HubSpot CRM vs. Insightly vs. VinSolutions

I am giving it a 9 rating out of 10 because it has saved my job and helped my team to cracks very big deals. Last year, we were supposed to give a presentation to a client as we were about to sign him for a project. The client asked for our numbers in a real meeting, but we hadn't prepared them for our presentation. I logged in to HubSpot CRM and created a small report that included the relevant numbers. This turned out to be a very good decision for our company, as we subsequently signed that client.

Incentivized

There are a lot of things Insightly is great with for Career Services but much of my job is updating things manually because Insightly doesn't have a way to help me manage the database the way we need to. We have multiple academic records per students but needed to have fields that are multiselect on our contacts. These are all manually updated which are very tedious and not the best for what we need it to be able to do

Incentivized

It is well suited to customer communication - emails/calls/texts. It helps with all those. You are able to get personal by adding notes to remember in the future, or tasks to complete down the road. It keeps history, so no salesperson can argue who did want and who gets the credit. Essentially, it is the final word - if the employee doesn't record it in Vin - then it didn't happen and anyone can help a customer. Seems to be less appropriate for actual marketing-related activities (as mentioned with their campaign manager).

Incentivized

• Timeline view and conversation log is extremely helpful and an underrated feature; this is in addition to the entire user profile view.
• Task management is simple but effective.
• Deal and company tracking with stakeholder management inside companies / deals is very handy; we know what is happening even though we might not be directly working on it.
• Gmail integration is quite smooth along with email tracking.

Incentivized

• The ability to set up filters to generate lists based on just the categories I am interested in.
• It's integration with our sales data so we can see customer spending trends across multiple years and seasons.
• The ability to circle back to previous email correspondence to refresh on past conversations with individual clients.

Incentivized

• Tracks sold logs, desk logs, offers, etc. so there is no confusion over what was offered or by whom.
• Gives a clear, concise list of sold vehicles, who sold them, and front and back end gross for easy reference.
• Trade appraisals are clearly visible, along with who appraised them, so there is no potential for misunderstanding between the sales managers, GSM and GM.

Incentivized

• More of an integration issue I think than a problem with HubSpot CRM, but we have AirCall integrated for direct phone lines and synching with individual users for outbound calls. Opening Aircall to make an outbound call automatically generates a new client - unattached to a company record as an orphan.
• Historical records with activities is awesome but when creating a deal it isn't always a choice to capture last 30 days of history. When it is an option and you click to add that to a deal you can see all the activity items and people who have done anything with the "file".
• I would like to see more native options for automation.

Incentivized

• Once you are immersed in the platform, for all of its integration kudos, the platform became "intuitive" if that is the right word for it. There was some push back from staff on deployment.
• The service and support team at Insightly was very responsive, but it seemed as if they had fielded similar complaints, and slower learning curves than we expected.
• Unfortunately, while all has worked out nicely now and we are very happy with the platform, we had to have additional instruction time for all the staff during onboarding as workflows, dashboards, and pipelines were more time intensive than expected on the demo.

Incentivized

• Because VinSolutions is able to pull customers lists, they also made a campaigns manager that allows you to create marketing emails and send them out. However, after the initial launch they never updated it, it seems. It would be the best thing...if it was 2005.
• This customer lists that I like to export to upload into my own email software, I can't get the actual list myself - I have to contact my Vin rep for them to give me. These lists are not the same, nor have the same filters, as the report lists that Vin does provide dealers. So, I prefer the other.

Incentivized

Thus far, our company has found HubSpot CRM to be a reliable service that serves its purpose well: a centralized business contacts database, accessible remotely, with a simple and visually-pleasing interface. Issues are non-existent or resolved quickly, and when the service is experiencing interruptions, notifications and/or updates are sent regularly.

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

I am giving it this rating because it has helped us keep track of leads, it saved us a lot of time by automating tasks, and it makes it easy for different teams to work together. It is user-friendly and has improved our approach to communicating with customers and closing deals.

Incentivized

Anyone with any experience with a working knowledge of Facebook or using a Windows computer will be able to quickly adapt to Insightly and use it to suit their needs. It can become more difficult to use as a company might have custom workflows or Insightly customer service might need to customize the program to better suit a company's need. A slow introduction to the system is better than having to learn the program quickly. Parts and knowledge build on each other so it hard to grasp all at once. The learning curve for Insightly is 2-3 weeks while mastery comes with time and exposure to the program

Incentivized

The provider is 100% available, with no downtime, maintenance, or unexpected outages. We have been able to perform solid continuous services for 12 months without any interruptions. We have backups as well, unlike the in-house backup that they keep on their end. I believe they have a very good redundancy and backup infrastructure in case they get any outages.

Incentivized

Pages normally load quickly, but every now and then, as entering updates to fields, it take a while to update. Sometimes even after refreshing the screen, we have to exit and go back in to get the fields or queries to update.

Incentivized

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

Technical support, general customer support, implementation support are all top notch. All representatives from the company check in every couple weeks to make sure all is going well; if there is a problem, I generally have a solution given within hours if not soon; and they are friendly, easy to understand, and do a great job. Well done!

Incentivized

Well, we didn’t get the chance to do this in-person training but rather one-on-one online training with HR in-house. There were PowerPoints to discuss as well as video instructions on how to use the app, so it was okay. We were able to play around with it during the training or onboarding session.

Incentivized

I've used Insightly's online training &/ or learned as I went. I've found the blogs and online written material helpful. I've also attended a few webinars, which can be useful if you use a J-I-T approach so as not to overwhelm you (or your staff) with functionality that you are using just yet. The fact that it's all available on their website and you can learn at your own pace is invaluable

Incentivized

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

did not participate in the implementation of this product did not participate in the implementation of this product did not participate in the implementation of this product did not participate in the implementation of this product did not participate in the implementation of this product did not participate in the implementation of this product

Incentivized

We've been using Hubspot for years and don't foresee making any changes away from it. It has been fully integrated into how our business operates. We ultimately selected HubSpot CRM because it had all the features and functions that our marketing, sales, and operations teams wanted. And it offered those features and functions at the right price point for our organization.

Incentivized

Insightly is significantly better than Zendesk. It is easy to use, pleasant to look at, and makes sense. However, I don't think Insightly is fair now compared to Salesforce. Insightly can do many of the same things as Salesforce, but I've only started on some of these features. Insightly has excellent potential, and its support team drives me to make it what I believe it can be. For the price, I believe Insightly is worth it.

Incentivized

I have never used a full-suite CRM with this depth prior to this experience

Incentivized

I don’t have the exact answers for this, but our accounting or finance department negotiates this. They always handle this kind of stuff and negotiate yearly licenses. Usually, they purchase 10 licenses in bulk and ask for a discount in bulk. Other than that, if there are any issues encountered on the app, they account for that. If it’s broken, that’s also taken into consideration when renewing the contract.

Incentivized

(+) 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

Our Customer Success Manager was great. A real professional and knowledgeable about the features and how they worked with our requirements

Incentivized

• We were able to track good quality leads and push them to closure.
• The leads were contacted within 24 hours so lead drops were minimum.
• The sales and marketing team were accountable for generating leads and driving revenue becasue of AI-generated Targets.

Incentivized

• Positive Impact>Visibility is critical when it comes to taking proactive measures within the organization. The Insightly Tool has helped use with that which minimizes costs when it comes to rework. We can proactively plan for upcoming growth and identify areas of improvement.

Incentivized

• Not sure about our financial investment in VinSolutions, but we have been with them for over 10 years, so our management keeps choosing it over other options (we have reviewed others in the past recommended by our dealer group).
• Positive impact on keeping our customers...ours. This avoids sales consultants recording their customers in some random ledger of their own...and then taking that list with them when they leave - especially to another dealership. This ensures that each person is the dealership's customer, and not the salesperson's customer.
• History is recorded, and we never know what we need until we run into an issue. VinSolutions is our go-to for many past communications and transactions. It provides a 'road to the sale' story that managers can pull up to help them navigate concerns.

Incentivized