Closely vs HubSpot Marketing Hub

by Gralio Feb 07, 2025

Closely is better for sales teams prioritizing LinkedIn lead generation and automation. HubSpot Marketing Hub is a better choice for businesses needing a comprehensive inbound marketing platform with broader functionalities beyond LinkedIn, encompassing various channels and marketing activities.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 5158 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 5 hours, 9 minutes of reading.

About

Closely is a cloud-based sales engagement platform that helps businesses generate leads and manage outreach on LinkedIn. It offers tools for automating connection requests, sending messages, scraping profile data, and extracting email addresses. Closely also provides analytics and reporting to track campaign performance. The platform integrates with CRM systems and other sales tools. Closely offers different pricing plans for individuals, small teams, and midsize teams.
HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive marketing platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a suite of tools including email marketing, marketing automation, social media management, analytics, and SEO optimization, all within a single platform. This helps businesses streamline their marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and track results. Its focus on inbound marketing and lead generation makes it a popular choice for businesses looking to attract and convert leads into customers. HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM platform for enhanced sales and marketing alignment.

Summary

Main difference
Closely is a sales engagement platform specializing in LinkedIn automation for lead generation and outreach. HubSpot Marketing Hub is a broader marketing platform offering various tools like email marketing, SEO, and social media management, best for inbound marketing and comprehensive campaigns.

Relative strengths of Closely (compared to HubSpot Marketing Hub)

  • Strong LinkedIn automation capabilities for lead generation and sales outreach.

  • Easy-to-use interface and streamlined user experience for managing LinkedIn activities.

  • Integrates with HubSpot, allowing for data synchronization between platforms.

Relative weaknesses of Closely (compared to HubSpot Marketing Hub)

  • Limited functionality beyond LinkedIn automation, lacking features like email marketing and SEO.

  • Negative user reviews regarding billing practices and customer support.

  • Lacks advanced features and filters in its prospecting tool, potentially limiting targeting capabilities.

Who is using Closely and HubSpot Marketing Hub?

Who should use Closely VS. HubSpot Marketing Hub

Closely is a cloud-based sales engagement platform ideal for sales and marketing professionals at SMBs. It automates LinkedIn outreach, manages connections, and extracts emails. Users praise its ease of use and robust automation, but some dislike the appoint module's UI and lack of Google Calendar integration. Closely offers tiered subscriptions starting at $70/month.

HubSpot Marketing Hub is a user-friendly platform ideal for businesses of all sizes seeking to enhance their marketing efforts. Its comprehensive suite of tools simplifies marketing automation, social media management, and analytics. Users appreciate the intuitive interface and robust reporting capabilities. However, some find the pricing model complex and the free version limited. Consider HubSpot if your business prioritizes inbound marketing and lead generation.

  • Best for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using LinkedIn for sales.

  • Suitable for various industries focusing on LinkedIn lead generation.

  • Best for small, mid-sized, and large businesses.

  • Suitable for various sectors, including e-commerce, retail, healthcare, finance, and more.

Closely and HubSpot Marketing Hub features

Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need
  • Workflows and Bot Builders
    Partially supported

    Closely offers automation for LinkedIn and email, but not explicitly via workflows or bot builders.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub offers workflows and bot builders for automated campaigns.

  • Email and Form Automation
    Partially supported

    Closely supports automated email campaigns, but form automation is not mentioned.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub supports email and form automation, streamlining workflows and saving time.

  • Multi-Channel Campaigns
    Partially supported

    Closely supports multi-channel campaigns, but is limited to LinkedIn and email.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub supports multi-channel campaigns, including SMS and social media.

  • HubSpot integration
    Supported

    Closely supports integration with HubSpot, allowing data synchronization between the two platforms.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub supports the ability to connect and sync data with HubSpot CRM.

  • Campaign tracking
    Supported

    Closely supports campaign tracking with detailed reporting and analytics on key metrics.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub supports campaign tracking, enabling users to track the performance of their marketing campaigns.

  • Workflow Automation
    Unknown

    The provided context focuses on features of workflow automation tools in general and lacks specific information about Closely\'s capabilities in this area. Thus, we cannot definitively say whether it supports workflow automation or not.

    Supported

    HubSpot Marketing Hub supports workflow automation for sales workflows and tasks to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.

Qualities

  • Value and Pricing Transparency
    No data
    -0.57
    Rather negative sentiment
  • Customer Service
    +0
    Neutral sentiment
    +0.65
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Ease of Use
    +0.6
    Rather positive sentiment
    +0.8
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Reliability and Performance
    -0.5
    Rather negative sentiment
    +0.42
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Ease of Implementation
    No data
    +0.21
    Neutral sentiment
  • Scalability
    No data
    +0.29
    Neutral sentiment
Closely and HubSpot Marketing Hub Pricing
All plans include features like multichannel campaigns, warm-up period, network manager, bulk messages to network, built-in inbox, integrations, and team management. Closely offers a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Plans

User sentiment

Strongly negative
-1

See full Pricing page

HubSpot Marketing Hub offers different plans, including Professional and Enterprise. Pricing is not directly disclosed on the page and requires contacting sales. There is no mention of a free plan or free trial.

User sentiment

Rather negative
-0.57

See full Pricing page

Closely and HubSpot Marketing Hub review insights

5106 reviews analysed from and

Users love

  • Easy to use and intuitive UI.
  • Robust automation features for LinkedIn outreach.
  • Cloud-based, no browser extension needed.
  • Excellent customer support.
  • User-friendly interface consistently praised for its ease of use.
  • The platform offers robust analytics and reporting features, providing valuable insights into marketing performance.
  • Excellent training resources and a very active user community.
  • HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates seamlessly with a wide range of other marketing and sales tools.

Users dislike

  • They will charge you card even after you cancel.
  • Appoint module is clunky, with a horrible UI and a very poor experience integrating it on a website.
  • No integration with Google Calendar.
  • Prospecting tool is lacking advanced features and filters.
  • The "free" version is extremely limited and most core features require paid access.
  • Contacts are expensive, and billing can increase rapidly with no warning as you add new contacts.
  • Some users report slow loading times and occasional glitches or bugs.
  • Email templates can be difficult to customize beyond basic edits.

Closely and HubSpot Marketing Hub Ratings

  • G2
    4.7/5
    (189)
  • TrustPilot
    3.8/5
    (52)
  • G2
    4.4/5
    (2526)
  • Capterra
    4.5/5
    (2401)
  • Glassdoor
    4.0/5
    (3550)

Company health

Employee growth

9% decrease in the last year
15% increase in the last year

Web traffic

141% increase in the last quarter
10% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

June 2017 - $2M
July 2012 - $101M

How do Closely's LinkedIn automation features compare to HubSpot Marketing Hub's broader marketing tools?

Closely specializes in LinkedIn automation for sales outreach, offering features like automated connection requests, messaging, and profile data scraping. HubSpot Marketing Hub, while it does offer some social media management tools, has a much broader focus, encompassing email marketing, SEO, analytics, and overall inbound marketing strategy. Therefore, Closely is a more specialized tool for LinkedIn lead generation, whereas HubSpot provides a more comprehensive, albeit less focused, suite of marketing tools.

Which platform, Closely or HubSpot Marketing Hub, better suits a business primarily focused on LinkedIn lead generation?

Closely is better suited for businesses primarily focused on LinkedIn lead generation. While HubSpot Marketing Hub offers broader marketing functionalities, Closely specializes in LinkedIn automation, scraping, and outreach, providing more targeted tools for lead generation on that specific platform. Closely's features like automated connection requests, messaging, and profile data extraction are specifically designed for maximizing LinkedIn lead generation efforts.

What are the advantages of Closely?

Closely specializes in LinkedIn automation for lead generation and sales outreach, offering tools like automated connection requests, messaging, and profile data scraping. This focus makes it advantageous for businesses prioritizing LinkedIn as a primary lead source. Closely is cloud-based, eliminating the need for browser extensions, and users praise its intuitive interface and robust automation features.

What are the disadvantages of Closely?

Closely's disadvantages include a clunky appointment module UI, lack of Google Calendar integration, limited prospecting tool filters, and reports of continued billing after cancellation. Some users also find the pricing to be high relative to its feature set, particularly for individual users. Focusing primarily on LinkedIn outreach, it lacks the broader marketing capabilities of platforms like HubSpot.

Is Closely cheaper than HubSpot Marketing Hub?

Closely's pricing starts at $70/month for the Personal plan, $150/month for the Growth plan, and $225/month for the Pro plan. HubSpot Marketing Hub's pricing is not publicly available and requires contacting their sales team for a quote, making direct price comparison difficult. Therefore, it's not possible to definitively state whether Closely is cheaper than HubSpot Marketing Hub without getting a custom quote from HubSpot.

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Page co-authored by
MK
Michal Kaczor
CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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