Hubspot Alternatives – The Deep Dive

Recently I broached the subject of piecing together Lower Cost Hubspot Alternatives.  I was curious about what it would take to replace Hubspot’s centralized marketing software by combining some best-of-breed digital marketing tools that excel at performing a smaller subset of the complete Hubspot feature set.

For example, Hubspot’s marketing platform offers an integrated platform for creating, publishing and maintaining a blog.  So I reviewed numerous blogging platforms and evaluated their features and will make a recommendation based on the results of our review.

There is No Substitute to Integration and Elbow-Grease

For those that could use a little refresher Hubspot’s primary functions, take a quick look at our Hubspot Review.  I understand that the cost of Hubspot can be a non-starter for many small businesses, so I’m trying to provide alternatives.

That being said, I believe that having an integrated comprehensive digital marketing platform is the best approach.  I think that the cost premium of Hubspot is worth the benefits of integration.  If you are thinking about testing the inbound marketing waters, but don’t want to commit to the cost and one year contract of Hubspot, then perhaps getting a feel for the concepts of inbound marketing through these “alternative” tools is the way to go.

After all, if you find yourself not utilizing these tools after a month or two of getting them setup, then the odds are that Hubspot is not going to help much.  Inbound marketing is a contact sport that requires a commitment to content creation and actively engaging your prospects.  No tool can do that better than your staff.

Piecing Together a Digital Marketing Suite

In order to piece together a toolset whose functions approximate that of Hubspot, I decided to break the functionality of Hubspot into 5 primary elements.  Those elements are:

• Content Management and Blogging Platform
• Email Marketing Platform
• Landing Pages
• SEO Research and Keyword Analysis
• Social Media Monitoring and Management

I’m going to do a deep dive into each of these features that describes the primary function of the tool within Hubspot and our preferred alternate tool that can produce similar results.

Let’s Work Together on This One

We are very interested to hear your thoughts on these alternatives and would like to see which tools you are using to approximate these results, so please, speak your mind in our comments or email us at HSAlternative (at) greystack.com.

Our Next post will focus on the CMS, Blogging and Email.

 

Jamie Troia is President of Greystack Digital Marketing and author of Stern Rules!