HubSpot vs Salesforce: A Comparison

At Revvy, we spend our days designing, building, and optimizing revenue systems for growing teams.
One of the most common questions we get from founders, RevOps leaders, and sales teams is:

“Should we go with HubSpot or Salesforce?”

The answer isn’t one-size-fits-all. Both platforms are exceptional, just in very different ways.

This blog breaks down how Revvy evaluates each platform, what we’ve learned from hundreds of implementations, and how to avoid the traps that lead to ballooning costs, messy data, and frustrated teams.

Core Difference

At its heart, this decision comes down to a simple trade-off:

HubSpot is purpose-built to help teams move fast. With clear defaults, an intuitive interface, and native connections between marketing, sales, and service, companies can launch in months. It’s designed to get your entire go-to-market team working seamlessly out of the box, without heavy customization or dedicated admin resources.

Salesforce, while powerful, leans toward flexibility and complex customization. It’s better suited for enterprise organizations with multi-region operations, advanced territory rules, or heavy CPQ requirements. This flexibility comes at a cost: longer setup times, higher technical overhead, and the need for ongoing admin and developer support.

For marketing, HubSpot’s fully integrated Marketing Hub delivers a smooth, unified experience — no extra integrations required. Teams can access ready-to-use automation, prebuilt reports, and analytics from day one. In contrast, Salesforce Marketing Cloud operates as a separate system that must be integrated, requiring more technical work and ongoing maintenance.

When it comes to cost, HubSpot provides predictable expenses and lower admin overhead, making it ideal for growing teams. While Salesforce can scale endlessly, it often results in higher long-term costs due to complex licensing, reliance on consultants, and constant upkeep.

In short: HubSpot is the better choice for speed, simplicity, and alignment, while Salesforce excels when deep customization and complex enterprise-scale operations are the top priority.

HubSpot vs Salesforce at a Glance

The Day-One Experience

With HubSpot, success means getting the essentials live fast. This includes clearly defined lifecycle stages and lead statuses with entry and exit rules, SDR sequences with automated handoffs to AEs and customer success teams, and clean pipelines built with required fields and validation. Core dashboards for funnel conversion, velocity, and SLA compliance are created early, along with simple quotes and product setups. The result is immediate visibility and data that teams can act on right away.

With Salesforce, the first month focuses on laying a strong foundation for scale. This starts with reviewing and designing the object model for accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes, and cases. Profiles and permission sets are aligned to roles, while territory logic and approval processes are set up to handle complex organizational structures. Foundational reports and dashboards are built to answer key leadership questions, and Sales Engagement tools are configured to boost SDR efficiency.

Finally, for both, integrations for billing, product data, and warehouse sync are planned out. The outcome is a robust, scalable system ready for advanced reporting and automation.

Migration: It Goes Both Ways

At Revvy, we’ve seen migrations go in both directions depending on a company’s needs. Some teams move from HubSpot to Salesforce when they’ve outgrown their current setup and need advanced CPQ capabilities, complex approval processes, or global structures. Others go from Salesforce to HubSpot when they want to simplify their tech stack, move faster, and improve user adoption.

A smooth migration requires careful planning. We start by freezing the current schema to prevent changes mid-process, then mapping all destination fields and objects before any data moves. Deduplication rules are thoroughly tested to ensure clean records, and teams are trained on new processes, not just button clicks. Finally, we run parallel UAT to catch issues early before the final cutover.

Before starting a migration, it’s critical to align on strategy. Ask questions like:

• What are the core business goals driving this migration?

• Which teams and processes will be impacted the most?

• How will data cleanup and deduplication be handled before migration?

• What custom objects and automations must be recreated or reimagined in the new system?

• Who will own and maintain the CRM post-migration?

• What is the timeline and budget, and how will we measure success after the cutover?

Common Pitfalls We See (and Fix)

When implementing a CRM, there are a few common mistakes that can slow growth and create unnecessary complexity. One pitfall we see often is companies trying to rebuild their ERP inside HubSpot. HubSpot is excellent for marketing, sales, and service, but it’s not built to manage complex product catalogs or financial data. The better approach is to integrate a dedicated CPQ or billing tool rather than force HubSpot to do something it wasn’t designed for.

Another issue is over-customizing Salesforce too early. Without clear governance, every new idea quickly turns into another field or flow, leading to messy data and overwhelmed teams. To avoid this, set up naming conventions and review cadences from day one so the system stays clean and scalable.

Lastly, many teams delay building dashboards, treating reporting as something to handle later. This is a mistake. Strong reporting should be in place from the start because it drives better data practices and creates visibility into performance right away.

Costs and Total Cost of Ownership

The license price alone doesn’t reflect your true CRM costs. The real investment comes from three factors:

1. Time to First Value – How quickly you can ship live features and start seeing results.

2. Admin Overhead – The size and skill level of your RevOps or admin team.

3. Customization Drift – How far your system deviates from its default, out-of-the-box structure.

The more you customize, the more complex, and expensive, the system becomes. That’s why we recommend staying as close to standard as possible to keep costs predictable and manageable.

Revvy’s Recommendations by Stage

Choosing the right CRM depends on your company’s growth stage:

• Pre-Seed → Seed: HubSpot is almost always the best choice. Use its default settings to launch quickly, validate your processes, and focus on speed.

• Series A → C+: HubSpot still works well unless you’ve reached a point where pricing models, partner programs, or territories have become highly complex. At this stage, start tightening processes and planning for scale.

• Global Enterprise: This is when Salesforce becomes the better fit. With a strong admin team and clear data governance, Salesforce can handle complexity at scale.

Some teams in this stage run a dual-stack system, HubSpot for marketing and Salesforce for sales and service, before committing to a full migration.

The Revvy Difference

Choosing a CRM isn’t just a technology decision. It’s an operational bet. At Revvy, we don’t just implement software - we design systems that support growth, from day one to IPO.

Our packages are designed to get you live fast and scaling cleanly:

• Lift-Off (HubSpot): 1-3 month implementation with core GTM workflows, reporting, and enablement.
• Migration Accelerator: From source audit to final cutover - zero data lost, zero downtime.

Final Verdict: Which Should You Choose?

• Choose HubSpot if you need speed, simplicity, lower costs and a single source of truth for marketing, sales, and service.
• Choose Salesforce if you need complexity and control for a large global organization with the resources to govern it.