monday CRM vs. HubSpot Smart CRM: Choosing the best CRM for your team

Choosing the right CRM for your business can spell the difference between well-organized client accounts and nurtured leads to prospects falling through the cracks. However, with so many CRMs on the market, selecting the best one can feel like a daunting task.

Both monday CRM and HubSpot CRM are popular options loved by many teams across a variety of industries. Still, there are critical ways these two platforms differ, and there’s even one that might be better suited for your organization. In this article, we’ll compare the two side-by-side so that you can better understand the differences between the platforms and assess which one is right for you.

How an AI-integrated CRM improves business workflow

Artificial intelligence and CRM software go together like peanut butter and jelly. Today, most CRMs are implementing AI features so that organizations can work smarter and get more work done without expending extra labor. AI CRMs allow teams of all sizes to run automations and intelligent workflows that boost productivity, efficiency, and eventually, revenue. Whether through AI sales agents, AI-powered pipeline management, or customized AI-generated content, CRMs are empowering teams to improve workflows thanks to modern technologies.

Here’s a closer look at a few examples of how AI is being used in CRMs to improve workflows:

• Accelerate deal closure: Teams close deals faster by automatically focusing on the most promising opportunities and receiving AI-guided recommendations for next steps.
• Reduce manual busywork: Sales and marketing professionals spend less time on data entry, lead research, and routine follow-ups, freeing them to build stronger customer relationships.
• Increase revenue predictability: With AI analytics and forecasting, organizations are able to gain clearer visibility into future sales performance and can make more informed strategic decisions based on accurate forecasting.
• Improve customer satisfaction: AI helps teams work more efficiently, leading to faster response times, more personalized communications, and proactive customer support to create better experiences that drive customer loyalty and retention.
• Scale team productivity: Small teams can accomplish more without leaning on adding resources by leveraging AI to handle routine tasks and optimize workflows
• Make smarter business decisions: Leadership teams access deeper insights into customer behavior, market trends, and sales performance to guide strategic planning.
• Maximize marketing ROI: Marketing campaigns become more effective through better targeting, personalized messaging, and automated nurture sequences that convert more leads.

At a glance: monday vs HubSpot

Want to quickly compare monday CRM and HubSpot CRM? Here’s a look at all the basic information you need to know at a glance.

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Features

Finding the right CRM means choosing a product with features that fit your existing workflow, not fitting your workflow to a specific software. The CRM you choose should also enhance your workflows by making them easier and more intuitive. Both monday CRM and HubSpot have some great features that make keeping on top of leads and clients easier. Let’s have a look.

monday CRM features

• Advanced email tools: Send mass personalized emails to prospects for sales follow-ups or marketing campaigns, and easily sync and track emails from different inboxes in one place
• Sales dashboards: See all the most important sales information at a glance, such as team and individual sales goal attainment, activity tracking, pipeline progress, and more
• Visual pipeline and work views: Choose from over 27 different work views to visualize your pipeline and sales progress, such as Timeline, Kanban, Calendar, and others
• End-to-end lead management: Use monday CRM to track incoming leads, score them according to priority, and assign them to the right agent for quick follow-ups
• Seamless contact management: Manage contacts and leads from anywhere with the mobile app, and keep multichannel conversations and customer history sorted in one view

HubSpot Smart CRM features

• Real-time pipeline view: Get an up-to-date overview of your pipeline on a visual dashboard that updates as you go
• Meetings scheduler: Help your leads book a meeting through email or a calendar on your website at times that work for you
• Live chat software: Connect with website visitors and leads instantly with a live chat feature to deliver quick responses
• Contact management: Use HubSpot to create contact records, log sales activities, and view previous lead or client interactions for simplified relationship building
• Customer ticketing: Service teams can log client issues as individual tickets that can be tracked and assigned in a shared inbox

monday CRM vs Smart Hubspot: AI and automations

It’s becoming less and less likely to come across a CRM system that doesn’t use AI in one way or another to boost capabilities and help teams work more effectively. Both monday CRM and HubSpot offer strong AI and CRM automation features. Let’s take a look at how they show up in each platform below.

monday CRM AI and automations

• Build your own custom automations: Create powerful sales automations in just a few clicks to remove the burden of manual tasks like client follow-ups, communications, and reminders
• monday sidekick AI assistant: Use natural language prompts to complete tasks in an instant, such as generating personalized content, gathering lists from third-party web sources, or getting additional contact data like demographics
• AI-generated sales and marketing emails: Compose personalized emails to each and every prospect and customer with monday CRM’s generative AI tools, allowing teams to create custom sales follow-ups and marketing campaigns in minutes
• AI sentiment detection: Detect sentiment from email communications, meeting summaries, and call logs to understand how a prospect or customer feels so that agents can intervene to improve customer experiences
• Predictive analytics and sales forecasting: Access advanced predictive analytics and sales forecasting features to better manage your pipeline, prioritize deals with a high likelihood to convert, and organize resources according to historical data and trends

HubSpot Smart CRM AI and automations

• AI email writer: Use AI to generate quick templates for personalized email outreach that can be tailored to different audiences
• AI overviews: Surface relevant data, flag urgent issues, fill in missing data, and share insights with AI to notify agents of important and time-sensitive information
• Data enrichment: HubSpot’s AI can enrich client records automatically with information from the web, chats, emails, and other datasets
• Automated duplicate detection: Create an AI automation that can instantly detect duplicate data records and merge them so that your database always stays accurate and organized
• AI assistance: HubSpot’s AI Breeze Assistant helps users leverage CRM data and use it to connect with business operations, whether it’s helping with meeting prep, creating content, or providing strategic analysis

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Integrations

Integrations can make a good CRM even better by connecting with the work tools you already use. When considering different CRM options, you don’t necessarily need to go with the one that offers the most integration possibilities, but rather the one that offers the integrations with the apps you use most. Here’s a look at some integration options with both monday CRM and HubSpot Smart CRM:

monday CRM integrations

With over 200 apps and integrations, monday CRM offers connections with some of the most commonly used work platforms. Your team can connect with essential tools such as:

• Google Apps
• Mailchimp
• Slack
• Zendesk
• Calendly
• GetSign

Integrations with monday CRM are also easy to connect, allowing you to get started instantly and allowing important sales data to flow between your monday CRM and the apps you use.

HubSpot Smart CRM integrations

HubSpot Smart CRM integrates with over 1,000 apps through the HubSpot App Marketplace, allowing its users to continue seamlessly using other work tools. Here are a few of HubSpot CRM’s most popular integrations:

• Salesforce
• Pipedrive
• Zoho CRM
• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Google Apps
• Zapier

It’s also important to note that both platforms have integrations with one another, meaning if you use monday CRM as well as HubSpot for another service like its Commerce Hub, you can connect the two.

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Pricing

Price is another important factor to take into consideration when shopping around for CRM software. Of course, you want to go with an option that offers affordable pricing, but it’s also important to look at pricing in terms of value for your subscription and not only a dollar amount. Let’s compare monday CRM plans and prices with HubSpot CRM.

monday CRM pricing

Here’s a short breakdown of monday CRM pricing:

• Basic: $12/seat/month, includes unlimited contacts, pipelines, and boards, unlimited free viewers, and more
• Standard: $17/seat/month, includes everything from the Basic plan plus advanced account and contact management, 2-way Gmail and Outlook integration, activity management, 250 custom monthly CRM automations and integrations, and more
• Pro: $28/seat/month, includes everything from previous plans and sales forecasting, email tracking and automations, quotes and invoices, mass emails, sales analytics, 25,000 monthly CRM automations and integrations, and more
• Enterprise: Price based on a custom quote, but includes everything from previous plans in addition to lead scoring, team goals, advanced analytics, account management, enterprise-level security, automation, integration, multi-level permissions, and more

HubSpot CRM pricing

Here’s a look at HubSpot’s plans and pricing options:

• Free: HubSpot CRM is free for unlimited users and includes access to all of HubSpot’s free tools, like sales, marketing, service, and others
• Starter Customer Platform: Starting at $9/seat/month, including everything in the free plan plus 500 HubSpot Credits, 1,000 marketing contacts, along with starter hubs for sales, service, content, and data
• Smart CRM Professional: Starting at $45/seat/month, includes 3,000 HubSpot credits, custom reporting, Teams, Duplicate management, and more
• Smart CRM Enterprise: Starting at $75/seat/month, includes 5,000 HubSpot credits, everything in the Smart CRM Professional plan, as well as a sandbox account, custom objects and events, field-level permission, and more

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Ease of use

Both monday CRM and HubSpot CRM have intuitive interfaces that aren’t difficult to use. To see how both stack up, let’s have a look at the ease of use of both platforms and what users say about each one.

monday CRM ease of use

Users, especially new ones, know monday CRM for its simplicity. While there are many features, it’s simple enough to customize your work views and boards to focus only on the features and information you want to see. According to reviews of the platform on TrustRadius, users call monday CRM “simple, easy to use, and helpful for managing leads and sales” and an “easy, simple, yet powerful CRM.” Other users claim that adding new users to the software was a breeze, saying that “as opposed to other CRM tools, the onboarding time was short.”

HubSpot Smart CRM ease of use

HubSpot CRM also ranks high on usability from many users on its TrustRadius page. However, with more features available in the HubSpot suite of products, some users get lost. Still, many users find HubSpot simple, with customers saying it’s “easy and intuitive to navigate” and “very easy to use and keeps important communication responses.” It’s also important to note that some users report that certain features aren’t as straightforward as they’d like. For example, one user claims that “reporting and dashboards are difficult to use and get the information,” and another the platform’s analytics are “not easy for anyone without any previous experience to set up and configure.”

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: User experience

User experience goes beyond just ease of use or customer ratings. It’s about how the software feels to work with every day and whether it actually makes your team’s life easier. Both platforms approach user experience differently, so let’s see how they stack up.

monday CRM user experience

With monday CRM, teams get software that focuses on visual simplicity and customization that adapts to your workflows. The platform’s colorful, intuitive drag-and-drop interface doesn’t overwhelm users with too many features at once, and it lets you start simple and add complexity as your team grows, which means less frustration during implementation. Teams like the visual boards and customizable views, which make it easy for everyone to stay on the same page. Overall, monday CRM provides a user experience that’s both straightforward and robust, making it ideal for users of all backgrounds, regardless of their technical expertise.

HubSpot Smart CRM user experience

HubSpot offers a wealth of features right out of the box, which can be both a blessing and a challenge. While power users love the comprehensive toolset, the abundance of features may be overwhelming when just starting out. The interface is clean and professional, but navigating between different hubs and features can feel complex for smaller teams who are just after basic CRM functionality. However, once teams get comfortable with the platform, there’s a lot to appreciate in the depth of available features and capabilities.

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Customer support

Customer support is another important aspect to take into consideration when choosing software, as it can be important to lean on during the implementation and onboarding processes. Here’s a look at what you can expect from both monday CRM and HubSpot customer support.

monday CRM customer support

With monday CRM, teams get plenty of support and resource options for a smooth onboarding experience. From videos, webinars, and a Knowledge Base for common inquiries, monday CRM strives to set its users up for success. There’s also a community where users can connect with one another to share tips and ask questions. Depending on the plan you select, you’ll be able to access direct support such as 24/7 customer support or a dedicated customer success manager.

HubSpot smart CRM customer support

HubSpot Smart CRM also offers its users several support options. There is also a community where users can discuss roadblocks and ask questions, as well as a knowledge base, and HubSpot Academy with training videos. Depending on the plan you choose, you’ll get access to different types of support. Professional and Enterprise plans offer access to 24/7 email and in-app chat support as well as one-on-one technical support. There are also tailored onboarding specialists available with an onboarding plan.

monday CRM vs HubSpot Smart CRM: Customer reviews

A good way to gauge which software might meet your team’s needs is to look at what other users are saying about their experience with a platform. Both monday CRM and HubSpot CRM have generally favorable reviews online, so let’s take a look at what users have to say.

monday CRM customer reviews

G2 rating: 4.6/5

On the monday CRM G2 review page, the software scores high points with its users. In general, users cite the pros as being the platform’s ease of use, customization options, automations, and intuitive interface. Many reviewers on the site share positive experiences with the platform, stating that “monday CRM stands out among CRM solutions due to its exceptional ease of use, powerful automation capabilities, and vibrant visual interface.” Other users call it “an incredible asset to [their] team” and “extremely easy to navigate.”

Another reviewer noted how monday CRM is easier for teams to adopt in the long term:

“Over the years, we’ve set up many clients on HubSpot and Salesforce. They get excited about all the fancy bells and whistles. But a few months down the line, they’re not using it. Why? Because it’s just too much for their needs. And the learning curve is too steep. monday, on the other hand, can start out super simple — and then get more complex over time. And it’s fully customizable.”

HubSpot Smart CRM customer reviews

G2 rating: 4.4/5

HubSpot also has generally favorable reviews on its G2 page. Users tend to like the platform’s ease of use, email marketing tools, and automation benefits. Users call it a “very refined CRM,” and another says that HubSpot is “a great tool to bring together a timeline of events on a client account in an area where we can collaborate on what we as a company need to do.”

However, some users also note the drawbacks of the software, for example, one user says that “many features that are rather basic are hidden behind paywalls thus encouraging me to consider looking for other CRMs,” and another says that there’s a “lack of some common functions in different CRM like resending emails.”

monday CRM vs Hubspot Smart CRM: Pros and cons

If you made it all the way here and are still stuck between two great CRM options, it might be helpful to simplify things and look at the main pros and cons of each. Here’s a quick breakdown of the drawbacks and advantages of each CRM:

monday CRM pros and cons

Pros

• Highly visual and intuitive interface that’s easy for any team member to pick up quickly
• Exceptional customization options that let you tailor workflows to match your existing processes
• Strong AI and automation capabilities without the complexity of other enterprise-level platforms

Cons

• Advanced reporting features may require upgrading to higher-tier plans
• Fewer third-party integration options compared to what HubSpot offers
• Certain features, like advanced admin and security, are only available on higher-tiered plans

HubSpot Smart CRM pros and cons

Pros

• Comprehensive free tier that provides substantial value for individuals and small teams getting started
• Extensive integration marketplace with over 1,000 available connections
• An all-in-one platform that combines CRM, marketing, sales, and service tools seamlessly

Cons

• Can feel overwhelming for teams who just need basic CRM functionality
• Many advanced features are locked behind higher-priced tiers
• Steeper learning curve due to the scope of available tools and options

HubSpot vs monday CRM: Which is the right solution for you?

Both monday CRM and HubSpot Smart CRM are reliable options for keeping leads actively engaged, organizing communications, and collaborating on sales, marketing, and service efforts. Both are easy to use, have intuitive platforms, offer good customer support, and have plenty of great reviews. All of that makes choosing even harder, but you can only use one CRM, so which one should you go for?

HubSpot Smart CRM is a good choice if you’re already using other HubSpot products, like its Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or other platforms. Otherwise, as a standalone CRM, it can feel a little more overwhelming than other products. Additionally, the platform has a steeper learning curve, making onboarding a little more lengthy. Finally, for the price you’re paying for professional-level plans, including onboarding fees, costs can add up a lot quicker when compared to other platforms like monday CRM.

On the other hand, monday CRM offers the best of both worlds. As part of monday.com’s suite of products, the CRM platform easily integrates with products like monday work management or monday service without any clutter. When it comes to setup and onboarding, monday CRM is quick and easy to get the hang of, making it a reliable option for even your most technically averse team members. Additionally, prices are flexible and based on how many users you need, and no hidden costs for onboarding, which means it’s easy to keep track of exactly how much you’ll be spending.

Aside from that, monday CRM’s AI and automation features are easy to use, customizable, and really help organizations make the most of their platform. The built-in AI gives every team, from small businesses to large enterprises, the ability to execute smart workflows and leverage AI data analytics for better efficiency and productivity.

What else makes monday CRM the better choice?

With monday CRM, teams get a platform that can be both robust and simple, easy to use but packed with essential features, and flexible yet complex enough to handle larger tasks.

The solution is highly customizable and flexible, allowing it to cater to different needs while still fitting specific workflows and use cases across the board. Let’s have a closer look at some of the features that make monday CRM the best choice:

• Manage, track, and organize leads in one unified place
• Hundreds of customizable templates to help you get started quickly
• Advanced time-tracking and reporting tools
• In-app real-time collaboration and communication features
• AI-driven features to accelerate sales processes
• Post-sales management tools to stay on top of client projects
• Internal operational features for easy hiring and onboarding
• Mobile app to keep up-to-date on contacts and tasks wherever you are

With monday CRM, your team can benefit from a platform that’s simple to use yet keeps all their sales, contacts, leads, and tasks information properly organized and within reach. The best part is that monday CRM is highly flexible and can scale with your business, so as your team grows, your CRM can grow alongside it without having to worry about switching platforms down the line.