HubSpot or SalesDesk - What's Right for You?

TLDR: SalesDesk is a modern alternative to HubSpot, built specifically for high-touch sales with a fully integrated CRM. It combines digital sales rooms, live collaboration, and AI insights in a clean, focused platform — ideal for multi-stakeholder, long-cycle deals without the complexity or cost of HubSpot.

If you're exploring tools to power your sales process, you're likely considering HubSpot - or already using it. While HubSpot is a well-known platform with broad capabilities, it’s not always the best fit for teams doing high-touch, consultative selling. Below, we outline the key differences between HubSpot and SalesDesk, highlight the limitations of HubSpot for relationship-led sales, and explain why SalesDesk may be a more innovative, cost-effective, and focused alternative to drive increased revenue.

General vs. Specific

HubSpot isn't one product; it's a portfolio of products. Each product is mature and packed with features. This can be daunting if you only want to use a subset of features. HubSpot is designed to support every GTM motion at every stage. It's a general-purpose tool.

SalesDesk is not a general-purpose tool, and it's not for everybody; it's intended to support high-touch consultative sales cycles. They're characterised in the following way:

• Multiple stakeholders: You have people on both the buy side and sell side who engage throughout the journey, from warm leads to onboarding and beyond. The sales process is multi-threaded.

• Information-Dense: During the sales process, you will share numerous documents, PDFs, and how-to videos. You will create numerous video call recordings, transcripts, and live chat constantly.

• Long Sales Cycles: You're not doing transactional deals at high volumes. This is relationship-based selling that can take weeks or months. As importantly, you will continue to upsell and cross-sell for a very long time.

• Relationship-Driven: Your customers are purchasing high-value products and services from you. You are interacting regularly, and trust-building and nurturing are critical to your success.

Future of B2B Sales

HubSpot is a fantastic product in many ways, but we believe B2B buyer behaviours have radically changed. In an era of mass outbound emails powered by AI, it's no longer just about sales enablement - it's about buyer enablement. Buyers typically speak to sellers much later in the sales journey, and we've found that buyers want to be educated and collaborate with sellers more naturally and organically.

This is why SalesDesk is so strong on built-in sales rooms, live collaboration with video huddles and chat, and rich document collaboration. Not to mention AI for understanding customer sentiment and intent. It's about bringing the buyer and seller together around a digital, branded collaboration space - inside your CRM.

How are we Unique?

• Advanced data model: SalesDesk's built-in CRM supports not only text and number fields, like HubSpot, but also native video and document records. Any video captured in a call is automatically indexed with AI and attached to your CRM view. A meeting minutes doc is created and shared.

• Customer collaboration built in: Invite your customer into a secure workspace within your CRM. No need for separate digital sales rooms or bolt-on tools. All of your deal information is stored permanently in one secure, branded space for your sales team and customers, and is always synchronised with your built-in CRM.

• Advanced reporting at no extra cost: Gain insights into your pipeline, customer engagement, and sentiment without additional integrations or upgrades.

• Team collaboration: Built-in chat, video huddles, and shared document review. Everything your team needs in one place to support collaborative selling.

• Live document collaboration: Create and co-edit documents in real time, then share directly as branded proposals for signature or review.

• More integration freedom: HubSpot offers approximately 1,700 integrations within its platform. Through our integration with Zapier, we support 7,000. You have far more control over your integrations with access to agentic AI models for more advanced automation.

Pricing

HubSpot offers a compelling freemium product to get your data into the platform, but it quickly becomes expensive as you encounter continuous upsell paths. SalesDesk has a simpler, more transparent pricing model that works out much, much cheaper over time.

User Interface

HubSpot is an extensive platform with an outdated user experience (UX) and old design patterns. SalesDesk offers a modern, elegant UI that delights sales teams and creates a seamless experience for your customers.

Issues with HubSpot

While HubSpot is feature-rich, many users and teams have reported challenges that limit its effectiveness in high-touch sales environments. These may not be issues for you as a HubSpot user, but these are the objections we hear most frequently from consultative sales teams.

• High Cost of Scaling: While the entry point is free, the price escalates significantly as you add contacts, features, or users, as well as other features that are built into our basic tier.

• Rigid Contracts: Annual lock-ins limit flexibility and make it difficult to downgrade or cancel.

• Complex Pricing Structure: Fees increase with the number of contacts and integrations, often resulting in hidden costs.

• Limited Customisation: Many users report that workflow and UI customisation are constrained without development support.

• Overwhelming for Focused Teams: The platform’s generalist approach can overwhelm teams that need specific tools for relationship-led selling.

• Expensive at Scale: HubSpot starts cheap but becomes very costly as you scale users, contacts, or advanced features.

• Shallow Compared to Best-in-Class Tools: Its all-in-one approach sacrifices depth compared to specialised tools like Salesforce or Intercom.

• Custom Object and Integration Constraints: Custom data modelling and integrations are limited unless you're on the Enterprise tier.

• Basic Reporting and Forecasting: Reporting is visually nice but lacks depth for advanced analysis or forecasting.

• Workflow Automation Limitations: Workflow logic is rigid and can’t handle complex branching or cross-object triggers well.

• Weak AI and Intelligence Tools: HubSpot’s AI features are limited compared to those of newer or more advanced platforms.

• Inconsistent UX at Scale: As teams grow and features multiply, the interface can feel cluttered, and navigation becomes inefficient.

Summary

SalesDesk is purpose-built for high-touch, consultative sales, unlike HubSpot, which is a broad, feature-heavy platform designed for all aspects of GTM.

SalesDesk offers built-in digital sales rooms, live collaboration, and native support for video, documents, and AI-driven insights — all within a modern, streamlined UI. It enables deep buyer engagement, team collaboration, and advanced reporting without requiring costly add-ons, making it a simpler and more focused alternative to HubSpot for relationship-driven sales teams.

Next Steps

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