I have to say that HubSpot is one of the most innovative CRM, marketing & sales automation platforms in the market today. It is no secret that it’s a powerhouse for any growth-oriented team.

However, the last few years have seen HubSpot shift its focus from the SMB market to enterprise clients and B2B businesses. It’s evidenced by their huge price increase. Even with price negotiation, you still pay head and shoulders above what the priciest HubSpot alternative would cost you.

#	Product	Trial	Pricing (Starts at)	Explore
1	ActiveCampaign	Free 14-day trial	$9/mo	Explore
2	Zoho CRM	15-day free CRM trial	$10.73/mo	Explore
3	Drip	Free 14-day Trial	$19/ month for 500 clients	Explore
4	Wishpond	14-day free trial	$75/mo	Explore
5	EngageBay	Free plan available up to 1000 contacts	$7.79/ month	Explore
6	Sendinblue	Free plan available for 300 emails/day	$25/mo	Explore
7	GetResponse	30-Day Free Trial	$15/mo	Explore

So, the search for a HubSpot alternative began. I wasn’t just searching for a simple marketing automation software. HubSpot is a pioneer business growth software that provides you with one integrated platform to cater to all your sales and marketing efforts.

To qualify as a HubSpot alternative, I was looking for tools that are equally robust. Tools that can at least act as CRM and email marketing tools. Those that facilitate collaboration between sales teams, marketers, and even support teams.

Why would you look for a HubSpot alternative?

• First, the pricing. Like I said earlier, the prices have outrageously increased over the years. I would sometimes overlook the price if the tech innovation and services offered are worth it. But for the past year or so, their tech and services are not worth the price tag increase.
• Then, in walks the world-class marketing automation features. I have no problem with that but some segments are limited. Take for instance the free customer relationship management platform, it’s barely functional. No reports, multiple sales pipelines, data storage, unlimited contacts, and forget about unlimited in-app dialing.
• If you want to unlock basic CRM task automation, you’ve got to chuck $50 every month for two people. And if you want to get to the sales email automation, you pay up $500 every month – that’s 10X more.
• Lastly, for unusual business models, HubSpot marketing isn’t as flexible. Take for instance you have an eCommerce business whose sales are made on Shopify, it’s difficult to log sales on HubSpot.
• Even for B2B businesses running sales on third-party tools, the reporting data structure is a bit wonky. As a result, reporting your campaign success is extremely difficult ultimately affecting your ability to improve and optimize campaigns.

For those like me looking for greener pastures and on a tight budget, I got you.

Top 7 HubSpot alternatives reviewed

ActiveCampaign: Robust marketing automation

ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one marketing automation powerhouse that rivals HubSpot only without the hefty price tag.

They are a name to be recognized in the SMB marketplace as marketing automation comes first. Not only that but they’ve grown to help customer-centric companies increase growth by rolling out a CRM and customer support feature.

It can handle everything from email to SMS marketing, Facebook custom audiences, and sales process management.

With ActiveCampaign automation, you can easily create highly targeted and customized campaigns using multiple tags and conditions. You’re also able to automate follow-up campaigns on a very easy-to-use visual editor.

It gives you access to goal tracking, advance reporting, automated sign-up forms, site tracking, split tests, etc. Basically, it’s everything you need to track customer attribution all through the customer journey.

ActiveCampaign has a robust CRM tool that easily automates tasks between the sales team and the marketing team. They boast simple drag and drop cards showing sales pipelines resulting in seamless and visually appealing lead/ contact scoring. Any Trello user can relate and use the cards.

This CRM automation feature will cost you $49/ month for 500 contacts. Keep in mind that you’ll have to pay $800/ month to access the HubSpot marketing automation solution. Also, if you don’t want CRM automation, you can access email marketing automation at $9/ month.

Unlike HubSpot, ActiveCampaign provides in-depth integration with robust eCommerce solutions. You’ll get detailed reports and you can track your email campaign success even if sales are carried out on third-party apps like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Square.

They have a superior reporting feature that goes beyond standard reporting. You’ll get conversion reports, automation reports, goal-based reports, and even contact trend metrics.

With ActiveCampaign, you get to sync all your calendar tasks with your CRM. Whether you’re using Google calendar, Apple, or Outlook, ActiveCampaign can sync all your activities – something HubSpot is yet to achieve.

Pros

• It provides an all-in-one suite for all your sales and marketing automation services under one platform.
• The pricing plans are pretty affordable even for SMBs.
• It provides quite a wide array of integrations with eCommerce solutions.

Cons

• No free plan.
• Compared to HubSpot, they have limited dashboard customization options.

Bottomline: ActiveCampaign can benefit any business that wants personalized email marketing based on customer behavior and order data. They provide you with advanced marketing automation features to increase conversion and sales.

Zoho CRM: CRM power suite

Zoho is another all-in-one marketing software that’s popularly known for its customer relationship management solution. They also provide email hosting, accounting, website creation, project management, and customer service solutions.

Their CRM platform is a great HubSpot alternative and the best thing about it is that it comes on a Freemium plan for 10 users. Otherwise, you only pay for what you’ll be using. I’d say they have done an amazing job of providing excellent features at very competitive prices.

Zoho CRM will give you three different views (Kanban, Canvas, or Tubular) for your contacts, leads, accounts, and deals. HubSpot provides only two views.

This makes it possible to choose what’s easy on your eyes, straightforward, and more product-focused. As a result, it provides an easy setup for you to add users and customize the dashboard to suit your needs.

They also have a robust ‘activities’ section. Here you have access to dozens of filters and custom fields that help you organize your users and contacts based on different activity types.

My favorite bit is the Sandbox feature. This allows you to test the built-in CRM before rolling it out. You get to test all modules and layouts to see what works best and then you can roll it to users. Very similar to Salesforce.

With Zoho CRM, you’re able to convert your leads to customers using their in-built feature suite. From campaign management features to prospecting tools, lead distribution, customer interaction tracking, lead nurturing, pipeline tracking, and so much more.

Additionally, when it comes to reporting and analytics, it is way above HubSpot. It offers custom reporting and visualizations. From bar charts to pie charts, line graphs, and funnel charts, the reports are easy to read. Well, it’s not as robust as Salesforce but it caters to most business needs.

Pros

• It is free for up to 10 users.
• You get gamification modules to increase engagement and interaction with your audience.
• It has an excellent and versatile feature set to manage customers, increase productivity, leads, and sales.

Cons

• To get access to all workflow automation capabilities to streamline your CRM tasks you need to pay for the Professional plan that costs $30/ month for every user. HubSpot costs $50 monthly for 2 users.
• They have no live chat support option. HubSpot has very responsive live support.

Bottomline: Zoho CRM is perfect for small to midsize businesses that focus on running CRM software. It has all the bells and whistles needed by a CRM platform to work with businesses in any niche allowing you to focus on what matters.

Drip: eCommerce email marketing automation solution

Launched less than a decade ago, Drip has gained a lot of traction in the eCommerce world. Drip acts like a shot of steroids to your sales team as it provides them with high-level sales tools and email automation.

They have a very easy-to-use platform and well-designed platform so no worries when onboarding. Drip’s major selling point is advanced automation. You have access to all marketing automation features at $19/ month for 500 clients. With HubSpot like we saw earlier, it’s $800/ month. No comparison.

The marketing automation workflow editor is a super intuitive visual builder with great flexibility that makes email automation fun. So much better than the ActiveCampaign workflow builder that can be a little bit glitchy.

Drip hosts quite a host of triggers and actions in the automation rule builder. These can be used to tag and score leads, track and record conversions, and even send conversions to third-party integrations like CRM platforms.

You can basically create any automation you need but Drip really shines when it comes to eCommerce automation. They give you access to abandoned cart automation and take it a notch higher to automatically trigger the automation whenever customers create a checkout.

We can’t forget their tagging system. It’s off the charts. You get to categorize your visitors based on their actions on your site or landing pages. They have the option of applying tags using the automation workflow or Drip Rules.

They also have a Drip eCommerce CRM used to store all contact data. This feature takes your contact scoring to another level as you get to qualify for every single contact.

You can see the customer engagement levels and know those likely to purchase and where your contacts are in the customer journey.

Pros

• It is a very easy-to-use platform.
• It has a wide variety of business automation features to scale your eCommerce at your pace.
• You can custom CTAs for your site visitors.
• It has a robust Drip eCommerce CRM for lead scoring.

Cons

• Automation and email marketing campaigns can get messy.
• It has no free plan.

Bottomline: Drip is the to-go platform for eCommerce owners looking for all-in-one marketing automation solutions. Their business automation features and native integrations will save you time, increase customer engagement, and sales.

Wishpond: Modern looking templates

Well, this is another all-in-one marketing platform that is a worthy HubSpot competitor. Its main superpower lies in landing pages, pop-ups, and running social media contests. But it also comes with built-in CRM, email marketing services, and automation features.

HubSpot has a poor and limited selection of email and landing page templates. Wishpond, on the other hand, provides a great library of mobile-responsive and modern-looking templates for your emails, landing pages, and popups. They are all responsive and highly customizable to match your business needs.

When it comes to social media contests, Wishpond has everything you need to increase customer engagement. From leaderboard to referral contests, sweepstakes, video contests, photo contests, and vote contests. It’s very much like Vyper.io in this regard.

With only $75/ month, you get access to unlimited social media contests, landing pages, pop ups, automated email drip campaigns, unlimited users, marketing automation, and 1000 leads. I know this isn’t cheap in comparison to other tools on this list but when compared to HubSpot, it’s way cheaper.

You are able to create automation to segment contacts, create a contact list based on user behavior, run lead scoring, and track your leads using robust analytics.

Pros

• A huge library of beautiful and modern templates for your landing pages, emails, and pop-ups.
• It helps you run contests and promotions that increase user engagement with your brand.
• It’s an all-in-one marketing solution at an affordable price tag.

Cons

• WishPond gets quite expensive if you get over the 2500 leads mark.

Bottomline: WishPond is great for any SMB that wants to run email marketing campaigns and social media contests without paying the hefty prices that come with HubSpot.

EngageBay: The Most comprehensive HubSpot alternative

In terms of features, EngageBay is a platform that can go toe to toe with HubSpot. It’s got everything that HubSpot has to offer from email marketing to landing pages, marketing automation, ticketing, live chat, sales CRM, contact, and appointment management, among other features.

Their free plan is very similar to what HubSpot offers. You get live chat, basic CRM, landing pages, lead grabber, autoresponder, and email broadcasts. The difference with HubSpot comes in the paid plans.

With the basic plan ($7.79/ month), you get access to SMS Marketing, lead scoring, social suite, a landing page builder, email templates, pop ups, and email marketing.

The growth plan ($14.99/ month) gives you full blown marketing automation, service automation, custom domain, push notification, and landing page and broadcasts split testing.

With Pro ($29.99/ month) you get custom reporting, web analytics, a dedicated account manager, and so much more.

You can run full-blown marketing campaigns via email marketing, website, and social media without breaking a bank. It’s like getting HubSpot’s identical twin on a discount. You get to access $800/ month worth of automation features at only $29.99/ month.

And this is enough to automate every aspect of your marketing effort and sales CRM. From subscription to workflows, drip email campaigns, social media campaigns, data syncing, and event tracking.

Pros

• It comes with a freemium plan and affordable prices for the paid tiers.
• Their contact management tool allows you to store as much/ little data as you’d like.
• It comes with a wide variety of marketing automation features.

Cons

• They need to improve on their native integration list. HubSpot offers more integration options.
• The free plan is limiting your emails and contacts are only up to 1000. HubSpot is more generous as they allow up to 1M contacts and 2K emails.

Bottomline: EngageBay is great for SMBs on a tight budget but looking for exactly what’s offered on HubSpot. You’ll get an all-in-one marketing and sales CRM suite.

Sendinblue: Cheap alternative with transactional emails

Any business owner looking for transactional emails, unlimited contacts, and built-in CRM, should give Sendinblue a shot. Their main focus is email marketing, lead nurturing, and conversions. It boasts to send over 100 million emails per day.

Sendinblue comes equipped with email automation tools, SMS marketing, landing pages, Facebook Ads, and a CRM. The free plan gives you access to the CRM, marketing automation features, unlimited contacts, and web tracking.

They bill you per email instead of contact base so businesses that send a few emails monthly will pay a lower fee even if they have a long contact list.

Also, they have a fairly wide selection of landing pages and email templates even with the freemium plan. HubSpot offers you no template with the free plan. You have to move up the food chain to the Marketing Starter package that comes with a ridiculous price tag.

One area that Sendinblue completely knocks out HubSpot is transactional emails. You get to send invoices, order notifications, account sign-ups, etc. automatically. HubSpot doesn’t have this feature.

Pros

• They have customizable templates with a drag and drop feature for your landing pages and newsletter creation.
• It offers transactional email, SMS marketing, and chat features that are outstanding.
• It comes with a free and affordable pricing plan.

Cons

• The CRM feature is pretty basic. You’re not able to track your deals or access pipeline management features like on HubSpot.

Bottomline: Sendinblue mainly attracts eCommerce businesses that need to send transactional emails and those looking for a cheap all-in-one marketing solution.

GetResponse: Best landing page and funnel builder

GetResponse is any marketer’s dream. You get access to ActiveCampaign automation power and an impressive sales funnel builder. It’s in 183 countries and available in 27 languages. Impressive, right?

It provides users with quite a large scope of services like, autoresponders, auto funnels, marketing automation, webinars, landing pages, and email marketing solutions. They have perfected the art of lead scoring and automated communication.

Where it beats HubSpot, their baby, the Autofunnel feature. It was added in 2019 to not only take care of all your traffic generation needs, but also to allow you to create high-converting sales funnels, webinar funnels, and lead funnels.

It has pre-built funnel templates that are not only customizable but also have access to payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Square. Their landing page templates are more than 180 and cut across every industry. And you get to split test all your pages to ensure you get the best results.

With their pro plan ($99/ month) you get access to the in-built CRM, marketing automation, sales funnels, webinar hosting, and unlimited automation workflows. They have cheaper plans but those don’t come with automation. But $99 is way better than $800 for advanced automation.

Pros

• The autofunnel feature is worth every dime. It’s the sauce you need for your lead gen and sales conversion.
• It offers a webinar feature that’s not available on any other platform on this list.
• It offers you lots of impressive marketing automation features. Very similar to ActiveCampaign.
• Stunning landing page and email templates.

Cons

• It doesn’t have a free plan. So if all you need is a CRM, HubSpot is better.
• It is not ideal for forms and pop-ups.

Bottomline: GetResponse is a great option for businesses looking to increase their traffic, lead generation, and conversion using funnels and landing pages.

Conclusion

Did you find a platform that convinced you to consider it to HubSpot?

These seven tools are clearly cheaper and most of them have a better product than HubSpot. No two tools are similar so you have to look for one that fits your business needs.

However, don’t focus too heavily on the price tag. Look at the services and automation solutions available as well.

Let me just recap what platform is best for what purpose.

• ActiveCampaign: for businesses looking for the best-in-class automation features.
• Zoho CRM: for SMBs looking for an easy-to-use, powerful, yet pocket-friendly CRM.
• Drip: for businesses that need first-class eCommerce automation features.
• Wishpond: for businesses running email marketing campaigns and social media contests.
• EngageBay: for SMBs looking for an easy-to-use and cheaper HubSpot alternative.
• Sendinblue: for businesses looking for a basic CRM and robust transactional emails.
• GetResponse: for high-converting sales funnels, landing pages, and automation features.

Good luck!