Gainsight CS vs. HubSpot CRM

It's great for being able to capture all information in Gainsight CS. The only challenge is some of the task management and visibility into workload that is very clunky. After watching the roadmap for 2025, I'm feeling more hopefully that some of my pain points will be handled. However, it's still challenging that the task-management basics will still be clunky. I'm excited for the AI scheduling of tasks, but this would be better if the improvements to task /workload visibility is updated.

Incentivized

Most of our clients are either government institutions or Education sector clients, such as universities, colleges, Coaching Institutes, and Competitive boards. We store their data in a single place. That means we can keep our one client's data in one place without any confusion. Our data is always clear and understandable while it is in HubSpot CRM.

Incentivized

• Logging customer activity is incredibly intuitive and easy for team to do and reference.
• Using the rules engine to generate CTAs for our team to intervene where needed has been helpful in automating relevant activities in bulk. We have a churn prevention program run through CTAs where Gainsight CS will notice risk criteria we've built in, then alert CSMs and their managers of potential risk concerns, like low product adoption or negative survey response, with clear next steps and actions laid out for what to do.
• More broadly, it has inspired a new mindset on our team for how to work with customers. Through working with Gainsight CS, they have become less transactional and look at accounts more holistically. Success Plans allow for this, as they create plans with customized customer goals and the tasks it will take to achieve those goals.

• The ability to create marketing campaigns and have control over when to stop and when to send the next according to your cadence design is excellent. However the ability to see the performance and the history for each prospect is so simple and so accessible - I kicked myself for not getting it sooner.
• Having one place to create companies and contacts as well as score leads and track all contract products means we don't have to miss any renewals.
• The Deal tracker gives us the ability to track multiple pipelines as well as team and individual metrics like average sale, percentage of goal, contribution to team effort which when mixed with an activity tracker means the team stays lean and mean to crush all goals.
• The real time chat feature means prospects can navigate to our landing page for info about us, levels of product availability, pricing and begin a quick chat with members of the sales and support team.
• Intel features along with lead scoring, SEO integration, podcasts and white papers all combine to be the most comprehensive CRM you could need.

Incentivized

• Would love to see a Gainsight OPs/Admin checklist that guides CS Ops team through specific pieces of information needed to execute specific playbooks (best practices)
• When creating reports, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct variable that you are looking for as it's nested under various categories
• Would love ability to "heatmap" specific individual customer engagement based on CSM inputted customer contacts at meetings
• Would love to see more analysis on engagements - how often, how frequent - built into the product

Incentivized

• At times, it feels like there are too many options, which can be overwhelming when trying to grasp all that it has to offer fully.
• The reporting features are lacking. It can be challenging to pull and export reports to share with users who are not on Hubspot.
• It appears to have more issues with Windows; it consistently logs out and requires re-login to the CRM and the HubSpot Outlook add-on.

Incentivized

Great tool and we've spent a lot of time getting it up and running. Unless something else comes a long that does a similar function for less money we will consider jumping cause we are always looking to save budget where we can. Till then I think we are satisfied with Gainsight at the moment.

Incentivized

To be honest there are some barriers due to which we are unable to use Hubspot at it's full potentials. The region that we work in has some restrictions that don't allow us to make calls or text which leaves us to just Email to the client.

Incentivized

I give it this score based on the implementation at my current employer. I don't know if it could be higher based on if the implementation went better, or if there is something on the vendor side that could help. If this were asked at my previous employer, I would have given it a score of 9 or 10.

Incentivized

Once you are set up with HubSpot CRM, it becomes difficult to use any other tool, as it integrates you into the workflow and makes it a habit to log in to HubSpot to identify tasks for the day. The overall ease of use is also a brilliant factor in using HubSpot. They push you towards deal closure and revenue generation.

Incentivized

Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good

Incentivized

There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal

The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.

Incentivized

Because when I needed help HubSpot responded immediately and provided me with the information I needed which enabled me to realize that HubSpot was even more customizable and easier to use than I thought! And I already thought HubSpot was very user friendly and easy to use, and then Support showed me how to manipulate the settings, columns and the appearance of the tool.

Incentivized

The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team

I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.

Incentivized

If you've had any prior experience with cloud based marketing automation or group communication tools, you can do the implementation without paid outside support. Though getting to a SLA (service level agreement) would be best achieved with the help of a third party who can facilitate

Incentivized

Gainsight CS simply had a broader set of functionality that we wanted. That said, if Vitally or ChurnZero were to close a few of the functionality gaps that mattered to us, we would prefer to use either of those competitor products.

Incentivized

Our team and senior managers deemed these products worth reviewing and requested that every team assess them, enabling our company to make an informed decision about the software to purchase. Everybody checked, and a survey was conducted among all those employees. We received the most votes for HubSpot CRM, as most employees preferred it.

Incentivized

It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.

Incentivized

• No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist

Incentivized

• Gave a ton of visibility into user and sales funnel.
• Able to get back to new signups or inbound leads much faster, sometimes within minutes. We have a Slack integration that's super helpful.
• Saved hours each week that were earlier spent digging through emails or spreadsheets for context; meetings are a lot shorter because it is super easy to go through the created reports.

Incentivized