Salesforce is the dominant CRM platform in the world. They are the biggest by a country mile. If you are an economic development organization, they should probably be on your list of systems to explore. If your heart is set on using Salesforce, there is one Salesforce Partner that we recommend and 5 that we suggest avoiding. We're happy to introduce you to the best group out there for economic developers.
HubSpot - a much smaller company (still publicly traded at running at $1 Billion a year in sales), still has the size and depth you'll want from a software company.
Unlike the handful of small companies in this space, you'll get a complete system, world-class support via online chat, email and even phone support FREE and your calls are returned in 5 minutes or less (on average). Access to the online Academy and Knowledge base for support.
Basic Functionality: CRM is CRM. You'll find that the ideas are the same.
So what's different?
Salesforce is more advanced and "wide open". Developers can build most anything with this platform. The industry term is Custom Objects - so you can add things like Properties (if you want to manage property inventory hitting the real estate market).
HubSpot is simple and direct. With fewer moving parts, getting around the system is easy so you can find the info you need easily.
Update: 2024
HubSpot now has Custom Objects, a website builder called a CRM and the Operations Hub to sync HubSpot data with other software applications.
Convergence, LLC sees the CRM as just one piece in our more comprehensive Economic Development Success System which includes