Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) helps companies manage their relationships and interactions with existing and future customers. Finding the right CRM software for your business is key to staying organized and creating more authentic relationships with your client base. A great CRM software can easily help automate team workflows, work efficiently, and improve your overall sales.
But which CRM software is the best one for you? There are several CMS software in the market, but both have different features and pricing tiers and selecting one is a tough choice.
To simplify things, I will compare two big names in the industry- Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft) and HubSpot. This will help you make a better decision and choose the right CRM that suits your business needs.
Keap Overview
Keap, which was previously known as Infusionsoft, is a CRM solution that was started in 2001. It is designed to attract leads with its email marketing platform to efficiently nurture your leads through marketing automation to efficiently manage your customers with its intuitive CRM software.
Click Here To Try Keap For Free
It has some excellent lead management features, and one of the most popular features is the automation it offers at a reasonable price point. Using the tool, you can convert your leads depending on the people who have filled your form by sending automated follow-up emails, scheduling appointments with your clients, and following up with clients after they have made the purchase.
Keap has some excellent email marketing features that let you automatically tag and segment new leads once they fill out a form or a landing page. You also have the option to select from email templates from its vast catalog and test your campaign.
Some highlights of Keap for small business CRM include:
- A campaign builder to visualize your campaigns and tailor your customer journey.
- A robust lead scoring system to effectively segment your contacts.
- Tags to help you organize or search for information about your contacts.
- Sales dashboard to manage your information in a single place
Keap is an excellent choice if you are a small business, start-up, or entrepreneur. So, if you have a growing business, then it is an all-in-one platform to expand your customer base and optimize your sales workflow.
- User-friendly interface
- Complex automation features
- Great templates
- Excellent segmentation
- Robust email marketing and CRM in a single place
- Good customer support
- Access to several integrations
- Fewer templates in comparison to other platforms
- Slight learning curve
- Difficult to cancel and billing issues
HubSpot Overview
HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM tool that gives you everything you need in a single place to get started with it right away. As your company grows, it lets you continue to meet all your needs without having to shift to another platform. Currently, you may require a CRM, but its Marketing Hub may come in handy when you want to convert your visitors into customers.
Click Here To Try Hubspot For Free
The tool has a suite of products that bring together your sales, marketing, and support teams in a single platform. It has everything you need, which includes a
- Marketing Hub – It helps you attract your audience and convert them into customers. Some of its features include a landing page builder, email marketing, marketing automation, and social media engagement.
- Sales Hub – It helps your sales team to efficiently engage with your customers and prospects to close more deals. Certain features include email tracking, sales automation, live chat, pipeline management, and document management.
- Service Hub- It is designed to allow your team to get customer service tools and data from multiple sources from a single app. Some features it has include a knowledge base, customer feedback surveys, shared inbox, and integrations with CRM.
- CMS Hub- The hub lets you create web pages directly using HubSpot. This lets you replace CMS like WordPress and WIX. Some features it has include website themes and integrations with the HubSpot CRM.
- Operations Hub- Operations Hub will connect with your apps, sync customer data, and automate your business processes. This will ensure all your data will mirror each other across different connected tools.
HubSpot is a CRM solution that is an excellent choice for small businesses starting their CRM journey, as well as higher-end businesses. When your business starts to grow, it has all the features to scale while remaining affordable.
- All-in-one solution for eCommerce businesses- email marketing, CRM, CMS, and more
- Thorough onboarding and courses
- In-depth reporting
- Powerful automation
- Lead scoring and segmentation
- Easily store as many contacts for free
- Strong global community
- Numerous integrations
- Steep learning curve
- Plans are expensive
- Overwhelming amount of functions
Keap vs HubSpot
1. Ease of Use
Ease of use is a key component to running any tool. If a software is easy to use your team will adapt and be productive using it for their online journey. In this section, we will evaluate how difficult it is to configure the CRM, create automation, and play with some features to see if they fit your needs.
Keap
Keap has an intuitive interface with a modern outlook with key features that are lined up in the navigation menu on the left panel. Its getting started page on its navigational menu is great to get you started. The page has an onboarding checklist having videos with instructions for importing contacts, connecting to third-party apps, and organizing your contacts with the help of tags.
People who use Keap have a lot of positive reviews for being easy and intuitive to use. As per reviews across the internet, Keap has taken time to create a reliable user-friendly platform.
HubSpot
HubSpot has a user-friendly interface having a neat interface. You can access each hub on the tool with a single click through its navigation bar. It offers service demos and tutorials for a smooth start to their user journey.
The platform has a rich list of features and functionalities that may be a little detrimental for beginners who are new in the space. One thing that makes the platform simple is that it eases navigation and is pretty well-organized, and all the features have straightforward names.
Verdict
It is a very close call when you consider the platform for its ease of use with glowing reviews. However, Keap is a winner in this section as it is simple and straightforward.
2. Pricing
Money talks and matters and this is the same case with Keap and HubSpot. However, cheaper CRM software doesn’t always mean that you have the best product, but getting something cheaper than the other is not something anybody will miss out on.
Keap and HubSpot are slightly expensive options but come with excellent features. Let us look at their pricing below.
Keap
Keap has three pricing plans, each having a 14-day free trial. The plans can be purchased on monthly and annual subscriptions, where you can save 20%.
Click Here To Try Keap For Free
The pricing of the three plans at the time of writing includes the Pro plan ($199 per month), Max plan ($299 per month), and Ultimate plan ($299 per month). There is no free plan, and you will be required to pay to play. Besides having an email marketing suite, the plans include CRM, marketing, and sales features.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers plans for enterprises as well as small teams or individuals. The tool has a 14-day free trial period to check its features. Its plans can be purchased on a monthly or annual subscription. The annual plans offer a discount on them.
The plans available for individuals or small teams at the time of writing include; Free tools ($0 per month without requiring a credit card to access it), a Starter plan (starts at $20 per month), and a Professional plan (starts at $890 per month).
If you choose its business and enterprise plan, you get access to two plans. The first plan is the Professional plan (starts at $890 per month), and the Enterprise plan (starts at $3,600 per month).
Verdict
Keap and HubSpot are more expensive than other standalone email marketing tools. However, the pricing structure of Keap is simple and cheaper compared to HubSpot. The tools that come with HubSpot make it a viable and cheaper solution in the long run.
3. Marketing and Campaign Management
Marketing and campaign management are important to successfully sell products and manage your campaigns in the long run. Let us understand what both tools have to offer.
Keap
Keap has some great marketing features to help you sell your products. It has three main marketing features
- Forms
- Landing pages
- Email Broadcasts
Forms offer a great way to collect leads and you can embed the form directly on your website. However, this feature lacks customization capabilities. Using it, you can only add custom fields, display your logo, set page background color, button color, and alignment. The tool allows you to easily automate its follow-up email with every form you create.
Keap allows users to build beautiful landing pages without breaking a sweat. Its drag and drop builder helps in the creation of landing pages without any hassle. The platform has several landing page templates that you use to create pages on the go.
The pages created using the tool are very responsive for different devices and can be easily customized to fit your brand identity. You can easily share the landing page or embed it on your website once you have published it to Keap.
Keap allows you to create email broadcasts and text. Here, you can pick a text template or email to use. In case it is an email, you can easily edit the visuals before sending it. Further, you can also select which users will receive the broadcast.
HubSpot
The marketing hub of HubSpot has all the tools you require to take your marketing campaign to a different level. It has comprehensive features, and you can get everything done in a single space. Let us look at the marketing activities you can perform with HubSpot:
- Create blog posts
- Track ads
- Manage social media accounts
- Build landing pages
- A/B test emails
- Run marketing automation
HubSpot’s campaign feature allows you to put all your marketing resources into a single goal. The platform allows you to determine your budget and track its KPIs to check how your campaigns are performing. Here, you can access assets such as ads, emails, and workflows that are created in connection to the campaign.
In case you plan to create a successful Black Friday campaign, you can create blogs, ads, and emails to help reach your campaign goals.
HubSpot has a versatile landing page builder where you can create and test landing pages to generate leads, and they look great on any device. The tool helps you build beautiful landing pages without requiring any technical expertise. Its drag and drop builder is great to customize your website without much hassle.
The tool allows you to personalize landing pages for individual visitors. You can show different content of your visitors based on the location of your visitor, their device, lifecycle stage, or any content based on your visitor’s behavior.
It has a useful page preview option that allows you to track your page engagement through different reports. The platform also has its own custom SEO suggestions to optimize each page from your search.
Verdict
HubSpot is a clear winner as it has better marketing and campaign features. You can easily run email campaigns to attract more leads with landing pages and web forms to help nurture them with marketing automation.
4. Customization and Sales Pipeline Management
Customization can help you create custom offerings as per your business requirements. Keap and HubSpot allow you to run basic customization, and if you need further tweaking, you can hire certified experts from their marketplaces. Its pipeline management lets you easily move deals along the sales cycle and run quick automation. Let us see what both the tools have to offer in this aspect.
Keap
Keap has excellent customization and lets you create custom fields for your contacts and company records. If you require to add more information, you can create custom fields and specify your business needs.
The pipeline management of Keap is clean and very easy to utilize when you compare it to HubSpot. You can easily drag and drop deals using its sales process and get a view of your deals on its Kanban boards. Here, you also get access to your automations, which is right from the deal card.
The sales feature is great in terms of a contact management dashboard having lists, filters, and saved searches. It also has company records with new custom fields. For selling, it has pipeline tracking, appointments, quotes, and invoices. Further, you can also set up online payments, do shopping carts, or create promotions.
HubSpot
HubSpot lets you customize every aspect of your venture, may it be deals, quotes, contacts, and products. The tool allows you to efficiently customize your reports and forecasts to get a better understanding of your business. If you want more reports with customized output, then you can create your very own report using its report builder.
If you are looking to create a custom object as per your business needs, then you have to be on its Enterprise plan. This feature is only required if you are running a high-end business.
The pipeline management of HubSpot is basic and is not very modern. It needs improvement, and overall, its UX is bad. For example, it is hard to progress a deal with a customer using its pipeline management feature.
The CRM tools and sales are bundled in its Sales Hub package. You will get a range of features with full contact data, which will track interactions with a lead, sales engagement, and access to a tool to make sales quotes. It also has email tracking, call tracking, and document management. Further, it has sales pipeline tools like management playbooks alongside a meeting scheduler.
Verdict
When you consider the customization features, then HubSpot is a clear winner. However, Keap, on the other hand, offers better pipeline management when you compare it with HubSpot.
5. Email Templates
Email templates are some key components you will be looking for in a good email marketing platform to create a good email list. Let us see what both the tools have to offer in terms of email templates.
Keap
Keap has a rich library of good-looking email templates with great flexibility that can be used in different settings. You can find the right template to fit your business needs, where you can easily sell a new product or announce an event. Its good customization options allow you to easily create new templates from scratch.
The tool allows you to style the email body text, include links, or merge fields. Overall, the entire process of creating emails with Keap is intuitive, and it takes a little over 10 minutes.
HubSpot
HubSpot has a ton of professionally designed email templates that are suited for various purposes, such as welcome emails, newsletters, re-engagement emails, follow-ups, etc. The email editor is flexible and lets you change every aspect of your templates, like texts, buttons, layouts, etc.
The emails can be personalized based on different criteria, which the platform automatically gathers from your location, their lifecycle, or the list they belong to.
Verdict
Keap and HubSpot have great email templates that you can select from. However, there is no clear winner in this aspect, and both have great features.
6. Automation
Automated workflows are great to improve your team’s productivity to eliminate manual work or repetitive tasks. What automation do the tools have to offer?
Keap
A core feature of Keap is its automation and its two modes of automation: Easy automations and advanced automations.
Easy automation is triggered when certain conditions are met. For example, when an invoice is paid, an invoice is sent, a product is purchased, etc.
Once the automation has been triggered, you can set one of the events listed below based on the trigger.
- Create a deal
- Send an email
- Create a task for the content
- Add more events
The tool lets you build these automations from scratch utilizing its automation builder and select from the list of automation templates. Further, its advanced automation lets you create automations when a link inside an email is clicked, opened, or a form is submitted, or other conditions.
HubSpot
The automation capability of HubSpot is divided into sequences and workflows. Here, a sequence represents a set of steps you want to complete a task, and a workflow is the process by which the steps are executed.
Sequences make sure that no deals fall through the cracks, and you can create series or time emails or personalize the sequence emails utilizing contact and company data from HubSpot and Salesforce.
Workflows can be used to automate manual and time-consuming activities. Certain tasks you can automate include; nurturing leads, updating leads lifecycle stages, and handling leads off to sales.
It has seven types of triggers to start a workflow. The automation options are limitless, and you can select from a pre-built list of automation tasks to streamline your work.
Verdict
Keap and HubSpot have good automation features. However, HubSpot has slightly better features, giving it an edge in this section.
7. Lead Management
Lead management is great for identifying potential customers and nurturing them using conversion funnels to drive new business growth. HubSpot and Keap have good lead management features, and here is how they compare.
Keap
Keap has good lead management functionality to attract leads via web forms and landing pages. The tool allows you to segment them into tags and check your interactions with a lead form in the contact management dashboard.
Keap is centered around customer relationships, and the tool has numerous segmentation features. The platform allows you to efficiently build different contact lists based on your common criteria, such as customer behavior, or check how your contacts interacted with your previous campaigns. You have an option to create as many lists as you want and further divide your audience into smaller groups.
Keap also allows you to score leads, track leads, set appointments with your leads, and track across your pipeline.
HubSpot
HubSpot has good lead management features, and using its software, you can manage all the activities listed below in a single place:
- Manage leads
- Prioritize your leads
- View communication history
- Score leads
Its contact database allows you to keep track of every detail about your lead from its profile. This information will help you understand and serve your customers better with greater context.
You can use forms, live chat, automation, and chatbots to attract and nurture new leads. Its universal conversation inbox will help keep everyone informed with the latest conversations with customers so your team will provide the best possible experience.
HubSpot also lets you segment your list into different categories and sub-categories that are based on different criteria, including age, location, behavior, lifecycle, etc. All the lists will be automatically updated, and contacts will be added or removed based on the data of any changes in the platform’s CRM.
Verdict
HubSpot has better lead management and segmentation features when you compare it to Keap. It covers your entire customer journey and has all sales-focused automation.
8. A/B Testing
A/B testing helps users efficiently compare different versions of their web pages to check which works best. It is great to enhance your website as it grows in the long run. But what do Keap and HubSpot offer in this aspect?
Keap
Keap has good A/B split testing to check your offering, and they are easy to access. Using the tool, you can split-test various elements, including email designs, subject lines, CTA buttons, sales pages, etc.
The tool has preview tests, and you can use its auto spam checking feature to realize if your elements are able to get past the spam filters and contribute to its good deliverability rates. Further, it has an intelligent send feature, which is powered by algorithms, which aims to improve your delivery times.
HubSpot
HubSpot has similar A/B testing features as Keap. After your campaign is set up, the platform lets you test different versions to discover the one that is engaging. The tool lets you A/B test on different elements, like subject lines, images, CTAs, email content, etc. You can also test landing pages for your business.
Verdict
Keap and HubSpot have good A/B features, but there is no obvious winner in this section.
9. Reporting
Reporting in a CRM system helps you know what is happening across your sales process and see how your team members are performing. Here are the reporting functionalities offered by Keap and HubSpot.
Keap
The reporting function of Keap is basic, and its pipeline reports allow you to view charts to show how your deals are performing over time and highlight how your reps are performing.
The tool allows you to track marketing effectiveness with pre-built reports to track conversions by audience segment, sales stage, email clicks, etc. You can evaluate its campaign performance to get a deeper understanding of your customer actions. So, you can fine-tune your marketing strategies using its advanced criteria and contact data.
You can also get insights into your sales reports and get the data you need to focus your efforts in the right place. Here, you get access to key metrics like total sales, forecast payment, etc.
Keap has automation reporting to optimize your campaign performance. You can easily access the historical performance of your automation and identify areas having good opportunities.
Finally, you get access to a reporting hub with advanced reporting features. However, you can only access it on its Max and Ultimate plans. Here, you get insights into advanced reports, like ROI tracking, search all reports, or pin your most-used reports on top of your hub.
HubSpot
HubSpot empowers your teams with analytics that are powerful enough for an analyst; but it is accessible to everyone. Its reports and dashboards allow you to get insights into your pipeline, coach your team by using your data, or forecast your revenue using data directly from your CRM and marketing hub.
The reports can be customized to fit the look and feel of your dashboard. The template library can get you started using its pre-built dashboards that are commonly used. You can use its drag and drop editor to customize the layout, and you can easily share your dashboards on Slack or email directly within HubSpot.
HubSpot has 90+ pre-built reports that are built in the dashboard. Some of the reports that are available with it are:
- Deal closed total vs goal
- Activity leaderboard by a rep having a type breakdown
- Deals open by the close date of this month
- Deal leaderboard
- And more
The tool allows you to view funnel reports and gain insights into how your contacts and deals are progressing via their life cycle stages.
The tool has a custom report builder where you can analyze multiple sources of data across HubSpot. Its major advantage is that you can easily surface your data from marketing and sales activities in addition to its objects.
You can create reports using its custom report builder, but a user will need to create/own and edit report permissions. If you have selected its Operations Hub Enterprise plan, then you can create datasets to power your custom reports. You can keep the private data secure with advanced reporting permissions.
Verdict
HubSpot and Keap have good reporting functionality and features. However, HubSpot has better overall tracking and customization offerings, making it a clear winner in this section.
10. Integrations
Integrations help you streamline your marketing process and give you a complete picture of your business without requiring you to work in silos. They enhance the platform functionality without having to switch over to multiple apps to use them. Let us see what they offer in this aspect.
Keap
Keap has limited apps it integrates to currently. It has integrations in categories like eCommerce, landing pages, membership, reporting, scheduling, Lead Gen, Connector, etc. However, it integrates with a total of 29 integrations.
It integrates with some popular apps which include WordPress, LeadPages, Zapier, Gmail, Unific, Instapage, Wistia, Typeform, ScheduleOnce, WebinarJam, etc.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers integrations with over 1400 popular apps in categories like
- Marketing
- Sales
- SEO
- Video
- Customer Service
- Productivity
- Finance
- Commerce
- And more
The integrations on HubSpot can be categorized into free, monthly, yearly, one-time fee, pay-as-you-go, or enterprise-grade pricing tier.
It also lets you check its compatibility with HubSpot plans, data flow direction, check its certification with the tool, and more.
Some popular apps it integrates with are Zapier, WordPress, Facebook Ads, Zoom, MailChimp, Canva, Slack, Google Sheets, Monday.com, Jira, ClickUp, WooCommerce, etc.
Verdict
HubSpot has more integrations with popular apps in the market and is the clear winner in this aspect.
11. Customer Support
Customer support is an essential component in any software if you run into any issues and want them resolved within a short time. We will look into the customer support offered by Keap and HubSpot.
Keap
Keap has excellent customer support to resolve all your issues or queries customers might encounter. It offers 24/7 support and live chat to help you with questions that you may have. They also offer email support to offer solutions and give you confidence in your process.
The tool has a Keap academy that has data about product training and access to webinars and events talking about the features of the platform. Finally, they have a user community where you can connect with similar people and find out about issues that they may have while running the tool.
HubSpot
HubSpot has a sticky help button that you can easily access from your dashboard. To resolve your issues, you get access to Live chat, email, and phone support. However, this may not be available throughout the day. This is one of the primary drawbacks of its support team.
The area where the tool excels is its knowledge base, where you can get a rich list of articles and replays into the different working of the tool, from onboarding to professional services and more. The tool has an academy where you get insights into different features available on the tool. Finally, they have a HubSpot community that helps you connect with peers to maximize your HubSpot knowledge by getting in touch with other customers of the tool.
Verdict
Keap and HubSpot have excellent customer support offerings, and both are equally good. Keap slightly peeps it when direct support is concerned; however, HubSpot has a better knowledge base with a rich list of articles and videos to resolve your issues even before you need live support.
Keap vs HubSpot: Which is Better?
Keap and HubSpot are great CRM software, and selecting a winner amongst them is a difficult task. However, you can choose
Keap if you are starting out with a few sales reps or sales. It is easy for beginners, and you can leverage its features to empower your business.
Click Here To Try Keap For Free
HubSpot if you have a big or growing business and require an all-in-one tool to replace email marketing, scheduling, customer support, and sales platforms. However, it is slightly more expensive than Keap.
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