Adopting customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation software into your business can help generate leads and then manage them through your sales process. HubSpot and Marketo are both popular solutions that come with a suite of tools to help you do exactly that.
While they are comparable in many ways, they each provide unique features and solutions that set them apart based on specific needs and uses.
HubSpot is popular CRM software best known for having robust free sales, marketing, and support tools. As a full-service marketing CRM solution, HubSpot can help businesses manage leads from generation through nurturing to deal closing.
Offered as a tool by Adobe, Marketo is strictly a marketing automation solution that aligns both sales and marketing teams through lead- or account-based marketing and AI content. Marketo can then integrate and sync with your existing CRM tool.
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Marketo vs. HubSpot: Comparison table
| Starting price | ||
| Free trial | ||
| AI capabilities | ||
| Built-in automation | ||
| Sales forecasting | ||
| CRM integration | ||
Marketo vs HubSpot: Pricing
Marketo
Businesses that are interested in Marketo can purchase it through the Adobe suite or as an individual product. Below are the premium tiers for Marketo as a standalone solution, all of which require contacting them for a quote.
- Growth: For up to 10 users and 20,000 calls per day. Offers core email marketing and segmentation features with limited automations.
- Select: For up to 25 users and 50,000 calls per day. Offers essential marketing automations and measurement tools.
- Prime: For up to 25 users and 50,000 calls per day. Offers lead- and account-based marketing with advanced journey analytics and AI personalization.
- Ultimate: For up to 25 users and 50,000 calls per day. Includes Marketo’s most advanced marketing automations with premium attributions and Marketo Measure.
HubSpot
Below, I have included both HubSpot’s CRM and Marketing Hub pricing.
- Free CRM: Free for five users with contact management, quotes, live chat, and more.
- Sales Hub Starter: $15 per seat per month, billed annually, or $20 when billed monthly. The Starter plan includes all the tools in the free plan, plus simple automation, e-signature, conversation routing, and more.
- Sales Hub Professional: $90 per seat per month, billed annually, or $100 when billed monthly, plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee. This plan includes all Starter features and prospecting workspace, playbooks, forecasting, and more.
- Sales Hub Enterprise: $150 per seat per month, with an annual commitment and a one-time $3,500 onboarding fee. Users of this plan receive all Professional tools, plus advanced permissions, predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence, and lead form routing.
- Free marketing tools: Free for up to five users. Allows users to generate new email leads.
- Marketing Hub Starter: $15 per seat per month, billed annually, or $20 when billed monthly. This includes all HubSpot Marketing free tools plus email and in-app chat support, marketing automations, and open branding on content.
- Starter Customer Platform: $15 per seat per month, billed annually, or $20 when billed monthly. This platform grants access to the Sales, Service, and Content HubSpot Hubs.
- Marketing Hub Professional: $800 for three seats per month, billed annually, or $890 when billed monthly. This plan has all features from the Starter tier plus campaign reporting, social media, omnichannel marketing automation, and more.
- Marketing Hub Enterprise: $3,600 for five seats per month, billed annually, with additional seats starting at $75 per month. This plan includes all Professional features plus the ability to limit access to content and data, multi-touch revenue attribution, customer journey analytics, and more.
Marketo vs HubSpot: Feature comparison
AI capabilities
Winner: Tie
With Adobe generative AI, Marketo Engage users can create content for all channels, including email, nurturing, chat, webinars, and more. Additionally, generative AI can help with live chat support by having chatbots answer questions in a natural and brand-friendly way. Marketo AI can also produce conversation summaries for sales reps plus dialogue assists. Reps can use this to instantly generate full libraries of topics, questions, and objection responses to refer to.
SEE: Best AI-Powered CRMs.
HubSpot also provides generative AI features slightly extended beyond Marketo’s capabilities for unique tools like entire website generators. Similar to Marketo, HubSpot AI can produce summarizations, brand voice consistency, blog and email writers, and chatbot builders. HubSpot does provide SEO recommendations that can optimize a business’ website and blog posts to rank higher in search engine results for optimal reach.
Built-in automations
Winner: Tie
Marketo users can quickly launch automations by allowing AI to build predictive audiences and segments. These automations can nurture prospects through omnichannel marketing with personalized experiences and triggered content. By using behavioral data, built-in intelligence, and sophisticated journey flows, businesses can both identify and engage customers to accelerate the customer experience.
HubSpot’s marketing automation software can create marketing campaigns that automate routine tasks. These campaigns can be extended across SMS, in-product marketing, and more. Users of HubSpot can automate lead nurturing using email drip campaigns that send timely touchpoints to prospects. HubSpot’s automations are customizable and can be used to create targeted workflows or communications ranging from a simple follow-up to a complex customer journey.
Sales forecasting
Winner: HubSpot
While Marketo doesn’t offer specific sales forecasting data, it does offer overall performance analytics. Users of Marketo can measure revenue by channel or program across metrics like pipeline, investment, ROI, and prospects generated. Marketo also has a unique predictive feature that can generate content recommendations. For example, AI-powered recommendations can display a bar placement overlay for each web visitor to highlight the single best performing asset for that specific buyer.
HubSpot has more detailed forecasting software with an easy-to-use interface. It allows for a holistic overview of entire pipelines and timely business forecasts that can be used for major team strategizing or 1:1s for sales or service teams. HubSpot even offers sales forecasting templates that users can immediately implement to track pipeline performance, predict sales revenue, and highlight which deals to prioritize.
CRM integration
Winner: HubSpot
Marketo itself is not a CRM tool. It operates entirely as a marketing solution built for lead generation and management. Because of this, it has the ability to integrate with third-party CRM tools. When you connect Marketo to a CRM, it can share information such as lead details and scores with the CRM for further analysis and nurturing. Marketo can integrate with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
HubSpot offers a sales and CRM solution within its suite of tools. Users can track and analyze sales activity with individual leads and accounts in real time. HubSpot’s free CRM includes well-rounded features such as meeting scheduler, email template builder, live chat software, and deal pipelines. HubSpot’s CRM solution can be customized and scaled to match your business’s size and needs.
Marketo pros and cons
Pros of Marketo
- Offers integrations with other CRM providers.
- Users praise Marketo and Adobe’s customer support.
- Offers advanced lead score management.
Cons of Marketo
- Users report costly additional charges for premium features.
- Limitations around design and interface themes.
- Users report outdated UX and UI.
HubSpot pros and cons
Pros of HubSpot
- 14-day free trial.
- Offers customizable and diverse templates.
- Powerful automation sequences for client interactions.
Cons of HubSpot
- Premium subscriptions and add-ons can be pricey for smaller businesses.
- User reports of occasional system glitches and complications.
- Users report there’s a learning curve with the software.
Should your organization use Marketo or HubSpot?
Choose Marketo if . . .
- You’re already a user of Adobe products and just want a simple lead generation tool added to your tech stack.
- You’re a B2B company looking for an account-based marketing tool.
- You want to boost your e-commerce business strategies.
Choose HubSpot if . . .
- You’re a small business looking for a robust free CRM solution with premium upgrades.
- You’re a B2B or a B2C business in need of a marketing, sales, and service tool.
- You’re an enterprise business in any industry looking for a full-scale CRM solution.
To dig more into this provider as a CRM solution, head over to our HubSpot review.
Methodology
To compare Marketo and HubSpot as marketing and lead generation providers, I used an in-house rubric. This rubric consists of predefined criteria and subcriteria centered around the most important factors when evaluating any general lead generation or CRM software and its functionality.
Here’s a breakdown of the scoring criteria to compare Marketo and HubSpot:
- Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
- Core features: Weighted 25% of the total score.
- Customizations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
- Integrations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
- Ease of use: Weighted 10% of the total score.
- Customer support: Weighted 10% of the total score.
