HubSpot’s CRM enables growth-minded businesses to optimize their relationships with leads and customers. Through harnessing the power of carefully crafted sales, marketing, customer service, content management, and operations tools, the software aims to make it easy to unify team strategy and drive conversion. Additionally, the software allows users to connect with over 875 integration apps, APIs, and solutions partners to create a customizable user experience that suits the way teams work.…
$0
Per Month [Unlimited Users]
Microsoft Planner
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Planner is presented as a solution to organize teamwork with intuitive, collaborative, visual task management. With it, users can create Kanban boards using task cards with files, checklists, and labels. Users can collaborate in Planner and Microsoft Teams and check visual status charts—all in the Microsoft cloud.
Microsoft Planner isn't as detailed for project planning as some of these. However, it is more user friendly. Anyone can learn how to use it. If you want simple and affordable for a diverse group, it's the way to go.
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.
There are a few examples where MS Planner would be suitable for employees at a mature organization. In my opinion, if you have Outlook or Teams, you already have built-in calendars and to-do lists. If you need a project management tool, you have two options: either pay for MS Project or use an alternative tool like Monday, Asana, or Jira. Regardless, their free versions are much more sophisticated than Microsoft's (MS Planner). Any team wishing to put together a halfway-decent project management board will need to look elsewhere, as MS Planner is only suitable for a personal to-do list.
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.
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.
Would be nice to see a calendar view instead of a list view
Permissions aren't configurable, anyone can delete any task at any time and there is no recycle bin
Notifications aren't great, you have to be attached as an owner to a task to see comments and be notified of changes, and even then notifications aren't shown for a lot of things
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.
It is a very useful tool that brings teams in sync with one another. The integration with other Microsoft products makes it an obvious choice because you don't have to purchase a license for a completely different tool that doesn't have cross-functional capabilities with the software you already use on a daily basis.
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.
The board-and-bucket layout makes it easy to organize tasks, track progress, and prioritize work at a glance, even for first-time users. I also appreciate how Planner seamlessly integrates with tools like Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, enabling users to collaborate, schedule tasks, and access their plans without needing to switch platforms. I also like how it’s accessible not only on desktops, but also on mobile devices.
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.
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
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.
Many areas of the company still use Trello to organize their activities and tasks, but gradually Microsoft Planner must replace the activities. Users are often "attached" to familiar technologies, but Office 365 takes advantage of the more organized use of the tools. This year we will not renew the Trello contract.
In my experience, productivity is negatively impacted because assigning subtasks aren't clear on Microsoft Planner
Managers aren't able to track direct reports' tasks across multiple boards -- leading to poor visibility for us
Notifications aren't always sent to inbox, so you rely on people's own project management skills to follow the communication on tasks they're assigned to. In my experience, this leads to missed deadlines impacting customer relationships.