If you're a small-medium sized team, we recommend using Copper over HubSpot (especially if you're just looking for a CRM and don't need HubSpot's marketing automation features). Copper has an infinitely better user experience and is more affordable in the long-run.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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The CRM space is probably the largest software category in the world, just ahead of project management. That said, there's 2 types of CRM categories:
Okay, let me explain. Most software will eventually get to a point where they need to determine if they should tack on the "CRM" category to their product offering. And because a CRM at the end of the day is really just a database, most software will justify "adding it" to their toolset.
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The CRM for small + medium teams (200 or less) that use Google Workspace.
If your team is using Google Workspace and you haven't yet considered Copper—take a minute right now to do just that.
Copper spends an absurd amount per-month in server costs alone, just to give you the deepest Google Workspace integration of any CRM out there.
As compared to all of the CRMs on the market, Copper has one of the most user-friendly experiences (which helps with team adoption), as well as a fully baked Chrome extension that allows you to use Copper (view tasks, past activity, and easily add new contacts to the CRM), without ever needing to even leave Gmail or Google Calendar.
It allows for powerful functionality like form integration and email automation functionality. For more details on this, check out the full Copper Review.
We've excessively used the API of all the major CRMs on the market and I'm here to tell you that Copper's API is fantastic. Their API is one of the most powerful and user-friendly to build on, especially as compared to that of HubSpot for which has some incredibly odd API design decisions.
While this might not sound like a big deal, if you ever plan on integrating your CRM (or hiring a company like ours to do it), I'm here to tell you that building the same integration in HubSpot takes 2–3x as long and is more of a pain to maintain. All factors that affect the integration cost at the end of the day, so API design matters and affects you even if you don't think it does. 🤖 Learn more about our top Copper Integrations here.
If you're more technical, they also have a fantastic native Zapier and Make connector which allows you to build custom integrations with other popular tools like PandaDoc and Dialpad.
If you're using Google Workspace at your company and you want a modern CRM for your team, look no further than Copper. Not using Google Workspace? We recommend checking out Pipedrive or HubSpot instead. Just an individual and stumble upon Copper because you were considering either Airtable or Notion as your CRM? Copper would definitely work, but also consider folk in this dedicated Copper vs folk comparison.
For a limited time, we're giving away our paid Copper crash course for free if you use our link to sign up for Copper here. Full details available here: Claim Copper Course.
The marketing automation tool (and CRM) for mid + large teams (200–1,000) who require a robust and all-in-one tool like Salesforce.
If you are considering HubSpot because of price (after hearing things like 50–90% off the first year)—let me stop you right now, you're playing directly into their marketing shtick (you'll see the #1 concern with HubSpot is actually price).
HubSpot was not initially built as a CRM, it was a marketing email automation platform. A powerful (and expensive) one at that—but credit where credit is due. It's just, most companies often need to start with just a CRM to streamline their business operations.
It wasn't until HubSpot realized that acquiring customers for their $20–60k+/yr marketing automation suite was a difficult sell out of the gate, that they decided to built a "free CRM" as a lead magnet (and gateway) to their expensive core product.
So if you're a startup or a team of 20 or less (that will actually be using the CRM day-to-day), we highly recommend looking at a different CRM (we've done a deep-dive on that here). Because after the first year, you will be paying 2-4x more for HubSpot than the competing solutions (even at their proposed "Year 2+ discounts").
Now if your team is quite large and considering Salesforce, we actually do recommend Hubspot in most cases. HubSpot is more user-friendly than Salesforce, and you aren't going to be totally stuck in the expensive enterprise software stack that a tool like Salesforce often requires.
We will also add that we work with HubSpot often, and Copper + Pipedrive have far superior API's to HubSpot (in that we can build the same integration in 1/2 the time), so there is a second-order unseen cost associated to HubSpot.
And finally, there's quite a bit that needs to "go right" in order for emails to automatically log from your team's inbox into HubSpot.
Replies to emails will be logged automatically on the contact's timeline if you have connected your personal email and the following is true:
1. The original email was sent through the CRM or sent from your connected email client with the sales email extension or add-in installed and the Log checkbox selected.
2. The original email was not sent to an email address or domain listed in your Never Log list.
3. The email address is still connected when the reply is received.
4. The reply is sent to an individual's email connected by the user who originally started the thread.
5. The sender of the reply is an existing contact in HubSpot.
(Something that most take for granted when working with a CRM like Copper, where everything just logs automatically with no prerequisites—even if the contact doesn't yet exist in the CRM, it'll go back 1 year through your team's email history and retroactively add those emails)
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