Another downside of Monday compared to other CRM systems is how it stores and displays client data. Clients are essentially just items on a board, just like any other item on any board you create. This means there isn’t a client overview or summary page that you can view easily.

Conclusion

The SaaS industry is constantly evolving, with new players and technologies rising to the forefront all the time. Although HubSpot has enjoyed a relatively uncontested run as the top CRM software since its release, new HubSpot competitors are gaining ground, including both new platforms and older tools that have been modernized.

With so many great options on the market, organizations should take the time to consider which one offers the combination of CRM, marketing, and sales enablement tools that best support their workflows and mission. You may very well discover a CRM solution that suits your business’s unique needs and that will also save you a significant amount of money over the long term.

To help you make the best choice for your company, Inperium Sell offers immediate free access for 10 days. Try out all our CRM features — no credit card required!