Bigin vs. HubSpot CRM - What's the better choice for SMBs?

1. Hubspot's complicated plans and choice overload

HubSpot categorizes its products into different categories: CRM, marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations. Each of these products have different plans, offering different features, with different limits, at different prices. When you're newly adopting a CRM tool for your business, the availability of so many choices can get overwhelming. While the options may make more sense for larger business organizations, they're not suited for small and medium business enterprises just getting started on their CRM journey. The multitude of plans and features only add to your confusion and apprehension.

Simplicity is at the heart of Bigin 

Bigin has been developed for small and medium business owners like you. We understand that you've been managing your business with simple tools like spreadsheets and sticky notes, and CRM software can sound technical and complicated. With most CRM tools, you're right to be apprehensive, which is why we built Bigin with simplicity as its main virtue.

A quick glance at the website makes this clear. Bigin offers three plans: Free, Express, and Premier. The plans are straightforward and easy for you to understand. We've hand-picked a range of features that are most useful for SMBs. While the features predominantly remain the same between the three plans, the only difference is in their respective limits. To put it simply, Bigin is designed to make your transition to CRM seamless and hassle-free.

2. What's a CRM without automation?    

If you've heard about CRM, then you've certainly heard about automated workflows being one of the most useful and beneficial features of CRMs. Workflows enable you to automate your business's repetitive routine activities, thereby substantially cutting down on manual labor and effort. For example, you can automate emails sent to your contacts, or automatically assign tasks to team members. Automation is the most attractive advantage that pushes SMB owners to move from spreadsheets to CRM software.

No automation in HubSpot's free CRM 

However, the HubSpot CRM doesn't offer workflows in its free plan. To access this feature, you have to upgrade to one of the paid products, the minimum of which starts at $50 per month.

Automation is ubiquitous in Bigin 's plans

Bigin on the other hand, offers workflows in all of its plans. For instance, the free plan allows you to create three workflows, which helps familiarize you with the concept of automation. Once you have a fair idea of how best you can use workflows for your business, you can upgrade to Bigin's paid plans which start at a much lower price of $9 or $15.

3.  Unlimited contacts with limited functionality 

You can store up to 15 million contacts in HubSpot's free CRM. This is one of the most attractive features that draws most SMB owners to HubSpot. On its face, this number is certainly a massive advantage and naturally irresistible to SMBs.

Once you have your contacts uploaded to your CRM tool, your next step would be to keep them on the loop with marketing emails, update them on new products and offers, and consistently nurture them. Nurturing is crucial because only 2% of sales are made during the first point of contact. This means that without following up, 98% of your potential sales are lost.

But here's where HubSpot's feature has a catch.

Marketing contacts & non-marketing contacts

While HubSpot lets you store up to 15 million contacts for free, if you want to extend marketing efforts, you should categorize your contacts into marketing contacts and non-marketing contacts. To maintain a list of marketing contacts, you have to move to one of the paid plans in HubSpot based on the number of your marketing contacts. It's only to these marketing contacts that you can send e-mails, advertisements, and other marketing materials. The Marketing Hub starter plan, for example, costs $50 per month for every 1,000 marketing contacts. This can turn out to be quite expensive for rapidly growing SMBs because every time you have an increase in leads, you have to pay extra, to the point where the HubSpot Free CRM isn't free anymore!

Bigin doesn't limit your marketing efforts 

Bigin, on the other hand, understands the importance of your marketing efforts. You can store 500/50,000/1,00,000 records in the free, express, and premier plans, respectively, without any limitation to your lead nurturing efforts. All you have to do is pick the plan that suits your business depending upon the volume of your leads and customers. Further, you can also integrate your Bigin account with Zoho Campaigns and engage in super-powerful email targeting.

4. Can you imagine sales without calls?

According to the Sales Development Technology Report published by Gartner, it takes 18 calls to truly connect with a prospect. As an SMB owner, you know how important sales calls are to remain consistently connected with your prospects and customers for their ultimate conversion.

No free feature for sales calls

HubSpot CRM, however, doesn't offer a calling feature. You can't make or receive calls from within the CRM tool, which will in turn also affect the data capture within the CRM. Every time you have a sales call with a new prospect, the details have to be manually added to the CRM. If you want to use the call feature, you have to upgrade to one of HubSpot's Sales Hub plans, which starts at $50 per month. Even in this plan, the feature limits calls to 500 minutes per account per month.

In-built cloud telephony

Bigin on the other hand, has built-in cloud telephony. It keeps your conversations with customers going. You can make and receive calls from within the CRM, record your calls for future references, and set up automated voice responses. The data from the call also gets captured automatically within the CRM, thereby cutting down on a lot of time and manual effort. The best part? It's a free feature in Bigin!

The points discussed above are some examples to help you understand how some CRM software, despite being loaded with multiple features, may sometimes not be the best fit for your business. It's important that you're not misled by low prices or the numerous features promised in their promotions.

Always make an informed choice

While offering a CRM product free for lifetime can be an irresistible offer for SMBs, we hope to have given you a fair idea of how free software like HubSpot may not always serve its intended purposes for your business. It's important that you make an informed decision before you invest in CRM software, especially since these investments are long-term and have a direct impact on your business performance and growth. You shouldn't be misled to think you're investing in a free plan and later end up spending more than you would have, had you opted for a paid alternative CRM platform in the market. This decision is crucial for SMBs also because of the relatively limited resources that they have when compared to large enterprises.

It's time to Bigin!

Now that we've spoken enough about how Bigin is a better fit for your business when compared to HubSpot, it's time for you to experience and understand its suitability to your business hands-on. Sign up for the free Bigin trial now and become a part of the Biginners club!