Salesforce vs HubSpot: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with keeping pipeline execution consistent while delivery stays on track. When prospect context lives across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets, follow-ups slip, handoffs break, and forecasting becomes guesswork. A CRM for agencies has to keep new business moving fast while preserving enough account history to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

In this article, we will delve into two powerful CRM solutions: Salesforce and HubSpot. Both platforms aim to streamline operations, yet they cater to different agency needs. Salesforce is a robust, highly customizable CRM that excels in managing complex processes and extensive automation, while HubSpot offers a more unified approach, integrating sales, marketing, and service functionalities to create a seamless user experience.

The right choice hinges on your agency’s unique requirements, including process complexity, desired customization, and the level of ongoing management you can commit to system setup and administration.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a robust enterprise CRM platform designed for extensive customization, intricate data models, and large-scale sales operations. It is well-suited for agencies that require advanced permissions, multiple business units, or specific processes integrated into record types and automation. Its reporting and dashboards facilitate multi-level pipeline management when data is consistently structured. A wide range of integrations is available through AppExchange and custom development, making Salesforce the go-to choice for agencies anticipating significant customization, governance, and long-term scalability.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that unites sales tools with marketing and service functionalities within a single ecosystem. It is ideal for agencies requiring pipeline tracking, lead capture, email campaigns, and lifecycle reporting all in one place. Teams can define pipelines, log activities, and automate follow-up processes using workflows, depending on their plan. The app marketplace offers support for popular agency tools and client-facing systems, making HubSpot a preferred choice for agencies seeking both CRM and adjacent go-to-market tools from a single vendor.

Feature comparison of Salesforce and HubSpot

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

In Salesforce Sales Cloud, opportunity stages are configured to implement various pipelines using Sales Processes and Opportunity Record Types. A Sales Process is essentially a filtered list of opportunity stages, while Record Types allow for the assignment of different sales processes to specific teams or motions. This setup enables an organization to maintain unique stage sets for various services or regions, all while ensuring the Opportunity object remains consistent. Additionally, stage probability is integrated into the stage setup, facilitating its use in pipeline views and reporting.

HubSpot, on the other hand, supports deal pipelines centered around stages, which can be created and managed in the pipeline settings. Deals progress through the established stages, and the definitions of these stages can be modified to align with how an agency qualifies and secures work. Separate pipelines can track distinct processes, such as new business versus renewals or different service lines, ensuring that stages remain unique to each pipeline.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

Salesforce monitors activities through tasks and events displayed on record activity timelines. Depending on configuration, permissions, and licensing, email and calendar activities can be captured using Einstein Activity Capture, with these items appearing on related records. Activities can be linked to accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities, ensuring that the context of a deal includes both scheduled and completed actions. The specific behavior may differ based on setup choices and the activity capture mode utilized.

HubSpot records activities on timelines, allowing users to log and associate calls, emails, meetings, notes, and tasks with contacts, companies, and deals. This activity data can populate properties such as the last activity date based on logged interactions. Users can filter activity timelines, and activities can be linked across related records, ensuring that a deal and its associated contact share the same logged context.

Automation and Workflows

Salesforce offers robust reporting capabilities through customizable reports and dashboards based on standard objects like opportunities and activities. Reporting filters and stage-type reporting leverage opportunity stage concepts, while activity reports can provide insights into both open and completed tasks. Dashboards can integrate multiple report charts to facilitate pipeline monitoring and sales management, with access governed by organization permissions and sharing settings. The extent of reporting coverage relies on enabled objects and the configuration of fields and stages.

HubSpot features workflows designed to automate actions across marketing, sales, and service processes, with availability contingent on the subscription tier. Workflows can be created from templates or crafted in the workflow editor, triggered by record events or property changes. Actions within workflows may include tasks, notifications, and record updates, though certain workflow types or actions are linked to specific hubs and plan levels.

Reporting and Analytics

Salesforce offers robust reporting capabilities through reports and dashboards that can be customized based on standard objects like opportunities and activities. Reporting filters utilize opportunity stage concepts, allowing for detailed stage type reporting, while activity reports can summarize both open and completed activities. Dashboards can integrate multiple report charts to facilitate pipeline monitoring and sales management, with access governed by organizational permissions and sharing settings. The extent of reporting coverage varies depending on the enabled objects and the configuration of fields and stages.

HubSpot delivers sales reporting through dashboards, the sales analytics suite, and custom reporting tools. Users can save reports to dashboards and share them with individuals who have the necessary access. The report builder allows for the creation of custom reports to analyze CRM objects and activities, enabling filtering and dataset selection tailored to specific reporting needs.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Salesforce integrations are typically added via AppExchange, the marketplace for apps and solutions that enhance the platform. For maintaining data hygiene, Salesforce employs matching rules to identify potential duplicates and duplicate rules to dictate the actions taken when duplicates are found during record creation or while viewing records. The Salesforce documentation further explains how duplicate sets and reports showcase duplicates identified by these rules and jobs. These configurations are set in Setup and tailored per object based on admin preferences.

HubSpot integrates with external tools through its app marketplace, offering a variety of integrations for sales, marketing, and operations. To ensure data quality, HubSpot provides tools for deduplication workflows, enabling the identification and management of duplicates, detection of formatting issues, and enrichment coverage tools that vary by plan. These functionalities are organized under Data Management and Data Quality, where teams can assess issues and implement corrections to records and properties.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM that centralizes contacts, conversations, and deal context without overwhelming setup processes. It's tailored for agency teams where various members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system maintains a visible relationship history, ensuring handoffs aren't reliant on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and customizable stages for diverse agency workflows
• Contact and deal timelines consolidate interaction history in one location
• Email and calendar synchronization links conversations to the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking standardize next steps
• Contact enrichment fills in missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools help merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• Simple pipeline reporting allows for monitoring stage health and deal progression
• Integrations and automation connectors minimize manual updates

For agencies, the primary advantage lies in achieving operational clarity across multiple relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups among team members. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting reliable over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Salesforce offers extensive customization for complex agency needs and HubSpot delivers a unified sales and marketing ecosystem, folk stands out as the optimal choice for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and streamlined sequencing. With its focused approach to relationship management, centralized contact history, and robust data hygiene features, folk ensures agencies maintain operational clarity and consistent follow-ups. For teams navigating multiple connections and fast-paced environments, folk is the best alternative to drive success and efficiency.

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