HubSpot is a known software that provides services for inbound marketing and sales. The business was started in 2006 with the goal of providing businesses with tools to simplify optimization of social media marketing and web analytics, while also providing a stable content management system that optimizes search engine optimization (or SEO). In a world where online presence is vital to the success of a business, it’s apparent as to why HubSpot is so widely used. While Hubspot offers integration with popular customer relationship management (CRM) systems such as SalesForce, the company released its own, free CRM in 2014 called HubSpot CRM Free. The goal of this release was to provide a free service on the platform that helps businesses manage relationships with their clients while also offering the capabilities of running reports to predict potential revenue, monitoring of sales team activity, and providing tools for analytics regarding sources of revenue.
HubSpot: Jack of All Trades, Master of None
While HubSpot offers a wide variety of tools that businesses may find useful, it certainly has its drawbacks and disadvantages. The biggest one reported by many reviews comparing various business solutions platforms is that HubSpot has earned its name as a “jack of all trades, master of none.” It’s true that the platform provides a complete set of tools required to run a successful business, but none of its services have ever really made the top of the list in any of their respective categories. Essentially, HubSpot is capable of many things, but none of the provided services have ever been deemed “the best”. There are many other disadvantages associated with the platform as well. For example, the pricing model requires users to sign on for a 12-month contract. Needless to say, being locked into a year-long contract with such a platform may not be the best idea for a business. If the solutions are not working for the business, or if the business decides that another service is a better solution to certain operations, it is difficult to switch. Not only is HubSpot a big commitment for a business in this regard, it also has the potential to become an extremely expensive set of services very quickly as the business grows. The goal of a product like HubSpot is to encourage success in a business, but at the same time, business scalability while using HubSpot can quickly become very costly.
SharpSpring As An Alternative
Because of these problems, many businesses end up searching for an alternative solution to HubSpot that better addresses their needs as well as cuts unnecessary costs. Enter SharpSpring. SharpSpring is an immediate solution to the problems that arise from HubSpot’s pricing methods. SharpSpring offers month-to-month contracts and requires no long term commitments. The cost also tends to be far lower than many competing platforms. While this platform does not offer as many services as HubSpot, it certainly has made a name for itself in being an excellent CRM and offers a set of extremely helpful tools such as dynamic forms for customer conversion, advanced email tracking for more personal messaging, and analytics for identifying critical points of contact for potential leads. In addition, it allows users to build effective landing pages that help convert visitors into leads, and also offers a stable platform for blogging.
SharpSpring Integration
More importantly, however, one of the key features that truly makes SharpSpring a powerful platform is its ability to integrate with a wide variety of 3rd-party software providers. SharpSpring integrates extremely effectively with WordPress, which itself is an extremely powerful platform. WordPress currently hosts over an estimated 75 million websites, and is used for its vast library of plugins and user-friendly interface. While SharpSpring may not support SEO as well as HubSpot does, WordPress fills the gap here and is far more effective in delivering this service. Forms from SharpSpring can be integrated in customizable, responsive WordPress pages that funnel leads visiting a stable, professional, functional site into an incredibly powerful CRM and analytics platform. WordPress provides a convenient method to create and maintain a fully functional website, which allows businesses to then focus on the tools offered by SharpSpring to manage marketing and convert web traffic into potential clients. This combination allows businesses to essentially benefit from all of the features offered by HubSpot, but with each of those features streamlined to be the best in their respective categories, eliminating the problem of “jack of all trades, master of none.”
Conclusion
When choosing a solution for business tools, it can be easy to get tunnel vision and choose the option that offers the most. The more successful solution is always to choose the option that, instead, offers the best. The combination of SharpSpring and WordPress offers a way for businesses to cover all of their needs while ensuring that they are using the best services in each category. The functionality available in WordPress is practically limitless due to its expansive plugin library, and the features available in SharpSpring offer the tactical marketing methods necessary for helping a business reach its full potential. If your company is paying higher than reasonable prices for HubSpot services, it may be time for a change.
WordHerd is here to help
WordHerd specializes in migrating CRM data from HubSpot to SharpSpring and website content from HubSpot to WordPress. We consult and partner with our clients through every step of the migration process.
You can expect our services to provide the following:
- Migration of all CRM Contacts, Companies, Deals, Notes, Calls, Emails, Custom fields and more.
- Together we will create a project plan that includes dates, time frames and milestones for the migration.
- Content migration occurs in the background, while your current HubSpot site continues to operate. Working closely with you, we will ensure that all of the data from your current site is thoroughly exported to the new system.
- We relink content, media hyperlinks and images to the new WordPress location.
- After the migration process is complete, we will test your new site to ensure that it is operating as expected.
- At the specified date and time, we will seamlessly switch over to the new WordPress site and ensure that you experience no downtime for your business.
- Where required, 301 redirects will be implemented to ensure SEO equity is retained.
- Post go-live we can maintain and manage WordPress websites for optimization and security.
If you are considering how to easily and seamlessly migrate HubSpot to SharpSpring and/or HubSpot to WordPress, please reach out to one of our Migration Specialists for a FREE consultation by calling 602-402-9035 or send us an email.
