Comparisons
HubSpot vs Copper CRM: a full comparison and which to choose
Copper is the CRM most deeply built into Gmail and Google Workspace; HubSpot is a complete platform that also works very well with Google. We compare both and tell you which suits a growing business.
If your company lives in Gmail and Google Workspace, Copper is probably the CRM that feels most at home in your inbox: you use it without leaving your email. HubSpot also integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Meet, and on top of that gives you marketing, customer service, automation and leadership reporting on the same CRM. For a growing business, HubSpot is the better choice; here is why, and when Copper still makes sense.
Quick verdict: Copper wins on convenience for small teams managing relationships from Gmail. HubSpot wins on scope: native lead generation and marketing, customer service, cross-team automation, AI with full context, advanced reporting and independence from any single productivity suite. If you plan to grow, choose HubSpot.
What are Copper and HubSpot?
Copper, formerly ProsperWorks, is a San Francisco-based CRM built around Google Workspace. Google has featured it for years as a recommended CRM for Workspace, and its Chrome extension shows the contact record, opportunities and tasks next to every email. It is sold per user on plans such as Basic, Professional and Business, with contact limits on the lower plans, and its typical customer is a services SMB, agency or consultancy managing long-term relationships.
HubSpot is a customer platform built on Smart CRM, with Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, Data Hub and Revenue Hub on top and Breeze as the AI layer. It works with both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and scales from the free tools to companies with multiple teams and countries.
CRM and data model
Copper organises information into people, companies, opportunities within pipelines, optional leads for contacts not yet qualified, tasks and projects. It supports multiple pipelines, which some teams also use for non-sales processes such as recruitment or delivery. Custom fields cover the usual needs, although several users point out that the number of record types is limited once the business gets more complex.
HubSpot starts with contacts, companies, deals and tickets, with labelled associations and custom objects on Enterprise. You can model contracts, subscriptions, properties or payments as real objects rather than loose fields, and workflows, reports and permissions work on them in exactly the same way. That is what keeps the CRM a good fit as the business evolves.
Copper or HubSpot for working from Gmail?
This is Copper’s trump card. When you open an email you can see who the contact is, which opportunity they are in and which tasks are pending; one click adds them to the CRM, and Google Drive attachments are linked to the record. For a team that spends the day in email, the feeling of never having to ‘go to the CRM’ is very valuable.
HubSpot covers the same scenario with its Gmail extension: email logging and open tracking, templates, snippets, sequences, meeting links and the contact record in a side panel. The difference is that HubSpot’s record carries far more context, such as forms submitted, pages visited, marketing emails opened or open tickets. And if your company moves to Microsoft 365 tomorrow, your CRM is unaffected.
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Meet
- Google Ads
- Google Sheets
- Microsoft 365
Sales: pipeline, follow-up and forecasting
Copper offers visual pipelines, reminders, tasks, email tracking and a clear view of every relationship. That is enough for teams handling a small number of high-value opportunities with a very personal approach.
Sales Hub adds follow-up sequences, task queues, calling from the CRM, quotes, forecasting, playbooks and a prospecting workspace. For teams that need to scale the number of opportunities without losing the personal touch, these layers make the difference.
Marketing and lead generation
Copper offers bulk email from the Professional plan and email series on Business, as well as integrations with email marketing tools. It does not include landing pages, a blog, advanced forms with nurturing, multichannel campaigns or revenue attribution by channel.
In HubSpot, marketing and sales work on the same record. The contact who downloads a guide, opens three emails and visits your pricing page arrives scored and assigned to the right rep, and when the deal closes you know which campaign brought it in. For businesses that generate leads through their website or content, that completely changes the conversation with leadership.
Customer service and projects
Copper has no ticketing module or knowledge base; for support it integrates with external tools. It does include projects, which are useful for tracking delivery work after the sale. That is a real advantage for agencies and consultancies that do not want yet another tool for it.
Service Hub offers tickets, a shared inbox, chat, a knowledge base, surveys and a customer portal, with Breeze’s Customer Agent to answer common questions. For tracking delivery in HubSpot, teams typically use ticket or onboarding pipelines, or a custom projects object, all associated with the customer and the deal.
Automation and AI: Breeze versus Copper’s AI
Copper includes task automation on every plan and workflows from Professional, designed around the sales process. On AI, it offers an email template generator and an email rewriter, and leans on Google Workspace’s Gemini for quick replies, meeting transcripts added to Copper or summaries of data exported to Sheets. Several of those capabilities depend on your Google subscription rather than on the CRM.
HubSpot workflows act on contacts, companies, deals, tickets and custom objects, linking marketing, sales and service. Breeze is built into the platform itself: Breeze Assistant drafts, summarises and prepares meetings using CRM context, and Breeze agents help with prospecting, customer support and data upkeep. The AI works across the customer’s full history, not just the email you happen to have open.
Reporting and leadership visibility
This is one of the most frequent criticisms in Copper reviews: reporting covers the basics, custom reports arrive on the Business plan, and deeper analysis usually means exporting to Google Sheets. For a small team, that may be enough.
HubSpot lets you build dashboards that combine marketing, sales and service: cost per lead, conversion by channel, sales cycle, forecast by team or retention by segment. Leadership gets a single source of truth without relying on spreadsheets.
Integrations and API
Copper has an API, a Zapier connection and an integration catalogue centred on Google Workspace and common SMB tools. Some users find its API less flexible than they need for complex integrations.
HubSpot has one of the broadest app ecosystems in the industry, plus private apps, webhooks and UI Extensions to build inside the record. Billing, ERP, e-commerce, telephony or WhatsApp either have a connector or can be custom-built. You can see examples in our HubSpot integrations.
Ease of use, implementation and total cost
Copper is very easy to adopt if your team already works in Gmail, and that is a genuine strength. HubSpot is also among the easiest CRMs on the market, with HubSpot Academy to train every role; setup takes a little more work if you switch on several hubs.
Copper charges per user and plan, with contact limits on the lower plans and a free trial; HubSpot offers free tools and Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions for each hub. We do not publish figures; see HubSpot’s official pricing and Copper’s official pricing. To compare properly, add to Copper the marketing tool, helpdesk, reporting tool and their integrations; for HubSpot, only the hubs you will actually use.
Before
- CRM inside Gmail
- Separate marketing tool
- Support in another system
- Reports in Google Sheets
After
- Gmail connected to HubSpot
- Marketing on the same record
- Tickets next to the customer
- Real-time leadership dashboards
Support, community, security and GDPR
Copper offers a help centre, a community and support that improves on the top plan. HubSpot adds edition-based support, a huge community, HubSpot Academy and a global network of certified partners; at Vexco we are a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, with consultants and developers in the same team.
Copper states that it complies with EU and US privacy regulations and uses standard contractual clauses for transfers, but we have not found an EU data hosting option in its public documentation. HubSpot lets you host your account in its EU data centre, with a DPA, consent management and advanced controls on higher editions.
HubSpot vs Copper comparison table
| Criterion | HubSpot | Copper |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Marketing, sales, service and content | Relationship management from Google Workspace |
| Gmail integration | Extension with logging, tracking and sequences | Native and very deep |
| Microsoft 365 | Yes | Not its territory |
| Data model | Standard objects, associations and custom objects | People, companies, opportunities, leads and projects |
| Marketing | Full Marketing Hub | Bulk email and series by plan |
| Customer service | Service Hub | External integrations |
| Automation | Workflows on any object | Workflows from Professional |
| AI | Breeze Assistant and agents | Email AI and Google’s Gemini |
| Reporting | Full funnel across teams | Basic, custom on Business |
| Contact limits | High-capacity CRM; marketing contacts by edition | Limits on lower plans |
| EU data hosting | Available | Not publicly documented |
When could Copper make sense?
- A small team that does almost everything from Gmail and does not want to leave the inbox.
- An agency or consultancy managing a few long-term relationships that wants projects in the same CRM.
- A company with no in-house marketing or structured customer service.
- A firm, long-term commitment to Google Workspace as your only suite.
If you are comparing other sales-focused CRMs, you may also be interested in HubSpot vs Close.
Verdict: why HubSpot wins
- One platform. Marketing, sales, service and content on the same CRM, with no parallel tools.
- Gmail, yes, but not only Gmail. You work from your inbox and the CRM does not depend on a particular suite.
- Breeze with full context. The AI is part of the platform and knows the customer’s entire history.
- Real leadership reporting. Attribution, forecasting and retention without exporting to spreadsheets.
- Grows without switching CRM. Custom objects, permissions, teams and a huge ecosystem of apps and partners.
How to migrate from Copper to HubSpot
Copper is one of the apps supported by Smart Transfer, HubSpot’s migration tool. According to HubSpot’s documentation, people and leads become contacts, companies stay companies, opportunities become deals, and notes, calls, tasks and meetings become activities, along with users. HubSpot also creates backfill workflows for properties such as source, contact type and loss reason.
There are still decisions to make: whether Copper leads come in as contacts with a lead status or are left behind, how to map pipelines and their stages, what to do with projects (a ticket pipeline, a custom object or a separate tool), how to keep Drive attachments and how to roll out the Gmail extension to the whole team on switchover day.
- Week 1Audit and clean-up
- Week 2Architecture and mapping
- Week 3Test Smart Transfer
- Week 4Gmail, workflows and training
- Cut-over dayFinal migration and validation
At Vexco we have migrated companies to HubSpot from Salesforce, Odoo and Clientify, always using the same phased method. If you want to get it right from the start, see how we approach HubSpot implementation.
