Item: HubSpot CRM
Rating: 7
Author: Austin Kirts

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We heavily rely on HubSpot to keep the company organized internally and to maintain consistent communication with our customers. Working with hospitals and healthcare at the height of the pandemic was stressful enough - HubSpot maintains records of communications with all contacts so everyone within the organization had an understanding of the timeline with each sales prospect, despite working remotely. This helped us coordinate touchpoints like calls, emails, and other marketing media at the appropriate time so that our sales pipeline wasn't disrupted by the adjustments caused by COVID-19. Even in our return to the office, the automation and shortcuts that HubSpot offers have been a large part in streamlining some of our processes so that less time is spent coordinating tasks, and more time is spent focused on our goals.

Pros and Cons

Maintains records of communication with contacts
Has options for automation in order to avoid monotonous little tasks and shift the focus back to the important stuff
Can create active lists that are visible to all users in order to keep everyone up-to-date at a moment's notice.

Some contact records are not logged perfectly. i.e. missing emails in the contact record log
I would like to be able to delete pre-made HubSpot properties in order to clean up my CRM and only use properties that make sense within the organization.
Inserting video into email communications is limited in functionality and quality.

Return on Investment

We relied on HubSpot to communicate the arrival of our direct-to-consumer online store (we previously only had b2b offerings) and added 182 unique customers to our portfolio since launch earlier this quarter.

Usability

The user interface is extremely user-friendly and is easy to navigate after becoming familiar with all of the available features. Overall it is much more "welcoming" to new users in comparison to other CRMs that we have accessed before - the rate of adoption was much quicker during the recent onboarding of a new intern and it aided in his success.

Alternatives Considered

ZoomInfo and ZoomInfo Engage (Tellwise)

HubSpot is much more effective in organizing contacts and the communication that occurs between the organization and those contacts. However, ZoomInfo would be our preferred resource for sourcing information about contacts in order to better meet their needs. HubSpot's tools are easier to familiarize yourself with and adoption is much quicker, but the offerings from ZoomInfo are more precise once you've become accustomed.

Key Insights

Do you think HubSpot CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with HubSpot CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did HubSpot CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of HubSpot CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy HubSpot CRM again?

Yes

Other Software Used

ZoomInfo

Likelihood to Recommend

HubSpot CRM is well suited to any organization in need of a structured way to communicate externally. Plans are available - at a cost - that offer additional functionality that is surely useful to a company larger than ours (and would be useful to us as well - but not enough to justify the expense). I can see any organization making good use of HubSpot considering it offers features suited to all aspects of the sales pipeline and beyond. The ability to generate quotes, track a customer through the sales process, send and/or automate marketing communications, assign internal tasks, and more features are all used on a daily basis even within our small organization.

Staying aligned with HubSpot CRM

Overall Satisfaction with HubSpot CRM