GreenRope vs. HubSpot Marketing Hub

There's no such thing as a CRM that doesn't have its complications and headaches. I have tried a lot of them and ultimately like GreenRope heads and shoulders above the rest. GreenRope is particularly suited for small to medium sized businesses who do not have the budget or need for a SalesForce install, or the engineers necessary to make other CRM software work. If you want a more sophisticated system than an email responder like MailChimp or Constant Contact, you need to have a CRM. So ask yourself what you are looking to automate in your business and then go for a solution that has the ability to scale with you. A CRM is a commitment to long term growth and automation, and you should see it as an investment -- both in cash and in time. I don't have a programmer and have managed to get a lot of functionality out of GreenRope (all DIY). And I'm always adding to it with no limits in sight.

As I said previously, I was not a fan at the beginning because, like everyone, I don't take change so well. Once I started following leads through HubSpot Marketing Hub, I integrated it with my email and created templates for what I needed, I started to see the positives immediately. My time working was better spent as I eliminated time put in routine tasks. I was able to track all communication in HubSpot Marketing Hub, we created systems in the office assigning tasks to one another and, through HubSpot Marketing Hub, our leads were able to book meetings in my calendar automatically. To be honest, if you are in sales and marketing, I cannot think of scenarios where HubSpot Marketing Hub cannot help. All I would like to say is, when using templates, pay attention to where you send them - you may need some personalization. I would encourage the management of HubSpot Marketing Hub to create short tutorials for beginners like me who need to configure and start using various features: setting up deals, templates, and dashboards.

Incentivized

• GreenRope provides a full-featured application at ALL pricing levels. You don't have to 'upgrade' to get better features - you've got them all right away. I really appreciated this!
• GreenRope doesn't charge per user (i.e., administrator of the system). Other systems require additional fees when adding administrators to your account. GreenRope makes it easy for me to get help with the CRM by adding more of my people, without adding multiple fees.
• Customer Service at GreenRope rocks! They really want to help you get started well. The training and set-up calls are fantastic. For any support issues that have come up (usually newbie questions!) I've always received a prompt response. I can't say enough about their support.
• There are many ways for me to customize my data sets, for management and segmentation of contacts, specific to my industry and business needs.
• Dashboard customization - as a visual learner, the presentation of information on my screen is important to me, and GreenRope allows me the ability to customize colours, icons, and sizes of things in my dashboard. This is helpful for my creativity and productivity.

• All-in-one software - the main thing HubSpot does well is the breadth of functionality.
• Easy of use - personally, I find it more intuitive than Marketo, which is the other MAP that I know well.
• Ads - I like that we can drill down on ads by channel, ad group, campaign, and even create and see performance data at each level.

Incentivized

• The project management software - while usable in its current form - can still benefit from further development. But I've noticed that they are working on it, so it seems they are aware of this area of opportunity.
• This is a little thing, but I'd like the ability to drill into specific tasks from more areas, and mark them complete quickly or make notes on them.
• I honestly don't have many suggestions. I use their ticket system to make suggestions when they occur to me, and they tend to incorporate suggestions very quickly into subsequent builds.

• While Hubspot has added some collaborative tools, I think this could improve. I'd like to see more options to comment on emails and ways of being able to share out changes as well as approval channels.
• The ability to update ads via the calendar is pretty cumbersome. There's no good way to bulk edit or update. You have go into each one individually.
• Real time edits would be nice. If you have multiple people working on the same thing, you'll get kicked out and your changes might not be saved.

Incentivized

They have monthly renewals, so at any time you can cancel and not feel like they are holding your money. Their customer support is easy to work with. Their ticketing system to communicate with you about service issues is fantastic(which is included in the monthly fee) allows you to track issues. We use the ticketing system and add it to our website. This gives people the ability to communicate with us 24/7.

Our business relies on the HubSpot platform to manage our marketing, sales and CRM processes. HubSpot marketing automation helps us define our activities and streamlines them in a cohesive and efficient way. Without HubSpot, we will have to revert to the 'old way' of doing everything with a variety of disparate systems.

Incentivized

It takes time to learn this system. It is not going to happen over night, but once you master it it will be worth it. I am already seeing some great results, all I have to do is keep learning.

While there are some frustrating things that pop up unexpectedly ("wait... I can't do X?"), I have found HubSpot to be easy to use and extremely helpful to my daily work. The documentation is really good, and when it's not helpful, the support staff have been amazing.

Incentivized

They have had issues with system availability over the course of days. Sometimes the system is unusable, other times updates simply take a long time to show up. It's better now but, from a reliaibility standpoint, HubSpot is not Salesforce.com yet. Still great software though.

With all the new features in HubSpot, the system can get a tad slow sometimes... That said, most of the time it is lightning fast and I have no problems. Because most of the integrations are API, they silently work in the background. I have not had trouble with lag due to HubSpot integration

Many times I have to repeat the issue several times before the person understands correctly. There was also an instant where support was not available when help was needed, had to wait for a response and it was a business day.

During the few times I've needed it, HS support has been accessible, helpful and efficient. Often rolling up their sleeves to make changes for you as opposed to leaving you with a list of instructions to decipher on your own.

I did the 2-day classroom at HubSpot's corporate office in Cambridge. First off, it was amazing to see their corporate office in general. They have such a cool office environment. But it was also great to have the ability to learn in a workshop format with other HubSpot users and meet my Account Manager/ Inbound Marketing Consultant in person.

I went through Inbound Marketing University in 2006. Great training and helped my transition from traditional (outbound) marketing to inbound marketing that I've been able to apply to a number of businesses from wastewater and water reuse, to professional services and SaaS. Share information of value to build awareness and trust. Answer customers' questions in a transparent way to generate more qualified leads. Understand the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead and put together a lead nurturing program. Your sales and marketing efforts will see significant ROI.

I think there are some cheat sheets and best practises lists that could be created that would save a business a lot of time and frustration. BUT, even as it is, the frustrations and challenges disappear as things start working. I am going to be offering up a few of the tricks I have learned to the team at GreenRope to share with other users because when customers offer valuable work arounds that they find helpful to others, we accomplish a few things. The coders get an idea of things that aren't working quite as expected so they can look into fixes, other customers get benefit and we all win

My biggest piece of advice for those who are implementing Hubspot is that you need to devote the time up front and learn how to use the product. Once you learn how to use Hubspot, it will be much more effective as well as much easier to use in the long run

We chose GreenRope.com because they were the best fit. We already had a marketing email strategy with Constant Contact so choosing a CRM with those capabilities was very important when making our decision. Everything we were already doing could be in 1 place instead of needing to login to several different outlets to reach our goals and objectives. For example, email marketing (Constant Contact), website tracking (our Host), client tracking (spreadsheets), Calendars (Outlook), etc. Now we do everything, email marketing, track leads, have a work flow, track website visitors, post events and forecast all with 1 login. It's great!!

Other competing software such as Zoho and Boomtown may have more bells and whistles, but it is too cumbersome and has many parts that only advanced users can operate. With HubSpot, each function is within reach of the average agent. It doesn't overpromise and then makes you feel incompetent when you can't use it all...

Incentivized

HubSpot is addressing this more and more. Currently you can assign tasks to designated sales teams, which grow as you grow. They've added free baseline products for those just getting started. These and more contribute to the scalability of HubSpot - so I gave it an 8 and am hoping for more in the future!

• It has helped us from an efficiency standpoint to organize, keep track off, and communicate with our contacts.
• We have high functionality and great features for a great cost.
• People with varying levels of computer experience can use GreenRope and many of its features.

Incentivized

• HubSpot has helped us increased our lead generation.
• HubSpot has allowed us to continue to grow our customer base without having to spend a ton of marketing dollars on advertising.
• HubSpot has allowed our company to standardize our process and bring the company onto one platform for sales and marketing.

Incentivized