While marketing trends are constantly in flux, interruptive ads aren’t the only way to build a business. Inbound strategies are a great compliment to outbound approaches, and that’s precisely where professional inbound marketing software plays a pivotal role.
These tools can significantly benefit any individual or company looking to improve their marketing game, and such software will be the topic of today’s article. We’ll dive into the top-rated tools of 2024, examine their features and pricing options, and help you choose the most suitable one for your business needs.
At FirstSiteGuide, we aim to provide unbiased reviews of many online services. After thoroughly reviewing various inbound marketing tools, we are ready to provide you with a list of the ten best ones.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
|
Best Overall
|
Best Value
|
Most Versatile
|
|
4.6
|
4.5
|
4.5
|
|
Starting at $20/mo
|
Starting at $29/mo
|
Starting at $97/mo
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Established industry leader
- Lots of integrations
- Can get expensive as you scale
- Customizable for your contacts
- More affordable
- Limited functionality compared to other plans
- All-in-one marketing tool
- No marketing contact limits
- Learning curve initially
Top 10 Most Popular Services for Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing software attracts customers through digital content that targets a specific audience and boosts customer engagement. This strategy focuses on creating top-notch content and sharing it to improve a business’s online presence and works well as part of a dynamic marketing strategy.
In this article we’re covering two different categories of tools: lead capture and marketing strategy. Some of the services we’ll be covering are great for collecting and nurturing leads while others are perfect for planning your inbound marketing strategy.
Before we dive deeper into the tools, here’s a quick list of the top-rated inbound marketing software in 2024. See what they’re about and what they’re best at, and choose for yourself.
- Hubspot Best Platform Overall
- ActiveCampaign Best Value for the Money
- GoHighLevel Most Versatile Platform
- ClickUp Advanced Automation for Executing Marketing Campaigns
- Maropost Best for Data-Driven Campaigns
- Salesforce Best CRM Available
- Pardot Best Email Campaign Tool
- Marketo Engage Best for Large Enterprises
- LeadFeeder Top Lead Generation Tool
- Sender Easy to Use
Now that we know which tools are on the top 10 inbound marketing software list, let’s dig into each and find out what makes them so good.
HubSpot — Best Platform Overall
Functioning as a combination of tools for inbound marketing, CRM, and sales, HubSpot is one of the leaders in the industry. This customer relations platform has all the necessary software and integrations a growing company might need. It scales with your business effortlessly, allowing you to focus on other vital aspects.
Key Features
- Effortless Team Alignment – HubSpot provides marketing, sales, CMS, CRM, commerce, and other tools, allowing your company’s teams to work together seamlessly.
- Keyword Research Tool – This feature helps your teams research the market and create superior SEO-rich content that’ll reach the front pages of the internet.
- Advanced Analytics Tools – With HubSpot, you can track your website’s visitors and improve your marketing campaigns based on their behavior.
Pricing
The HubSpot platform offers various plans that fit anyone’s needs and budget.
Free
- $0 per month
Individuals and startups can benefit from HubSpot’s free option, incorporating free marketing, sales, service, CMS, operations, and commerce tools.
Starter
-
$20 per month
$15/month with an annual subscription
The starter plan gets you 1,000 marketing contacts and increases the limits of the free tools.
Professional
-
$890 per month
$800/month with an annual subscription
This plan upgrades the starter pack with marketing automation, custom and campaign reporting, and social media features.
Enterprise
- $3600 per month
It provides custom events and objects, revenue attribution, and team organization features on top of everything included in the professional plan.
HubSpot is an established leader in the inbound marketing realm. This is typically a platform for larger companies, as the jump in the first to second pricing-tier is a bit steep, so if you’re a bigger business or expecting to need to scale quickly this is a great option.
Established leader in the online and inbound marketing space.
- Full marketing suite
- Lots of integrations
- Great Analytics
- Pricey for large email lists
- Limits on email list size
ActiveCampaign — Best Value for the Money
Aimed at SMBs, ActiveCampaign is a SaaS platform that provides excellent email marketing and interaction automation features. While there’s no free plan, ActiveCampaign’s paid plans are relatively cheap and provide incredible value. These plans are highly customizable and can be bundled with other sales and CRM tools.
Key Features
- Plan Customization – ActiveCampaign lets you customize any plan by the number of marketing contacts you need.
- Next-Level Integration – The app marketplace has over 870 integrations, including WordPress, Zapier, Shopify, and more.
- Automated SMS – With ActiveCampaign, you can automate messages and reach your customer’s most-used devices – mobile phones.
Pricing and Plans
ActiveCampaign has four paid plans, including the following:
Lite
- $29 per month
This plan is excellent for entrepreneurs and provides 1,000 marketing contacts.
Plus
- $49 per month
This option gets you Facebook lead ads, custom audiences, lead scoring, and integrations and is perfect for small teams.
Professional
- $149 per month
This plan is aimed at teams of five. It includes split automations, Microsoft and Salesforce integrations, and more.
Enterprise
- $259 per month
The enterprise plan gives you custom reporting and objects, single sign-on, and unlimited email testing on top of everything in the professional plan.
ActiveCampaign is geared directly towards email and SMS communications which makes it a great option for marketing campaigns. If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool, this might not be your pick.
Marketing automation for any business.
- Great options for marketing automation
- Affordable for entry level marketers
- Not an all-in-one marketing tool
GoHighLevel (GHL) — Most Versatile Platform
Whether you are after sales funnel creation, email marketing, or automated appointment scheduling, you should look no further than GoHighLevel. This all-in-one sales and marketing software provides everything a business might need for growth, including CRM and pipeline management, email and SMS marketing, workflow automation, and various tracking and analytics tools.
Key features
- Two-Way Messaging – Besides sending SMS to your customers, GoHighLevel lets you receive messages and works with Facebook, Instagram, Google Business, and WhatsApp.
- Drag-and-Drop Tools – You can effortlessly create and customize your own SaaS interface for complete control over your platform’s appearance and functionality.
- Simplicity and Ease-of-Use – The learning curve with GoHighLevel is almost non-existent, and teams can quickly adapt to the platform.
Pricing and plans
There are three dedicated GoHighLevel plans – Starter, Unlimited, and SaaS Pro Plan.
Starter
-
$97 per month
Save 20% with an annual plan
The starter plan offers online booking, unlimited contacts and users, marketing automation, and a website builder.
Unlimited
-
$297 per month
Save 20% with an annual plan
You get API access, a dedicated app with more control, and unlimited sub-accounts for as many clients or businesses as you need.
SaaS Pro Plan
-
$497 per month
Save 20% with an annual plan
You get everything in the Unlimited plan, plus the ability to create a White-label SaaS business, charging for account access to users you sign up. If you’re looking to start a SaaS business or any type of agency, this is a great choice.
GoHighLevel provides a lot of flexibility and covers a large range of functionality from email and SMS marketing to calendar and reputation management.
If you’re looking for an affordable all-in-one marketing option, or your tired of having to connect all your marketing systems through Zapier, this could be a great option for you.
- Great all-in-one tool
- No limits on contacts
- Easily build sales funnels
- Bit of a learning curve
ClickUp — Advanced Automation for Executing Marketing Campaigns
With advanced customizability, templates, real-time collaboration features, and other marketing tools, ClickUp becomes a potent platform for managing marketing strategies. However, its automation features are undoubtedly the platform’s best offering, allowing you to automate even the most advanced marketing campaigns and taking your inbound marketing to another level.
Here at FirstSiteGuide, ClickUp is what we use to organize and plan our blog and marketing content.
Key features
- Seamless Integration – ClickUp effortlessly connects with your other tools, as there are many integrations with other marketing softwares.
- AI Assistant – The AI-powered bot can help you create top-notch content in a few clicks, but it’s a paid feature that costs $5 per monthly member.
- Customization Tools – Customizable templates adapt to anyone’s marketing needs.
Pricing and plans
ClickUp has four pricing plans – Free Forever, Unlimited, Business, and Enterprise.
Free Forever
- Free
Individuals get 100MB of storage, unlimited tasks and members, kanban boards, and 24/7 support.
Unlimited
- $7 per user per month
This plan is geared toward startups and smaller teams and grants unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards, Gantt charts, and custom fields.
Business
- $12 per user per month
It grants you Google SSO, advanced automations and time tracking, and workload management on top of the unlimited plan’s features.
Enterprise
- Custom Pricing
The enterprise plan provides everything in business, adding white labeling, live onboarding training, access to managed services, and more.
While ClickUp is more of a project management and marketing campaign organization tool, it still has the ability to improve your inbound marketing by keeping you and your team on schedule and moving forward.
- Free plan offers a good amount of feature
- Affordable project management software
- Lots of integrations
- Need to invest time into proper set up
- Not as intuitive as other platforms
Maropost — Best for Data-Driven Campaigns
Whether you are after email, SMS, web, or social media marketing, Maropost can handle it for you. This multi-channel platform can seamlessly automate your marketing campaigns and relies on data-driven decisions to help you optimize it all. As such, Maropost is fantastic as inbound marketing software and can vastly improve your conversion rates.
Key features
- Customer Division – Segmenting your audience in real time lets you cater to each customer and personalize your approach for every subscriber.
- Multi-Channel Tools – Maropost can automate various marketing tasks for social media, SMS, web, and email marketing.
- Data-Driven Marketing – The platform automatically uses surveys and analytics to optimize your marketing strategies.
Pricing and plans
Maropost offers three paid plans – Essential, Professional, and Enterprise.
Essential
- $251 per month
The essential plan includes scripting, dynamic content, email and SMS campaigns, unlimited users, contacts and lists, content recommendations, and seamless integrations.
Pro
- $764 per month
You get mobile keywords, training, onboarding, and dedicated customer success and deliverability managers on top of everything from the essential plan.
Premium
- $1529 per month
Premium gives you access to everything from the above mentioned plans and unlimited journeys, 150 custom contact fields, and DaVinci AI.
Maropost is a great option for fast growing businesses that need a premium multi-channel marketing tool.
Easy to use, e-commerce focused marketing tool.
- Great for fast growing businesses
- Geared for E-Comm
- Lots of integrations
- Not for entry level marketers
- One of the pricier options
Salesforce — Best CRM Available
Primarily a CRM platform, Salesforce offers plenty of marketing tools for managing multi-channel campaigns. Its Marketing Cloud platform provides analytics, AI tools, automation, and more, allowing you to divide your customers into groups, create and send personalized marketing messages, track the performance of your campaigns, and improve based on real-time analytics.
Key features
- Seamless Email Marketing – Salesforce lets you create customized and personalized emails in just a few short steps.
- Social Media Analytics – You can effortlessly get feedback on your latest Facebook and Twitter campaigns.
- Advanced Integrations – As a CRM tool, Salesforce seamlessly connects your marketing efforts with the sales team and integrates well with almost any software these teams use.
Pricing and plans
Salesforce has five monthly plans ranging from $25 to $500 per user. They are:
Starter Suite
- $25 per user per month
It grants you access to Salesforce’s starter suite and lets you use lead, contact, account, and opportunity management tools, email integration, and a simple setup.
Professional
- $80 per user per month
The professional plan upgrades the starter suite with forecast management and customizable dashboards and reports.
Enterprise
- $165 per user per month
The enterprise plan gives you flexibility, a web API, deal insights, territory planning, and more.
Unlimited
- $330 per user per month
This plan builds upon the enterprise plan with advanced automation, generative AI, and sandbox tools.
Unlimited+
- $500 per user per month
It gets you everything from the unlimited plan and more. It includes performance management, team collaboration, and revenue intelligence tools.
Salesforce is an established leader in the CRM realm and offers numerous integrations to build out a marketing suite.
If you have a team, the collaborative nature of this platform might be just what you’re looking for.
Powerful CRM functionality to drive conversion in your pipeline.
- Easy list segmentation
- Great pipeline functionality
- Lots of integrations
- Per user fee structure can get expensive
- Not a full marketing suite
Pardot — Best Email Campaign Tool
Once a standalone B2B marketing automation platform, Pardot is now part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. This marketing automation software adds to your Salesforce CRM, connecting visitors to your business. It handles email marketing and potential customer behavior tracking, helping you with forms, scoring, marketing analytics, audience segmentation, and more.
Key features
- Dynamic Content – Pardot lets you create personalized forms and emails and helps make your website or landing page unique.
- Engagement Studio – This feature handles email campaign visualization, helping you track activities and monitor the performance of your campaign.
- B2B Marketing Analytics – The Pardot platform combines marketing and sales data, giving you a complete overview of your campaigns, budgets, and ROI.
Pricing and plans
There are four paid plans for Pardot – Growth, Plus, Advanced, and Premium.
Growth
- $1,250 per month
The growth plan includes email marketing and lead generation, nurturing, and scoring features, making it best suited for small businesses.
Plus
- $2,750 per month
This plan includes advanced versions of the above mentioned features, taking your marketing automation to the next level.
Advanced
- $4,400 per month
The advanced plan adds dynamic content and automation rules and improves integration with Salesforce.
Premium
- $15,000 per month
On top of everything from the advanced plan, the premium option adds advanced analytics, predictive lead scoring, and personalized product support.
As you can see, Pardot plans are pricey. Additionally, they are an add on to Salesforce CRM, so that’s an added expense to consider as well.
If have a large business with a sizable email list that accounts for a considerable percentage of your bottom line, they’re worth checking out.
Powerful Salesforce Email Marketing App
- Powerful email marketing tool
- Advanced marketing automations
- Premium pricing
- Need Salesforce as well
Marketo Engage — Best for Large Enterprises
Owned by Adobe, a company you’ve undoubtedly heard of in other industries, Marketo Engage is an all-in-one marketing automation software that can massively boost your customer engagement. It’s a fantastic option for email, events, social media, or SMS marketing, letting you continue and coordinate conversations from a central hub.
Key features
- Generative AI – The AI engine works as a perfect brand ambassador chatbot, and it can also summarize conversations and generate topics and questions for your sales team.
- Insightful Analytics – Marketo Engage’s marketing analytics give you a complete picture of your sales and marketing data from the first visitor interaction to customer conversion.
- Predictive Engagement – The software’s in-depth profiles, behavioral data, and AI work seamlessly to personalize experiences for each website visitor.
Pricing and plans
All four Marketo Engage plans – Growth, Select, Prime, and Ultimate, have custom pricing.
Growth
- Custom Pricing
You get access to essential email marketing, automation, and segmentation features.
Select
- Custom Pricing
This plan builds upon the previous option with advanced automation and tracking features.
Prime
- Custom Pricing
The prime package includes powerful AI personalization and analytics.
Ultimate
- Custom Pricing
It gives you everything from the prime plan with premium attribution features and next-level automation.
Marketo Engage is best suited for large businesses.
We don’t like that they aren’t transparent about their pricing, so if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution similar to Marketo Engage, but with a cheaper price tag, HighLevel would likely be a better choice.
- CRM integration
- Advanced segmentation and analytics
- Multi-channel marketing automation
- Customer support limitations
- Custom pricing only
LeadFeeder — Top Lead Generation Tool
Building effective marketing strategies is a piece of cake with Leadfeeder by your side. This B2B tool identifies your website’s visitors and tracks their behavior, helping you understand who your potential customers are. It gives insight into your visitors’ engagement and optimizes your content based on said data.
Key features
- Automatic Bot Removal – Leadfeeder provides quality leads by removing ISPs and both from your website traffic.
- Native Two-Way Integrations – This B2B solution plays well with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and many other marketing apps you might use.
- Custom Visitor Segmentation – The tool automatically scores leads based on activity and lets you create custom filters for segmenting the most valuable ones.
Pricing and plans
Understanding Leadfeeder’s plans is effortless, as there are only two – Free and Paid.
Free
- Free
Leadfeeder’s free plan lets you identify up to 100 companies, gives you data from the last week, and supports unlimited users.
Paid
-
$198 per month
$139 per month with an annual subscription
The paid plan offers unlimited visitor data storage and users, two-way integrations, custom filters, user management, and various tracking features.
We appreciate the simple pricing with Leadfeeder. You can access the Free plan and be able to tell if it will suit your needs before upgrading to a paid plan.
Great B2B Lead Generation Software
- Straightforward pricing
- Great tool for understanding user behavior
- Easy lead scoring
- Might need integrations for a full marketing suite
Sender — Easy to Use
Aimed at B2Bs and e-commerce businesses, Sender is a reliable and incredibly straightforward inbound marketing software. The platform lets you effortlessly boost conversions and broadcast your marketing campaigns, as it’s equipped with pre-built forms and popups, customizable email and SMS sequence builders, and various templates you can further customize to your needs.
Key features
- Drag-and-Drop Editor – Sender lets you quickly customize and edit your emails without coding.
- Customization Library – There are dozens of responsive and customizable templates in Sender’s email template library.
- Effortless and Simple Interface – Setting up and using SMS or email automations is incredibly straightforward in Sender’s intuitive interface.
Pricing and plans
Sender has four paid plans – Free Forever, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise.
Free Forever
- Free
Individuals and businesses entering the market can get the free plan with up to 15,000 monthly emails, email automation, and up to 2,500 subscribers.
Standard
- $19 per month
The plan grants you essential email tools with multi-user access and SMS messaging and removes Sender branding.
Pro
- $35 per month
This option upgrades the standard plan with free SMS, advanced automation features, and dedicated IPs.
Enterprise
- Custom Pricing
This plan provides unlimited emails, SSO, advanced permissions, and a dedicated manager on top of everything in the pro plan.
If you’re looking for a low-barrier to entry for an inbound marketing tool, Sender is a great starter option to test.
Easy and straightforward email marketing tool.
- Entry level option
- Pre-built templates for plug and play
- Basic features for established businesses
- Not a full marketing suite
Comparing the Top 10 Inbound Marketing Tools
If you’re wondering how these tools compare against each other, we’ve created a detailed comparison table and a detailed overview of the software for your convenience. See below and compare these tools, their best features, and prices.
| Inbound Marketing Software | Features | Pricing | Cons |
| HubSpot | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Analytics and tracking – Keyword research – Seamless team alignment | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Free plan – $20 starter plan – $890 professional plan – $3600 enterprise plan | – Limited functionality with lower-tier plan – Limits on marketing contacts |
| ActiveCampaign | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Customizable plans – 870+ integrations – Automated SMS | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – $29 lite plan – $49 plus plan – $149 professional plan – $259 enterprise plan | – Limits on marketing contacts – Not an all-in-one |
| GoHighLevel | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Drag&drop editor customization – Two-way messaging – Versatility with all-in-one marketing tools | ⭐⭐⭐ – $97 starter plan – $297 unlimited plan – $397 SaaS pro plan | – Learning curve for those new to marketing tools |
| ClickUp | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Effortless customization – Seamless integration – AI assistant | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Free plan – $7 unlimited plan – $12 business plan – Custom-priced enterprise plan | – Need to invest time to get the most benefit and streamlined system |
| Maropost | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Customer segmentation – Custom forms, contacts, and surveys for marketing optimization – Multi-channel customer engagement | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – $251 essential plan – $764 professional plan – $1529 enterprise plan | – Pricier option with no entry-level plans |
| Pardot | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Engagement studio – Advanced marketing analytics – Dynamic content (forms, emails, landing pages, website) | ⭐⭐⭐ – $1,250 growth plan – $2,750 plus plan – $4,400 advanced plan – $15,000 premium plan | – Premium pricing – Also need Salesforce for this service |
| Salesforce | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Effortless email customization – Insight for Facebook and Twitter marketing efforts – Seamless integrations with other tools | ⭐⭐⭐ – $25 starter suite plan – $80 professional plan – $165 enterprise plan – $330 unlimited plan – $500 unlimited+ plan | – Mainly just CRM functionality – Integrations needed for additional marketing tools |
| Marketo Engage | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Predictive engagement through behavioral data and AI – In-depth marketing analytics that connect your sales and marketing teams – Generative AI engine for chatbots, summaries, and sales team questions | ⭐⭐ – Custom pricing for all four plans | – Lack of transparency with pricing – Not an entry level tool |
| Leadfeeder | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Custom filters and visitor segmentation features – Two-way CRM integrations quality leads with automatic bot removal | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Free plan – $198 paid plan | – Need additional software for full marketing suite and functionality |
| Sender | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Drag&drop editor for customization without coding – Extensive email template library – Easy-to-use interface for effortless SMS and email automation | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Free plan – $19 standard plan – $35 pro plan – Custom-priced enterprise plan | – No native social media functionality |
How to select the best inbound marketing software
Our in-depth overview of the top 10 software for inbound marketing undoubtedly makes things more straightforward. However, you’re probably still wondering which software you should go for. To get to the answer, you’ll need to determine precisely what you’re looking for, so consider the following:
Specific business goals and needs
What are you trying to achieve with inbound marketing software? That’s the first question you’ll need to answer. Once you know your business goals, you’ll effortlessly find the features you’re after.
Available features
The software’s features are another vital thing to consider, and trying out the software is a great way to learn about these features. Of course, the more features, the merrier.
Ease of use
Efficiency with inbound marketing software significantly depends on the tool’s ease of use. You should look for software that’ll positively impact your productivity and a tool your team can quickly adapt to.
Available integrations
Whether you’re an individual or a company, you’re likely already using certain apps for other aspects of work. Therefore, your inbound marketing software should integrate and play well with these apps.
Customer support
The quality of customer support is crucial to any application or digital service. Before making the final decision, you should thoroughly examine the inbound marketing software’s responsiveness and customer support channels.
Conclusion
As businesses quickly turn toward inbound marketing campaigns targeting a specific audience, the need for dedicated inbound marketing software increases. These tools provide countless marketing features and integrations and come with various free and paid plans, but the one you choose depends on your business needs.
