Salesforce and HubSpot sell into the same buyers and disclose price in almost opposite ways. Salesforce’s pricing page sends seven of its 34 listed products and industries to a Contact Sales button with no number attached. HubSpot’s Sales Hub page prints a figure on every tier and a per-seat rate on each paid one, then adds a required one-time onboarding fee of €1,470 on Professional and €3,420 on Enterprise in a footnote under the price. The work each page leaves behind is different: with Salesforce you have to obtain the missing terms, with HubSpot you have to add up the ones already printed.
What it is and who it’s for
A Contact Sales button is a vendor’s decision to move a product’s commercial terms off the page and into a conversation. Salesforce states the scope of that decision plainly: its pricing page is provided for information purposes only and subject to change, and buyers are told to contact a sales representative for detailed pricing information.
That framing does not apply evenly across the catalog. Salesforce lists 18 products by role and 16 by industry on the same page; 27 of those route to a “See all … pricing” page, and seven route to Contact Sales — Einstein AI and Salesforce Einstein on the role side, and Construction & Real Estate, Professional Services, Retail, Technology, and Travel, Transportation, & Hospitality on the industry side.
HubSpot’s Sales Hub page sits at the other end of the range and shows that a published price does not automatically mean a self-serve purchase. It lists four tiers with figures attached — Free at €0 per month for up to two users, plus Starter, Professional, and Enterprise — and swaps the Buy now button for Talk to Sales only on Enterprise.
That line matters most for buyers moving past self-serve: into a Salesforce product that carries only a Contact Sales button, or into HubSpot Enterprise, where the price is printed but the button still says Talk to Sales.
How it works
Salesforce splits its estate into three purchase paths on a single page. Products with their own pricing page sit behind a “See all … pricing” link. Data 360 and Agentforce get a Flex Credit Pricing Calculator that estimates the credits needed and the overall price. The seven Contact Sales entries get no self-serve route at all. The page repeats one sales number, 1-800-664-9073, across three separate FAQ answers: upfront costs and additional fees, changed product needs, and adding or upgrading products.
A contract layer sits under all three paths. Salesforce Starter can be purchased on a monthly or annual contract, signed up and bought directly from a free trial, while all other subscriptions are generally paid annually in advance. Most Salesforce products use annual contracts, though Salesforce says subscription terms vary.
HubSpot publishes the figures Salesforce withholds, then stacks layers Salesforce’s page never quantifies. Sales Hub Starter shows €7 per seat per month alongside €20, and Professional €90 alongside €100, with a Pay Monthly / Pay Annually toggle switching between them. Enterprise starts at €150 per seat per month with no second figure and a Talk to Sales button.
Below the seat rate sits a usage layer. Each tier carries a fixed allocation — 500 HubSpot Credits on Starter, 3,000 on Professional, 5,000 on Enterprise — and features including the Prospecting agent and Customer agent are marked “This feature uses HubSpot Credits.” HubSpot describes credits as buyable in packs or as pay-as-you-go, with a spend cap the buyer can adjust and the option to pause features.
Pricing and cost considerations
The full price on the HubSpot page is not the seat rate. Professional carries a required one-time Professional Onboarding fee of €1,470, and Enterprise a required one-time Enterprise Onboarding fee of €3,420, both disclosed as asterisked footnotes under the tier cards rather than in the headline figure. Measured against the listed €150 Enterprise seat rate, that onboarding fee is worth close to two years of one seat. Our HubSpot pricing guide tracks how the same seat-plus-credits structure repeats across the other hubs.
Bundling is priced openly on the same page. HubSpot offers Commerce Hub Professional at €57 per seat per month instead of €95, or Commerce Hub Enterprise at €98 instead of €140, when billed annually, to buyers who purchase Sales Hub. The offer is limited to new Sales Hub and Commerce Hub customers, so a team already running either product does not qualify for it.
Salesforce answers the equivalent question with a phone number. Asked directly whether there are upfront costs or additional fees, its FAQ describes add-ons, apps, and additional products and asks buyers to call 1-800-664-9073; it names no fee and no floor. Support is a second unpriced line on the same page: Salesforce says it offers several advisory, adoption, and support plans and points to Success Cloud, without attaching a figure. Published Salesforce edition pricing lives on the per-product pages instead, which our Salesforce pricing guide breaks down.
Integration cost is disclosed the same indirect way. Salesforce says many of its products integrate directly with outside applications, and that for those without built-in integration — the page names on-premises data sources — buyers can purchase MuleSoft licenses, work with integration partners, or use apps on AgentExchange. That is a separate license line, surfaced in an FAQ about integrations rather than anywhere near a price.
How to choose
Sort the products you are evaluating by how each vendor discloses price, not by vendor. These two pages alone show four patterns: a published per-seat price with a self-serve Buy now (HubSpot Starter and Professional), a published price with a sales-led close (HubSpot Enterprise at €150 with Talk to Sales), a calculator in place of a price (Salesforce’s Flex Credit route for Data 360 and Agentforce), and a Contact Sales button with nothing attached (Einstein AI, Salesforce Einstein, and the five industry clouds).
Once sorted, ask each vendor for the components the other one publishes. For a Contact Sales product, that means the questions HubSpot answers in the open: whether a required onboarding fee exists, what the base allocation includes, and what the tier above costs. For a published-price product, it means the questions Salesforce’s FAQ raises: which subscriptions must be paid annually in advance, and what an advisory or support plan adds.
Price the usage layer apart from the seats, and check what each vendor actually gives you over it. Salesforce Digital Wallet is described as near real-time monitoring of usage data for consumption-based products like Data 360. HubSpot describes a wider set of levers on its credit system: see the balance and track usage in a single workspace, add packs, adjust a spend cap, or pause features. Monitoring and capping are not the same control, so establish which one is on offer for the product you are buying.
Then check contract shape against your own cadence. Starter is the only Salesforce product its pricing page confirms as available monthly, while HubSpot exposes a monthly-versus-annual toggle on Starter and Professional and leads with the lower figure; our guide to annual vs monthly SaaS billing covers what that trade normally buys. Last, confirm the path you tested is the one you can deploy: Salesforce states trial subscriptions cannot be used in a production capacity and must be used only for non-production purposes.
Limitations and gotchas
A calculator is not a quote. The Flex Credit Pricing Calculator returns an estimate of credits needed and overall price for Data 360 and Agentforce, on a page that still closes by saying it is for information purposes only, subject to change, and that detailed pricing comes from a sales representative.
A tier price is not a tier cost. The €1,470 and €3,420 onboarding fees sit in footnotes under Professional and Enterprise, and HubSpot marks both as required — so a buyer weighing €90 per seat against a rival’s headline rate is comparing an incomplete number.
Included credits are a starting balance, not a ceiling on spend. HubSpot’s own description of the system covers adding more packs, adjusting the spend cap, and pausing features, which makes the 3,000 credits on Professional an included allocation rather than a limit on what a customer can consume or buy.
Tier limits are quantified, and they move. The Sales Hub comparison tables set calling minutes at 500, 3,000, and 12,000 across Starter, Professional, and Enterprise; HubSpot-provided phone numbers at one, three, and five; deal pipelines at one, two, 15, and 100 from Free upward; and customizable workflows at up to 300 on Professional against up to 1,000 on Enterprise. HubSpot directs buyers to its Product & Services Catalog for full technical limits and definitions.
Expansion can be involuntary. Salesforce says products can be added or upgraded at any time, but that some products may need to scale together — a constraint that tends to surface at renewal rather than at purchase.
FAQ
Does HubSpot Sales Hub cover the LinkedIn subscription its sequences rely on?
No. The comparison table states that LinkedIn actions within sequences require a Sales Navigator subscription, a third-party license outside the HubSpot bill.
Beyond the €60 per-seat gap, what separates HubSpot Professional from Enterprise?
Quantified headroom. Sequences move from 500 to 1,000 email sends per user per day, call recording and transcription from 750 to 1,500 hours per account per month, and custom reporting from 100 reports and 10 million events per query to 500 reports and 100 million events.
What does HubSpot’s free Sales Hub tier actually restrict?
One deal pipeline, up to three canned snippets, up to three email templates per account, a maximum of one personal meetings link, and HubSpot branding on 1-to-1 email, live chat, and meeting links, which paid tiers remove.
Can a Salesforce trial be converted without calling sales?
Yes. Salesforce says buyers can hit “Buy Now” from within the trial to purchase licenses. When the trial expires, the prompt is to buy or to call for more information.
Does the Flex Credit Calculator cover everything Salesforce prices by consumption?
Not as described. The calculator is named for Data 360 and Agentforce specifically, while Digital Wallet is described more broadly as monitoring consumption-based Salesforce products, with Data 360 given as the example.
