HubSpot Marketing Hub vs. Opal

As I said previously, I was not a fan at the beginning because, like everyone, I don't take change so well. Once I started following leads through HubSpot Marketing Hub, I integrated it with my email and created templates for what I needed, I started to see the positives immediately. My time working was better spent as I eliminated time put in routine tasks. I was able to track all communication in HubSpot Marketing Hub, we created systems in the office assigning tasks to one another and, through HubSpot Marketing Hub, our leads were able to book meetings in my calendar automatically. To be honest, if you are in sales and marketing, I cannot think of scenarios where HubSpot Marketing Hub cannot help. All I would like to say is, when using templates, pay attention to where you send them - you may need some personalization. I would encourage the management of HubSpot Marketing Hub to create short tutorials for beginners like me who need to configure and start using various features: setting up deals, templates, and dashboards.

Incentivized

If a team can afford to pay for Opal and dedicate resources to properly onboard everyone and maintain organization, I'd absolutely highly recommend it.

Incentivized

• A/B testing has been really effective for our landing pages and emails.
• Adding our website to Hubspot has made it easier to make fast changes and get quality data and insights.
• Emails are easy to create and share between teams to get feedback and collaborate on.

Incentivized

• Allows me to present visuals of content that's easy to understand.
• Review processes are made simple and are streamlined.
• Helps me stay within character count when planning content.

• It is less about HubSpot as a platform and more about the app, but I wish they were able to bring a bit more functionality to the app such as being able to schedule posts. It would make trade shows much easier.
• I wish the template designs were easier to make changes to because without CSS knowledge they can be complex to adjust. Many other sites have more user-friendly designs and this one is very rigid and sometimes hard to adjust.
• While I love HubSpot Academy, I wish it listed out your current courses versus having to search for them. It would help remind me which ones I need to finish.

Incentivized

• I would love it if Opal integrated social publishing into their tool.
• It would be beneficial if at least some basic analytics were brought back into the tool so we could then review content performance within the same tool as creative teams.
• I've felt like at times the process of creating and sharing presentations was a bit tedious. It'd be nice if was a bit simpler.

Incentivized

I've been using Hubspot for about 6 years off and on but I highly recommend it as a CMS, especially with co workers all over the United States who need a one stop shop to find customer information and teamwork activities on Deals and Tasks.

Incentivized

While there are some frustrating things that pop up unexpectedly ("wait... I can't do X?"), I have found HubSpot to be easy to use and extremely helpful to my daily work. The documentation is really good, and when it's not helpful, the support staff have been amazing.

Incentivized

They have had issues with system availability over the course of days. Sometimes the system is unusable, other times updates simply take a long time to show up. It's better now but, from a reliaibility standpoint, HubSpot is not Salesforce.com yet. Still great software though.

With all the new features in HubSpot, the system can get a tad slow sometimes... That said, most of the time it is lightning fast and I have no problems. Because most of the integrations are API, they silently work in the background. I have not had trouble with lag due to HubSpot integration

During the few times I've needed it, HS support has been accessible, helpful and efficient. Often rolling up their sleeves to make changes for you as opposed to leaving you with a list of instructions to decipher on your own.

I did the 2-day classroom at HubSpot's corporate office in Cambridge. First off, it was amazing to see their corporate office in general. They have such a cool office environment. But it was also great to have the ability to learn in a workshop format with other HubSpot users and meet my Account Manager/ Inbound Marketing Consultant in person.

I went through Inbound Marketing University in 2006. Great training and helped my transition from traditional (outbound) marketing to inbound marketing that I've been able to apply to a number of businesses from wastewater and water reuse, to professional services and SaaS. Share information of value to build awareness and trust. Answer customers' questions in a transparent way to generate more qualified leads. Understand the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead and put together a lead nurturing program. Your sales and marketing efforts will see significant ROI.

My biggest piece of advice for those who are implementing Hubspot is that you need to devote the time up front and learn how to use the product. Once you learn how to use Hubspot, it will be much more effective as well as much easier to use in the long run

Other competing software such as Zoho and Boomtown may have more bells and whistles, but it is too cumbersome and has many parts that only advanced users can operate. With HubSpot, each function is within reach of the average agent. It doesn't overpromise and then makes you feel incompetent when you can't use it all...

Incentivized

I've used Percolate and it's said to be a competitor of Opal, but in reality, it's a tool I've struggled with. It's fine for day-to-day scheduling and publishing, but lacks the flexibility and functionality of Opal. Opal really feels like it was built by storytellers where Percolate feels like it was built purely by an engineering team.

Incentivized

HubSpot is addressing this more and more. Currently you can assign tasks to designated sales teams, which grow as you grow. They've added free baseline products for those just getting started. These and more contribute to the scalability of HubSpot - so I gave it an 8 and am hoping for more in the future!

• Ads - built-in ROI measurement in HubSpot's Ads to help improve ad optimization.
• Workflows - opened the door to automate some processes at scale.
• Campaigns - some room for improvement here. It could be a knowledge gap, but we've found that having email opens as a default engagement that's part of campaign performance muddies the waters on what actually is working in campaigns.

Incentivized

• Always ahead of the game when it comes to planning

Incentivized