ConvertKit vs HubSpot

Trying to choose between ConvertKit vs HubSpot as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.

ConvertKit vs HubSpot comparison
  • 4.7 GetApp
  • 4.7 Capterra
  • 2 TrustPilot

Average 3.8 / 5

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ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.

Pricing

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Key features

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Support

Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users

  • 3.4 TrustPilot
  • 4.5 Capterra
  • 4.4 G2

Average 4.1 / 5

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HubSpot

A CRM platform that offers email marketing, content management, marketing automation, and customer service capabilities.

Pricing

Marketing tools only start at $18 a month for 1,000 marketing contacts

Key features

  • Email automation, reporting, etc.
  • Landing pages and forms
  • Marketing automation
  • Website builder and hosting
  • CRM platform
  • B2B commerce tools
  • Customer service software
  • Sales and operations software
  • Integrations with various services

Support

24/7 support via email and chat on paid plans, phone support on professional and Enterprise plans. Community support only on the Free plan.

General info about company

ConvertKit

ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.

HubSpot

HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006. Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Difficulty

ConvertKit

Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.

HubSpot

The software may seem complex and even overwhelming. However, newcomers get service demos and tutorials for a smooth start. Overall, the interface is user-friendly and approachable.

Best for

ConvertKit

Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.

HubSpot

Medium to big e-commerce companies that want an integrated software package with marketing, CRM, customer service, and website hosting all in one.

Free plan

ConvertKit

The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited forms
  • Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
  • Audience tagging and segmentation
  • Selling digital products & subscriptions
  • Community support
  • Free recommendations

HubSpot

A free plan for 2,000 email sends per month. Available email templates and features are limited. No customer support, only the access to HubSpot Community.

Pricing

ConvertKit

Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.

Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:

  • Live chat & email support
  • Paid recommendations
  • Free migration from another tool
  • Automated email sequences
  • Visual automation builders
  • Third-party integrations
  • One additional team member

Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:

  • Newsletter referral system
  • Subscriber scoring
  • Advanced reporting

HubSpot

Billed monthly:

  • Starter: $20 for up to 1,000 marketing contacts
  • Professional: $890 for up to 2,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $3,890 with a mandatory paid onboarding)
  • Enterprise: $3,600 for up to 10,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $6,000 with a mandatory paid onboarding)

Other pricing features:

  • Users are only billed for their “marketing” contacts (actively in use) and can have many more inactive contacts
  • Even if a user cancels the subscriptions, they will be billed for the rest of their commitment period duration

Support

ConvertKit

Community support:

  • The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
  • Available even on the free plan

Email and live chat support:

  • Available for Creator users
  • Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users

ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.

HubSpot

  • Service demo for new users
  • Technical support is available on paid plans only
  • Access to the HubSpot Community on the Free plan
  • Chat and email support on all paid plans
  • Phone support only on Professional and Enterprise plans
  • Mandatory paid assisted onboarding on Professional and Enterprise plans
  • Advanced and Premier additional onboarding options
  • Customer training
  • Various courses with certifications
  • HubSpot user groups

Features

ConvertKit

  • Email builder
  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
  • List segmentation
  • Lead scoring
  • A/B testing
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators

HubSpot

  • Email automation
  • Dynamic list segmentation based on various criteria
  • Email reputation reporting and tracking
  • Custom reporting dashboards
  • Integrations with popular services
  • Drag-and-drop email builder and pre-made templates
  • Landing pages
  • Live chat with website visitors
  • A CRM app for iOS and Android

Templates

ConvertKit

25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:

  • Newsletters
  • Content promotion
  • Product sales pitch
  • Waitlist

The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.

ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.

HubSpot

15+ email templates
Only 5 email templates on the free plan

Templates for:

  • Welcome messages
  • Sales
  • Newsletter
  • Event invitations
  • Announcements
  • Ebook emails

Integrations

ConvertKit

120 integrations with third-party apps for:

  • Memberships and courses
  • Analytics
  • Lead capture
  • E-commerce
  • Giveaways
  • Quizzes
  • Workflows
  • Webinar
  • Affiliate management
  • CRM
  • Scheduling
  • Email verification

ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.

HubSpot

1,495 integrations including WordPress, Zapier, Canva, Facebook, Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, and more.

Devices

ConvertKit

  • Web app only

HubSpot

  • Website
  • A mobile app for iOS and Android to manage the CRM
  • Chrome extension for Gmail or G Suite
  • Office 365 add-in and desktop add-in for Office 365

 

  • No installable solution.

Languages

ConvertKit

English English

HubSpot

English English Chinese (traditional) Chinese (traditional) Danish Danish Dutch Dutch Finnish Finnish French French German German Italian Italian Polish Polish Portuguese (Brazil) Portuguese (Brazil) Spanish Spanish Swedish Swedish

Automation

ConvertKit

10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.

HubSpot

Many pre-built automations (called workflows) triggered by:

  • Contacts
  • Companies
  • Deals
  • Tickets (for support purposes)
  • Quotes
  • Conversations
  • Feedback submissions

Pros

ConvertKit

  • Good platform for content creators
  • Great deliverability
  • Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
  • A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns

HubSpot

  • An all-in-one solution for e-commerce businesses: email marketing, CRM, CMS, and more
  • 1,482 integrations
  • Thorough onboarding and courses
  • A strong global community
  • Ability to store many contacts for free

Cons

ConvertKit

  • Very basic reporting
  • Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
  • Not great for midsize and large businesses
  • No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch

HubSpot

  • Steep prices
  • Complicated feature system may cause additional spendings
  • Overwhelming amount of functions
  • Support isn’t accessible enough
  • Email templates aren’t sophisticated

Reviews from experts

ConvertKit

If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.

Karl Kangur

Karl Kangur

Director of Marketing at Smash Digital, SEO/Marketing speaker

We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.

Karan Singh

Karan Singh

CEO of Code Creative India

HubSpot

The fact that it’s so user-friendly is a big advantage to using HubSpot’s CRM platform. Its guided set-up wizard, demos and intuitive interface make it a great tool for all levels of experience. It’s still a huge software with a lot of bells and whistles, but taking all that into account, its usability is still outstanding. You’ll be particularly impressed with its lead management features.
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Anything above Starter gets very expensive and requires you to pay a high onboarding fee. In the case of the HubSpot Marketing Professional plan, this is $3,000 on top of the $890/month.
Surprisingly, HubSpot’s templates aren’t quite what you’d expect from such a popular, modern tool. I’d like to see some more design options for email and landing pages.

Roberta Phillips

Roberta Phillips

Marketing Manager, and Inka Wibowo, Senior Content Manager

Overall: I'm 50-50 with HubSpot. I see it as a compromise and middle step until we are able to get more specialized solutions for each one of their offerings.
Pros: HubSpot is a good solution for organizations at their early steps. It provides all the necessary tools for website management and marketing activities. The contacts' management is good too.
Cons: It doesn't go in-depth on anything. For everything that HubSpot does there is a platform that does it better. But we would need many different tools so we stay with all in one but shallow approach (for now). It is also very expensive for what it is.

Information Technology and Services worker

Information Technology and Services worker

*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.