Lower Cost Alternatives to Hubspot

Looking for Hubspot’s competitors?  I’m wondering if you are looking because of Hubspot’s pricing or because Hubspot’s features don’t fit your needs?  We have a plan for you if your looking for Hubspot Discounts.

If you like the features of Hubspot but can’t quite commit to the price tag, well frankly, we think you’re probably being penny-wise and pound foolish.  That being said, it is possible to pull together many of the elements provided in Hubspot, using multiple vendors to save yourself some money.  You won’t get the tight integration that you’ll get from Hubspot and you’ll probably prove the concept of inbound marketing with your mish-mash of products only to later decide that Hubspot was your best bet all along, but it can be done.

Similar Products

There are a handful of products that compete head-to-head with Hubspot.  The problem with these is that most cost more than Hubspot.  Software like Silverpop and Marketo offer integrated email marketing and lead nurturing platforms, forms and contact management.   Marketo promotes their WYSIWYG landing page building, social tools and CRM integration too.  The problem is that Marketo starts well above the $1000/month mark and Silverpop doesn’t share pricing on their website, but the last time I spoke with them, they were priced  much higher than Hubspot as well.

There is a product that offers some of the same elements of Hubspot at a lower price point and that is Infusionsoft.  Infusionsoft has been around longer that Hubspot and they have recently started making some noise in the marketplace.   This noise started by no small coincidence when Goldman Sachs made a $54 million dollar investment in the company in early 2013.

I have been an Infusionsoft Partner for three years now and I believe that they are a good fit for many small companies.  If you are a small online retailer or would like to conduct more ecommerce transactions on the web and you don’t have infrastructure in place to do it, you need to take a long hard look at Infusionsoft.

I bring up ecommerce because in addition to the marketing automation, lead nurturing and contact management tools provided by Infusionsoft, they also offer a complete ecommerce shopping cart that integrates with all the other components of the tool including their very serviceable CRM system.  They also support affililate marketing management.  I would be happy to talk to you about the trade-offs associated with Infusionsoft vs. Hubspot just drop me a line.

Pulling Multiple Solutions Together

Of course, the other alternative to Hubspot is pulling multiple solutions together under one roof.  Back in the day, we used to call this a “best-of-breed” solution.  There have always be trade-offs between buying a completely integrated system and buying best-of-breed and your online marketing system is no different.  A Best-of-Breed approach may even save you money in software and product costs, but I honestly believe in the long run, it will cost you more in time and effort.  My other concern is that for many, analyzing your results will be more difficult and the lack of integration will make it harder to identify trends.  But, there are definitely quality products that do elements of what you get in Hubspot, some are even free.  The plan is to provide you with some suggestions on the following fronts over a series of blog posts covering the following topics:

• Content Management and Blogging
• Keyword Analysis and SEO Tools
• Landing Pages
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Management and Engagement tools

Hubspot’s dream is to make a platform where all these elements work in perfect harmony.  Hubspot has not quite gotten everything together, they’ve gone through so growing pains but my bet is that they will figure out a way to get everything working together more seamlessly, at a lower cost that we could do pulling five or six products together ourselves.

But stay tuned for the best of breed tools analysis that I will be pulling together to show you how I would do it if I were building my own “Hub Spot”

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