HubSpot is the holy grail for marketers worldwide and boasts more than 194,000 clients in over 120 countries across the globe. It offers marketing features, including forms, live chat, email marketing, and a well-integrated sales CRM.
But does that mean HubSpot is the best marketing automation software for you?
Well, only for some.
The main issue with HubSpot is how expensive it is. HubSpot prices each product differently—like the Marketing Hub, Sales CRM software, and Service Hub. While you can buy each product separately, bundling increases your total investment.
Although HubSpot is big in marketing automation, many smaller teams seek alternatives to elevate their marketing strategies to the next level.
There might be better choices than HubSpot if you want budget-friendly software for small- to medium-scale businesses.
In this article, we will highlight the 10 best HubSpot alternatives. We’ll cover their key features, pros and cons, pricing, and customer ratings to help you find the best marketing automation software suited to your unique business needs.
What Should You Look for In a HubSpot Alternative?
HubSpot provides a holistic set of features for you to streamline your operations.
However, when it comes to specific use cases, you may find some alternatives in this list that are better applicable. Here are some key attributes to look for in a HubSpot alternative:
- Advanced features and capabilities: Look for a tool that will provide a little extra to your marketing team along with email marketing automation features and CRM
- Ease of use: Choose an alternative to HubSpot that is intuitive, easy to navigate, and does not have a steep learning curve
- Integration capabilities: Evaluate your option for seamless integration capabilities with critical software systems
- Pricing: HubSpot’s pricing is a significant pain point, especially for small marketing teams and businesses. Select tools that are affordable and offer value for money
The 10 Best HubSpot Alternatives to Use in 2024
Here is our list of the top 10 HubSpot alternatives for your marketing team in 2024.
1. ClickUp
ClickUp is a comprehensive free project management software and an all-in-one productivity tool suitable for every marketing team, irrespective of their size or industry.
The Marketing Project Management Workspace from Clickup is especially relevant for marketing automation. It offers essential functionalities, including calendar views, Kanban boards, and real-time collaboration opportunities.
Manage tasks and projects, and collaborate efficiently with your team using ClickUp
Brainstorm, plan, and execute your marketing programs with ClickUp
Create content calendars and manage publishing schedules using the software. Automate email marketing with its email productivity tools , enhance your productivity with the built-in marketing campaign management templates and quickly visualize progress with its different dashboards that offer insights on any bottlenecks before they delay a project.
That’s not all! ClickUp Automation enables you to create workflows using over 50 distinct actions. Select from one of ClickUp’s more than 100 pre-made automated workflows. Use ClickUp Automation to automatically update statuses, send messages, and assign tasks or comments.
Let ClickUp Automations do your busywork.
Work across apps in Clickup’s collaborative platform with pre-built or customizable workflows.
ClickUp also offers thousands of templates to craft marketing plans , communication plans , and content calendars with different dashboards and views to keep you on track to achieve your goals.
Additionally, the ClickUp AI writing assistant is one of the best AI writing tools to help you quickly generate essential marketing collateral like content briefs, email marketing campaigns, blog posts, and case studies.
Use the AI writing assistant in ClickUp to generate blog posts, brainstorm ideas, compose emails, and more ClickUp AI helps marketers finetune and personalize messaging as per customers’ needs and where they are in their buying journey.
ClickUp best features
- Marketing automation: Robust marketing automation features with expansive customization options to simplify marketing workflows
- Task management: Create recurring tasks, communicate, and assign them to relevant stakeholders for smoother operations
- Customizable templates: Access the extensive collection of customizable templates, including customer journey Nutshell is a CRM solution that supports customer engagement, marketing automation, sales forecasting, and revenue pipeline management—all in one platform.
Nutshell provides a centralized repository to import, manage, and export contact data. Its powerful email marketing tool, Nutshell Campaigns, offers powerful filtering features to establish audiences and construct and deliver email blasts, newsletters, and drip sequences .
Nutshell best features
- Pipeline management: Multiple pipeline views, including a drop-down board and a visual map
- Activity reminders: Sequence tool with timely alerts for customer follow-ups
- Intelligent forms: Easy-to-embed smart web forms for lead capturing
- Sales automation: Sales progress markers with a drag-and-drop function for users to designate leads as won, canceled, or lost
- CRM: Unlimited CRM contacts and data storage
- Reporting and analytics: Reporting feature with data points, such as closed sales, productivity, revenue forecasts, etc., that enable you to generate presentations and charts seamlessly
Nutshell limitations
- Inconvenient lead contact bar
- Limitations in customizations and keyword searches
Nutshell pricing
- Foundation: $16 per user per month (billed annually)
- Pro: $42 per user per month (billed annually)
- Power AI: $52 per user per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: $67 per user per month (billed annually)
You can try out any of the free plans for free for 14 days.
Nutshell reviews and ratings
- G2: 4.2/5 (919+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.2/5 (447+ reviews)
3. Brevo
via Brevo Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a CRM suite with multiple marketing automation functionalities geared toward helping you grow faster.
While its foundation is an email marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses, it offers marketing automation for creating and managing landing pages, social media ad campaigns, and other inbound marketing tools .
Brevo best features
- Sales automation: Cross-channel personalization, analytics, and triggers to simplify your sales workflow
- Facebook ads: Automated re-targeting ads to capture the right leads
- API: Well-stocked API catalog to simplify integrations
- Mobile-friendly messaging: SMS and WhatsApp marketing for targeting customers in a mobile-friendly way
- Landing page customizations: Drag-and-drop form builder to customize your pages
- Email marketing: Automated email list segmentation to improve click-through rates
Brevo limitations
- Setup can be difficult for beginners
- Clunky to add and remove members from a plan
Brevo pricing
- Free Forever
- Starter: $25/month (billed annually)
- Business: $65/month (billed annually)
- BrevoPlus: Custom pricing
Brevo reviews and ratings
- G2: 4.5/5 (680+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (1910+ reviews)
4. ActiveCampaign
via ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation tool for user-centric companies looking to drive growth with a small marketing team.
It offers a comprehensive CRM solution, email marketing tools, and simple automated outbound and inbound marketing workflows to help you deliver the best customer experience.
ActiveCampaign uses pre-determined action triggers in the sales pipeline to generate and send email sequences on autopilot, much like HubSpot. The software gathers user data from social media, text messaging, landing pages, live chat, and other online material to target high-intent prospects.
ActiveCampaign best features
- Activity alerts: Automatic reminders for important customer dates and follow-ups
- Automations map: Clear view of all advanced automation in a single place to facilitate advanced tracking and reporting on what customers are responding to
- Shopify integration: From welcome emails to cart abandonment notifications, everything can be automated throughout the lifecycle of customer interactions
- Engagement score feature: Track the actions of loyal buyers by scoring their actions
- In-built lead scoring tool: Score leads based on intent and budget for prompt sales pipeline management
- Mobile-friendly messaging: Automated SMS marketing and on-site messaging
ActiveCampaign limitations
- Reporting does not include attribution
- Occasional glitches and lags
ActiveCampaign pricing
- Lite: $29/month per user (billed annually)
- Plus: $49/month for three users (billed annually)
- Professional: $149/month for five users (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
You can try out any of the plans for free for 14 days.
ActiveCampaign reviews and ratings
- G2: 4.5/5 (10675+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (2335+ reviews)
5. Keap
via Keap Keap (formerly InfusionSoft) is a CRM and automation tool for small businesses to upgrade their marketing and sales automation processes.
The CRM integrates with e-commerce functionalities that automate inventory management, follow-ups after purchases, and invoice collection for your online store.
Keap offers a centralized dashboard that provides insightful analysis and comprehensive reporting on lead sources, click-through rates, form completion, sales tracking, campaign success, income, contact management activities, and other transactions.
Keap best features
- Lead management: Use features like segmentation, prioritization, distribution, and filtering to manage leads and close more sales
- Landing page customizations: Drag-and-drop campaign builder to build high-converting landing pages
- Data import: Free data migrations from platforms like Mailchimp and Constant Contact
- CRM: Sync with custom workflows that update every interaction with a potential customer through the different sales stages
- Integrations: Seamless integration with like Zapier, Quickbooks, and Shopify, making it very easy to keep all data related to individual customers in one place
- Email marketing: Use features like templates, autoresponders, and spam filters to keep your email correspondence up-to-date
Keap limitations
- Email templates have basic designs
- Duplicate contacts are hard to manage
Keap pricing
Keap offers three pricing plans (for a minimum of 2500 contacts):
- Pro: $183/month (billed annually)
- Max: $229/month (billed annually)
- Ultimate: $229/month (billed annually)
You can try out the Pro and Max plans for free for 14 days.
Keap reviews and ratings
- G2: 4.2/5 (1465+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.1/5 (1260+ reviews)
6. Engagebay
via Engagebay Engagebay offers various marketing and CRM automation tools, live chat solutions, and help desk software.
However, it is beneficial as a startup marketing tool , providing an all-in-one feature suite for small marketing and sales teams.
Engagebay’s inbound marketing automation capabilities include lead generation, scoring, segmentation, site and SMS messaging workflows, campaign management, and more. Automate your email marketing workflows by creating email sequences and automated delivery based on customer behavior triggers.
Engagebay best features
- Reporting and analytics: Monitor your marketing team’s performance by looking at the number of visitors, subscribers, and conversion rate
- Predictive analysis: AI-powered predictive lead scoring and recommendations
- Landing page customizations: Use features like the free drag-and-drop landing page builder to create web pages and conduct A/B testing to optimize them further
- Meeting scheduler: Appointment scheduling tool for seamless user experience
- Customer support: Excellent onboarding support for reliable email automation
Engagebay limitations
- Limitations for the number of nodes in automation, even in higher tiers
- The learning curve is steep
Engagebay pricing
- Free Forever
- Basic: $13.79/month per user (billed annually)
- Growth: $59.79/month per user (billed annually)
- Pro: $110.39/month per user (billed annually)
Engagebay reviews and ratings
- G2: 4.6/5 (210+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (600+ reviews)
7. Pipedrive
via Pipedrive Pipedrive is a sales pipeline management and CRM software almost as popular as HubSpot, especially amongst remote sales teams.
Pipedrive offers sales tools, analytics, 300+ integrations, and other features for managing content and workflows that drive the sales process.
Its comprehensive pipeline view shows the status of each sales opportunity in the funnel and helps identify and mitigate bottlenecks, if any.
Pipedrive best features
- Automated alerts: Activity reminders for sales reps to follow up with prospects
- Sales automation: Sales and workflow automation Drip is a feature-rich CRM built to support e-commerce marketing teams and enable them to provide their customers with hyper-personalized products, services, and experiences.
Drip does not parade as a marketing suite; instead, it sells a single solution that gathers individual contact data, customizes your digital storefront for the specific prospect, and then engages them through email, SMS, and social media interactions.
Drip best features
- Customer relationship management: Abandoned cart notifications and post-purchase customer relationship management
- Sales automation: Pre-designed email and SMS templates and workflows to smoothen your workflows
- Insights: See the complete impact of your marketing strategies through detailed dashboards to modify and improve customer experiences for an increased lifetime value
- Integrations: Data integration from e-commerce sites like Shopify, WooCommerce, etc
- Ad automation: Social media ad automation with tailored content for individual customers
- Multi-channel campaigns: Unify customer communications Mailchimp is a well-known email marketing automation platform for growing businesses. It has extended its offering to include customer relationship management, website design, and other general marketing automation tools.
Mailchimp offers a Customer Journey Builder to personalize emails for converting customers at scale and set up triggers for seamless deliverability based on behavioral patterns, browsing data, and purchasing trends.
It also helps you cross-sell your products, recover abandoned carts, re-engage existing customers, and win new ones.
Mailchimp best features
- Predictive analysis: Data-based recommendations for marketing campaign optimization
- Segmentation: Use advanced logic like spending amounts, buying behavior, and predicted attributes to analyze campaign performances with custom reports, funnel visualizations, and industry benchmarking
- Pre-built templates: Get access to a massive library of pre-designed layouts and advanced generative AI tools Ontraport is an enterprise marketing automation and CRM platform for mid-size businesses and large organizations to help them scale their marketing and sales processes at a fraction of enterprise-grade pricing.
From segmenting and organizing leads to scoring and routing them to appropriate sales reps and maintaining a unified contact history of interactions, Ontraport’s Sales CRM is a powerful solution.
It also offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor to help you create customized and visually attractive web pages and forms to capture more leads and convert them into customers.
Ontraport best features
- Sales automation: Build email and SMS campaign system, extensive automated tools, campaign management tools , pre-made templates, native AI capabilities, real-time collaborative capabilities , and more.
Find the cost of entire campaigns, billable hours, and more with advanced formulas in ClickUp Custom Fields
From email automation to marketing resource management, ClickUp is your go-to software for optimizing your marketing strategy for accelerated business growth.
If you are still unsure about which software to check out, let us invite you to try ClickUp for FREE (seriously, you don’t have to pay a penny!). Contact our sales team to start automating your marketing and sales operations with ClickUp today!