HubSpot vs Asana

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 CRM + 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.

• Powerful marketing automation tool
• Flexible customization for larger teams
• All-in-one platform (CRM, marketing, support, sales)
• Strong ecosystem and brand with lots of educational content
• AI features that help with data enrichment and support workflows

• Gets expensive quickly once you scale usage
• CRM feels clunky and less intuitive than newer tools
• Requires time (and often a consultant) to fully set up
• Overkill for most SMBs that just need simple deal tracking
• Creates friction in day-to-day usage, which can hurt adoption

HubSpot has been pushing AI pretty heavily, but it's important to remember that HubSpot is not an AI-first CRM.

Sure, they added data enrichment, the ability to summarize deals, and an MCP, but that's not an AI-first CRM 😅 HubSpot is the mini-van that is trying to keep up with the times.

The HubSpot MCP connector is built mostly around reading and acting on CRM data, not restructuring the CRM itself. So through chat you'll be able to do things like: look up a contact or deal, search records by property, read what properties (fields) exist, and update the values in those fields.

But you can't configure or interact with HubSpot CRM beyond that. You can't create a brand new custom field, or edit drop down options, or delete a field.

HubSpot has added AI features because their existing customer base demands it, although they are not the CRM to start using from scratch in this era. For example, Lightfield (our top pick) allows you to fully set up the CRM from scratch and even migrate data within the AI chat. You get consulting, CRM setup, and the tool. This is just not possible with HubSpot.

With that, if you are looking for an AI-CRM in this era, HubSpot is not the CRM to go for.

HubSpot gives you everything you'd expect from a CRM.

You're able to keep your contacts, companies, deals, and pipelines within one central location. You can track all your customer interactions and see the team's full history of communication with them all while moving deals through stages (Kanban style).

It solves the main problem of deals falling through because details were missed as contacts were passed between team members, so if you're using this feature for basic use, it'll work well and feel pretty familiar. HubSpot even has an integration with the best email client, Superhuman Mail where you can manage your deals from within your inbox.

Where things start to go wrong is when you add more customization. HubSpot likes to layer in a ton of properties, fields, and customization options, which can make the system feel heavier than it needs to be. Suddenly, updating a deal or finding information takes way longer than it should, which creates friction. Larger teams often hire a consultant to set everything up (for an additional $20-$40k), but smaller businesses don't have that luxury, so the system gets overwhelming fast.

If the "free" CRM isn't what brought you to HubSpot, we're willing to bet it's because you've heard about their powerful marketing automation feature.

You can build workflows that, for example, will capture leads from, say, a lead magnet, send nurture emails, score them based on behavior, and route qualified leads over to your sales team automatically. When it's set up the right way, it can feel like you've got a mini marketing engine running in the background.

But that's the catch... it only works IF you're actively investing in inbound marketing. Most SMBs aren't publishing content consistently or building out full funnel strategies, so they end up paying for a system they barely touch. That's a huge part of the disconnect, yes, this is a great feature that we won't downplay, but that doesn't mean the use case is always there.

Just know that there are tools out there (like Copper or Pipedrive) that offer lightweight versions of this feature but without all the complexity, especially for teams smaller than 20-30.

• Free CRM: $0. Best for individuals or very small teams that want basic contact management and a place to track deals.
• Starter: $15/mo. per seat. Best for small teams that want basic email marketing and simple automation.
• Professional: $890/mo. Best for growing companies that need marketing automation and advanced reporting.
• Enterprise: $3,600/mo. Best for large organizations that need advanced customizations, predictive analytics, and enterprise-grade automation.

Asana is tried and true. We used it for seven years before switching to Motion, and the reason it stuck around that long wasn't because it's just really well built. Things don't break, the system holds up as your team grows, and you can trust it to do what it's supposed to do day in and day out.

They've also done a better job layering in AI without it feeling like an afterthought than ClickUp or monday.com When we looked at monday.com's AI features, they felt bolted on and not that useful. Asana's feel like they actually belong in the product more so.

That said, Asana is going through a hard time right now despite executing on AI better than most legacy tools that have been around for a long time. And honestly, part of why we left after seven years captures the core limitation well: Asana is great at organizing work, but Motion was better at helping us actually focus on doing it.

If your team spends more time maintaining the system than benefiting from it, that's a sign it might not be the right fit. It really needs someone who knows what they're doing to set it up properly, and for smaller teams or anyone who wants AI to handle more of the day-to-day heavy lifting, that overhead just isn't worth it.

• Great for large teams with lots of moving parts (300+ employees)
• Clear ownership and project visibility
• Useful workflow automation once it is set up
• AI features are integrated more smoothly than most PM tools
• Good fit for enterprise teams

• Needs real setup and upkeep (you need a consultant to set it up right)
• Too customizable for smaller teams
• Feels more useful for managers than individual contributors
• AI and automation push you toward more expensive paid plans

If you have complex projects that require multiple custom fields, team collaboration, multiple views including kanban boards, lists, timelines, gantt charts and perhaps even workload management features. Workload management features, for example, allow you to manage your teams capacity, see how much work is on their plate (whether they are overwhelmed or underworked) and rebalance work as required.

Asana’s automation mostly runs on Rules. You can assign work automatically, move tasks between stages, and build repeatable flows for things like approvals or requests.

This saves a lot of repetitive admin work but it really only works well when there's someone who is super on top of building the systems, teaching them to the team, and then keeping an eye on it all. If you don't have that person, you end up with multiple/conflicting systems or things start to fall apart. The newer AI tools can help with that a little bit, but you still need someone "managing" the team's Asana.

Asana’s AI is better than I expected. The chatbot in particular is actually useful and didn't feel like a waste of time. You can ask it to move deadlines, summarize updates, and surface blockers, and it usually gets the job done without wasting your time.

A lot of the value here is for managers. The status updates and reporting are helpful if you are presenting upward. AI Studio and AI Agents are the more interesting long-term feature, but they're still early and sit on pricier plans.

Reporting important to your team for things like monitoring spending for project costs, tracking project status and seeing total revenue across projects (note: this can at times be managed in your CRM so you'd want to make the decision as to where you're mainly tracking revenue so you have a single source of truth).

• Free: Best for trying Asana with a very small team. Limited once you need automation or AI.
• Starter: $10.99/user/month billed annually
  Best for teams that want timelines, rules, and basic AI features.
• Advanced: $24.99/user/month billed annually
  Best for larger teams that need reporting, goals, workload planning, and AI Studio.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Best for large companies that need stronger security and admin controls.