HighLevel x Hubspot: Which CRM excels at WhatsApp integration?

When WhatsApp fuels your sales process, selecting the right CRM can be the key to securing a deal or losing a lead. With HighLevel vs Hubspot, you'll experience instant chat access, seamless message logging, AI-driven follow-ups, and intuitive drag-and-drop workflows — however, each platform offers unique advantages in customization, pricing transparency, and pipeline sophistication. Meanwhile, a next-gen competitor is quietly transforming the standards for true WhatsApp integration.

Why WhatsApp CRM Integration Matters

Linking WhatsApp directly to your CRM bridges the divide between conversations and revenue. Automated contact syncing and message logging eliminate the need for manual data entry and reduce the risk of lost leads, ensuring that every interaction is a valuable record.

• Accelerate response times by initiating follow-ups and reminders the instant a customer engages.
• Enhance engagement with personalized, template-based outreach that feels custom-crafted.
• Simplify workflows with an integrated dashboard that consolidates chats, contacts, and campaign analytics.

With your team able to view every WhatsApp message alongside emails, calls, and deals, they can devote less time searching for context and more time closing sales — transforming casual conversations into reliable conversions.

What is HighLevel?

HighLevel is a comprehensive marketing and sales platform tailored for agencies and growing teams, allowing you to consolidate leads, campaigns, and customer data in one convenient location—eliminating the hassle of managing multiple tools.

By integrating WhatsApp into its workflow builder, HighLevel automates messaging sequences based on buyer behavior, including appointment reminders and post-purchase check-ins. Its drag-and-drop campaign editor enables you to easily create broadcasts or follow-up funnels without any coding knowledge.

While the platform boasts powerful triggers and reporting dashboards, some users may find customization options somewhat limited, and telecom fees can accumulate quickly. Nevertheless, for agencies seeking a centralized hub that combines WhatsApp with email, ads, and SMS, HighLevel offers a ready-to-use solution.

What is Hubspot?

HubSpot offers a free CRM that centralizes all your contacts, deals, and tasks into a streamlined interface—no credit card needed. It comes equipped with live chat, email tracking, meeting scheduling, and ticketing tools right out of the box. Robust integrations with Marketing Hub and Service Hub facilitate seamless automation between teams. As you grow, HubSpot's ecosystem allows you to scale up to paid plans for more advanced automation and reporting. The native WhatsApp integration lets you send and receive messages directly in the shared inbox, automate template-based notifications through workflows, and manage two-way customer conversations efficiently.

Feature comparison of HighLevel and Hubspot

Two-Way Messaging

HighLevel offers seamless two-way WhatsApp messaging through a unified inbox, allowing your sales team to manage leads effortlessly without the need to switch tools. Thanks to a native Twilio integration, messages, templates, and replies are synced in real time, ensuring that both inbound inquiries and outbound nurturing are context-rich and tracked within the CRM, resulting in quicker deal cycles.

HubSpot’s native WhatsApp integration, available on Professional and Enterprise Service Hub plans, brings two-way messaging into your shared inbox. This allows agents to respond to customer inquiries using text, images, or videos—all from within HubSpot. Incoming messages automatically create a new thread linked to the appropriate contact, company, deal, or ticket record, while outbound template or free-form messages initiate 24-hour sessions to facilitate ongoing dialogue. You'll have complete visibility into session limits and conversation counts, ensuring you stay within your monthly quotas without any surprises. Additionally, workflows can trigger business-initiated template messages for re-engagement or reminders, logging every interaction as a timeline event.

Template Management

With HighLevel, you can create and manage reusable WhatsApp templates that feature buttons, images, and quick replies. These templates seamlessly integrate into your automated workflows, enabling teams to maintain consistent messaging for promotions, follow-ups, and transactional updates. The streamlined approval process is perfect for scaling outbound communications.

HubSpot’s WhatsApp integration, available in the Professional and Enterprise Service Hub, offers a synchronized template manager directly within your CRM. Once you connect your WhatsApp Business account, every approved template in Meta automatically syncs to HubSpot’s CRM under the Templates > WhatsApp tab, where you can filter by status (Ready to use, Needs personalization, Rejected), language, and category (promotional, transactional, OTP).

Automated Responses & Chatbots

Our platform supports comprehensive multimedia messaging capabilities, allowing sales reps to send and receive images, files, videos, and voice notes using WhatsApp templates or chat. All these assets are recorded and easy to access within the conversation history, enabling teams to track documents and visual content without any confusion.

With HubSpot’s WhatsApp integration available in Service Hub Professional and Enterprise, you can set up workflows to dispatch automated messages—such as welcome sequences, abandoned cart reminders, and delivery updates—directly as WhatsApp template notifications.

Although HubSpot doesn’t have a built-in chatbot builder for WhatsApp, you can seamlessly integrate third-party chatbot platforms through Zapier or respond.io. This integration channels conversation flows into HubSpot’s shared inbox and customer records, allowing a chatbot to qualify leads or address common inquiries before escalating matters to a live agent, all within your established workflow framework.

Multimedia Support (Images, Videos, Files)

Experience comprehensive multimedia messaging capabilities, allowing sales representatives to send and receive images, files, videos, and voice notes effortlessly through WhatsApp templates or chat. All these assets are logged and easily accessible within the conversation history, enabling teams to track documents and visual content without confusion.

HubSpot’s native WhatsApp integration (available in Service Hub Professional and Enterprise) facilitates the seamless sending and receiving of media attachments—such as images, videos, audio, stickers, and documents up to 15 MB—directly from the conversations inbox or contact record.

Incoming media messages generate timeline events featuring thumbnails and download links, allowing sales and support teams to view or forward assets without needing to switch apps.

Contact & Lead Synchronization

Conversations initiated on WhatsApp are automatically logged and linked to the appropriate contact or deal. HighLevel seamlessly creates new leads or updates existing records, keeping your pipeline current in real time without the hassle of manual entry, which streamlines your sales process.

With HubSpot’s native WhatsApp integration, available on Professional and Enterprise Service Hub, every new WhatsApp conversation is synced directly to the corresponding CRM contact record, creating or updating the contact based on their phone number.

Once you connect your WhatsApp Business account, only new messages will trigger this synchronization (historical chats remain in WhatsApp). Each incoming conversation generates a new timeline event linked to the associated contact or deal. For lead capture channels, such as click-to-WhatsApp ads, you can automate contact creation from form submissions and carry on the conversation via WhatsApp, all of which is tracked within HubSpot.

Workflow Triggers & Notifications

WhatsApp events, such as incoming messages or clicks on template buttons, can ignite robust workflow automations in HighLevel. From a single customer interaction, you can send internal notifications, launch campaigns, update deal stages, or schedule follow-ups.

HubSpot’s Service Hub integrates with WhatsApp through certified partners, bringing events like new messages, template sends, or delivery failures directly into its workflow engine. This allows you to trigger downstream automations—such as converting high-priority conversations into deals or support tickets and sending alerts to your team—making every WhatsApp exchange an actionable signal within your CRM.

folk CRM: The Best CRM Connected to WhatsApp

If your sales team utilizes WhatsApp to connect with leads and finalize deals, folk CRM’s seamless WhatsApp integration is a game-changer.

With folk’s WhatsApp CRM, every conversation is automatically synced and recorded in your CRM—eliminating the hassle of manual copying and preventing lost messages. You gain complete visibility into your team's WhatsApp interactions with leads and customers, ensuring you always grasp the context behind each deal. Whether it's a follow-up or a pivotal decision point, the full picture is just a click away.

However, folk goes beyond WhatsApp.
It integrates effortlessly with Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, Google Meet, Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and more—allowing you to manage emails, meetings, and social interactions all in one unified platform. You can easily import contacts from any channel and handle them seamlessly within folk.

Here’s what truly sets folk apart:
AI agents enhance your sales process by automating workflows, revealing deal insights, and increasing productivity—allowing your team to concentrate on closing deals instead of administrative tasks.
Are you ready to revolutionize your sales operations and achieve outstanding results?
👉 Start your 14-day free trial

Conclusion

In the competitive landscape of CRM solutions, HighLevel excels with its comprehensive automation and targeted marketing tools, while HubSpot offers a robust, scalable platform with seamless integrations. HighLevel stands out for agencies, focusing on multi-channel marketing, whereas HubSpot is perfect for growing teams needing a solid CRM foundation. However, if you're searching for a CRM that effortlessly connects WhatsApp with a suite of other tools, folk presents an exceptional alternative. With its AI-driven workflows and complete integration across platforms, folk empowers your team to focus on nurturing relationships and closing deals.

Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.