HubSpot vs Zoho CRM:
A Comparison

A crucial requirement for any CRM is that it makes your sales reps’ lives easier. An easy-to-use interface and automation of routine tasks helps them focus better and improve their productivity. Both Zoho and HubSpot provide basic modules for sales reps to manage their contacts, accounts, deals, and sales activities. Zoho offers a much wider range of features to work with CRM records and automate complex tasks.

• Unlock advanced features like multiple pipelines, currencies, and lead scoring.
• Workflows limited to Professional edition and above, with restricted notification options.

• Access versatile workflows from the free edition.
• Leverage workflows, macros, and custom functions for comprehensive automation.
• Achieve in-depth sales forecasting with role or territory hierarchies.

Everything in your organization follows a process—whether it’s how to handle a new lead, close a deal, or escalate a customer issue. Standardization is the key to efficiency in getting things done. Your CRM should help you build and enforce all your processes. You should be able to build in rules to automate certain processes or ensure employees do the right thing at the right time. Zoho allows you to standardize numerous aspects of your processes, as well as add a personal touch to your customers’ journeys. HubSpot also provides a set of process management features, but they are narrower in scope. For example, Zoho allows you to build and enforce various kinds of processes, but HubSpot limits this capability to your sales pipeline stages and only allows you to automate certain actions and tasks at each stage.

• Constrained by quote-based approval and limited escalation rules.
• Lacks custom validation logic.

• Establish process blueprints for standardization.
• Enable personalized customer journeys through journey orchestration.
• Incorporate multiple page layouts for diverse sales processes.

Building standard processes into your CRM is great, but being able to set it up as per your custom business requirements takes it to the next level. Every business has a unique way of operating and their CRM needs to reflect that. Whether it is the way the product looks or the types of modules and fields available, the CRM should fit the organization’s structure and not the other way around. Zoho provides immense flexibility in how you structure your CRM. HubSpot does provide some options for customization, but most are only available for the higher paid editions.

• Limited interface customization options.
• Enterprise license required for custom modules.

• Enjoy custom record views, functionality, and a sandbox for risk-free testing.
• Tailor your CRM to meet unique business requirements.

Where your sales are, numbers and measurement can’t be far behind. Understanding how your business is performing and where improvements can be made are key inputs any CRM should give you. While both Zoho and HubSpot offer a wide range of standard reports, the complexity of analytics offered by Zoho keeps it a step ahead.

• Access custom reports in the Professional edition.
• Limited report types, with no mobile analytics.

• Unlock a wide array of report types for all paid editions.
• Leverage intelligent anomaly detection for valuable data insights.

Artificial intelligence transforms your CRM from a mass of data to a gold mine of insights and predictions. An AI can perform deep analyses on the data in your CRM, learn from it, spot anomalies and trends, and even give you predictions and suggestions of how to improve your business. Zia, Zoho’s sophisticated AI assistant, has a range of features to help you understand your customers and their preferences better. HubSpot provides a handful of AI features, but they are not as sophisticated.

• Basic AI features, including company insights and call transcriptions.

• Harness advanced AI with a voice assistant, predictions, image scanning, and AI-powered email enhancements.

Zoho offers software solutions specifically dedicated to marketing automation, but that doesn’t stop us from including marketing features built into Zoho CRM as well. HubSpot keeps its sales and marketing hubs separate. While we agree that HubSpot Marketing Hub’s feature set is much broader, Zoho CRM still has its fair share of features to amp up your lead generation and nurturing—including some which Marketing Hub, doesn’t offer. If you are already using Marketing Hub and are now looking for a CRM, you can easily import your leads right into Zoho with our free HubSpot extension.

• Utilize Marketing Hub with extensive features.

• Leverage RFM segmentation, social media lead enrichment, and marketing attribution seamlessly within CRM.

Whether working on a deal or handling a customer issue, everything in your organization is a team effort. If communication among team members is slow or delayed, it can impact your revenue or affect your customers’ perception of your brand. A CRM should facilitate meaningful interactions between its users, and aid the progress of any collaborative effort. Both Zoho and HubSpot allow users to tag team members in records and notes and coordinate calendar appointments. Zoho also provides exclusive team collaboration feeds. Another aspect of collaboration is the ability to connect with third-party stakeholders and allow them to access and modify the information that is relevant to them. This helps the data in your CRM stay up-to-date and relevant.

• Benefit from calendar integration and team communication tools.

• Establish portals for external collaboration, CalDAV sync, and feeds for enhanced team collaboration.

For organizations which deal with a wide variety of product lines, it can be complicated to track and manage deals for each product line. Building your product inventory into your CRM provides a standardized, efficient way to build quotes and create deals. This also helps you create better reports and analytics to analyze how your business is performing on a more granular level. HubSpot and Zoho both provide features to build a product library, customize prices for individual deals, and build sales quotes.

• Manage products and quotes efficiently with templates.

• Enhance inventory control with vendors, orders, invoices, and flexible discount options.

What use is a vast customer database if you can’t access it at anytime, from anywhere? When it comes to CRM data, you need to be able to access, edit, or add new information at a moment’s notice. This is especially true for sales reps, who are typically on the move, interact with scores of customers on a daily basis, and need to stay on top of their calendars. While HubSpot’s mobile app gives you access to all your important CRM records, Zoho goes a step ahead and incorporates AI and analytics in to the mobile experience.

• Access essential CRM features on the go.

• Unlock advanced features like voice notes, prospect location, AI assistant, and an analytics app for comprehensive mobile CRM experience.