HubSpot CRM was created to give small businesses the opportunity to use integrated CRM software. Many small businesses don’t use a CRM or can’t afford a CRM with great features. Having a CRM is essential to scale modern businesses. In an effort to expand HubSpot’s internal product offerings, the new HubSpot CRM is a native integration to HubSpot’s platform.

Integrations

We can assume that HubSpot is going to integrate well with native products, but what other integration capabilities does HubSpot have? We explore them below.

Integration Capabilities of HubSpot CRM:

• Gmail
• Google Apps
• Outlook
• Apple Mail

One of the issues we see with HubSpot CRM is the inability to integrate to accounting (ERP) or other marketing automation software (besides HubSpot) with HubSpot CRM. Instead of giving you the flexibility to integrate with Sage or QuickBooks (like SugarCRM or Salesforce), it doesn’t yet give you this option. We’ll keep you updated as new integration apps become available, but for now it seams that HubSpot CRM is just another reason from the company to hook you up to their marketing automation and content management system (CMS). HubSpot’s strength in our opinion has always been in it’s marketing engine over content management (it is a template-based CMS, not true PHP).

HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe mentions that the CRM is primarily for small businesses. “One of the challenges for small businesses historically has been building sales and marketing systems that connect without massive integrations or technology needs. Our customers have been asking us for years to build a CRM that can be used on its own or with the HubSpot marketing platform.”

Volpe infers that indeed the CRM will integrate best with HubSpot’s native platforms. Other CRMs, such as Saleslogix and SugarCRM, can integrate with almost any marketing automation platform (such as Salesfusion)

Features

The new CRM will run in the background of HubSpot whether you use it or not. If you already have Salesforce integrated with HubSpot, it will run side-by-side, but HubSpot CRM will not communicate with Salesforce.

HubSpot CRM Features:

• Pulls all executive information from company website onto the CRM automatically.
• Integrated phone system (similar to Callinize)
• Google Calendar sync
• iPhone app
• Official release Q1, 2015

HubSpot CRM promises to have easy-to-use features that will save you loads of time. We are interested to see where the product is heading, or if it will remain a HubSpot-universe only product. It is promising to see HubSpot tackling an issue that is so important: the lack of CRM systems for small business. Again, even according to HubSpot’s own CMO, HubSpot CRM is not considered an enterprise or mid-level offering.