Microsoft is one of the biggest technology companies in the world. It has played a major role in changing the way we live and work by introducing products like Windows, Office, Azure, and more.
Dynamics 365 is their business solutions giant that unifies multiple applications that can help transform your business. They took all separate existing solutions (Dynamics CRM, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics AX, etc.), divided them into different apps, rebranded and merged them under one umbrella.
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What was previously known as Dynamics CRM is now divided into two apps: Sales and Customer Service. They can be purchased separately depending on your needs, or in a bundle called ‘Customer Engagement Plan’ which will give you all the functionality that existed in Dynamics CRM.
HubSpot
HubSpot is no Microsoft, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. While Microsoft is enormous with hundreds of products in the market, HubSpot focuses on the customer relationship. They’ve been here for a while (From 2004), and they provide three software solutions:
- HubSpot CRM
- HubSpot Marketing Hub
- HubSpot Sales Hub
As you may have guessed, they can work together or separately depending on your needs.
How do they compare?
Dynamics 365 |
HubSpot |
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Pricing |
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Plan
(Includes: Sales, Customer Service, Project Service Automation, Field Service, Microsoft Social Engagement) Full User: $115 per user/month Team Member: $8 per user/month
Dynamics 365 Sales App Full User: $95 per user/month Team Member: $8 per user/month
Dynamics 365 Customer Service App Team Member: $8 per user/month |
HubSpot CRM
FREE! (Yes, you read that right)
Marketing Hub
Sales Hub
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Free Trial |
Yes | Yes (HubSpot CRM is Free Forever so not really a trial) |
Generic Features |
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Marketing Features |
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Sales Features |
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Integrations |
Dynamics 365 has out of the box integrations with most other Microsoft products like:
Dynamics 365 also allows for Custom Developed Integrations, these usually require more technical knowledge and largely depend on the requirements needed and systems being integrated. |
HubSpot has something called ‘HubSpot Connect’ which serves as a hub (pun intended) for all their integrations. You can find all the existing integrations here. |
Hosting |
Cloud and on-premise | Cloud |
Language Support |
Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified (PRC), Chinese Traditional (Hong Kong SAR), Chinese Traditional (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese | English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, German, French and Japanese |
What are the advantages of each product?
You’ve seen what both companies offer regarding price, features, and functionality. It is fair to say that both products have very intriguing features that can make your business processes much easier and faster.
Dynamics 365 advantages:
- Brand Name: Now this could be unimportant to some, but we cannot neglect that brands work very hard to be recognized. With recognition comes trust and that’s important when choosing a solution that will hold most (if not all) of your company’s data.
- More features and updates: Microsoft is killing it lately with features. Every update is bringing loads of new features to the table. You can also check for features currently in development here.
- More Languages Supported
- Out of the box streamlined sales process: When you purchase Dynamics 365 for Sales or Customer Engagement, you’re not only getting the sales entities and fields (Lead, Opportunity, Contact, Account, etc.), you’re also getting a fully developed sales process that starts from the lead all the way to the invoice:
– A lead is created (whether manually or generated from an email or another activity)
– If it Qualifies, it will create a contact, an account, and an opportunity
– A Quote is added to the opportunity
– If the client is happy, the opportunity is won which will create the Order containing the items from the quote
– From that Order, an invoice can be generated.
- Integration with Microsoft Products: Being a Microsoft product, Dynamics 365 has the edge over the competition with its seamless integration with other products in the same ecosystem. If a company already has Office 365, it is super easy to integrate with Dynamics 365 to get the most out of both products.
- Built-in tools: Microsoft includes powerful tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Relationship Assistant that can boost relationship building with customers and engage potential buyers with personalized content.
- Advanced Find and Relevance Search: Dynamics 365 offers many search options allowing you to find any record you want effortlessly. As we all know, when there’s a vast amount of data, a simple criterion could be insufficient to complete the search, which is why Microsoft includes “Advanced Find” which is a tool helping you define complex queries in a user-friendly interface requiring zero technical knowledge.
HubSpot advantages:
- Price: Obviously the biggest advantage and for some people, the only needed bonus. The Free version of HubSpot CRM is limitless! It is a huge plus for user efficiency and could be very attractive especially for small companies, or those that want to try a CRM system for a period longer than a month.
- User Friendliness: “More is less” is a very popular saying. While HubSpot offers fewer features than Dynamics 365, it still has all the essential CRM functionality in an easy-to-navigate interface.
- Integrations: Both systems can integrate with practically anything, but HubSpot makes it easier to find already developed integrations to save you the hassle of searching or developing your own.
- Website Integration: This is a premium feature, so it’s not really available in the FREE version of HubSpot, but it’s still very handy for salespeople. Using website integration, HubSpot can notify you when an old lead visits your website allowing you to “strike while the iron is hot.”
Want more information on what a partnership with Sherweb looks like? Check out our InfoKit.
Conclusion
There is no ultimate winner in this comparison. Each product has its strengths and weaknesses. The real question is not “Which one is better?” It’s rather “What are you looking for?” If you’re looking for a free solution that can help you centralize your data and automate some business processes, HubSpot is a great solution. If you want a business solution software that is well-supported and trusted, and you have plans to extend it later on to include ERP and possibly Document management, Dynamics 365 has you covered.
Start planning what you want and have a great CRM experience!
