Why the Salesforce vs HubSpot question is a different decision for SMBs
For enterprise companies with 500-person sales teams, complex territory management, and multi-year deal cycles, Salesforce is often the only serious option. It handles things HubSpot cannot — custom data models, granular permission structures, deep ERP integrations, forecasting at scale.
For a business with 5 to 100 people, that same power creates problems. Salesforce requires someone to configure it, maintain it, and keep it updated. That person costs money whether you hire internally or pay a consultant. The software itself costs more at comparable feature levels. And the teams using it often need training before they can do basic tasks.
HubSpot was built to be the CRM you can set up yourself. The free tier is real. The interface works without a manual. Marketing and sales data live in the same platform. For most SMBs, that matters more than Salesforce's ceiling.
This post lays out the concrete differences so you can make the call without wading through vendor marketing.
"Salesforce wins on power and configurability at scale. HubSpot wins on speed to value and total cost of ownership for teams under 100 people. Knowing which of those things your business actually needs is the whole decision."
Salesforce vs HubSpot: side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Salesforce | HubSpot |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | None | Genuinely free — unlimited users & contacts |
| Entry-Level Paid | Starter Suite ~$25/user/mo | Sales Hub Starter $20/user/mo |
| Mid-Tier Paid | Professional $80/user/mo | Sales Hub Professional $100/user/mo |
| Enterprise | Enterprise $165/user/mo · Unlimited $330/user/mo | Sales Hub Enterprise $150/user/mo |
| UI / Ease of Use | Steep learning curve — requires training | Best-in-class — minimal onboarding needed |
| Setup & Admin | Requires dedicated admin or consultant | Self-service — most teams can configure it themselves |
| Customization Depth | Unlimited — custom objects, flows, logic | Strong on paid tiers — some limits vs Salesforce |
| Marketing Integration | Marketing Cloud (separate, expensive) | Native HubSpot Marketing Hub — same platform |
| Email Sequences | Available on Professional+ via Sales Engagement | Available on free tier (limited sends) |
| Reporting & Forecasting | Industry-leading at Enterprise tier | Solid — slightly less granular at top tiers |
| App Marketplace | AppExchange — 7,000+ apps | HubSpot App Marketplace — 1,500+ apps |
| Best For | Complex sales, large teams, enterprise ecosystems | SMBs, inbound marketing, fast setup, sub-100-person teams |
Salesforce — deep dive
Salesforce is the dominant CRM in the mid-market and enterprise. Roughly 20% of the global CRM market runs on it. There is a reason: it handles things no other platform does as well — custom objects, territory management, complex approval workflows, multi-org setups, and integrations with ERP systems like SAP and Oracle.
Salesforce Starter runs about $25 per user per month. That tier is limited — it covers basic contact and deal management but cuts off most of what makes Salesforce valuable. Professional at $80 per user per month unlocks workflow automation, collaborative forecasting, and pipeline management tools. Enterprise at $165 per user per month adds custom objects, advanced reporting, and API access. Unlimited at $330 per user per month adds 24/7 support and additional storage.
Where Salesforce wins:
- Customization depth that no other CRM matches. You can model almost any sales process, data structure, or workflow in Salesforce given enough configuration time and expertise.
- AppExchange lists over 7,000 integrations — far more than any competitor. If a third-party tool integrates with a CRM, there is almost always a Salesforce connector.
- Reporting and forecasting at Enterprise tier are genuinely powerful. Finance teams and sales leadership can slice pipeline data in ways HubSpot's reporting cannot fully replicate.
- For companies already in the Salesforce ecosystem — using Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud — keeping everything on one platform reduces data silos and integration complexity.
- Territory management and permission structures at scale are significantly more granular than HubSpot's. For sales organizations with 50+ reps, regional teams, and complex data visibility requirements, that matters.
Where Salesforce has real problems for SMBs:
- The total cost of ownership is high. The license fee is only part of it. Most small businesses that go to Salesforce end up paying for a consultant to configure it or hiring a part-time Salesforce admin. A Salesforce-certified administrator costs $80,000 to $120,000 per year on salary, or $100 to $200 per hour if you hire one project by project.
- The interface is not intuitive. Teams that use Salesforce without proper training often adopt it poorly, enter data inconsistently, and end up with an expensive system the sales team routes around.
- Marketing is a separate product. Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget) costs well above the CRM license and requires its own implementation. HubSpot puts marketing and CRM in the same platform with shared contact data by default.
- The Starter tier is misleading. $25 per user per month sounds accessible, but it does not give you the Salesforce that organizations actually benefit from. Most businesses that commit to Salesforce land at Professional ($80/user) or Enterprise ($165/user) within 12 months.
True cost check: A 10-person team on Salesforce Professional pays $800/month ($9,600/year) in licenses. Add a part-time Salesforce consultant at even 5 hours/month at $150/hour and that is another $9,000/year. Total: roughly $18,600/year. The same team on HubSpot Sales Hub Professional pays $1,000/month ($12,000/year) — with no admin overhead because they can configure it themselves.
HubSpot — deep dive
HubSpot's free CRM is the best entry-level option on the market. Unlimited users, unlimited contacts, deal tracking, email integration, meeting scheduling, and basic email sequences — all at no cost, with no expiration date. Most small teams that start on the free tier stay there longer than they expected.
Sales Hub Starter runs $20 per user per month and adds two pipelines, simple automation, and removes HubSpot branding. Professional at $100 per user per month is where HubSpot gets serious — multi-pipeline support, sequences with higher send limits, forecasting, playbooks, and robust workflow automation. Enterprise at $150 per user per month adds custom objects, advanced permissions, and predictive lead scoring.
Where HubSpot wins:
- The free CRM is genuinely functional. A 10-person sales team can run a real pipeline, log calls, send emails, and book meetings without paying anything. No other major CRM offers that.
- Setup takes hours, not weeks. HubSpot's guided onboarding and HubSpot Academy materials let a non-technical person configure a working CRM in a day. Most Salesforce implementations take 30 to 90 days even with a consultant.
- Marketing Hub and Sales Hub share a single contact database. When a lead downloads a white paper, opens an email, or fills out a form, that activity shows up in the CRM contact record automatically. You do not need a Zapier workflow or middleware to make that connection.
- For inbound-focused businesses — where marketing generates the leads and sales works the pipeline — HubSpot was built around that workflow. The two functions actually talk to each other.
- The Sales Hub Professional tier at $100/user is competitive with Salesforce Professional at $80/user when you factor in what each actually delivers. HubSpot requires no admin to maintain. Salesforce does.
Where HubSpot has limits:
- Custom objects are only available on Enterprise tier ($150/user). Businesses with non-standard data models — tracking things that do not fit into contacts, companies, or deals — hit this wall at lower tiers.
- Reporting is strong but not Salesforce-grade at the top end. Complex pipeline forecasting with territory splits, custom fiscal year logic, and granular opportunity scoring requires Salesforce or significant customization work.
- For companies with more than 100 to 150 users, Salesforce's permission and territory management structures become meaningfully more useful. HubSpot's team-and-user permissions work well at SMB scale but are less granular at enterprise scale.
- The app marketplace has 1,500+ integrations, which covers almost everything an SMB needs. But Salesforce's AppExchange has 7,000+, which matters if your tech stack includes less common tools.
"HubSpot charges more at mid-tier than Salesforce on paper — $100/user versus $80/user. In practice, HubSpot costs less because you do not need someone to configure and maintain it. That admin overhead is the hidden cost most people miss when comparing sticker prices."
Who each platform is actually built for
Salesforce is the right call when: You have a complex, multi-stage sales process with 50+ reps across regions or territories. Your deal cycles run 6 to 18 months with multiple stakeholders per account. You are already in the Salesforce ecosystem and adding the CRM reduces integration overhead. You have budget for a dedicated admin or consulting relationship to configure and maintain it.
HubSpot is the right call when: You have a team under 100 people. Your pipeline is straightforward — lead, discovery, proposal, close. Marketing generates leads and you want that data connected to sales without middleware. You want the team actually using the CRM, not routing around it. You cannot justify an internal Salesforce admin.
The signal that you are making the wrong choice: Choosing Salesforce because it sounds more serious. Most SMBs that switch from HubSpot to Salesforce do it because the founder thinks Salesforce is what "real" companies use. Most of them regret it 18 months later when they see what the total cost actually is and how little of Salesforce's capability they are using.
Ease of use: the gap that compounds over time
The ease-of-use difference between Salesforce and HubSpot is not just about the onboarding period. It compounds every month the system is live.
With HubSpot, a new sales rep can be productive in a few hours. Contacts are easy to create, deals are easy to move through a pipeline, email sequences take 15 minutes to build. The team uses it because it does not get in the way.
With Salesforce, new reps often need formal training before they can enter data correctly. Workflows require an admin to build. Custom reports need someone with Salesforce report builder experience to create. Every time something breaks or needs to change, it goes back to the admin queue.
CRM adoption rates matter more than CRM features. A HubSpot system that the team uses every day outperforms a Salesforce system that the team partially uses and partially avoids. If you do not have someone dedicated to keeping Salesforce configured and current, the adoption problem grows over time.
The automation gap neither platform closes
Both Salesforce and HubSpot include workflow automation. Salesforce Flow handles complex multi-step automation with conditional logic, field updates, and cross-object actions. HubSpot's workflows on Professional and above cover deal stage triggers, contact property changes, email sequences, and internal task creation. At the right tier, both platforms handle standard CRM automation well.
The gap is not inside the CRM. It is between the CRM and everything else.
When a prospect books a discovery call and then no-shows, neither Salesforce nor HubSpot triggers a follow-up sequence based on that data from your calendar tool unless someone specifically built that integration. When a customer job closes in your field service software and they become a candidate for a cross-sell or upsell, neither CRM knows about it automatically. When a lost deal goes cold for 90 days and becomes a win-back candidate, triggering the right sequence at the right time across email, SMS, and voicemail requires a custom workflow that neither platform builds for you out of the box.
Those are not edge cases. They are the workflows that separate businesses with functional revenue operations from businesses with a CRM that mostly tracks things after the fact.
That cross-system automation layer is what Aplos AI builds. We do not replace Salesforce or HubSpot. We connect your CRM to the external systems where revenue events actually happen — scheduling tools, service platforms, payment systems, phone systems — and automate the follow-up that neither CRM handles automatically. No-show follow-up, win-back sequences, cross-sell triggers from service data. The CRM tracks the pipeline. We automate the actions that move it forward.
Your CRM captures what happened. It rarely drives what happens next. We audit your current workflow, map every gap where leads or revenue fall through, and build the automation layer that closes it — on top of Salesforce, HubSpot, or whatever you are running.
Get a Free Automation Audit →The verdict
If you are running a team under 100 people and your sales process is not wildly complex, HubSpot is the better choice. The free CRM is real, the paid tiers are competitive, and you do not need a dedicated admin to keep it working. It was built for inbound-led, marketing-aligned sales teams, and that describes most SMBs.
Salesforce belongs in the conversation when you have over 50 sales reps, complex territory management needs, a multi-year deal cycle, or you are already inside the Salesforce ecosystem and adding the CRM reduces integration costs. If you are choosing Salesforce because it sounds more professional, that is not a good reason and the total cost will make that clear within 18 months.
The Salesforce vs HubSpot decision is almost always settled by two numbers: how many people are on your sales team, and how much you are willing to spend on CRM administration on top of the license cost. Run those numbers honestly, then pick the tool that fits them.