HubSpot vs Salesforce.
HubSpot for most small and mid-market teams that want marketing and sales in one tool. Salesforce for complex organisations that need their own data model, code and many teams on one platform. Below is each one on price per seat, onboarding fees, contract terms, customisation, marketing, AI agents, integrations and API limits, read on the vendors’ own pages on 23 October 2026, with what a 10-seat and a 50-seat sales team would pay.
Twelve questions, two CRMs.
HubSpot here means Sales Hub on HubSpot’s Smart CRM. Salesforce means Sales Cloud. Both sell more products on the same platform; they come up where they change the answer.
| Question | HubSpot | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | One customer platform with a shared CRM (Smart CRM) and hubs on top: Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data and Revenue. Sales Hub is the sales tool. | A CRM platform with separate clouds for sales, service, marketing and commerce, plus Slack, Tableau and the Agentforce agent platform. Sales Cloud is the sales product. |
| Who it fits | Small and mid-market companies that want marketing, sales and service in one tool that a small ops team can run. | Larger or more complex organisations: many sales teams, a custom data model, code in the CRM, strict security, or several Salesforce clouds already in use. |
| Free and entry plans | Free for up to 2 users. Starter is $20 a seat a month at list. On 23 October 2026 HubSpot was showing new customers $7 a seat, an offer it calls limited time. Starter commits monthly. | A Free Suite at $0. Starter Suite is $25 a user a month, billed monthly or annually, and bundles sales, service, email marketing and commerce basics. |
| Mid-tier price per seat | Sales Hub Professional: $90 a seat a month paid annually, $100 at list. Enterprise: from $150 a seat a month. Prices in USD. | Pro Suite: $100 a user a month. Core: $195. Advanced: $395. Max: $550. All billed annually, in USD. Core, Advanced and Max launched on 3 September 2026; Salesforce compares Core with the old Enterprise Edition and Advanced with Unlimited. |
| Seat model | Two paid seat types. Core Seats give access to the platform and Breeze Assistant ($20 on Starter, $50 on Professional, $75 on Enterprise a month). Sales Seats add full Sales Hub tools ($100 Professional, $150 Enterprise) and include a Core Seat. View-only Seats are free. | A per-user licence of your edition for everyone who logs in. Agentforce adds its own licences: an Agentforce User License at $5 a user a month (it needs Flex Credits) and the Agentforce add-on at $125 a user a month. |
| Onboarding and support | Required one-time onboarding fees: $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional and $3,500 for Enterprise. Marketing Hub charges its own: $3,000 and $7,000. Phone support starts on Professional; Starter gets email. | No onboarding fee on the pricing page; implementation is done by your team, a partner or Salesforce Professional Services, priced separately. The Premier Success Plan (24/7 support for business-stopping issues) is included with Core, Advanced and Max. |
| Contract terms | Starter can commit month to month. Professional commits annually even when you pay monthly. Enterprise is sold through sales. | Starter Suite is billed monthly or annually. Pro Suite and every edition above it are billed annually. Detailed pricing goes through a sales rep. |
| Customisation | Custom properties, pipelines and code-free workflows. Workflows need Professional or Enterprise. Custom objects need an Enterprise subscription. | Custom objects, page layouts, record types, Flow Builder and Apex code. The Pro Suite column lists Flow Builder at 5 flows per org, and Salesforce’s docs say Apex does not run in Professional Edition orgs. Core and above include a partial sandbox; Advanced and Max add a full one. |
| Admin effort (our view) | One trained operations person can run most portals alongside other work. Settings are mostly point and click. | Plan for a dedicated admin once you use Flow heavily, Apex or more than one cloud, and for a developer when the org carries custom code. |
| Marketing tools | Built in. Starter covers marketing, sales, service, content and data basics. Marketing Hub Professional is $800 a month paid annually with 3 Core Seats and 2,000 marketing contacts, plus the $3,000 onboarding. | Starter Suite includes email marketing. Full marketing automation is Marketing Cloud, a separate product: Growth Edition from $1,500 per org a month and Advanced from $3,250, billed annually. |
| AI agents | Breeze Assistant is included with every subscription. Agents run on HubSpot Credits at $0.01 each: Customer Agent 50 credits per resolved conversation, Prospecting Agent 100 per lead it recommends for outreach, Data Agent 10 per prompt per record. Professional includes 3,000 credits a month; unused credits do not roll over. | Agentforce. Each action uses 20 Flex Credits (30 for voice), and Flex Credits cost $500 per 100,000, which is $0.10 an action by our arithmetic. The alternative is $2 per conversation. Core includes 500,000 Flex Credits, Advanced 1 million and Max 2.75 million per org per year; Agentforce for Sales is a $125 add-on below Max. |
| Integrations and API limits | Over 2,000 apps in HubSpot’s marketplace. Private apps get 100 API requests per 10 seconds and 250,000 a day on Free and Starter, 190 and 625,000 on Professional, 190 and 1,000,000 on Enterprise. | AgentExchange (formerly AppExchange) held about 10,000 Salesforce apps, 2,600+ Slack apps and 1,000+ agents, tools and MCP servers in April 2026. API access is a $25 a user a month add-on on Pro Suite. Enterprise-class orgs get 100,000 API calls a day plus 1,000 per user licence. |
Read on each vendor’s own pages on 23 October 2026; the sources are listed below. Prices are list prices in US dollars per seat or user per month unless marked per org, and both vendors quote larger deals through sales. HubSpot’s Starter offer is for new customers only. Salesforce’s limits documentation still uses the old edition names (Enterprise, Unlimited). Picking the CRM is the smaller half of the job; see CRM implementation for the rest.
Each is the right answer for someone.
Choose HubSpot when
FitsYou are a small or mid-market team, marketing and sales should work from the same records, and nobody wants to hire a full-time CRM admin. Professional covers most sales teams’ automation and reporting.
Watch forEach Professional or Enterprise hub carries its own onboarding fee. Custom objects need Enterprise. AI agents draw on monthly credits that do not roll over, and Marketing Hub Professional includes 2,000 marketing contacts.
Choose Salesforce when
FitsThe organisation is complex: several sales teams or regions, a data model HubSpot’s objects cannot hold, logic that needs Apex, or Service Cloud and other Salesforce products already in use.
Watch forContracts are annual, the useful pieces are often add-ons (Agentforce at $125 a user, API access on Pro Suite at $25), and you should budget for an admin, and usually an implementation partner, on top of the licences.
Choose a Starter plan when
FitsYou have a handful of reps, one pipeline and a simple process. HubSpot Starter or Salesforce Starter Suite gets contacts, deals and email in one place for $20 to $25 a seat at list.
Watch forHubSpot Starter has no workflows, so automation means moving to Professional. On Salesforce, the step up to Pro Suite is four times the price per user.
Choose neither when
FitsThe CRM you have works and the problem is adoption or data quality, or all you need is a lighter pipeline tool. Pipedrive or Zoho may cover it for less.
Watch forA migration between CRMs is a project of its own: records, history, automation and integrations all have to move and be checked. Do it for a reason you can write down.
What a 10- and a 50-seat team pays in licences.
The totals are our arithmetic on the list prices above, checked on 23 October 2026, before any discount the vendors’ sales teams agree. The third card is the work around the licence.
Licences for a 10-seat team
HubSpot Sales Hub Professional: 10 × $90 × 12 = $10,800 a year, plus $1,500 onboarding, so $12,300 in year one. Salesforce Pro Suite: 10 × $100 × 12 = $12,000 a year, or $15,000 with the $25 API add-on. Salesforce Core: 10 × $195 × 12 = $23,400 a year. Add HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional at $9,600 a year plus $3,000 onboarding, or Marketing Cloud Growth from $18,000 a year.
Licences for a 50-seat team
HubSpot Professional: 50 × $90 × 12 = $54,000 a year plus $1,500 onboarding. HubSpot Enterprise: 50 × $150 × 12 = $90,000 plus $3,500. Salesforce Core: 50 × $195 × 12 = $117,000 a year. Salesforce Advanced: $237,000. Agentforce for Sales on Core adds 50 × $125 × 12 = $75,000 a year.
Implementation, migration and changes
Data model, pipelines, import and automation decide whether the licences pay off. Our HubSpot set-up is from $6,000 fixed and takes from 4 weeks. Salesforce work (Flow, Apex, integrations, Agentforce actions) runs on an embedded team at $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month. A move from one CRM to the other starts at $7,000 fixed. What each includes.
Where each fact came from.
All read on 23 October 2026.
Do not choose on the demo or on the per-seat price. Write down how many people will log in, which teams share the records, and who will administer the CRM in two years, then price both for that. We are not a partner of either vendor and earn nothing on licences, so we will tell you when HubSpot is enough and when it is not.
HubSpot vs Salesforce
HubSpot vs Salesforce: which is better for a small business?
For most small businesses, HubSpot. It puts marketing, sales and service on one set of records, a non-specialist can run it, and Sales Hub Professional covered most sales automation at $90 a seat a month (paid annually) on 23 October 2026. Salesforce fits a small business that already knows it needs a custom data model or code in the CRM, or that is growing into a larger Salesforce estate.
Salesforce vs HubSpot pricing: how much per user?
Checked on 23 October 2026, in US dollars a seat a month. HubSpot Sales Hub: Starter $20 at list (with a $7 new-customer offer), Professional $90 paid annually or $100 at list, Enterprise from $150. Salesforce Sales Cloud: Starter Suite $25, Pro Suite $100, Core $195, Advanced $395 and Max $550, all billed annually except Starter. HubSpot adds required one-time onboarding of $1,500 (Professional) or $3,500 (Enterprise).
Is HubSpot cheaper than Salesforce?
At list prices, yes, for comparable tiers. By our arithmetic, 50 seats of Sales Hub Professional cost $54,000 a year plus $1,500 onboarding; 50 seats of Salesforce Core cost $117,000 a year. Salesforce Pro Suite ($100) is close to HubSpot Professional on licence, but needs a $25 add-on for API access and does not run custom Apex. Both vendors quote larger deals through their sales teams.
Does HubSpot charge an onboarding fee?
Yes, on Professional and Enterprise. On 23 October 2026 the Sales Hub pricing page listed a required one-time Professional Onboarding fee of $1,500 and Enterprise Onboarding of $3,500. Marketing Hub has its own: $3,000 for Professional and $7,000 for Enterprise. Starter has no onboarding fee. Salesforce lists no onboarding fee; its implementation cost comes from your team, a partner or its Professional Services.
How are Breeze and Agentforce priced?
HubSpot’s Breeze Assistant is included with every subscription. Its agents use HubSpot Credits at $0.01 each: 50 per conversation the Customer Agent resolves and 100 per lead the Prospecting Agent recommends, so Professional’s 3,000 monthly credits cover about 30 prospecting leads. Agentforce actions use 20 Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000, about $0.10 an action; the Agentforce add-on is $125 a user a month, and Core, Advanced and Max include 500,000 to 2.75 million credits a year.
What changed in Salesforce editions in 2026?
On 3 September 2026 Salesforce launched Core ($195 a user a month), Advanced ($395) and Max ($550), each with Agentforce, Slack, analytics, data security and the Premier Success Plan, and 500,000, 1 million and 2.75 million Flex Credits respectively. It compares Core with the old Enterprise Edition and Advanced with Unlimited, and says existing customers keep their legacy pricing. Starter Suite and Pro Suite are still on the pricing page.
Should we move from Salesforce to HubSpot, or the other way?
Move to HubSpot when Salesforce is mostly a pipeline and contact database, admin costs outweigh what the customisation gives you, and marketing lives in another tool. Move to Salesforce when you need custom objects at scale, Apex, or several clouds on one platform. Either way, map every object, field and automation first; records, history and integrations all have to move and be reconciled.
What does Gigabit charge for HubSpot or Salesforce work?
A HubSpot set-up starts at $6,000 fixed: data model, pipelines, import and clean-up, core automation, dashboards and training. Salesforce work such as Flow migration, Apex or integrations runs on an embedded team at $3,000–$7,500 per engineer per month. A move between CRMs starts at $7,000 fixed. Licences and HubSpot’s onboarding fees are separate, and we are not a partner of either vendor.
Where to go next.
CRM implementation
Data model, pipelines, migration and automation on the CRM you pick, at a fixed price.
CRM implementationHubSpot
Set-ups, portal rebuilds, integrations and Breeze agents on HubSpot.
HubSpotSalesforce
Integrations, Flow migration, Apex and Agentforce actions for teams that already run Salesforce.
Salesforce
Price the CRM for the team you will have in two years.
Thirty minutes on how many people log in, which teams share the data and who will run it, and which of the two fits that.