Customer relationship management (CRM) systems give sales and marketing teams the tools and insights they need to generate more leads and close more deals. HubSpot and Zoho, two leading CRM providers, promote their platforms to companies based on how their software helps businesses drive higher revenues. In this article, we’ll compare these platforms on a number of key factors – including price, functionality and integrations – to help you find the right CRM for your business.
To help you choose the best CRM software, let’s start with an overview of the HubSpot and Zoho CRM systems.
Criteria
HubSpot
Zoho
Starting price
$30 per month (2 users)
$14 per user per month
Free plan or trial
Free plan
Free trial
Sales and marketing features
Multichannel marketing, lead management, customer segmentation
Multichannel marketing, lead scoring, data enrichment
Reporting and analytics
Sales forecasting, attribution reports, shared dashboards
40+ reports, charts and visualizations, precise analysis
Workflows and automations
Custom general workflows, marketing workflows
Easy automations, lead collection and distribution
Omnichannel communications
Full email client, social media integration, VoIP and power dialer
Full email client, social media integration, telephony
Integrations and apps
1,000+ apps, extensions, impressive API
1,000+ apps, unique custom apps, extensive API
HubSpot’s comprehensive CRM platform is ideal for companies wanting better results from their sales and marketing teams. The system is feature-packed and provides the levels of functionality and analytics both teams need to improve their performance when it comes to attracting and converting leads. With its custom automations and 1,000-plus plug-ins, the software is flexible enough to fit the exact needs of your business. 
This powerful and sophisticated platform has a simple interface, user-friendly controls and a very shallow learning curve, so your staff will understand how to make the most of the program in no time. HubSpot can help drive sales for any business, but it really comes into its own for midsize to large companies with more complex and dispersed internal structures.
Read our full review of HubSpot CRM to learn more about the system’s ease of use, customer support and more.
Zoho provides a highly adaptable, intuitive CRM with outstanding reporting features, workflow automations and AI integration. While it lacks the depth of features HubSpot has, what it does have is powerful, intuitive and smart enough to help smaller businesses drive more leads and sales from their sales and marketing teams. 
Your marketers will love how easy it is to promote your business on social media, email, online advertising and more from this one platform. Meanwhile, your sales team will love how Zoho helps prioritize leads, reduce paperwork and enrich contact data. If you want the system to go beyond its native capabilities, there are more than 1,000 integrations to choose from in the vendor’s app store. With the top plan costing $52 per user per month, Zoho is ideal for revenue-chasing small businesses.
Read our full review of Zoho CRM to find out about implementation, customer service options and more.
When we evaluated the HubSpot and Zoho CRMs, we found a number of notable similarities and differences.
HubSpot
Tier
Base cost per month based on minimum user amount
Minimum users
Feature summary
Additional user cost
Free
$0
1
2,000 emails per month, live chat, SEO recommendations
N/A
Starter
$30
2
1,000 record properties, 10 dashboards, 25 active lists, 2 deal pipelines, form automation, email retargeting, document storage, sales automation and sales content analytics
$25/user
Professional
$1,600
5
Everything in the Starter level, plus SEO analytics, customer reporting, A/B testing, dynamic personalization ($3,000 onboarding fee)
$100/user
Enterprise
$5,000
10
Everything in the Professional package, plus 10,000 marketing contacts and a wide variety of additional tools ($6,000 onboarding fee)
Custom quote
HubSpot’s entry-level Starter plan is excellent. However, to get the best use out of the platform, you’ll need to subscribe to the Professional or Enterprise package so you can really benefit from HubSpot’s advanced suite of sales and marketing functions. Likewise, the vendor’s app store is excellent, but many of the really useful apps come at a cost. 
There’s a $3,000 onboarding fee for Professional clients, and that fee goes up to $6,000 for the Enterprise level. Watch out for other add-on expenses, like WhatsApp conversations, transactional emails and API calls.
The Starter tier allows month-by-month payment but will cost 20 percent more if you don’t commit to a year. With the Professional or Enterprise plan, you have to pay annually upfront. 
Zoho
Tier
Cost per user per month
Feature summary
Standard
$14
250 marketing emails a day, lead scoring, automation workflows, multiple pipelines, sales forecasting and 1GB storage
Professional
$23
500 marketing emails a day and everything in the Standard plan, plus custom links, unlimited custom list views, workflow blueprints and Google Ads integration
Enterprise
$40
1,000 marketing emails a day and everything in the Professional level, plus custom modules, AI-powered insights and advanced analytics
Ultimate
$52
2,000 marketing emails a day and everything in the Enterprise tier, plus enhanced storage, advanced customer support and 5GB storage
Zoho’s Standard package is full-featured and should be more than enough for smaller businesses. If you want more tools, the higher-tier subscriptions are competitive with HubSpot and most other CRMs. The vendor doesn’t charge setup or onboarding fees either.
As with HubSpot, many of the third-party apps that add functionality to the Zoho CRM cost extra, so bear that in mind when evaluating the bang you’ll get for your buck. There’s a free 15-day trial on all subscriptions except Ultimate, where you instead get 30 days to put the system through its paces to ensure this is the right solution for your business.
Winner: Zoho
Zoho’s lack of onboarding fees and cheaper pricing means it wins this round. Furthermore, while both CRMs have inclusive email marketing tools, HubSpot is more restrictive on whom you can send emails to. Your money is more likely to go further with Zoho.
HubSpot isn’t the only CRM provider to offer a free plan, as you can see in our review of monday CRM.
HubSpot

The marketing results dashboard in HubSpot provides insights into your leads. Source: HubSpot
Zoho
Winner: HubSpot
Both platforms have comprehensive sales and marketing tools that are advanced, genuinely valuable and completely customizable. However, HubSpot wins this category for its advanced SEO features, ready-to-go marketing automations and excellent segmentation options.
Zoho CRM is one of several business software products sold under the Zoho brand. Check out our Zoho Books review (accounting software) and Zoho Assist review (remote PC access solution) to learn about other platforms that may be of service to your business.
HubSpot
Zoho

Using the Zia AI assistance, you can create charts in Zoho by asking questions as if you were talking to a chatbot. Source: Zoho
Winner: Zoho
The Zoho CRM is better for sales and marketing reporting and analytics because of its highly customizable reports, great data visualizations and the sheer scope of analyses you can run. That said, HubSpot’s reporting and analytics should be enough for most businesses.
HubSpot

The intuitive drag-and-drop automation builder in HubSpot lets you develop custom workflows. Source: HubSpot
Zoho
Winner: HubSpot
HubSpot beats Zoho on workflows and automations thanks to its wide range of prebuilt general workflow and marketing automations and how easy they are to customize. Zoho is close behind, however.
HubSpot
Zoho

You can send and receive emails from within the Zoho CRM platform. Source: Zoho
Winner: HubSpot
HubSpot and Zoho are both superb for multichannel engagement with clients, allowing you to communicate with leads and customers across a variety of methods, but all through a single software solution. However, HubSpot wins for its shared inbox, which allows team members from across your company to more easily come together to serve customer needs and solve any problems.
Don’t overlook the importance of the telephone in closing deals. A Turtl survey found that 27 percent of B2B sales professionals consider the phone the best channel for booking meetings.
HubSpot
Zoho
Winner: HubSpot
Both vendors’ app stores are great, and we thought the custom app selection on Zoho really stood out during our review. However, HubSpot wins for its better API, specialty sales and marketing apps, webhooks, and data syncs.
Zoho and HubSpot both have the CRM tools you need to drive revenues, but having reviewed both, we think the right system depends on the size of your business.
HubSpot is best for midsize and large businesses wanting better results from their sales and marketing teams.
HubSpot CRM’s sales, marketing and collaboration tools make it the best choice for larger companies. With this solution, you can give your marketers the ability to run complex, multichannel, segmented campaigns from one dashboard. Better still, the collaboration tools allow your sales and customer service teams to share their insights, knowledge and experience with your marketers. This gives them the extra details they need to make your messaging more relevant and engaging on future campaigns. And whatever team an agent is on, they’ll have much more time to be creative and productive thanks to HubSpot’s workflow automations.
Zoho is best for smaller businesses wanting better results from their sales and marketing teams.
The Zoho CRM has all the functionality small businesses need to boost revenues through improved marketing and higher lead conversions. The omnichannel marketing suite and communications tools within the Zoho platform are intuitive and powerful. Your marketing team will love the campaign analytics features and your sales reps can take great advantage of the data enrichment and deal-stage tools. Thanks to Zoho’s time-saving and customizable workflow automations, your agents will have more time to dedicate to other tasks that require their expertise and attention. This solution is also priced well for small companies.
Zoho and HubSpot are excellent CRMs for driving new leads and sales for a variety of businesses. The better solution will depend on your company’s size. Both CRMs share many features, but HubSpot’s advanced tools make it more suitable for midsize to large businesses. Zoho costs far less and is still very capable, with more than enough functionality for small and midsize businesses.
Zoho has grown a lot in popularity in recent years because of its full range of CRM features, how easy they are to use and, compared to rival platforms, how affordable they are.
No, Zoho is not the same as HubSpot. Zoho and HubSpot are separate CRM systems from different software providers. While they have many features in common that help sales and marketing teams improve their performance, they are different products with slightly different use cases. Zoho is aimed more at small businesses, while HubSpot is more for enterprise businesses. Some of their specific tools and capabilities vary as well.
While HubSpot is a market-leading CRM, whether there is a better CRM out there for your business depends on your company’s needs. HubSpot is feature-rich but can be costly, especially if you don’t need all of its tools. A better CRM might be one that is more budget-friendly for the features you need.
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