The choice between HubSpot or Insightly shouldn’t be made lightly (I’ll see myself out).
Jokes aside—if you make the wrong decision, it could end up costing a ton of time and money trying to regroup.
I’m AJ—and I’ve been there. I’ve used almost every platform under the sun (while scaling my business over the last decade).
After a successful multiple seven-figure exit, I’ve made it my mission to help fellow entrepreneurs achieve financial freedom (without the same pitfalls).
The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the stakes are high, but there can be only one winner.
Here’s our HubSpot vs. Insightly winner-take-all showdown. Spoiler alert: the winner of this one dominated the competition.
HubSpot CRM has everything you need to help manage your business. Seriously, it’s got it all.
Insightly is all about scaling your business practices without breaking the bank!
My team and I tested both customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.
Pricing & Free VersionTop FeaturesCustomer ServiceIntegrationsEase of UseBest Mobile AppKnowledge and Learning CenterLimitationsWhich One We Think is Best for Small Businesses
How We Objectively Test Each Platform:
AJ’s got a knack for kick-starting businesses, putting them on autopilot, and setting them up for acquisition. Over the past decade, he’s been right in the thick of things with hundreds of small businesses, helping them with just about everything under the business sun. If you need advice on software suites and choices? AJ’s your guy.
We roll up our sleeves and dive into the top CRM features we think are pretty crucial for small businesses. Stuff like reports and analytics, options to customize your pipelines, and the ability to link up with other apps and services. We know what makes small businesses tick, so we know what features they need to get the job done.
Money matters, folks! When it comes to picking a CRM system, price is usually the deal-breaker. We give a big thumbs up if a provider charges $30 or less per user each month for their starter plan. Extra brownie points for throwing in a freebie plan or trial, options to scale up or down as needed, and the freedom to pay monthly or yearly. We’re looking for flexability for small businesses.
We all know support is mega important when you’re choosing a CRM platform. This is especially true for those smaller businesses or sales teams who can’t afford to have tech wizards on their payroll. We put our detective hats on to see if these companies offer round-the-clock support, and we looked at the different ways you can get help. We’re talking live chat (like, real-time convo), email tickets, a good old-fashioned phone call, and self-service tools (for the DIY-ers out there).
When you’re in the business of picking a CRM, integrations are like the secret sauce that takes your burger from ‘meh’ to ‘mind-blowing’. Imagine, all your favorite apps and tools, working together in perfect harmony, making your workflow smoother than a fresh tub of Nutella. When we review a CRM, we look at the integrations most SMB owners are looking for.
When you’re reviewing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, it’s essential to pay close attention to its ease of use. After all, a CRM is as beneficial as its usability. A simple, intuitive interface saves you and your team a great deal of time and headache. When we’re reviewing each CRM, this is a crucial aspect that we look for.
The importance of Mobile CRM cannot be overstated in today’s digital age. It’s essential for fostering strong customer relationships and managing business activities. Mobile access to CRM makes it possible for sales teams to update and access customer information in real time, improving efficiency and ensuring up-to-date data. Mobile CRM can have a massive impact on SMBs, so thoroughly testing it is essential for each one of our reviews.
Here’s the Insightly/HubSpot CRM comparison CliffNotes.
Finding the right CRM to fit your budget is key.
After all, if you’ve got a champagne taste on a beer budget, your expenses can quickly get out of hand.
Let’s see how both CRM platforms stack up in terms of cost.
Insightly offers three pricing plans, with a free plan available for up to 2 users.
The plans are as follows:
Free Forever – Up to 2 usersPlus – $29/MonthProfessional – $49/MonthEnterprise – $99/Month
HubSpot CRM offers a free plan in addition to three paid plans:
Free Plan – Free ForeverStarter CRM Suite – $30/MonthProfessional CRM Suite – $1,335/MonthEnterprise CRM Suite – $5,000/Month
AJ’s Take: This round goes to HubSpot CRM for its extremely robust free plan (for unlimited users). The CRM software offers sales, service, marketing, CMS, and operations free forever. Insightly offers a free plan (for up to 2 users), but it doesn’t even come close.
HubSpot and Insightly both offer some fantastic features for SMBs to take advantage of.
Let’s see which one comes out on top!
Let’s look at a few of our favorite features from HubSpot.
When I look for great pipeline management, I look for three things above all else.
These include:
Customizable sales pipelines Easy-to-use interfaceAffordable pricing
HubSpot Sales Hub excels in all three categories, making it one of the best tools in the game for managing your sales pipeline.
Let’s break it down.
My team and I tested this feature (over six months) by adding our affiliate marketing deals to HubSpot CRM.
We could fully customize our dashboard to fit our specific needs (which was awesome).
Here’s how it looked from our perspective.
Once everything was fully customized, we could easily add our deals with a click.
From there, we could track each deal across our pipeline at a glance.
Here’s our dashboard view (to give you some context).
We especially loved the drag-and-drop interface, which allowed our team to quickly move deals between stages as needed.
The bottom line: If you want to empower your sales team to succeed and close more deals, we recommend trying HubSpot!
Getting your entire team together for a meeting is a struggle, even for the best of us.
Imagine having a way to quickly get everyone on the same page (and in the same place) at a set time and place.
Well, you don’t have to imagine it with HubSpot’s intuitive meeting scheduling tool.
With HubSpot, you can easily accomplish the following:
Find the best meeting times for everyone (with the click of a button).Schedule meetings with internal and external teamsSchedule meetings by sharing a link or embedding the scheduler on your websiteSync your calendar to automatically update availability
We were able to handle our scheduling like a boss with HubSpot, setting up all kinds of meetings (with zero hiccups).
Here’s an example that we whipped up in under 5 minutes.
We sent the link and confirmed the time—the rest was history!
HubSpot took a frustrating time suck and streamlined it for us, earning major points in this category.
Managing your customer support tickets can be tricky.
As your business scales, so do your customer inquiries.
This could be a challenge for any SMB without the right tools in place.
Fortunately, HubSpot CRM offers an excellent ticketing feature that makes organizing and managing support requests a breeze.
With this feature, you can:
Collect tickets from various channels (email, chat, social media)Track and manage all of your tickets in one placeAssign tickets to specific team members Set auto-responses and custom ticket statuses
Here’s a quick look at our ticket dashboard during our six months of testing (to show you how awesome it looked).
We were impressed by how efficient and organized HubSpot’s ticket management was, allowing us to quickly resolve customer inquiries (without any confusion or overlap).
Plus, we could fully customize our ticket board (shown below).
This is perfect for niche SMBs with a specific communication process in place.
Our takeaway: Don’t let your customer tickets fall through the cracks as you grow your business. Let HubSpot do the heavy lifting while you nurture your relationships and focus on growth.
Don’t sleep on customer feedback surveys.
They’re a great way to gauge overall satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
Fortunately, HubSpot makes it easy to create and send custom surveys to your customers (without breaking a sweat).
We were able to create the following different types of surveys throughout our testing period:
Customer supportCustomer satisfactionCustomer loyaltyCustom surveys
Here’s a snapshot of how it looked from our perspective.
The whole creation process took less than 10 minutes to create a survey, saving us hours of time and effort trying to figure out customer preferences.
Our two cents: HubSpot made sure that we had everything we needed to build surveys that would give us actionable insights into how we could improve our customer relationships.
Connecting with your customers in real time is crucial for establishing and building relationships in today’s digital landscape.
With HubSpot’s live chat feature, you can chat with visitors on your website, answer their questions, and offer support on the spot.
Here are some of the most notable features of this tool:
Fully customizable chat widgetChatbot integration for automated responsesCanned responses for frequently asked questions We gave this feature a thorough test (over six months) by using it on our website to assist visitors with any questions they had about our products and services.
We could fully customize the chat widget’s look and feel, making it seamlessly blend in with our website design.
Here’s how it looked during the customization process.
Plus, the chatbot integration feature was a game-changer for quickly providing answers to common questions.
Our verdict: HubSpot’s live chat feature is a must-have for any SMB looking to improve their customer experience and boost conversions on their website.
In addition to being a powerful CRM, HubSpot also offers a variety of content management features (especially useful for small businesses looking to build their online presence).
These include the following:
Web page creationBlog creationAd managementLanding page design Web forms SEO optimization tools
We put these features to the test by creating various web pages, blog posts, and landing pages for Small Business Bonfire.
The fantastic themes and templates (shown below) made it easy for even non-tech-savvy team members to create professional and visually appealing content.
Most of these are available 100%, leaving no barrier to entry for startups and SMBs on a budget.
We especially loved the drag-and-drop editor, which allowed us to easily add the following to each page:
TextImagesVideoSocial linksButtons
Here’s how it looked (about halfway through our web page creation process).
Our final thoughts: HubSpot CRM can manage all your content creation needs, making it a one-stop shop for SMBs looking to boost their online presence and attract new customers.
Email marketing is a fantastic way to nurture leads, promote your products and services, and keep in touch with customers.
HubSpot’s email marketing capabilities(courtesy of HubSpot Marketing Hub) make it easy for SMBs to do the following:
Create and send personalized emailsSegment their audienceTrack the success of their campaigns
Let’s break it down.
For starters, HubSpot offers some gorgeous email templates to start with (pictured below).
These templates essentially allow beginners to create powerful email campaigns (with no coding knowledge).
Plus, the email editor makes personalization easy, with simple drag-and-drop features for adding dynamic content and custom fields.
Here’s our first draft of an email campaign to introduce our SBB newsletter.
HubSpot’s intuitive interface made us feel like tech wizards while we navigated the email creation and customization process.
Once we finished, we could send emails directly from HubSpot and track our campaign’s success using in-depth analytics.
The nuts and bolts: If you’re serious about scaling your marketing efforts, we recommend HubSpot for some serious return on investment (ROI).
If you’re not using automation, you’re going to have a hard time scaling your business.
Setting up automation can seem daunting and confusing, but HubSpot CRM makes it easy with its visual workflow builder.
You can automate everything from lead nurturing to internal communication (and everything in between).
Here’s a look at a simple automation my team and I created in minutes.
The purpose of the automation was simple—create a sequence to automatically capitalize the first letter of the first and last name of each of our contacts.
The whole process took less than 5 minutes and saved our team a ton of time in the process.
The best part: We could easily create and customize these workflows using HubSpot’s pre-made automation templates (shown below).
Within HubSpot, we were able to create the following types of marketing & sales automation:
Email campaignsLead generation & nurturingAutomating lead management featuresNotifications for better task managementSales follow-ups Grammar and spelling checks
These endless possibilities make the CRM platform a top choice for SMBs looking to streamline their processes and save precious time.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the top features offered by Insightly.
If you’re serious about scaling your business, you will need powerful tools to manage your sales process.
That’s where Insightly comes in to save the day!
The platform provides simple yet effective pipeline management, allowing a bird’s eye view of your pipelines at a glance.
To test this feature, we added some of our affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire.
Here’s how a new deal card looked (to give you a better idea).
With our deals in place, we could easily track them from our pipeline dashboard.
Here’s a quick look at our pipeline, offering a fantastic color-coded stage view.
Overall, if you’re looking to easily manage your pipelines, close more deals, and ramp up your sales process, Insightly is a safe bet.
Learning from your data is vital to understanding what works for your SMB (and what needs improvement).
Insightly offers various dashboards (with real-time data) that are endlessly customizable to fit your business’s unique needs.
Here’s a look at our primary dashboard, where we could get an overview of the following:
Deals won/lostWin rateTop sales repsSales funnelTotal sales
We loved the sheer amount of customizability and flexibility that Insightly’s dashboards offered.
With these real-time insights, we were able to make better decisions and drive our business forward.
If you’re still making gut decisions without consulting the numbers first, Insightly can add a ton of value to your operations.
If you’re still using spreadsheets and sticky notes to manage your contacts, it’s time for an upgrade.
Insightly offers powerful tools to make managing contacts a breeze.
We imported our existing B2B contacts into the platform with ease (using a CSV file), and we were able to quickly view the following:
Contact informationAll interactions with our teamAny upcoming tasks or appointments
The process took less than 5 minutes and essentially made switching our entire business over to Insightly a no-brainer.
Once everything was switched over, here’s how our contacts dashboard looked.
As you can see, everything is laid out in a way that’s easy to read and offers useful information at a glance.
Plus, we could add a picture to each contact, making it easier to put a face to the name during meetings or calls.
At the end of the day, managing your contacts with a centralized database is a must. Insightly provides a seamless solution for SMBs looking to streamline their operations and stay organized.
Insightly makes creating and sending powerful email campaigns from your CRM solution easy with just a few clicks!
The CRM software allows you to create email templates that can save your sales and marketing teams a lot of time.
Check out a template we created (during our six-month testing period) to roll out our newsletter.
Within each template, we could edit the following info:
Category SubjectEmail contentAttachments
These templates were great for freeing up our team to focus on what matters—closing deals and nurturing client relationships.
Here are some of the templates we created with Insightly.
With Insightly, you can easily see the following metrics for all your email campaigns:
Open ratesClick-through ratesBounce ratesEmails sent
Having all this data in one place helps your team make quick business decisions about what’s working (and what needs improvement).
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the repetitive tasks that come with running a business, Insightly’s automation capabilities might be the solution you need.
With Insightly, we could easily create powerful sales and marketing automation workflows that saved us countless work hours.
The possibilities are endless, from automating email responses to creating tasks and appointments.
We could customize each workflow according to our unique business needs and easily track their performance with real-time data.
Plus, Insightly’s automation tools are extremely user-friendly, meaning you don’t need any coding knowledge to get started.
Some types of automation we created (during our six-month testing period) included:
Notifications when a new deal was createdAssigning users automaticallyLead nurturing campaigns that we could schedule and send outFollow-up tasks for sales reps
Our takeaway: Insightly offers robust automation tools to save your SMB time and resources. With automation, you can work smarter, not harder, and scale your business to new heights.
Insightly really shines when it comes to project management features.
We were pretty impressed by the capabilities it offered, and it really took our project oversight to the next level.
We put in some Small Business Bonfire projects to track Insightly’s project management capabilities (over six months).
Here’s how our project dashboard looked.
Here’s a look at some of the highlights that we thought were awesome:
Ease of use: The platform is user-friendly, making it a breeze to dive in and start managing projects immediately. There’s no steep learning curve, meaning your team can hit the ground running immediately.Projects dashboard: We got an excellent overview of all our projects from the projects dashboard. This feature allowed us to quickly identify which projects needed more love. Talk about staying on top of things!Real-time collaboration: Insightly fosters a collaborative environment by allowing team members to update project status in real-time. This meant our team was always on the same page, maximizing productivity and ensuring no detail slipped through the cracks.
So, if your SMB is looking to enhance project management and foster team collaboration, Insightly definitely deserves a spot on your shortlist!
AJ’s Take: HubSpot ultimately wins this round despite Insightly’s fantastic features. HubSpot offers way more features across the board, including sales, marketing, and service tools that are 100% free.
After testing, we compiled a thorough list of our favorite CRMs for Small Businesses. Check it out now! The list might surprise you.
Great customer service allows your team to get the help they need when needed (without having to ask you).
So let’s look at how HubSpot CRM and Insightly compare when it comes to the following metrics:
Availability Knowledge baseTrainingResponsive support
Regarding customer service, HubSpot is a standout amongst the competition.
Let’s break it down:
Availability – HubSpot provides 24/7 email, phone, and live chat support. We used the live chat frequently, and HubSpot’s customer service team was always available.Knowledge base – HubSpot has an extensive knowledge base, with articles, tutorials, and videos to help guide you through the platform. We found this extremely useful when trying out new features.Training – HubSpot offers free training resources for all their tools. We particularly enjoyed their HubSpot Academy courses and webinars that helped us fully utilize their software.Responsive support – In our experience, HubSpot’s customer service team was always quick to respond and provide helpful solutions. We never had to wait longer than 5 minutes for a response.
Insightly delivers some good customer service, but comparing it to HubSpot is tough.
Let’s look at the following:
Availability – Insightly offers phone and ticket support through paid plans only. Unlike HubSpot, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to access support.Knowledge base – Insightly offers a great knowledge base with articles and tutorials.Training – Insightly offers great training resources, including webinars, videos, and a comprehensive help center.Responsive support – The longest we waited to hear back from Insightly was 3 hours. Compared to HubSpot’s 5 minutes, this wasn’t a fair fight.
AJ’s Take: HubSpot dominated this round with its always-available live chat, allowing customers to receive quick and efficient support at all times. Their extensive knowledge base and training resources make it easy for anyone to learn how to use their tools.
Let’s look at how Insightly does when it’s facing down HubSpot in terms of integrations.
Put simply, HubSpot is the king of integrations.
HubSpot offers over 300 native integrations with its app marketplace.
Some of my favorites include the following:
SlackMailChimpZapierAsanaTrelloDropboxGmail
Plus, HubSpot integrates with Zapier to provide thousands of additional third-party apps.
Essentially, if you need an integration with HubSpot, they’ve got you covered.
Insightly offers some great native integrations.
These include the following:
SlackGmailJiraMagentoAsana
Insightly provides many great options, including a Zapier integration worth checking out.
AJ’s Take: Insightly holds its own here (which is impressive) with many great native integrations worth considering. However, HubSpot offers just about any integration you could think of.
If your CRM is clunky and hard to use, your team won’t want to use it—plain and simple.
So, let’s examine this crucial factor and see which customer relationship management software wins out.
HubSpot offers a fantastic interface with helpful templates and videos to point you in the right direction.
It’s extremely beginner-friendly, with a drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easy to set up and customize the platform.
Plus, HubSpot offers many helpful resources in their knowledge base and HubSpot Academy courses to help you quickly get up to speed.
Insightly is incredibly easy to use. It has a sleek, no-nonsense interface that’s perfect for beginners.
We loved Insightly’s customizable dashboards, allowing us to see relevant information at a glance. Plus, their drag-and-drop functionality made customizing our workflows and processes simple.
AJ’s Take: Both Insightly and HubSpot CRM provide an intuitive interface that’s perfect for beginners to get started with CRM.
A great mobile app is essential to get work done on the go. Let’s take a deep dive into each platform’s mobile app feature to see which one is better!
HubSpot’s mobile app (available on iOS and Android) is perfect for SMBs that want to fit their entire CRM experience in their pocket.
HubSpot offers the following features with their app:
Activity trackingTicket managementEmail marketingContact managementDeal managementMeeting scheduling
It’s got a great user interface, making it easy to use on the go. And with push notifications, you’ll never miss an important task or update.
Insightly’s mobile app (also available on iOS and Android) is great for those who want a simple CRM experience while out of the office.
Here are some features offered by Insightly:
Contact managementPipeline managementProduct managementTask trackingEmail marketingLead management
What’s great about Insightly’s mobile app is that it has the same layout as the desktop version.
AJ’s Take: Both platforms offer a near-perfect representation of the desktop version with their mobile app. For that reason, this round is a stalemate.
With great self-service options, you can quickly get the answers you need without waiting for customer service.
Let’s look at how these two titans stack up in this category.
HubSpot CRM offers a fantastic knowledge base full of thorough articles and webinars covering almost any imaginable topic.
Plus, their Academy courses are a great way to learn more about the platform.
Insightly’s knowledge center is highly informative and covers all of the basics you need to know to get started with their CRM.
However, it doesn’t offer as much depth and detail as HubSpot’s knowledge base does ultimately.
AJ’s Take: While Insightly’s knowledge center is helpful, HubSpot offers more options and resources to help users learn about their tools. Plus, their Academy courses give a comprehensive look at the platform.
Even the best CRM has its flaws.
Let’s pull back the curtain on some limitations of both Insightly and HubSpot.
No platform is perfect, and that includes HubSpot.
Here are a few of HubSpot’s limitations:
Advanced plans are pricey: While HubSpot’s starter plans are relatively affordable, their advanced plans can get costly for SMBs. We’re talking up to $5,000/month. CMS Hub offers limited customization: This limitation isn’t a deal-breaker, but HubSpot’s CMS Hub offers limited customization options compared to most standalone CMS platforms.
Insightly also has its own limitations that users should be aware of.
These include:
Limited free plan – Insightly does just about everything it can to try and get you to upgrade to a paid plan. Their free plan is pretty limited, with only two users and no access to customer service.Few advanced features – Insightly lacks many features (such as live chat or A/B testing) that are really helpful for scaling.
AJ’s Take: HubSpot wins this round easily. Insightly’s lack of customer service with the free plan lost the platform many points in this round.
There you have it—our winner (by a pretty big margin) is HubSpot!
If you’re looking for all-in-one CRM software that offers sales, marketing, service, and CMS in one place, go check out HubSpot today!
If you’re looking for a simpler solution with scalable, affordable pricing plans, Insightly is a great choice.
Both platforms offer a free plan, so check them out today!
The post HubSpot Vs. Insightly 2023: Best for Your SMB? appeared first on Small Business Bonfire.
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