Let’s be real: HubSpot is a beast. What started as an inbound marketing platform— a term they coined themselves—has since expanded into a suite of several products, including Marketing Hub, Service Hub, Sales Hub, Operations Hub, the newly re-launched CMS Hub, and a freemium CRM.
That may sound impressive, but it’s still reasonable to wonder— with so many tools, is HubSpot good for marketing? Or is this simply a case of yet another company casting its net too wide, without offering the same depth of functionality as its competitors? We decided to source verified customer reviews on G2 and conduct our own research to find out!
The answer?
It depends.
HubSpot Marketing Hub may be a great fit for small and scaling businesses. It could also be insufficient, especially for enterprise organizations with advanced ABM needs. On the other hand, some teams might find the features overkill. In this post, we’ll take a look at some HubSpot Marketing Hub alternatives to consider.
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub boasts more than 150,000 customers in over 120 countries, from small businesses to enterprise organizations like Loom, Monday, Reddit, Wistia, and Zapier. Although Marketing Hub seamlessly integrates with other HubSpot products, it also covers a lot of ground on its own. The core platform offers:
Quick note: Marketing Hub offers a free plan, but you’ll need to upgrade in order to access any automation features—like form responses, email nurturing, workflows, or dynamic content. When billed annually, HubSpot Marketing Hub’s pricing is:
HubSpot Marketing Hub’s visual automation builder makes it easy for users to design automated workflows and processes, like sending emails, prompting notifications, and routing qualified leads to sales. The intuitive, user-friendly interface scored high marks on G2. Marketing Hub also earned rave reviews for its extensive email marketing functionality, including:
HubSpot Marketing Hub’s integrations are another advantage, especially when it comes to other HubSpot products. Designed to function both independently and also as part of a cohesive marketing and sales mega-platform, Marketing Hub is easy to use if you're already familiar with HubSpot’s CRM, as well as Sales Hub and Service Hub.
Marketing Hub also plays nicely with third-party integrations, so you can mix and match with other tools in your tech stack—like Salesforce, Google, WordPress, and Zapier. According to one customer review, “HubSpot has become something of a nerve center for our marketing.”
HubSpot Marketing Hub’s pricing structure is arguably the biggest source of contention among its users. Although the platform itself has extensive capabilities, it’s impossible to access more advanced marketing automation features without steep plan upgrades. As one customer put it:
“You have no choice but to buy their entire product suite, which includes both volume and per-seat pricing. Features that came with Marketing Hub last year or even a few months ago, now require a separate license to buy. Given that this is a high dollar, negotiated price product, it is a huge time waster to constantly hit a wall that requires a new sales process to get past.”
— IT Administrator, Mid-Market
Some users report feeling burdened by HubSpot Marketing Hub, especially on smaller or B2C teams who don’t require that same degree of B2B functionality. According to one customer review:
“HubSpot is great if you have a marketing person who can manage it for you. It is incredibly easy to use. However, if you are a small business, it is too big and unnecessary for what you need.”
So, what about the alternatives? Let’s take a look.
ActiveCampaign has positioned itself as a full-fledged “customer experience automation” platform, spanning email, marketing automation, sales automation, and a CRM. In addition to a wide range of features, ActiveCampaign offers over 500 pre-built automations to more than 180,000 customers. It can also easily integrate with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento, making it a solid choice for eCommerce brands.
ActiveCampaign integrates with over 870+ different apps, including:
ActiveCampaign has a wide range of pricing options, starting from $29 per month for 1,000 contacts to $549 for 25,000 contacts, plus custom packages for 50,000+ contacts. Learn more about ActiveCampaign pricing.
ActiveCampaign is rated 4.6 out of 5 stars based on 10,000+ verified customer reviews on G2.
👉 Test drive ActiveCampaign in TestBox and compare it with HubSpot and other leading marketing automation products. No demos, no pitch decks. Evaluate software on your terms.
Marketo— formally Adobe Marketo Engage—is a robust marketing automation platform. Hubspot vs. Marketo is a common debate for marketing ops professionals—where the latter really shines is their use of AI and machine learning. This affords users advanced capabilities that are invaluable for ABM campaigns, like being able to customize campaigns for target accounts based on real-time behavior.
Marketo offers three main pricing tiers:
Marketo is rated 4.1 out of 5 stars based on 2,200+ verified customer reviews on G2
SharpSpring by Constant Contact is an integrated, cloud-based marketing automation platform and CRM. Designed as a one-stop-shop for marketing and sales teams, it offers a wide range of features across email marketing, social media and campaign management, ad retargeting, a landing page designer, and more. Although primarily geared towards SMB and agencies, SharpSpring also has custom plans available for enterprise customers.
With annual billing, SharpSpring’s plans cost:
SharpSpring is rated 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 700+ verified customer reviews on G2.
Mailchimp—officially Intuit Mailchimp—may have originated as an email marketing service provider, but it has since evolved into a full-blown marketing automation platform with more than 11 million active customers and 4 billion users. Built for small and growing businesses, Mailchimp was acquired by Intuit in 2021, enhancing their core email marketing tool with advanced AI capabilities that may normally be out of reach for smaller teams on other platforms.
Mailchimp offers over 250 integrations, including:
When billed annually, pricing starts at $59 per month for 1,000 contacts and goes up to $1,300 per month for over 250,000 contacts.
Mailchimp is rated 4.3 out of 5 based on 12,000+ verified customer reviews on G2.
👉 Test drive Mailchimp in TestBox and compare it with HubSpot and other leading marketing automation products. No demos, no pitch decks. Evaluate software on your terms.
There are so many excellent marketing automation platforms options out there— but it can be tough to determine the right fit for your team, without seeing them in action. TestBox lets you test marketing automation software like HubSpot Marketing Hub, Marketo, ActiveCampaign, SharpSpring, and Mailchimp all in one place, for free. You can also access pricing and compliance information, making side-by-side comparisons a breeze—without the endless demo calls. Start testing software in minutes!
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