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HubSpot Integration with Salesforce: The Good and the Bad

By January 29, 2025No Comments
HubSpot Integration with Salesforce

The integration between HubSpot and Salesforce has become a sought-after solution for businesses looking to streamline their sales and marketing processes. HubSpot is a leader in the world of inbound marketing, and Salesforce rules the CRM world. Integrating these solutions will link the marketing team with the sales team, thereby promising to make workflows unified and efficient. As with any tool, there are advantages and disadvantages. Let us go over the pros and cons of connecting HubSpot and Salesforce.


What is HubSpot Salesforce Integration? 

The integration of HubSpot and Salesforce is an amazing combination that lets you use the inbound marketing power hub, HubSpot, with the power of Salesforce’s CRM system. By integrating them, you can synchronise information (leads, contacts, companies, deals) across both platforms to ensure sales and marketing teams are both on the same page with the same information. HubSpot’s integration with Salesforce combines the marketing automation and lead nurturing capabilities of HubSpot with the advanced CRM capabilities of the Salesforce platform. It also supports automation, customizable syncing choices and robust reporting, so that all teams can align their efforts and drive business growth.


How Do You Connect Your HubSpot and Salesforce Accounts? 

To connect your HubSpot and Salesforce accounts, start by ensuring you have the necessary permissions in both platforms. (I was a HubSpot Super Admin and Salesforce System Administrator.) To do this in HubSpot: go to Settings and then Integrations > Connected Apps, and click on Salesforce. After clicking the “Connect app” button, you will be prompted to log into your Salesforce account. Log in and grant permissions to share data between both platforms. With HubSpot, configuring the integration is done for you, step by step — choosing the Salesforce environment (Sandbox or Production), mapping properties between the systems, setting sync rules so you know what should flow between the systems and when. Once you review and finalize your settings, you can enable the sync. (I recommend syncing a few records as a test before rolling it out completely.)


HubSpot vs. Salesforce Data Architecture

Both HubSpot and Salesforce have different data architectures tailored to fit their fundamental platform purposes. HubSpot’s data architecture is designed to support its marketing and sales tools, operating with simplicity and flexibility in mind. It organizes data into four primary objects: Contacts, Companies, Deals, and Tickets. These objects are highly connected to each other, meaning teams can seamlessly track customer interactions all along the buyer’s journey. With HubSpot, data is easy to manage even for users with no technical background. You can add custom properties to these objects, though they’re subject to limits that fall short of what you can do with Salesforce’s abundant customization power.  

Salesforce has a much more complex and highly customizable data architecture., Its structure consists of an array of standard objects (e.g. Leads, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities), along with custom objects that businesses can build to reflect their specific workflows. Salesforce’s architecture facilitates the implementation of advanced relationship mapping and deeper data hierarchy in a controlled fashion, to have granular control in terms of how data can be stored, accessed and reported. A big advantage here is this level of customization, although it also means a steeper learning curve and will likely need dedicated administrators to manage. It’s important to understand the differences in these architectures when integrating the two platforms so that businesses are able to correctly map data and avoid sync errors.


HubSpot vs. Salesforce Data Types

When comparing data types in HubSpot and Salesforce, it’s clear that one platform is handling data to suit its use cases unlike the other. HubSpot focuses on simplicity and user accessibility, organizing its data into core objects: Contacts, Companies, Deals and Tickets. Just as with Rails models, each object is a type of information: Contacts are individuals, Companies are businesses, Deals are sales opportunities, and Tickets are support cases. Alongside these objects, there are pre-defined, as well as customizable, properties to store any extra information like names, email addresses, or deal amounts.HubSpot’s data types are easy to understand and easy to use, without technical know-how.  

Salesforce offers a wider range of configuration options as well as data types of much higher complexity. Salesforce also allows for custom objects, which include any standard objects, such as Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and so on, and can be built to suit custom business processes. Each object has fields associated with the object, such as simple data types (text, numbers, picklists, dates) and advanced data fields (formulas, lookups). These customizable data types are unmatched in their flexibility and power to allow businesses to create workflows and reports exactly how they need. While that complexity can provide a more robusstsolution, it also makes Salesforce more difficult to configure and maintain, particularly for users not already familiar with how its architecture works. What are the Benefits of Integrating HubSpot With Salesforce? 

HubSpot integration with Salesforce provides a plethora of benefits to run your operations smoothly and improve collaboration among sales and marketing teams. By bridging the gap between these two platforms, businesses can unlock new efficiencies, increase data accuracy and get a holistic view of the customer journey.

  • Seamless Data Synchronization – Bidirectional data sync features ensure integrations keep your leads, contacts and deals updated across both platforms. It has no risk of discrepancies and all marketing and sales teams work with real accurate, real time data.
  • Enhanced Lead Management – HubSpot’s marketing tools work hand-in-hand with Salesforce’s CRM capabilities. HubSpot lets you generate leads and nurture them, then pass them over to Salesforce so that your sales team can pick them up. This makes lead tracking a bit better and keeps potential leads from slipping through the cracks.
  • Customizable Sync Options – Businesses can choose what not to sync so it’s tailored for their needs. For example, users can choose what properties to transfer (fields) and set up rules on when and how data is synced.
  • Improved Sales and Marketing Alignment – When HubSpot and Salesforce integrate, it gives both visibility into what’s going on with the other. Marketers can find how their campaigns impact sales outcomes and sales teams are able to gainmarketing insights to customize their outreach.
  • Automation Capabilities – With automated workflows, manual effort is reduced and productivity  increases. For instance, the HubSpot lead scoring system can automatically assign leads to sales reps in Salesforce so they don’t have to spend time manually doing it and can follow up in a more timely fashion.
hubspot and salesforce

Challenges of HubSpot-Salesforce Integration

Despite all of these great advantages, there are some challenges to using the HubSpot Salesforce integration. Technical complexity during setup, ongoing maintenance, and the possibility of data synchronization problems are all issues that businesses should be prepared to deal with. Common challenges  how they can affect your workflows include:

  • Complex Setup Process – The integration is powerful, but it’s also hard to set up. You need technical knowledge to correctly configure a sales CRM — mapping fields and the like, as well as data sync rules. Without the help of the experts, companies might make mistakes in configurations that result in data errors.
  • Cost Implications – HubSpot and Salesforce both come equipped with free versions or basic ones, but don’t be surprised if you require premium subscriptions for the integration. Moreover, businesses also might have to investin third-party tools or consultants to configure such setups or debug problems.
  • Data Overload Risks – It’s easy to sync too much data between the platforms and end up having too much noise to focus on actionable insights. For instance, syncing improper or obsolete records will create a cluttered database decreasing efficiency.
  • Limited Customization for Some Use Cases – While the integration is highly customizable, some users may find limitations when dealing with unique business processes. Even if these cloud data management solutions cater to varying customers and complex workflows, they might require additional customization through APIs or third-party tools that raise costs and are complex.
  • Sync Errors and Delays – Proper configuration can not solve problems such as duplicate records, field mismatches and sync delays. Most of these errors disrupt workflows and need constant monitoring and maintenance to fix.

Is HubSpot-Salesforce Integration Right for Your Business?

Figuring out whether the HubSpot-Salesforce integration is right for your business depends on what you seek to achieve, your processes, and what your budget allows. In the case where your marketing organization relies on HubSpot for marketing and on Salesforce for customer relationship management, this integration can be a valuable bridge between these two platforms, bringing the data together and facilitating effective teamwork between teams. It can be particularly important for companies looking to centralize lead management, align marketing and sales teams, and view the 360 degree customer journey. This integration will prove instrumental for companies who put automation and real time data synchronization at the center of their operations, helping them rid themselves of manual work and increase efficiency.  

But maybe the most important criterion is to look if your business has enough resources to do the integration and sustain it. It’s a setup that can get complicated — technical expertise is required to map fields, create workflows, and manage the rules of data syncing. Also, if your team doesn’t already use one platform exclusively or its processes from marketing and sales largely don’t overlap, then it might not make economic sense to adopt an integration—at least at this time. Ultimately the way the HubSpot – Salesforce integration serves you best is if you seek to scale, gain better interdepartmental synergy, and make business oases out of actionable insights from both platforms to fuel your growth.


Make the Most of HubSpot-Salesforce Integration

For companies that are ready to bring sales and marketing together, as well as make their back office operations more efficient while getting a complete picture of their customer interactions, integrating HubSpot with Salesforce is a transformative step. However, the success of this integration hinges on understanding the unique strengths and challenges of each platform, including their data architecture and types. HubSpot is easy to use,  but Salesforce allows you to gain better control over such processes as customization. Whether this integration is a good fit for your organization depends on your assessment of needs, technical resources, and goals. Providing you do proper planning, setup, and maintenance of the integration, it can unleash new efficiency and make a big difference to the growth of your business.

Il'ya Dudkin

Il’ya Dudkin is the content manager and Salesforce enthusiast at datagroomr.com. He has more than 5 years of experience writing about Salesforce adoption, duplicate detection issues and system integrations with MuleSoft. He also works with IT outsourcing companies to facilitate the adoption of new Salesforce apps and increase user acquisition and loyalty.