HubSpot CRM vs. Insightly vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

In my last position at a SAAS company, I used Salesforce and HATED IT. It was so clunky, and when I used HubSpot, it was like a breath of fresh air. Any company that does customer interactions and sales needs Hubspot. There is a TON of room for customization, which is AMAZING. I don't see anywhere that it wouldn't be a good fit.

Incentivized

Insightly is very well suited to track steps in a particular process. It is also very easy to connect contacts, organizations, requests, and projects. It is great for storing data in a way that is easily referenced. It is a helpful tool for facilitating team collaboration. The connectivity to our website forms is also very useful. It is less appropriate for tracking financials as far as invoicing and payments.

Incentivized

Sales Cloud is very well suited for the daily leads and opportunity pipeline management as well as user management. Sales process automation are very helpful for repetitive tasks. It integrates well with other platforms. It's easy to customize and report on data. Sales Cloud can be pricey so is only open to larger org's that need complex CRM. User adoption is slow to any new users that have no prior experience.

Incentivized

• It tracks emails including opens, clicks, and keeps a great log.
• I love how they give you options to build your own reports as well as some templated reports as well.
• It creates an easy way to work with your colleagues even if its remote positions.

Incentivized

• Support>It feels like a partnership and support is a critical asset to consider when adopting new tools
• Customization>The ability to customize with custom objects has allowed us to utilize Insightly in unique ways.
• Customer Feedback>They very much are interested in soliciting client feedback when it comes to product planning.

Incentivized

• Logging notes: SF makes it easy to log notes in the timeline or static notes that live in an easy-to-see spot for longevity.
• Logging activities: It's easy to post a call, text, email, etc.
• API data: Once connected, SF is critical to automation, such as website activity, login activity, pages visited, etc., which saves the Customer Success side time in understanding account activity.
• Custom fields: you can add custom fields to really personalize your experience. We use quite a few and it's brilliant.

Incentivized

• Pricing - HubSpot offers a number of great features in the free version however the paid options can be pricey.
• The free version could do with more options in some of the additional areas such as the marketing platform. Although there are some options included, they are very limited.

Incentivized

• There are some minor glitches such as the screen freezing up. You can fix this by refreshing the page and it doesn't happen often but when it does, it does disrupt the flow.
• Pulling a report from multiple objects is limited. You have a lot of options but there are some things you want to be able to pull in together and you can't.
• Items such as Contacts and Organizations don't always link together.

Incentivized

• I have hard-coded the auto-update of the phone number format and state format from some codes shared by the community, but I do not know where to do it. I cannot reset it either.
• It is unclear what functionalities each version has. We use the enterprise version, and it seems we can only have one design of the pipeline. But different business segments would have very different sales cycles, and hence, pipeline tracking would be different. It would be nice to have this available in our version.
• It seems I cannot create a report to pull notes logged at the account levels.

Incentivized

To be honest there are some barriers due to which we are unable to use Hubspot at it's full potentials. The region that we work in has some restrictions that don't allow us to make calls or text which leaves us to just Email to the client.

Incentivized

Insightly offers a great product; it's the right fit for our company at this time. We were, however, considering moving to Contactually due to their cost effective automation features. However, they lacked the project management capabilities of Insightly. As our company grows, we would love to stay with Insightly - and if they can nail the automation and add the ability to customize a little bit more, it would be the perfect solution for us. For a larger company with a more involved sales team, you might find the metrics/reporting to be a bit basic. Insightly offers great customer service even to free customers

There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.

Incentivized

I think the usability is great. I am able to train a new agent with zero experience in our process with HubSpot in a day or less. They can be proficient in using HubSpot quickly, the way I've designed it to work, in less than a week. I am able to load new leads, set calling campaigns, and start prospecting quickly. I've even had to call customer service for help, and they were super helpful.

Incentivized

The reports are easy to customize and generate within seconds. The pipeline clearly shows what is going on with the order, so we don't have to waste time frequently checking in. The database helps us quickly look up a healthcare provider's NPI so we can add it to the order and verify eligibility for insurance.

Incentivized

Salesforce has been designed on the basis of "Clicks, not code". So anyone willing to learn the Salesforce user interface (which is quite good as far as management software platforms go) is able to become a Salesforce user or even a Salesforce administrator. You don't have to know coding language to work in the Salesforce environment. Also, Salesforce has one of the best software training resources (Trailhead) that I have ever encountered. It is free to all, easy to use, and most importantly it is interactive. No scrolling through endless text in a user manual. There are hands-on modules and related videos interlaced and through it all you earn points and badges to display your level of learning.

Incentivized

Knock on wood... I haven't had any difficulties with Insightly's availability to-date. I mostly use it on my desktop and infrequently access via my Android phone. No access issues.

Incentivized

Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.

Incentivized

The interface is very user friendly and easy to navigate. Reports can quickly be made, including custom fields.The website response has always been quick to load and has never been unavailable when I have needed access. They listen to requests for additional or custom features, and they hold workshops frequently to assist new and experienced users.

Incentivized

Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure

Because when I needed help HubSpot responded immediately and provided me with the information I needed which enabled me to realize that HubSpot was even more customizable and easier to use than I thought! And I already thought HubSpot was very user friendly and easy to use, and then Support showed me how to manipulate the settings, columns and the appearance of the tool.

Incentivized

We have used Insightly for almost 2 years now. We have always been able to get in touch with support for a variety of reasons and they have never disappointed us. The support staff have always been very understanding. They have assisted with answers to our questions and have provided great tech support. We would highly recommend them.

Incentivized

The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.

I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business

Insightly is a very useful tool, it has the essential capabilities that a company need. Easy to use and very intuitive, so, you don't need tutorial or extra documents. Navigation inside the platform is quite simple. You will be able to store your client's information, about your potential business opportunities, organize teams and users and, connect your emails

Incentivized

I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this

If you've had any prior experience with cloud based marketing automation or group communication tools, you can do the implementation without paid outside support. Though getting to a SLA (service level agreement) would be best achieved with the help of a third party who can facilitate

Incentivized

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Incentivized

Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.

Salesforce requires a lot of in-depth knowledge both to implement and to manage. I found it to be quite clunky and there was an additional overhead for any marketing functionality, that wasn't up to par. Whilst Zoho had some good features, in practice the CRM was difficult to manage, customer support was non-existent, and like Salesforce, required 3rd party support agents in order make simple changes. comparison, HubSpot allows the user to make many changes themselves such as adding and mapping properties, and also has excellent customer service. Combined with a well-rounded offer in terms of marketing, analytics and a good CRM, HubSpot stands out as the clear winner.

Incentivized

Insightly has far more modern applications than GoldMine. It allows for more customizations. Our reports are nicer looking and it seems much more user friendly. Insightly also seems to be more than just sales focused. GoldMine seemed to really be geared more towards a sales staff. Insightly has more capabilities for our future needs as well

Incentivized

Salesforce Sales cloud is well integrated with a lot of other marketing and sales technology SAAS products that we use within our business, which is a big part of why I enjoy using it. Compared to NetSuite, it is a lot more user friendly, a modern platform that provides better visual understanding of sales pipeline and contains more useful data across the customer journey.

Incentivized

Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.

(+) Being able to download my LinkedIn connections was a huge benefit. (+) I use the task function to stay on top of my follow-up activity which is another positive feature. (+) The sorting capabilities also help me pinpoint the contacts that I need to stay on top of. (-) When I add a new lead from an existing organization, I would like the organization's information to automatically populate the fields like address, website, description. I enter all that information manually. (-) My mass mailing experience has been tedious due to the email function being interrupted and crashing due to bad email addresses in some of my records. (-) Many of my leads do not have current email addresses. I wish Insightly offered a tool to help find email addresses. I spend too much time researching to find email addresses.

Incentivized

I don't think there is a limit to Sales Cloud's scalability; at least, I haven't encountered one or heard of one. My data is not enormous, so perhaps some companies might encounter lags, but nothing from my end. I think I'll be able to use Sales Cloud from now until infinity.

Incentivized

Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.

• Automation helps to save time so that we can reach out to more prospecting or save time that can be spent on more strategic sales tasks like deal management
• Visibility/collaboration helps connect marketing and sales efforts vs them being siloed
• Connection with salesforce helps us to get more out of our CRM spend as we have valuable data insights coming from Hubspot

Incentivized

• We started using Insightly to organize our company, and it's done just that and more which provides value that money cannot buy.
• Insightly allows our sales team to stay on top of sales leads more so than doing so without it, which in turn creates more sales opportunities.

Incentivized

• All tools we've implemented with Salesforce had a pretty quick positive ROI with the exception of CPQ & Billing. That was a very large project that I would only suggest for businesses with many SKUs that tend to be packaged together.