CRMs are the need of the day. Whether you are a multi-billion dollar movie studio that caters to hundreds of millions of people scattered all across the world or a small-scale boutique that pretty almost exclusively caters to its town’s local population, you are likely to benefit greatly by utilizing the services of an efficient CRM.
But you probably already know that.
So, let’s skip ahead and talk directly about two CRMs – HubSpot and Zendesk – to see which of these two is better suited for your small business. In this blog post, we will first take a detailed look at HubSpot and then Zendesk to assess their respective strengths and shortcomings. Then, in the second half, we will compare and contrast both these CRMs to determine which of the two CRMs makes the most sense for you to pay for to manage the accounts of your small business.
Reviewing HubSpot CRM
If one were to condense HubSpot in the sweep of one wordy sentence, it would be as follows: HubSpot CRM assists sales and marketing teams to manage contacts, track customers’ transactions, see the sales pipeline in real-time, find high-quality leads to pursue and consequently develop, and also automate email marketing.
Yet what does any of it mean and, more importantly, what are the specifics behind HubSpot? Let’s have a look.
Read more: Reasons Why Businesses Need Subscription Management with HubSpot
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HubSpot’s Free Plan
As per Forbes.com, HubSpot Service Hub offers three plans in total—free, professional, and enterprise. The free one, despite not costing its user a single cent, still offers a range of features – a maximum calling time of 15 minutes, maximum notifications of 200, and the allowance of one booking page that is only integrable with either Google or Outlook – that make it a compelling offer.
While these features are no doubt decent enough for a business that is still either testing out its usage of CRMs or is deciding whether to shift to the two premium versions of HubSpot, these are not nearly enough for any business in the long run. Therefore, use HubSpot’s free plan only if you are new to the world of CRMs and are simply experimenting, or if you are testing out HubSpot and, if impressed, then plan immediately on shifting to either of the paid plans.
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HubSpot’s Professional Plan
HubSpot’s professional plan obviously costs more, yet it also gives you a lot of features that are as follows: 16 hours of calling time per user per month, up to 15 deal pipelines, and up to 300 automated workflows. HubSpot CRM also lets you analyze your business’ sales through its smart notifications feature. This can be tremendously beneficial for small businesses that are especially ripe for growth since it firstly allows for ways in which you can spearhead your business’s growth and then allows for ways in which you can continue to moderate that growth to sustain it.
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HubSpot’s Enterprise Plan
There is not as much of a difference between HubSpot Service Hub’s Enterprise and Professional plans. Even so, the most important differences must be discussed: it allows you to record your calls and even automatically transcribes them for you, which is a great feature for your sales department which is responsible for listening to customers’ queries about your product/services. For most businesses, however, it might not make as much sense to shell out the extra cash for the Enterprise plan since it does not offer as many solid updates from the Professional one.
Reviewing Zendesk Support Suite
Barring the usual features that are common amongst all of Zendesk’s major competitors (such as HubSpot), a few crucial important benefits that Zendesk Support Suite offers is that of an efficient and highly developed communications channel. Zendesk offers you the option of communicating with your customers through a host of different social media applications like WhatsApp and even Facebook, and, as the cherry on top, keeps tabs on all these conversations in a single outlet that is integrated into Zendesk Support. This does two things: firstly, it provides maximum ease of communication to your customers, but it also makes it easier for your sales agents to keep track of all your customer’s calls and queries.
Read more: Maximize Revenue and Customer Lifetime Value with Zendesk
HubSpot vs Zendesk: The Final Verdict
Ultimately, however, it is quite clear that for most small businesses – especially those who have potential or plans of expanding in the future, it might be a better investment to keep on HubSpot from the start. Yes, one reason behind that is that HubSpot does not make it as easy for customers to leave its service as compared to Zendesk, but if you are using HubSpot from the start, then that should not be an issue for you.
Another reason why it makes sense for you to use HubSpot over Zendesk is owing to the latter’s larger suite of features that make it equipped to not just handle businesses that grow in size, but also cater to a diversity of businesses that make it more suited to subscription-management than Zendesk.
The biggest reason behind these obvious differences that make HubSpot the better option is that HubSpot has been in the market for longer and thus has had time to develop a larger user base. This, in return, has expanded its revenue which has allowed it to add more and more features to its kitty and elevate its product even further. Zendesk is still getting to that point, which is why, if HubSpot’s slightly larger charge rate is not a deal breaker for you, then you should definitely make the leap of using HubSpot over Zendesk.
Where HubSpot’s Professional Suite costs $99, Zendesk’s Support Suite costs $79 for more or less the same features except a few crucial ones that, if one thinks about it, make all the difference. It will most likely not be worth it for you to save those $20 per user to use software that is not (yet) as fully developed to not just manage your business’ subscriptions but also spur it towards more growth in the future.
