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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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There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
A shared documentation and note taking tool that tip-toes the line of a flexible no-code platform (for teams of all sizes).
Notion is part of a category of apps often referred to as an "all-in-one", for which we aren't particularly fans of.
The main problem we have with this is it feels more like a cop-out when asked to define what you are—we do everything.
Notion started as a team knowledge base app, and that's what it should really be defined as. The problem is, as you're doing well in a single category, some apps decide to double-down, while others look to increase their TAM (Total Addressable Market). Notion is in the latter camp.
We've found that rolling out all-in-one solutions with customers is actually more difficult to get team adoption due to overwhelm.
Take Notion, it's not opinionated. In them deciding to make it super flexible, allowing it to "do anything", it by design becomes overwhelming with time. We know, it'll be incredibly exciting at first—all of the limitless potential! But then that "potential" turns to overwhelm in weeks and months.
What structure should I add these notes in? Should I add tasks here? Or over here? Do I message you on Slack, or @comment you here in Notion? Because it does "everything", it introduces micro-fatigue for doing anything.
Although, if you're looking for an incredibly flexible note taking tool that struts the lines of "no-code builder", where you actually see structure as a negative, then that's where an all-in-one app like Notion will actually shine.
When teams start having micro-success with Notion, they end up trying to use it for everything, and this is exactly where Notion's limitations and flaws are shown.
We're taking customer notes in Notion, what if we actually had our customer's information in Notion as well! Thus the mistake of trying to use Notion as a CRM is born. It will never be a proper CRM. Yes, Notion has relational databases at the core, and a CRM is really just a bunch of relational databases at the end of the day, but the difference here is opinionation and structure.
Versus getting into this point further here, that's where we've written a post explaining why Notion is not a CRM.
Your team is using Notion collaboratively with some of your clients now, eh? That's great! We have a collaborative shared knowledge base, what would make this even better? A project management tool—let's build that right into Notion as well, because tasks are really just line items in a database, right?
Wrong.
The same issue arises as before. What makes a good project management tool like Motion actually good, is the opinionation and structure. You can't just start connecting tasks to customers to notes to videos to XYZ. That's a surefire way to overwhelm absolutely everyone on your team.
The goal of a project manager is to actually get work done—with Notion as a project manager, you'll be spending more time building out a project manager, tip-toeing the line of product manager (instead of project manager).
Here's a more detailed post of our thoughts on how Notion stacks up as a project manager as compared to the leaders on the market.
Choosing to roll out something like Notion across your team requires immense thought, structure, documentation, and training.
So are you trying to build all of this out yourself? And if so, are you a product designer? Do you understand your team's specific needs even better than they do? Or are you just trying to build what you think is needed and then plan to have everyone use it in that way?
If the latter, adoption is more than likely to fail, and you might want to reconsider choosing an all-in-one tool like Notion, and instead opt for something more purpose-built as your team's internal knowledge base like an alternative like Slite.
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
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