HubSpot vs Creatio: a full comparison and which CRM to choose

HubSpot or Creatio? If you want a CRM your team will adopt quickly and that brings marketing, sales and service together on the same data, HubSpot is the better choice for most growing companies. Creatio stands out when the main challenge is modelling long, heavily regulated processes with no-code tools, and you have the resources to design and maintain them.

At Vexco we are a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, so we have a side. That is exactly why we want to be fair: Creatio is a serious platform with real strengths, and there are cases where it makes sense. We compare them criterion by criterion, without price figures (they change often) and with what we see in real projects.

What are Creatio and HubSpot?

Creatio, formerly known as bpm'online, is a Boston-based vendor that describes itself as an AI-native, no-code CRM and workflow platform. Its offering has a platform layer (Business Studio, for building applications with visual designers, and AI Studio, for creating and governing AI agents) and three CRM products: Sales, Marketing and Service. It has a strong presence in banking, insurance, manufacturing and the public sector, with dedicated solutions for financial institutions.

HubSpot is a customer platform built on a single CRM, Smart CRM, with products you switch on as you need them: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, Data Hub and Revenue Hub, plus Breeze as the AI layer with an assistant and agents. Its typical customer is a growing business, from a handful of users to several hundred, that wants marketing, sales and service to work from the same data.

The difference in approach explains almost everything. Creatio starts from processes and gives you a canvas to draw them. HubSpot starts from the customer and gives you a ready-to-use CRM that you can extend whenever you need to.

HubSpotCreatio

ApproachUnified, ready-to-use CRMNo-code process platform

MarketingVery complete Marketing HubCreatio Marketing

Customer serviceService HubCreatio Service

AIBreeze, assistant and agentsCreatio AI and AI Studio

Learning curveLowMedium to high

Typical rolloutWeeksMonths with custom processes

App ecosystemVery broadSmaller

DeploymentCloud with EU optionCloud or on-site

CRM and data model

Both let you extend the data model. In Creatio you can create objects, sections and pages with its designers with a lot of freedom, and this is one of its strongest arguments: if your business has very specific entities, such as policies, case files or loans, you can model them in full detail.

HubSpot works with standard objects (contacts, companies, deals, tickets, products, quotes) and, on Enterprise editions, with custom objects and labelled associations. It covers the vast majority of business models without turning the CRM into a software project. When you need to go further, UI Extensions and apps let you add screens and logic inside the record itself.

The practical question is not how much you can customise, but how much you will be able to maintain. Every custom object, rule and page is something someone will have to document and review whenever the process changes.

Which is better for the sales team?

Creatio Sales covers the full cycle: leads, opportunities, forecasts, orders and account management, with guided processes that set out the steps at each stage. In complex sales, with approvals and many stakeholders, those guided processes are useful.

Sales Hub is designed so reps sell more and type less: visual pipelines, follow-up sequences, meeting links, templates, calling, quotes, forecasting and a prospecting workspace, with the Gmail or Outlook extension logging activity automatically. In practice, adoption is higher because the tool mirrors how salespeople already work.

Marketing: the most visible difference

Creatio Marketing includes email, campaigns with a visual designer, events, segmentation and lead scoring. That is enough for many B2B organisations, especially if marketing relies on events and communications to the existing customer base.

Marketing Hub plays in a different league for digital demand generation: forms, landing pages, email, automation, ads, social media, SEO, lead scoring and revenue attribution, plus website and blog with Content Hub. Everything writes to the same contact that sales then works, so you know which channel generates business and not just clicks. If your growth depends on your website and content, this point usually settles the comparison.

Customer service

Creatio Service offers case management, SLAs, a knowledge base and a portal, with the advantage of modelling very detailed service processes, something valued in banking or utilities.

Service Hub covers tickets, a shared inbox with email, chat, WhatsApp and forms, SLAs, a knowledge base, a customer portal, satisfaction surveys and customer success. The difference is that agents see on the same record what the customer has bought, which marketing emails they received and which deal is open, with no integrations in between.

Automation: process designer versus workflows

This is where Creatio is strongest. It started life as a business process management (BPM) platform, and its designers let you build long processes with branches, approvals, sub-processes and advanced logic without code. For organisations with tightly regulated procedures, it is a great tool.

HubSpot workflows are easier to read and maintain: triggers, branches, delays and actions on contacts, companies, deals, tickets and custom objects, plus custom code and webhooks on higher editions. They cover the vast majority of sales and service automation. The flip side of Creatio’s power is that it needs people who can design processes and, often, a partner to maintain them; several users on review platforms mention a demanding learning curve.

AI: Breeze versus Creatio AI

Creatio has put AI at the heart of its message: agents working alongside people, AI Studio for designing them with prompts, flows and code, and tools so every employee can create their own assistants.

HubSpot focuses on ready-to-use AI on top of CRM data. Breeze Assistant helps you write, summarise and research inside any record, and Breeze agents handle support conversations, analyse accounts or prepare prospecting. The practical advantage is that the AI works on a unified, well-structured CRM, which is what really determines the quality of its answers.

Reporting and analytics

Creatio offers configurable dashboards and analytics by section, and its strength lies in measuring how processes progress. HubSpot gives you reports that combine marketing, sales and service on the same database: from first touch to revenue and renewal. Higher editions add custom reports, multi-touch attribution and datasets. For leadership, that makes all the difference.

Integrations and API

Both have an API and a marketplace. Creatio’s is geared towards connectors and templates for its industries. HubSpot’s is one of the broadest on the market, with native connections to Gmail, Outlook, Teams, Slack, Zoom, invoicing, e-commerce and telephony. Its REST API is very well documented and includes webhooks, private apps and serverless functions.

Where no connector exists, Vexco builds custom integrations with ERPs, invoicing tools and payment gateways, with consultants and developers in the same team.

Which is easier to use and adopt?

HubSpot is known for being easy to use, and it is not a cliché: in real implementations, reps log activity from the first week and admins change properties, pipelines or workflows without depending on a developer. The free HubSpot Academy helps a great deal with training.

Creatio is intuitive once well configured, but its flexibility means the experience depends heavily on how it was designed. In reviews, users praise its no-code customisation while also mentioning a longer learning curve, changes that sometimes require compiling, and occasional slowness on heavily loaded instances.

Implementation and total cost of ownership

Creatio combines a platform plan (Growth and Enterprise, per user, or Unlimited, with no user limit and pricing based on the size of the organisation) with per-user CRM products and AI usage. HubSpot offers free tools and hubs in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions, with per-seat licences and, for marketing, pricing that depends on the number of contacts. See Creatio pricing and HubSpot pricing on their official pages.

The licence is only one part. Add the implementation time, the profile who will run the system, the development needed to maintain what has been built and the tools you would have to add. A Sales or Marketing Hub project is usually up and running in 4 to 8 weeks with our method; a Creatio rollout with custom processes usually requires considerably more design upfront.

1. Weeks 1-2Process and data audit
2. Weeks 3-4CRM architecture
3. Weeks 5-7Build and integrations
4. Week 8Training and adoption

Support, community and partners

Creatio works with a partner network and its Academy, which has detailed technical documentation. HubSpot adds a huge community, HubSpot Academy, support included in paid editions and a very wide partner network across Europe, including Spain and Italy.

Security, GDPR and EU hosting

Creatio offers its managed cloud as well as deployment in the customer’s own cloud or on its own servers, an option valued in sectors with strict requirements. HubSpot is cloud-only, but lets you host your account data in its EU data centre in Germany, and includes a data processing agreement, consent and lawful-basis management, SSO, team permissions and, depending on the edition, audit logs.

For most European companies, this comfortably covers GDPR. If your policy requires your own infrastructure, Creatio has the edge.

HubSpot vs Creatio comparison table

When could Creatio make sense?

• You are a bank, insurer or regulated organisation with long processes, approvals and very specific traceability requirements.
• Internal policy requires you to deploy the CRM on your own infrastructure.
• You have an in-house team able to design and maintain no-code applications, and the CRM is just one piece of a wider process platform.
• You will give access to a very large number of internal users and an unlimited-user model suits your organisation.

If several of these apply to you, Creatio deserves a serious evaluation. If you are also looking at other enterprise suites, you may find our HubSpot vs Salesforce and HubSpot vs Microsoft Dynamics 365 comparisons useful.

Verdict: why HubSpot wins

1. One platform, one source of truth. Marketing, sales, service and content work on the same customer record, with no syncs to maintain.
2. Real adoption. A CRM your team uses is worth more than a powerful one nobody updates. HubSpot is quick to learn, and it shows in data quality.
3. First-class marketing. Native demand generation, nurturing, attribution and content, which are more limited in Creatio.
4. Time to value. With a phased HubSpot implementation, your team works in the CRM within weeks, not quarters.
5. More predictable total cost. Less reliance on technical profiles to maintain processes and fewer add-on tools.
6. Ecosystem and applied AI. Integrations, partners and talent readily available, and Breeze working on your data from day one.

How to migrate from Creatio to HubSpot

Migrating from Creatio is above all an exercise in simplification. The data moves across well; what takes judgement is deciding which processes to rebuild, which to simplify and which to drop.

1. 01Inventory of objects and processes
2. 02Clean-up and deduplication
3. 03Mapping to HubSpot objects
4. 04Test load and validation
5. 05Cutover and adoption

1. Objects. Accounts become companies, contacts stay contacts, opportunities become deals and cases become tickets. Custom entities become custom objects or, if simple, properties.
2. Properties. Review every field before creating it: Creatio lookups usually become dropdown properties, and many legacy fields are not used.
3. History. Activities, emails, calls, notes and attachments are loaded against each record, with their original dates.
4. Processes. They do not migrate as is: they are redesigned as pipelines, workflows, sequences and tasks, which is a chance to remove steps nobody follows.
5. Integrations. List the connections with your ERP, invoicing or telephony and decide which a marketplace connector covers and which need development.
6. Cutover. Plan the data freeze, the final load and validation with key users.

Common pitfalls: replicating every Creatio process one by one, migrating without deduplicating and forgetting team permissions. At Vexco we have carried out migrations such as a SaaS fintech moving from Salesforce and an accounting firm moving from Odoo, and the pattern repeats itself: simplify first, then migrate. If you want to do it methodically, take a look at our HubSpot migration service.

• Breeze
• Comparison
• Creatio
• No-code