All three are capable CRM systems. CRM stands for customer relationship management. A CRM system holds your contacts, companies and deals, and records the emails, calls and meetings that go with them. For a small UK team choosing its first proper CRM, the choice usually comes down to three questions. What will you pay once you have the features you need? How quickly can your team start without outside help? And how much of your working day runs in Outlook and Teams?
In short, HubSpot is built for a quick, self-service start and offers free tools. Salesforce is highly configurable, with a large marketplace of add-on apps. Dynamics 365 Sales is Microsoft’s own CRM, so it sits closest to Outlook, Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365.
What “Dynamics 365 CRM” means
There is no single product called Dynamics 365 CRM. People use the phrase for Microsoft’s customer apps, and for a sales team that means Dynamics 365 Sales, once called Dynamics 365 for Sales. It comes in three tiers. Microsoft describes Sales Professional as “core sales force automation, Microsoft 365 interoperation, reporting, and dashboards”. Sales force automation means software that handles routine sales work, such as logging activity and moving deals through stages. Sales Enterprise adds deeper insights, AI and more customisation, and Sales Premium adds advanced sales intelligence and automation.
Cost
At the time of writing, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Sales pricing page lists Sales Professional at £50.00, Sales Enterprise at £80.70 and Sales Premium at £115.30, each per user per month, paid yearly and excluding VAT.
Salesforce and HubSpot publish their own prices on their websites, across several tiers. HubSpot also offers free tools, with limits, which let a small team try it before paying. Microsoft and Salesforce both offer free trials.
When you compare, compare like for like. Price the tier that has the features you need, not the entry tier. Check annual against monthly billing, minimum user numbers and paid add-ons. Then add the cost of setup, moving your data and training, which for a small team can matter as much as the licences.
Ease of use and setup
HubSpot is designed for teams to set up themselves, so a small team can often get going without help. Its paid Sales Hub plans run from Starter, aimed at small businesses, through Professional to Enterprise.
Salesforce can be configured to fit most sales processes, and AppExchange, its marketplace, offers a large range of add-on apps. That flexibility usually means someone has to own the setup, either an administrator on your staff or a partner.
Dynamics 365 Sales is customised with the Power Platform, Microsoft’s tools for building apps and automated flows with little code, so a firm that already uses Power Apps will find it familiar. Unless someone in-house knows the Power Platform, expect to use a partner for the first setup.
Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365
This is where the three differ most for a firm that runs on Microsoft 365.
Dynamics 365 Sales has an app for Outlook on the desktop, the web and mobile. From an email or meeting you can see the related customer record, link the email to an account or opportunity, and keep contacts in step. In Teams, staff can view and work on customer records inside a chat or channel, and sellers can make Teams calls from within Dynamics 365, with each call logged on the record. It uses the same Microsoft sign-in as Microsoft 365. If you run Business Central, Sales also has a standard integration with it, so sellers can see stock and invoices.
Salesforce offers its own Outlook integration and a Microsoft Teams integration, though the Teams features depend on your edition. Salesforce also owns Slack, the workplace chat tool, so a team that works in Slack gets a close fit there.
HubSpot offers an Outlook add-in, a small app that runs inside Outlook, for Windows, Mac and the web. Its app for Microsoft Teams brings HubSpot notifications, tasks and tickets into Teams, though some features need your Microsoft administrator to install it for the whole organisation.
All three connect to Outlook and Teams. The difference is depth. Dynamics 365 comes from the same company as Outlook and Teams and shares their sign-in and licence management. For a team that lives in Outlook and Teams, that counts. For a team on Gmail and Slack, it counts for less.
Which suits which team
HubSpot suits a small team that wants to start quickly, perhaps with marketing and sales in one place, and to pay more only as it grows. Salesforce suits a team that expects to build a large or highly customised sales operation, or that already works in Slack. Dynamics 365 Sales suits a team that lives in Outlook and Teams, wants to extend its CRM with the Power Platform, or runs Business Central and wants sales linked to orders and invoices.
If you already run Business Central, check its built-in contact management first. It keeps contacts, logs interactions and tracks opportunities, and it may be enough to start with. Whichever way you lean, a short trial using your own deals and your own mailbox will tell you more than any comparison.
Next step
Spark 365 works with UK firms on Business Central and the Power Platform. If you want to know how a CRM would connect to your finance system before you choose, we are happy to talk it through.