Why Your Agency Shouldn’t Use HubSpot Sales for Your Team
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One of the most frequent questions Gray and I are asked is which CRM is the best for an inbound marketing agency to use. We are HubSpot Sales Pro users, however, we have tried quite a few others before landing with the HubSpot CRM.
We really like HubSpot Sales Pro, but in the beginning, times are tight and $50 per user can seem like a lot of money to spend on a CRM. So the question becomes, is HubSpot’s free CRM the best solution, or are there other competitors out there that are better?
When You Should Consider Other CRM’s
Every agency works a little differently.
Every agency is also at a different place in the growth stage and there are a lot of factors to consider when choosing a CRM.
So here are some examples of when it might make sense to pick a CRM other than what HubSpot has to offer.
HubSpot’s free version of their CRM is pretty limited.
If you begin using it and quickly find yourself running out of templates, tracked activities, call minutes… You get the idea… But if you cannot afford $50 per month per person then it might be time to look elsewhere.
Now there’s some good news and bad news.
Bad news first, everyone always chooses bad news first. The bad news is there isn’t another great free option that we have found that isn’t equally or more limiting.
The good news, however, is that you do have options that are half the price of HubSpot’s Pro version. For instance, Nimble, Zoho, and Pipedrive have pretty decent versions that are half the cost.
Now the opposite issue, if you are a very large agency with many sales reps and money is not the primary motivator for staying away from the HubSpot CRM the lack of large sale team management might be.
Larger agencies will likely favor a solution like Salesforce and take advantage of the bi-directional integration with HubSpot Marketing if they are using that tool.
If you’re a boutique agency that uses HubSpot’s Marketing tool and especially if you’re a partner agency, the HubSpot CRM is pretty much a no-brainer.
If you are not using HubSpot’s Marketing tool I might test out some other options to see how you like the interface and feature set in comparison. More on that below.
Other Agency CRM Options
Over the past 5 years we jumped around to a few different CRM’s to try and find the perfect fit before landing on HubSpot’s CRM. Not too sound too much like a grandfather here, but “back in those days” there were quite a few more free, or inexpensive options.
Gray and I were pretty surprised when doing research for this episode to realize that the HubSpot Pro version we use is actually pretty in line, if not less expensive than the competition (coming in at $50 per user per month at the time we are writing this). When we first signed on with HubSpot Pro we knew we were paying a premium, but since we were HubSpot Marketing tool users it made the most sense.
Some of the CRM’s we tried and that worked for our agency includes the following list:
- Nimble – Currently starting at $25 per month per user.
- Base – Currently $95 per month per user.
- Zoho – Currently $25 per month per user.
- Pipedrive – Currently $25 per month per user.
- Close.io – Currently $110 per month per user.
The CRM Reality
Agencies love bouncing around from software to software looking for the latest and greatest. Wanting to find the best solution isn’t a bad thing. When your search leads you down the path of wasting months and months looking for a unicorn piece of software that doesn’t exist, that’s a bad thing.
We do it with CRM’s, we do it with project management tools, invoicing and proposal software etc…
We will be the first to admit that at our agency we did the exact same thing. My point is that at some point you just need to pick a CRM and stick with it. It won’t be perfect, there will be some frustrations, but dedicate the time to building out a system for your agency that works. The time you save from testing every CRM software out there and focusing on making the one you decide to go with work is the best option.
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