HubSpot vs Salesforce: The Ultimate GTM Tech Showdown for B2B SaaS

Imagine you’re a CMO or CRO at a SaaS scale-up, plotting world domination (or at least next quarter’s pipeline). The board demands hyper-growth, your teams demand better tools, and you’re stuck at a crossroads: HubSpot vs Salesforce.

One is practically synonymous with CRM in enterprise circles; the other is the savvy up-and-comer that’s taken the mid-market by storm. Both claim they can unite your Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams under one high-performing GTM engine. The stakes? Only your revenue growth, customer experience, and sanity of your ops teams. No pressure, right?

In this in-depth comparison, we’ll evaluate HubSpot vs Salesforce for go-to-market technology in B2B SaaS. We’ll break down how each platform supports Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success use cases, and examine the strategy behind each (think HubSpot strategy vs Salesforce strategy).

We’ll keep it direct and human–like advice from a friend who’s seen the battle firsthand, with a dash of cheeky wit (because GTM life is too short for boring content). By the end, you’ll see why a growing number of GTM leaders at high-growth SaaS companies are leaning toward HubSpot as their weapon of choice. Let’s dive into the showdown.

For high-growth SaaS companies, HubSpot’s integrated approach across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success often translates to faster execution, better team alignment, and a more outcome-focused GTM strategy, making it a compelling choice to future-proof your ABM and revenue operations. - Paul Sullivan, Arise GTM

HubSpot vs Salesforce: All-in-One vs. Best-of-Breed GTM Strategies

When comparing HubSpot strategy vs Salesforce strategy, it boils down to two different philosophies for go-to-market tech:

• HubSpot’s All-in-One Approach: HubSpot started as an inbound marketing tool and evolved into a unified platform covering marketing automation, CRM for sales, customer service, CMS, and more, all tightly integrated by design.

  The strategy here is a single “source of truth” for your customer data and interactions, enabling marketing, sales, and support to work off the same playbook.

  This all-in-one model emphasises ease of use and quick deployment over heavy customisation. HubSpot essentially bets that a harmonised, user-friendly system will drive better adoption and alignment.

  Fun fact: Marketers with a single source of truth are 54% more likely to rate their strategy as “very effective”, so alignment isn’t just kumbaya, it’s ROI.

• Salesforce’s Best-of-Breed Ecosystem: Salesforce, in contrast, built its empire as a highly extensible CRM, augmented over time by acquiring or developing separate products (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Pardot, etc.).

  Its strategy is often described as a “platform of platforms.” Need marketing automation? Plug in Marketing Cloud (or integrate a tool like Marketo). Need customer success management? Add Service Cloud or a third-party solution. Salesforce’s philosophy gives you extreme flexibility. You can heavily tailor the system to your processes and mix and match specialised tools.

  The trade-off: it’s more complex by nature. Getting that 360° customer view may require knitting together several systems (plus a skilled admin team to keep it all running). Even Salesforce’s own pitch acknowledges you might need an add-on like Data Cloud just to unify data across its ecosystem.

In simpler terms, HubSpot is like an all-inclusive resort; everything is built in and works together out of the box. Whereas Salesforce is like a sprawling city, powerful and customisable, but you might need a guide (and a map) to navigate.

GTM leaders at high-growth companies often prefer the former’s agility: less time fussing with integration and maintenance, more time executing campaigns and closing deals. However, enterprise veterans might counter that Salesforce’s robustness pays off for very complex orgs with unique needs.

So, which strategy wins for a B2B SaaS go-to-market team?

If you value fast time-to-value, user adoption, and lean operation, HubSpot’s unified platform has the edge. If you have highly complex workflows, legacy integrations, or simply love spending your budget on custom development and admin headcount, Salesforce’s ecosystem might appeal.

Next, let’s examine how these philosophies translate into Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success functionality.

Marketing: HubSpot Marketing Hub vs. Salesforce Marketing (Pardot, Marketo, & More)

For GTM leaders (CMOs, VPs of Marketing) in B2B SaaS, the marketing platform decision is crucial. You need to generate and nurture leads, run campaigns across channels, support ABM efforts, and feed Sales a steady diet of opportunities, all without requiring your team to become full-time IT specialists.

Let’s compare how HubSpot and Salesforce stack up in the marketing arena, including how HubSpot marketing vs Marketo and HubSpot vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud factor in.

HubSpot Marketing Hub: HubSpot made its name in marketing automation and inbound marketing, so it’s no surprise that Marketing Hub is one of its strongest components. It’s a comprehensive suite that includes email marketing, workflows, social media management, ad tracking, SEO tools, a blogging platform, a landing page builder, ABM account targeting tools, and even a full CMS (for website and landing pages), all natively integrated with HubSpot’s CRM.

The appeal here is clear: one login, one learning curve, and all your marketing channels and data in one place. Marketers can easily build campaigns without writing code (drag-and-drop email and page builders), and everything auto-syncs to the CRM timeline (no more “oops, the leads didn’t sync overnight” fiascos).

HubSpot excels at ease of use: G2 users describe the UX as “smooth and easy,” giving HubSpot an 8.7/10 Ease of Use rating vs 8.0 for Salesforce. In practice, that means even a lean marketing team can self-serve things that might otherwise demand a technical specialist.

HubSpot also bakes in a lot of features that would be add-ons elsewhere. For example, out-of-the-box, you get landing pages, blog, SEO tools, lead scoring, and account-based marketing features.

By contrast, Salesforce’s core marketing products often natively lack some of these capabilities. You might need extra tools or custom code. (Spoiler: one Salesforce comparison admits their Marketing Cloud Engagement “does not include landing pages, blogs, SEO tools, lead scoring, or account scoring” and that segmentation can require SQL, whereas HubSpot includes all of those with no coding.)

Salesforce Marketing Solutions (Pardot & Marketing Cloud): Salesforce’s marketing offering isn’t a single product but a collection. The two names you’ll hear most are Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) and Marketing Cloud Engagement (often just called Marketing Cloud, from Salesforce’s ExactTarget acquisition).

In simple terms, Pardot was Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation tool (focused on email nurturing, forms, landing pages, lead scoring/grading), while Marketing Cloud is a broad B2C/B2B tool for multi-channel campaigns (email, SMS, ads, etc.).

Many B2B SaaS companies using Salesforce CRM have historically chosen Pardot or Adobe Marketo for marketing automation. Marketo is a separate product (now owned by Adobe) that integrates with Salesforce CRM; another popular “best-of-breed” combo is Salesforce + Marketo.

So,  how do these compare to HubSpot?

Pardot vs HubSpot: Pardot can be powerful in the hands of an experienced admin;  it offers robust lead scoring & grading, and tight integration to Salesforce Sales Cloud. However, users often find Pardot’s interface dated and its learning curve steep. As a Salesforce-owned product, it requires that you integrate and maintain sync between two databases (Pardot and the CRM),  something HubSpot users never worry about since marketing and CRM are one system.

In fact, running campaigns in Salesforce’s ecosystem can feel fragmented: one analysis noted Pardot campaigns are distinct from Salesforce campaigns and need “Connected Campaigns” to align, whereas HubSpot offers a single integrated campaigns tool for marketing and sales.

Moreover, reporting in Pardot is often cited as limited out-of-the-box, pushing many teams to export data or use Salesforce’s B2B Marketing Analytics add-on to get insight. HubSpot, conversely, includes intuitive campaign analytics and attribution reporting without needing a data scientist on call.

Marketo vs HubSpot: Marketo is a heavyweight capable of extremely advanced automation flows and customisation. Large enterprises have used it alongside Salesforce for years. However, it shares the same challenges: it’s complex, usually requires a dedicated admin (or an entire ops team) to manage, and isn’t cheap. Routine tasks like building emails or pages often require more technical skill in Marketo than in HubSpot.

As one marketing leader put it after experiencing a Salesforce+Marketo stack: “Building landing pages was more technical in Salesforce than we imagined and beyond my team’s capability… We needed a developer to hard-code them. HubSpot removed that barrier for our smaller teams without technical expertise”. This highlights how HubSpot empowers non-technical marketers to do things in-house that often required coding on the Salesforce/Marketo side.

Campaign Channels & ABM: HubSpot Marketing Hub supports a wide range of channels natively,  you can manage your blog and content offers, schedule social media, track ad campaigns (Google, LinkedIn, Facebook), and send marketing emails all from one interface.

Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Engagement, as HubSpot points out, is primarily focused on messaging (email/SMS) and “does not include marketing channels like social or ads” by default.

That means with Salesforce, you might juggle separate tools for social publishing or rely on third-party integrations for ads and web content, whereas HubSpot has those baked in.

When it comes to Account-Based Marketing (ABM), a big priority for many B2B SaaS teams, HubSpot has made this a selling point. It offers account-level targeting, company scoring, and ABM dashboards natively.

Pardot and Salesforce can certainly do ABM, but it might require more manual setup (like creating account tier fields, custom reports, or using Salesforce’s Engagement History dashboards). In fact, Salesforce’s standard offerings lack built-in ABM tools like account scoring without custom work. HubSpot delivers a ready-to-go ABM toolkit (you can literally flip a switch to designate “target accounts” and start tracking account engagement in HubSpot).

Ease of Use and Agility: A direct quote from a university marketing director who switched from Salesforce to HubSpot: “Salesforce was clunky and inefficient. We couldn’t automate it the way we wanted, which limited what we could do… HubSpot automation frees up our time to do other important things, like strategy, outreach, and events.”

This sums up a common sentiment: Salesforce’s marketing tools can achieve almost anything given enough time and resources, but HubSpot helps you achieve a lot, fast.

If you’re a high-growth company, speed and agility in marketing execution are huge; being able to launch campaigns quickly without waiting on technical support can be a game-changer.

In one statistic, after 6 months on HubSpot, customers saw a 107% increase in inbound leads on average (likely attributed to how quickly they can get campaigns running).

To be fair, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (especially with all its add-ons) can be extremely powerful for complex segmentation and personalised messaging on a massive scale, and it is used by many large enterprises successfully. But for most B2B SaaS GTM teams, those advanced edge cases might not outweigh the day-to-day productivity benefits of HubSpot.

HubSpot’s marketing platform is laser-focused on empowering the marketing team to execute independently and iterate often. Because it’s unified with the CRM, the feedback loop to Sales is instantaneous;  every email open, content download, or ad click is visible to the reps in real time.

Marketing Verdict: HubSpot offers a more cohesive and marketer-friendly experience, covering everything from attracting traffic (SEO/blog) to nurturing leads, with minimal need for IT support.

Salesforce’s approach (whether via Pardot or Marketing Cloud) can meet the needs of enterprise marketing departments, but at the cost of higher complexity and often slower adaptability.

For a high-growth SaaS, where marketing agility and tight alignment with sales are critical, HubSpot’s marketing hub often delivers more bang for the buck.

It’s telling that HubSpot was named the #1 Marketing Software for enterprise, mid-market, and SMB on G2 in 2024, showing that even larger companies are finding value in its approach.

Sales: HubSpot CRM vs Salesforce Sales Cloud for GTM Teams

Turning to the Sales side of the house,this is where Salesforce built its legacy, and where HubSpot, in recent years, has made huge strides. As a CRO or Head of Sales, you care about having a CRM that your team actually uses, clear pipeline visibility, efficient workflows, and maybe a bit of AI magic to prioritise deals. How do HubSpot’s Sales Hub (CRM) and Salesforce’s Sales Cloud compare for a high-growth B2B sales team?

Salesforce Sales Cloud (CRM): Salesforce is often considered the “gold standard” CRM, especially in the enterprise. It offers a rich set of features for sales force automation: accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes and product catalogues, forecasting, territory management, partner management, you name it.

One of Salesforce’s greatest strengths is its customisability. You can create custom objects, tailor page layouts, build custom process automation (with Flow or Apex code), and essentially model any sales process you can dream up.

Large sales organisations value this because they can enforce complex processes or data models (for example, modelling a multi-tier channel sales structure or intricate approval workflows).

Additionally, Salesforce has an enormous ecosystem (the AppExchange) with thousands of apps/plugins, and it integrates with just about everything. Features like Einstein AI offer advanced forecasting, scoring, and even automated insights (if you’re on the higher-tier plans or add-ons).

However, all that power has a flipside: complexity.

The joke in the industry is that “Salesforce is a CRM you need a team to manage.” Data from G2 and others consistently show Salesforce scoring a bit lower on ease of use (8.0/10) and ease of setup compared to HubSpot. It’s not that Salesforce’s UI is bad the Lightning interface is relatively modern, it’s that the system itself demands more administrative overhead.

Customising Salesforce is a project (often a never-ending one). For a high-growth scale-up, this can be a drag: you might not have full-time admins available, and every tweak or new sales playbook could mean additional configuration and testing.

HubSpot CRM / Sales Hub: HubSpot’s CRM is younger but highly formidable, especially for small and mid-size sales teams. It started as a free CRM to complement the marketing tool, but today HubSpot Sales Hub (the paid tiers) include advanced features like CPQ (configure-price-quote) tools, e-signatures, sales sequences (automated outreach cadences similar to Salesloft or Outreach), a phone dialer, playbooks, AI-driven contact scoring, and more.

The big selling point for HubSpot in sales is usability and adoption. Salespeople often resist updating CRMs that feel like “data entry for someone else’s benefit.” HubSpot’s interface tends to win them over. It's clean, fast, and closely integrated with their email (Gmail/Outlook plugins) and calendar. Reps can track emails, log calls, and set follow-up tasks, all with minimal friction.

One metric to highlight: According to G2 reviews aggregated by Monday.com, HubSpot edged Salesforce in Quality of Support (8.6 vs 8.0) and overall user ratings (HubSpot CRM 4.4/5 vs Salesforce 4.3/5). This suggests that not only do users find it a tad easier, but they feel better taken care of when issues arise.

Indeed, one CMO quipped that getting Salesforce support on the line was “almost impossible… Without HubSpot, we’d be back in the Dark Ages” in terms of team efficiency, a hyperbolic but telling testimonial.

From a functionality standpoint, what can HubSpot Sales Hub do versus Salesforce? For core CRM functions (managing contacts, companies/accounts, deals/opportunities, tasks, basic reports), both have it covered. Salesforce, being older, has more mature capabilities in certain areas, like:

• Territory Management: Assigning leads/accounts by complex rules,  possible in HubSpot Enterprise via custom properties and workflows, but Salesforce has a dedicated module for it.

• Large Team Coordination: Salesforce has features like account teams, dynamic sales performance dashboards, and very granular permission controls (helpful if you have thousands of users with different roles). HubSpot has role-based access and now granular permissions too, but Salesforce is battle-tested for huge orgs.

• Customisation/Automation: Both have automation engines (HubSpot’s workflows vs Salesforce’s Flow/Process Builder/Apex). HubSpot’s is more user-friendly; Salesforce’s is more powerful (you can code practically anything). If your sales process is straightforward, HubSpot shines. If it’s highly specialised, Salesforce might be more adaptable.

• Analytics & Forecasting: Salesforce’s reporting can get extremely detailed (especially with its Einstein Analytics/Tableau CRM). HubSpot’s reporting has improved a lot. You can build custom reports and dashboards, but very complex KPI tracking might still be easier with Salesforce if you invest in their analytics add-ons. Notably, standard Salesforce reports often require admin know-how to build, whereas HubSpot reports are designed for end-users to drag-and-drop fields.

Sales-Marketing Alignment: A key GTM consideration is how well the sales CRM connects back to marketing. Here, HubSpot has an inherent advantage: it’s literally the same system for both. Reps can see exactly what emails a lead opened, what webpages they visited, and any marketing notes, all on the contact record. No connectors, no delays. If Marketing marks someone as an MQL, Sales sees it instantly.

In a Salesforce setup, if you’re using Pardot or Marketo, there’s typically a sync (which might run every few minutes) and sometimes fields don’t match perfectly. It’s workable, but not seamless. HubSpot’s one-database approach means less leakage between marketing and sales.

An anecdote from a sales leader after switching to HubSpot: “Our entire team can get the information they need for each customer. It’s increased communication, nimbleness and flexibility”. That speaks to having all interactions in one place, enabling quicker responses and better personalisation during sales calls.

Pipeline and ABM: For account-based strategies, salespeople in HubSpot can easily identify “Target Accounts” (as flagged by marketing or sales) and view company-level data and buying committee contacts in one view. Salesforce, again, can do this, but, you might need to manually configure account tags or use their ABM AppExchange packages.

In terms of pipeline management, both HubSpot and Salesforce let you customise deal stages and track pipeline value, win rates, etc.

Salesforce’s forecasting module is more advanced out-of-the-box (especially for large org roll-ups).

HubSpot offers forecasting tools in Sales Hub Enterprise that cover the basics well for small-to-mid teams.

The practical difference is often user adoption: a fancy forecast report means nothing if reps aren’t diligently updating deal stages. If HubSpot’s ease encourages reps to update their deals more regularly, you might actually get more reliable pipeline data versus a partially-used Salesforce.

Sales AI and Productivity: Both platforms are infusing AI. Salesforce’s Einstein can auto-score leads, suggest next steps, and even automate data entry (like contact roles) if configured. HubSpot has been rolling out AI as well (e.g., an AI-powered predictive lead scoring model is included in Enterprise, and AI email drafting tools).

Neither has a clear edge here for a mid-market use case, the difference is more in accessibility. Salesforce’s AI might require a higher tier or admin tuning; HubSpot’s is on by default in some cases with a simple interface (again, power vs simplicity theme).

User Feedback: It’s worth noting that many scale-ups start with HubSpot (for both marketing and sales) and eventually consider “graduating” to Salesforce as they grow, under the impression that Salesforce is the only way to handle enterprise scale. This narrative is changing.

HubSpot Enterprise has introduced features like custom objects, allowing businesses to store additional data types (similar to Salesforce’s custom objects) and increased limits on records, etc. In 2020, HubSpot might have seemed unproven for, say, a 500-person sales team, but by 2025 we have examples of larger organisations successfully staying on HubSpot.

The platform is scalable, as one industry expert noted, “Salesforce is scalable, HubSpot is scalable, unless you make it unscalable”, underscoring that good data governance is the real key.

In short, the old assumption that “serious companies use Salesforce” is fading; now it’s about which tool fits your go-to-market motion best.

Sales Verdict: Salesforce Sales Cloud is the Swiss Army knife with a blade for every possible need, revered by ops teams and often mandated by enterprises.

HubSpot Sales Hub is the sleek multitool that covers 95% of what most B2B sales teams need, and crucially, is the one reps love using.

For a high-growth company, the benefit of a CRM that your salespeople embrace (meaning cleaner data, better CRM hygiene, and more accurate forecasts) cannot be overstated.

Unless you have truly unique sales process requirements or an existing Salesforce-heavy infrastructure, HubSpot’s sales CRM can likely handle your needs with far less fuss.

And if you do have those unique needs, ask if they’re really needed or just nice-to-haves, agility and adoption often trump hyper-specific customisation in fast-paced environments.

Customer Success: HubSpot Service Hub vs Salesforce for Post-Sale Service

Your customer-facing efforts don’t end at closing the deal, in SaaS, that’s often when the real work begins. Customer Success (CS) and support teams need tools to onboard customers, answer their questions, track product usage and health, and drive renewals and expansions.

How do HubSpot and Salesforce support the Customer Success/Service side of the go-to-market engine?

HubSpot Service Hub: HubSpot’s Service Hub is the newest of the trio (Marketing, Sales, Service), but it’s grown quickly. It provides a help desk for managing support tickets, a knowledge base for self-service articles, customer feedback surveys (NPS, CSAT, CES), and tools like a shared inbox and chat for customer communication.

Because it sits on the same CRM, every support ticket or customer interaction is linked to the contact and company records that sales and marketing use.

This means a Customer Success Manager (CSM) can pull up an account in HubSpot and see the entire journey: marketing emails they engaged with, the deal details from the sale, and all support tickets or feedback submitted post-sale.

That 360° view is powerful for driving retention. The CSM will know if the customer had a bunch of issues early on or if they’re a power user who’s clicking every marketing webinar invite.

Service Hub is designed with the same philosophy as the rest of HubSpot: make it easy to use and all-in-one. Setting up a knowledge base or automated ticket workflows can be done without writing code. The interface for support agents is straightforward.

For a SaaS company, Service Hub can cover typical needs like logging support issues, assigning tickets, sending customers status updates, and escalating when needed.

It’s not a full-blown IT service management tool (and it doesn’t try to be), but it hits the sweet spot for many customer success and support teams in the mid-market. And because it’s integrated, salespeople can even use this info, e.g., a salesperson preparing a renewal can see all the tickets and survey responses to inform their approach.

Salesforce Service Cloud (and others): Salesforce’s answer for post-sale is Service Cloud, which is one of its core offerings (alongside Sales Cloud). Service Cloud is extremely feature-rich and is used by large call centres and support teams globally. It has case management, omni-channel routing (phone, email, chat, social media cases), knowledge base, field service (for dispatching technicians, etc.), and can integrate with telephony systems.

For a Customer Success context (as opposed to high-volume customer support), Salesforce can be configured to track customer health scores, renewals, and more, but often companies use specialised CS tools in addition.

For example, many enterprise SaaS teams use Gainsight integrated with Salesforce to manage customer success metrics (product usage, health scoring, playbooks for CSMs).

Gainsight is an additional platform that sits on top of Salesforce data. This highlights a pattern: Salesforce provides the base (cases, contacts, etc.), and you can layer on apps for specific CS workflows if needed.

If your support operation is complex, e.g., you have a support centre, with tiers of support reps, SLAs, and need things like case entitlement or a deeply customised support process, Salesforce Service Cloud is almost unparalleled.

But if your support is relatively straightforward (say, a small team handling tickets via email/chat and doing periodic check-ins with customers), Service Cloud might be overkill.

It’s also worth noting that Service Cloud, like Sales Cloud, requires careful setup. Without an admin, you might find it non-intuitive out of the box because it’s so flexible (it expects you to mould it to your needs).

Integration and Alignment: The biggest advantage of using either HubSpot Service Hub or Salesforce Service Cloud is if they connect back to the sales CRM.

In HubSpot’s case, it’s automatic support tickets are just another object in the CRM.

In Salesforce’s case, Service Cloud and Sales Cloud are part of the same platform, so an account’s cases are visible to the account manager (assuming permissions allow).

Both systems, therefore, can give a unified view within their own ecosystems. However, if a company chose, say, HubSpot for marketing/sales and a separate helpdesk like Zendesk for support, then you’d have to integrate those (which many do via API or third-party connectors).

Similarly, if using Salesforce for CRM but something like Zendesk or Freshdesk for support, integration is needed. The ideal is to reduce those silos, and both HubSpot and Salesforce offer solutions to keep service aligned. HubSpot’s approach is just more turnkey since it’s one portal for all.

Capabilities Comparison: Let’s list a few key needs of Customer Success/Support teams and see how each handles them:

• Ticket Management: HubSpot has a ticket pipeline (much like a deal pipeline) that can be customised (statuses like Open, In Progress, Closed, etc.). Salesforce has Cases with lifecycle statuses and more advanced automation (entitlements, escalation rules). Both can auto-create tickets from emails or forms. HubSpot’s ticketing will satisfy most standard support workflows; Salesforce can do more complex routing if needed.

• Knowledge Base: HubSpot Service Hub includes a Knowledge Base module where you can host help articles (and it’s tied to your website style). Salesforce offers Knowledge as an add-on to Service Cloud, which is quite robust (used by large enterprises for internal/external knowledge). For a lean team, HubSpot’s simpler KB might be easier to manage, whereas Salesforce Knowledge is part of their enterprise toolkit.

• Customer Feedback: HubSpot has built-in survey tools (NPS surveys you can send to customers and the scores log on their contact record, etc.). In Salesforce, you’d likely use a third-party survey tool or Salesforce’s own surveys (which are available but often not used as commonly as HubSpot’s among SMBs). HubSpot’s advantage is a quick feedback loop integrated with contact data.

• Automation & Playbooks: HubSpot can automate actions like sending an email when a ticket closes or creating a task for a CSM when NPS is a detractor. Salesforce can do all that too, again with more complexity if needed.

  HubSpot also recently introduced “playbooks” feature in Sales/Service, essentially scripted call guides or checklists for reps to follow during calls (similar to what a Gainsight might offer for success plans, albeit simpler).

  Salesforce likely requires an add-on or custom object to create structured playbooks for CSMs unless using a partner app.

• Product Integration: A big part of Customer Success is understanding product usage. Neither HubSpot nor basic Salesforce does product analytics out-of-the-box (that’s where specialised tools or custom integration come in).

  However, HubSpot’s Operations Hub can help by letting you sync product data into HubSpot custom objects or properties (e.g., feeding “last login date” or “usage tier” into the contact/company records). In Salesforce, you’d do similarly, create custom fields or objects to store usage data.

  Both can work; it depends on if your team is set up to push that data in.

Team Size Fit: For a smaller CS/support team (say <10 people), HubSpot Service Hub is very attractive because you likely don’t have a dedicated systems administrator for support software, you need something easy to set up and linked with the rest of your tools.

Many such teams use Zendesk as an alternative, but if you’re already on HubSpot for CRM, adding Service Hub consolidates vendors. For a larger support org (dozens or hundreds of agents, 24/7 support), Salesforce might be more appropriate as it can handle sophisticated needs and volume (and you’d have admin resources to configure it).

Customer Success Verdict: HubSpot Service Hub is an excellent choice for high-growth SaaS companies that want to keep their post-sale teams tightly aligned with sales and marketing. It provides the core capabilities to support and delight customers, packaged in the HubSpot way (user-friendly, integrated, and outcome-focused, less about fancy IT features, more about actually resolving customer issues quickly).

Salesforce’s service offerings are extremely powerful and proven in large-scale environments. If your goal is to build a massive, highly customised customer support operation, Salesforce is a solid foundation.

But if your aim is to enable a nimble customer success team that can ensure renewals and upsells without wrestling with complex software, HubSpot’s approach often wins. It brings that human, conversational touch (through easy chat, email integration, surveys) under the same roof as your sales/marketing data, which for many GTM leaders is key to creating a seamless customer journey.

HubSpot vs Salesforce – Side-by-Side Comparison Table

To recap the key differences across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success, here’s a comparison of HubSpot vs Salesforce from a GTM perspective:

Sources: Real-user feedback and product analysis from G2 and vendor resources.

FAQs: Choosing Between HubSpot and Salesforce for B2B SaaS

Is HubSpot really scalable for enterprise use?

Yes – HubSpot is scalable for many enterprise scenarios, although this is a common concern. In recent years, HubSpot has aggressively expanded its enterprise capabilities (e.g. support for custom objects, advanced permissions, account-based features, and higher volume limits).

It’s no longer just a SMB tool; in fact, HubSpot was rated the #1 marketing software by enterprise customers on G2 in 2024, indicating large organisations successfully use it. The key to scalability is less about the software and more about how you manage it. As one expert put it: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot are all scalable, “unless you make it unscalable” through poor data governance or design.

In other words, HubSpot can handle growth, but you should still invest in good processes (data hygiene, defined workflows, etc.) as you would with any CRM. There are Fortune 500 companies using HubSpot today, and HubSpot’s infrastructure runs on a modern cloud backend similar to Salesforce’s.

Unless you have extremely specialised enterprise requirements (and a massive ops team that’s idle, unlikely in a fast-growth SaaS!), HubSpot can scale with you. That said, Salesforce has a longer track record in very large, complex orgs, so extremely risk-averse enterprise IT might still be more comfortable with SFDC. But for high-growth companies that value agility, HubSpot’s scalability plus ease-of-use is a big win.

HubSpot vs Salesforce pricing – which is more cost effective?

Upfront costs: HubSpot offers a free CRM and relatively low starting costs for basic Sales and Marketing modules, which is great for smaller teams. As you layer on features/users at the Professional and Enterprise levels, HubSpot’s pricing can climb (often based on the number of contacts for Marketing Hub, and per-seat for Sales/Service Hubs).

Salesforce, by contrast, has no free tier. You’ll pay per user from the start, and its list price per user is often higher for similar functionality (e.g. Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise is ~$150/user/month vs HubSpot Sales Hub Enterprise at ~$120-$150/user/month).

However, Salesforce’s pricing is à la carte: you might need to buy Marketing Cloud/Pardot separately (Pardot starts around $1,250/month for 10k contacts) and Service Cloud separately, etc. This can make Salesforce’s total cost significantly higher if you need the full GTM suite.

On the flip side, Salesforce sometimes offers discounts for startups or bundled deals for multi-cloud purchases, and large enterprises can negotiate enterprise agreements.

Total cost of ownership: Here’s where things get interesting. With Salesforce, beyond subscription fees, you often need to budget for administration and development (maybe hiring a Salesforce admin or contracting a consultancy for implementation). There’s also costs for add-ons (e.g., if you want Salesforce CPQ for quoting, or Einstein AI features, those might be extra or only in top-tier plans).

HubSpot tends to be more transparent. You know what’s included in your tier, and there are fewer hidden add-ons (apart from buying more contacts or additional seats as you grow). You might not need a full-time HubSpot admin for quite a while, whereas many companies find a Salesforce admin indispensable early on.

That translates to real $$$ saved in headcount or consulting.

One study found HubSpot can be around 31% cheaper than an equivalent Salesforce setup over a 3-year period when considering software + admin costs (this will vary, of course, by what you use).

In summary, HubSpot is generally more cost-effective for small and mid-sized operations and offers a lot of value bundled together. Salesforce can become expensive as you bolt on the necessary components. But if you only need Salesforce’s core CRM and nothing else, and you already have the team to manage it, you might find the per-user cost justified for the depth it provides. Just be cautious: costs can snowball with Salesforce if your needs expand.

Do large enterprises use HubSpot, or is Salesforce better for big companies?

Large enterprises use both. Salesforce undeniably has a huge enterprise customer base (it’s common to find Salesforce in Fortune 500 companies across many industries, as it was designed with enterprise sales in mind).

HubSpot historically focused on SMBs and mid-market, but in the last 3-4 years it has moved upmarket and landed quite a few enterprise clients (examples include Trello/Atlassian, VMware’s division, and even higher-ed institutions like the University of San Diego have switched to HubSpot).

The lines have blurred: Salesforce has been pushing down-market with essentials and small biz packages, while HubSpot has been pushing up-market with enterprise features and larger implementations.

So, Salesforce isn’t “better” simply because a company is big, it really depends on that company’s needs.

A tech-forward enterprise that values ease of use might go with HubSpot to avoid the bloat of legacy systems. A traditionally run enterprise with a massive IT department might lean Salesforce because they have resources to customise it deeply (and perhaps existing investments in the Salesforce ecosystem).

One might argue Salesforce currently still holds an edge in scenarios with thousands of users or extremely complex organisational structures. But we’re now seeing companies with hundreds of sales users and millions of contacts using HubSpot Enterprise successfully.

If anything, enterprises are starting to evaluate HubSpot as a viable alternative when undergoing digital transformation. The key is to map your requirements: are they truly enterprise-complex, or can they be met by HubSpot’s simpler paradigm?

For example, if an enterprise needs 10 different business units with Chinese walls between data, Salesforce’s multi-org or partitioning might handle that. HubSpot introduced their business units feature for similar needs, but it’s newer.

If an enterprise has a huge legacy of Apex code and customisations, migrating to HubSpot could be challenging. But a high-growth modern enterprise that doesn’t want to carry that technical debt might choose HubSpot to streamline operations.

We’re at a point where both platforms can serve large enterprises, so it comes down to philosophy: one CIO might prefer the “no-code, user-first” approach (HubSpot) while another prefers the “fully tailor to our existing processes” approach (Salesforce).

Can HubSpot and Salesforce integrate? What if we want to use both?

Yes, HubSpot and Salesforce can integrate with each other. In fact, HubSpot provides a native Salesforce integration (HubSpot’s roots in marketing automation mean they long ago built connectors to push leads into Salesforce).

If you truly wanted, you could use HubSpot Marketing Hub and Salesforce CRM together: marketing activities in HubSpot sync over to Salesforce leads/contacts, and sales updates in Salesforce sync back to HubSpot.

Many companies have done this, especially those who adopted HubSpot for marketing when their sales team was already committed to Salesforce. The integration is relatively solid for basic needs (it can sync contacts, companies/accounts, deals/opportunities, and certain activities).

However, maintaining two systems as your source of truth can introduce complexity. There’s potential for sync errors, field mismatches, or timing issues (e.g., a rep updates something in Salesforce a moment after it synced from HubSpot, causing a conflict).

There’s also a duplication cost, you’re paying for two systems and maintaining both. For a short-term or transitional period, using both can be fine. For example, if you plan to migrate fully to HubSpot but need a phase where Salesforce still houses some data, integration eases the transition (or vice versa).

Some large orgs might also use HubSpot for a specific division and Salesforce for another, syncing data at a high level,  but that’s more of an exception than the rule.

Generally, if you can consolidate onto one platform, you should. If you’re evaluating which to go with long-term, it’s best to choose and migrate rather than run a perpetual HubSpot-Salesforce combo. Using them together can sometimes feel like driving two cars at once, possible, but not very efficient!

The integration is a safety net, though: it means choosing HubSpot for one part of your org doesn’t irreversibly lock you out of Salesforce, and vice versa. They can coexist during migrations or specific workflows (e.g., maybe you use HubSpot for marketing but have a team that insists on Salesforce for CRM; integration can keep them roughly aligned).

Just remember that any integration requires monitoring and tweaks over time.

Which is better for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) – HubSpot or Salesforce?

For ABM specifically (targeting a set of high-value accounts with personalised marketing & sales efforts), HubSpot has a very clear, out-of-the-box ABM solution that many GTM teams find handy.

HubSpot lets you designate “target accounts,” it automatically identifies buying committee roles (if contacts have titles indicating Decision Maker, etc.), and provides ABM dashboards showing account engagement.

You can run account-based campaigns in HubSpot by syncing target account lists to LinkedIn Ads, personalising site content for target accounts using HubSpot’s CMS, and triggering tasks for Sales when key accounts hit certain thresholds (e.g., multiple contacts from Acme Corp visiting your pricing page triggers an alert). Because HubSpot was built with the idea of marketing-sales alignment, ABM comes naturally, it’s basically an extension of inbound, just more targeted.

Salesforce absolutely can support ABM, but it often relies on your team to set it up or use additional tools. For instance, Salesforce’s Pardot has features like Account Grading and campaign segmentation, but you’d need to manually mirror what HubSpot does automatically.

Salesforce also integrates with leading ABM platforms like Demandbase, 6sense, or Terminus, which are powerful, but those are separate products that layer onto Salesforce to provide ABM-specific analytics and ad targeting. That means more investment and complexity.

If you implement Salesforce without those, you can still do ABM by creating account lists, using Salesforce reports to track engagement, etc., but it won’t feel as cohesive as HubSpot’s built-in approach.

One thing to consider: ABM success isn’t just about tools, it’s about execution across teams. So the simpler it is for your Marketing and Sales to coordinate, the better.

HubSpot’s advantage is giving both teams a shared window into account activity with minimal setup. A marketer on HubSpot can easily pull a list of target accounts that haven’t had any recent activity and spin up a campaign, and sales will immediately see the interactions from that campaign.

In Salesforce, a lot of that could be done, but probably by a RevOps person building custom reports or dashboards for the sales team, or using the aforementioned ABM add-ons.

In summary, HubSpot is often the faster path to ABM for high-growth companies. It’s ready to go for account-based strategies and will help enforce consistency. Salesforce can be just as effective for ABM if you invest in configuring it or integrating best-in-class ABM tools, which some larger enterprises do.

If you already have something like 6sense or Demandbase feeding your account insights, Salesforce will ingest those just fine. But if you’re starting fresh with ABM and want native capabilities, HubSpot gives you a running start.

We have a small team now, but plan to grow fast. Should we start with HubSpot or Salesforce?

For most small teams with big growth plans, starting with HubSpot is often the better choice and then reassessing down the line if you truly need to switch.

Here’s why: HubSpot will allow your team (whether it’s 5 people or 50) to get up and running quickly, with less technical overhead. You can focus on building your pipeline and refining your go-to-market messaging, not on hiring admins or consultants to implement a complex CRM.

HubSpot scales gradually. You can begin with free or Starter tiers and upgrade as you add more contacts or require more sophistication. By the time you’re at a scale where you might consider Salesforce (say, hundreds of employees, very specialised processes), HubSpot will likely have scaled with you through its Professional and Enterprise editions.

There used to be a notion of “graduating to Salesforce” once you hit a certain size, but that threshold has shifted upward. Many companies delay that switch or never make it, because HubSpot keeps adding functionality to serve larger teams.

Unless you have a compelling reason that today Salesforce is required (e.g., an investor or partner mandates it, or you absolutely must use an industry-specific Salesforce app), HubSpot will be less of a burden on a small-but-growing team.

It’s easier to train new hires on (important when you’re hiring fast), and typically you’ll have fewer “uh oh, the CRM is broken” moments that need firefighting.

Additionally, migrating from HubSpot to Salesforce later is quite feasible if needed, data can be exported/imported or synced. So you’re not painting yourself into a corner by starting on HubSpot.

Think of it this way: it’s easier to go from a nimble setup to a complex one when you have more resources, than to start complex while you’re resource-constrained and try to simplify later.

Many high-growth companies find that by the time they’re “big,” HubSpot has already done everything they need, so they stick with it and avoid a migration entirely. And if growth is so explosive that Salesforce becomes appealing, that success likely brings the budget and team to implement it properly at that time.

What about other CRM platforms – is there a reason to choose neither HubSpot nor Salesforce?

While HubSpot and Salesforce are two of the most popular choices (especially in B2B SaaS), there are indeed other platforms out there. Some notable ones:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365: Popular in certain enterprise segments (often where Microsoft products are standard). It’s an enterprise CRM like Salesforce, though with a different ecosystem. Companies might consider it if they have heavy Microsoft integration needs.

• Pipedrive, Copper, Zoho CRM: These are examples of CRMs that smaller businesses use. They tend to be more lightweight. Pipedrive is very sales-focused (pipeline kanban style), Copper is tightly integrated with Google Workspace, and Zoho offers a budget-friendly suite. However, none of these have the broad GTM capabilities across marketing/sales/service that HubSpot and Salesforce do so you’d likely outgrow them or need to add separate tools for marketing automation, etc.

• Oracle CX, SAP CRM: These are more for very large enterprises or specific industries (Oracle and SAP CRMs are often found in huge corporations or those already using those vendors for ERP). They would rarely be a fit for a high-growth SaaS (they’re often even more complex and costly).

• Specialised Platforms: Sometimes a company might use a specialised solution like Gainsight for CS or Marketo for marketing alongside a CRM. But in terms of core CRM choice, HubSpot vs Salesforce covers the vast majority of what B2B SaaS companies consider.

In general, HubSpot and Salesforce have become the two poles of the market for good reason: they’re both excellent, supported by large communities, and constantly improving. Unless you have a niche requirement or a strong existing ecosystem tie (like being a Microsoft shop for everything), most GTM teams will get the best results by choosing one of these two.

Choosing “neither” usually means either going with a patchwork of smaller tools (which can hamper scaling) or choosing a legacy enterprise system (which can hamper agility). That said, every company is unique. The best approach is to clearly outline your requirements and maybe trial a couple of options.

But if you’re reading an article about HubSpot vs Salesforce, chances are these two are already on your shortlist and the others have fallen off, which, is telling in itself.

Conclusion: Future-Proofing Your GTM (Why HubSpot Often Wins for High-Growth SaaS)

In the battle of HubSpot vs Salesforce for go-to-market supremacy, there’s no denying that both are extremely capable platforms.

Salesforce brings raw power, an immense feature set, and a legacy of enterprise trust.

HubSpot brings agility, a unified user experience, and a philosophy of making GTM tools accessible and effective for the whole team.

For high-growth B2B SaaS companies where speed, alignment, and adaptability are mission-critical, HubSpot’s DNA often aligns better with your needs. It’s direct, outcome-focused, and frankly, it’s fun to use. When was the last time a sales rep said that about their CRM?.

This isn’t to say HubSpot is “better” in an absolute sense, but it might be better for you, given the pace and pressures of scaling a SaaS business.

It removes friction between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success by uniting them on one platform, which means fewer dropped balls and more cohesive customer journeys.

Meanwhile, it frees your ops and IT folks from playing system integrator all day, so they can work on strategic improvements (or you can operate without a heavy ops headcount early on).

Salesforce, on the other hand, might be the right choice if you know you need that extreme flexibility or if you’re operating in an enterprise context that demands certain Salesforce-only integrations. It remains a fantastic platform for those who leverage its strengths, and it’s tried-and-true.

Just remember the famous adage, “Nobody gets fired for buying Salesforce.” It humorously highlights Salesforce’s dominance, but the unstated follow-up is, “…yet those who chose HubSpot might end up looking like geniuses when their growth charts shoot up.” 

As GTM leaders, our ultimate goal is to drive revenue and customer satisfaction. The tech is a means to that end. Choose the platform that lets your team execute your strategy with the least resistance.

In 2025 and beyond, many fast-growing SaaS teams find that HubSpot’s lean-in approach to inbound, ABM, and customer-centric growth gives them that edge. It’s built to help you attract, engage, and delight (in HubSpot’s own mantra) without getting mired in complexity.

So, if you’re ready to future-proof your ABM and go-to-market engine with a platform that scales with you (and maybe crack a smile from your VP of Sales when they open the dashboard), HubSpot deserves serious consideration. Salesforce will always be there if you need it but you might be surprised how far you can go with HubSpot as your growth catalyst.

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