Is your agency looking for Hubspot alternatives?
Most agencies start out on HubSpot free CRM and quickly outgrow it, so they opt into HubSpot Marketing Hub for all its inbound marketing features.
That’s when it gets problematic since the bare bones cost is $800 per month with many teams paying $3,200 or more each month. That makes it an excellent choice if you have a big budget and a dedicated, large marketing and sales team to customize and manage it for you.
However, in our experience, most agencies don’t have either.
The relatively steep learning curve means that most agencies aren’t making the most out of this inbound marketing software.
In this post, we’re sharing the top HubSpot alternatives for agencies.
1. HighLevel
Compared to HubSpot, HighLevel is much easier to use, and you don’t need the enterprise plan pricing and months of time on a custom migration and integrations like you have to do on HubSpot.
The simple fact that HubSpot has an elaborate certification program speaks to this. The only reason something like this even exists is that the platform is too complex for most businesses and agencies to set up by themselves. So, you need to bring on a HubSpot certified consultant or agency to do it for you. Working with a HubSpot consultant can easily cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
In our experience, most agencies aren’t making the most use of HubSpot because they don’t have either the budget or resources to fully make it their own.
In fact, more than 15,000+ agencies are using HighLevel to increase client campaign performance, reduce costs, decrease churn, and add an additional SaaS-like revenue stream.
For example, HighLevel customer Melissa Blair says, “I’ve moved one client off of HubSpot because she was a small company and was paying $1000.00 per month for HubSpot and didn’t need all of the features. Year 2, they told her it was going up to $2000 a month. My 2 cents is that most small businesses (only a couple of employees) are not the ideal client for HubSpot.”
Ben Baker agrees, “I personally think HighLevel has way more to offer than HubSpot. I was paying over $1,800 a month for 50,000 contacts. I switched and never looked back, their UI is dope, and it’s an amazing platform for sure. I wish HL had a UI that was as awesome as theirs, but at the end of the day, I chose the cost-effective & feature-rich choice.”
Best for: Marketing Agencies, Consultants & Digital Entrepreneurs
2. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a powerful email and marketing automation tool that small business owners and their teams can use.
Many agency owners are initially attracted to ActiveCampaign for its email marketing platform, including its email marketing automation, automated workflows, web forms, high email deliverability rates, and easy-to-use flowchart-style editor.
Additionally, ActiveCampaign offers powerful customer relationship management (CRM) features that make it easy for teams to automate lead management tasks.
You can also use this platform’s landing page builder to create landing pages with no coding experience required.
It also offers advanced marketing analytics reporting and tracking tools.
Lastly, it allows you to sync calendar tasks across Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook and offers various third-party integrations.
Pricing for their lite plan starts at $9 per month for businesses with 500 contacts or less but increases to $29 per month for companies with 1,000 contacts.
Best for: Small Brick and Mortar Businesses & Solo Consultants
3. Ontraport
Ontraport is a CRM and automation platform that helps businesses of all sizes scale their lead generation and digital marketing efforts.
The marketing and sales automation software allows you to collect data to understand your contacts better and deliver effective messaging that engages your users. Ontraport’s platform also offers flexible automation and has a library of templates to save you time. You can do personalized SMS marketing.
Their sales CRM offers the tools you need for smart pipeline and contact management. Additionally, it provides Google calendar integration, lead scoring, and task automation.
You can also create responsive landing pages using their templates.
Ontraport also makes it easy for ecommerce businesses with secure order forms, coupon codes, and payment processing.
The cost of plans varies based on your number of contacts and users. For instance, the Basic plan starts at $24 per month for up to 500 contacts and 1 user but increases to $66 per month for up to 1,000 contacts.
Best for: Solopreneurs and Digital Product Businesses
4. Keap
Keap offers an all-in-one sales and marketing automation platform that helps businesses capture new leads, save time with automations, and keep your team organized.
It offers various sales and marketing automations, including advanced options, to allow you to personalize follow-ups while saving time. For instance, you can send text or email communications after potential customers complete forms on your website or social media.
You can also trigger automations with integrations from third-party apps.
The CRM platform helps you collect and organize information on leads automatically with custom lead forms, landing pages, and social media.
Your data is organized and easy to access through a desktop or mobile app, making it simple to manage and monitor communications and relationships with leads and customers in real time.
Keap also offers ecommerce features, invoicing, and payment processing, allowing you to manage your business in one place.
Lastly, Keap provides email and text automations, including email templates, to save you time.
Keap’s pricing starts at $129 per month for up to 1,500 contacts and two users. The price does increase with additional contacts.
Best for: Ecommerce and Digital Product Businesses
5. Zoho
Zoho CRM is one of the better and cheaper HubSpot CRM alternatives designed to help your marketing and sales work together effectively. For instance, the customer segmentation tools allow you to segment customers and send campaigns tailored to your prospects and customers.
It also offers various email marketing tools and marketing automation features to save your team time and help you automate your sales process. The CRM also helps you nurture leads through your marketing funnel.
Landing pages and forms are easy to create with their drag-and-drop interface, and they also offer email templates and automations.
You can monitor and track key data analytics with the CRM, keeping all information in one place.
Zoho CRM is available as a mobile app and on a desktop. Additionally, the software is designed to be easy to implement and use.
Zoho CRM offers four pricing packages to fit businesses of all sizes, with packages offering different features to suit different needs. Packages are based more on the number of users instead of the number of contacts. For instance, the Standard package starts at $14 per user per month.
Best for: Small Businesses
6. ClickFunnels
As one of the better HubSpot Marketing Hub alternatives, ClickFunnels excels at making it easy to create and implement various email campaigns and marketing funnels that guide visitors through the buyer’s journey.
With its inbound marketing automation, you can build workflows, landing pages, and emails.
ClickFunnels also offers website hosting for your funnels and split testing features to test and iterate your funnels.
They also offer courses to help businesses implement their marketing automation systems.
ClickFunnels offers three tiered plans and includes a 14-day free trial. The Basic plan is $127 per month and includes one admin user and up to 10,000 contacts.
Best for: Ecommerce & Digital Product Businesses
7. Pipedrive
Similar to Zoho, Pipedrive is a CRM designed for sales teams at small businesses.
The visual sales platform makes it easy to see progress at a glance, and the drag-and-drop interface is easy to use.
You can customize pipelines to fit your sales cycles, including using custom stages and fields.
You can segment your leads, including filtering, categorizing, and sorting to create targeted lists.
The platform comes with powerful reporting and analytics on sales and key activities and includes revenue forecasting.
You can create and track email marketing campaigns that integrate with the CRM software. Additionally, the drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to create your emails, or you can select a pre-made template.
The various customization options and dashboard features are easy to use and navigate
Pipeline offers four plans to fit businesses of different sizes. Plans start at $14.90 per user per month.
Best for: Small Businesses
HighLevel: The Real Opportunity For Digital Agencies
Each of the best HubSpot competitors has its strengths and weaknesses for sales and marketing teams. Some excel with marketing automation tools. Others excel as a basic email marketing solution. And others make it simple to have a seamless sales process with great customer data and web analytics.
However, if you can’t justify $3,000+ per month, don’t have dedicated internal resources solely focused on HubSpot management, need unlimited contacts, and/or are looking for deep white-label functionality at a more affordable price point, then the best HubSpot competitor is HighLevel.
Plus, if you have any questions, we have an excellent customer service team that’s ready to help. We even offer concierge migration support from other platforms. If you are an agency and are ready to try a HubSpot alternative, you can get started with a 14-day free trial of HighLevel here 👇
