Why use HubSpot and Salesforce together?

A lot of B2B companies run Salesforce and HubSpot together. Both have a CRM, automation, lead management, and reporting, so the obvious question is why you would pay for both. Usually, sales already uses Salesforce and wants to keep it. Marketing tries to work with Salesforce’s marketing tools, finds them frustrating, and wants HubSpot. The company connects the two rather than making everyone change systems.

That’s the main reason we see this setup. Sometimes Salesforce supports a complicated sales operation. Sometimes the sales leader just prefers it. Either way, getting everyone to agree on one tool can be harder than giving each team the tool it wants and making the two work together.

Why not just use one?

You can. If HubSpot handles your sales process and both teams are happy using it, you can run the whole operation there. There’s no reason to add Salesforce just because another company uses it. You can also stay entirely within Salesforce if its marketing tools work for your team.

But a lot of companies are making this decision after Salesforce is already in place. Maybe the sales leader chose it, maybe the team used it at a previous company, or maybe it was bought years ago. It doesn’t matter much why it was chosen. Sales uses it now, people know how it works, and the reports and integrations are already built around it.

Then marketing needs better tools. You could move the whole company to HubSpot, but that means getting sales to agree, moving the data, rebuilding the processes, and training everyone. If Salesforce is working for sales, that can be a lot of work to solve a marketing problem. Adding HubSpot lets marketing change its tools without making sales change its CRM.

Where Salesforce’s marketing tools fall short

For the day-to-day B2B marketing work we see, Salesforce’s marketing tools are worse than HubSpot’s. Marketing can have the features it needs on paper and still have a hard time getting anything done. The problem shows up when somebody needs to change a form, update a nurture sequence, adjust lead scoring, or get a campaign out this week.

A marketer needs different information on a form because the campaign changed. They need to update a workflow because the qualification rules changed. Those should be ordinary changes the team can make. In plenty of Salesforce environments, they become requests for an administrator or specialist. The campaign waits while someone else finds time to make the change.

The product names add another layer of confusion. Account Engagement, formerly Pardot, and Marketing Cloud Engagement are different products within Salesforce’s marketing offering. Being a Salesforce customer doesn’t mean you already have one clear marketing setup that does everything your team needs.

HubSpot is more straightforward for this kind of work. Marketing can build forms and landing pages, manage lists, set up nurture, and change workflows in the system it uses every day. That’s why a company can be happy with Salesforce for sales and still decide its marketing tools aren’t good enough.

What HubSpot is good at

HubSpot comes at the problem from the other direction.

It started as a marketing automation platform, and marketing is still where a lot of its value comes from. The tools are built around the work marketers actually do: creating campaigns, capturing leads, building forms and landing pages, setting up automation, managing nurture, scoring contacts, and understanding where demand is coming from.

That's particularly useful once marketing becomes a real operating function.

A marketer should be able to change a form because a campaign needs different information. They should be able to update a workflow because the qualification criteria changed. They should be able to create a nurture sequence without having to explain the requirements to a Salesforce administrator first.

This is where HubSpot tends to fit well alongside Salesforce.

Salesforce can remain the place where sales runs the opportunity process while HubSpot gives marketing the freedom to operate its part of the funnel.

How the two systems work together

The usual division is that HubSpot handles forms, landing pages, campaigns, segmentation, nurture, scoring, and marketing reporting. Salesforce handles accounts, opportunities, pipeline stages, forecasting, and the processes around closing a deal.

A prospect fills out a HubSpot form and gets nurtured there. When they meet the company’s qualification criteria, sales gets the record in Salesforce with enough information to understand where the person came from and why they’re being passed over. Sales works the opportunity in Salesforce, and the outcome goes back to HubSpot so marketing can see whether the lead became pipeline or revenue.

The exact handoff depends on the business. Some teams involve sales early. Others wait until a lead meets a specific threshold. Marketing may keep nurturing people while sales is working with them. You need to agree on what happens, when it happens, and who owns the next step. Our HubSpot–Salesforce integration setup guide covers how to turn those decisions into platform ownership and field mapping.

What about cost?

Running both platforms costs more than running one, and there's no getting around that. The question is whether the additional cost buys something the business actually needs.

If you're paying for Salesforce because sales needs it, then the decision about HubSpot is really a marketing decision. Does the marketing team need a dedicated platform for the work it is doing?

If marketing is sending a newsletter and running occasional campaigns, probably not.

If marketing has a dedicated team, meaningful paid spend, demand-generation programs, lead nurture, attribution requirements, and a pipeline target, the answer may be different.

At that point, you are paying for more than software. You're paying for the marketing team to be able to operate without constantly depending on the CRM team, and you're giving them a system designed around the work they are responsible for. That can be worth more than the difference in license cost.

Where running both gets difficult

The systems need clear rules about records, fields, and ownership. Which leads sync? When do they sync? What makes someone ready for sales? Which system can change their status? Where does lead source come from, and how does opportunity information get back to marketing?

If those decisions aren’t made, both systems can start changing the same information. Marketing updates a field in HubSpot, Salesforce writes something else into it, and nobody knows which value to trust. Or a lead gets passed to sales without an owner, and both teams assume someone else is following up.

Connecting the platforms doesn’t settle any of that. Someone needs to define the process, set up the field ownership, and check that records move the way the teams agreed. That’s the RevOps work involved in running both. The setup needs to be clear enough that when something goes wrong, somebody can find out why. For a closer look at that work, see what a HubSpot–Salesforce integration project involves.

When should you add HubSpot to Salesforce?

Start with what marketing is struggling to do. Can the team build and change campaigns without waiting on the Salesforce team? Can it manage scoring and nurture without custom development? Can it see which leads became opportunities? Does sales get enough history to understand why a lead was passed over?

If several of those answers are no, look at whether the problem is the current setup or the tools themselves. HubSpot is worth considering when marketing needs a better working environment and sales wants to stay in Salesforce. Company size tells you less than the work the team is trying to get done.

When should you stick with one?

If HubSpot handles your sales and marketing needs, stick with it. If Salesforce’s marketing tools work for your team, there may be no reason to add HubSpot. And if you’re starting from scratch, see whether one platform can handle the work before committing to two.

Running both makes sense when Salesforce works for sales, its marketing tools are getting in marketing’s way, and moving the whole company would create more work than connecting the two. That’s the decision to make: what each team needs, what already works, and what it would take to change it.