HubSpot vs Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: which CRM fits a Microsoft company

Dynamics 365 vs HubSpot: which to choose in five situations

Pick by two things: which system owns customer, price and order data, and who will change the CRM after go-live. Those two answers decide more than any feature list. Being on Microsoft 365 doesn’t decide it: Dynamics 365 Sales and HubSpot both work in Outlook and Teams.

What’s the real difference between HubSpot and Dynamics 365 Sales?

HubSpot is a finished application for marketing, sales and service that you set up through its settings. Dynamics 365 Sales is an application on Microsoft’s Power Platform that an admin or a partner shapes to your process.

The difference shows on day one. A new HubSpot account has a deal board, a record page and reports ready to use. A Dynamics 365 Sales environment opens a full sales app, but languages, mailboxes, views, forms and process stages are set up before the team starts.

What does a sales rep see every day in HubSpot and Dynamics 365?

HubSpot and Dynamics 365 Sales both show the pipeline, the record and the next task. The two differ in what’s ready before anyone configures them.

The pipeline

HubSpot opens deals as a board: one column per deal stage, one card per deal, and each column’s total and weighted amount at the bottom. Dynamics 365 Sales opens My Open Opportunities: a list with a deal tracker chart and a sales funnel above it. A drag-and-drop board for opportunities isn’t on by default. An admin adds it.

The dashboard

Dynamics 365 Sales starts on a sales dashboard with work items, open leads by source, recent calls, pipeline by stage and opportunities at risk. Some tiles stay empty until you set up sequences and scoring. HubSpot starts with a dashboard library, and Professional adds a report builder for the reports a sales head needs.

Email and calendar

In Dynamics 365 Sales, the App for Outlook tracks emails and meetings to records. The app runs on server-side synchronization with Exchange Online: an admin approves and tests each mailbox first, and a tracked item can take up to 15 minutes to arrive.

In HubSpot, the Outlook add-in logs and tracks single emails, and the connected inbox logs by rule. A Microsoft 365 admin can deploy the add-in to everyone.

Business Central with Dynamics 365 Sales or HubSpot: what syncs

Business Central is where Dynamics 365 Sales leads most clearly. Microsoft builds the link between Business Central and Dynamics 365 Sales itself, through Dataverse. HubSpot’s own Business Central app syncs four objects and turns every Business Central customer into a HubSpot contact.

Customers and contacts are rarely the hard part. The work is quote to order: quotes, sales orders, invoices and products. Neither system maps quotes to Business Central out of the box, so decide where a quote is written before you choose.

The Business Central licence also changes the price. Users with Business Central Premium can add Sales Enterprise as an attach licence for $20 a user a month, against $105 for Sales Enterprise on its own. Both are US list prices in Microsoft’s licensing guide, billed annually, as of October 2026. The guide gives no euro attach price.

With HubSpot, Business Central is a build of its own: which system owns customers, prices and orders, how companies match, and where quotes live. Our Business Central guide shows what HubSpot’s app does and where it breaks. The ERP guide covers connectors and custom builds.

Outlook, Teams and Copilot: what Microsoft 365 already gives you

No Microsoft 365 plan includes a CRM licence, not even E5. The plans give you Outlook, Teams and limited Power Apps rights, and both CRMs build on those.

The Microsoft 365 argument for Dynamics is narrower than it sounds. Dynamics 365 Sales lives inside your tenant, with one login and one admin center. HubSpot connects to the same Outlook and Teams from outside. For a sales rep, both CRMs log email from Outlook.

What do HubSpot and Dynamics 365 Sales cost?

For ten sellers, Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and HubSpot Professional cost about the same in licences: €10,920 and €10,800 a year. List prices with annual billing, before VAT, as of October 2026, from Microsoft’s Austrian price list and HubSpot’s pricing for new customers in Europe.

Billing terms change the Dynamics price. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, Sales Premium costs €130 a user a month when you pay yearly, €136.50 on a one-year term paid monthly and €156 on a monthly term.

What the numbers leave out

• Set-up. Dynamics 365 Sales is usually set up with a Microsoft partner. HubSpot Professional and Enterprise need a one-off onboarding fee and someone who owns the account. Get both as days of work, in writing.
• Admin time. A Dynamics system needs someone who can change forms, flows and security roles, in-house or at the partner, for as long as you run it. Budget that time like a licence.
• Sequences and scoring. Sales Enterprise covers sequences for up to 1,500 records and predictive scoring for up to 1,500 records per environment a month. More needs Premium or Sales Insights.
• Power Platform licences. Flows with premium connectors, shared Power BI reports and your own Power Apps can each need a licence.
• Credits. Agents run on credits in both. Dynamics Premium includes 1,000 Copilot Credits a user a month. HubSpot Professional includes 10,000 credits for the account, and new customers pay marketing email from them.
• Existing HubSpot customers keep their seat pricing: a Sales Seat costs €100 on Professional and €150 on Enterprise. Our seats and credits guide explains both models.

Set-up effort for Dynamics 365 Sales and HubSpot, and who runs it afterwards

Plan a Dynamics project with a partner and an admin who stays. Plan HubSpot with an owner who knows the sales process, and help for the ERP side.

Before a Dynamics 365 Sales team can start

• Languages. An environment starts with its base language. German is a language pack an admin turns on, and each user picks it.
• Mailboxes. Each user’s mailbox is approved and tested before Outlook tracking works.
• Sample data. Trial environments come with Microsoft’s sample companies and people. Delete them before you import your own.
• Views, forms and stages. The opportunity board, extra fields, process stages and dashboards are changed in Power Apps or the app designer.
• Security roles and business units, which decide who sees and edits which records.

Before a HubSpot team can start

• Pipelines, stages and properties in settings, with required fields per stage.
• Users, seats and permissions, including free view-only seats for managers who only read.
• Outlook and Teams. Each user connects the inbox; a Microsoft 365 admin deploys the add-in and approves the apps.
• The ERP side as a project of its own, with an owner per field.

Who changes the CRM after go-live matters more than the go-live date. A Dynamics system only the partner can change gets slow and expensive to adjust. A HubSpot account nobody owns fills up with duplicates and unused properties.

When Dynamics 365 Sales is the better choice, and when HubSpot is

You can run both: HubSpot for marketing, Dynamics 365 Sales for sales. HubSpot’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 app syncs records one or two ways and can create Dynamics sales orders from deals. Running both means two licences and a sync to look after, so decide which system owns each field.

Comparing HubSpot with a smaller sales CRM instead? Read HubSpot or Pipedrive.

Mistakes when choosing between HubSpot and Dynamics 365

• Assuming Microsoft 365 includes a CRM. No Microsoft 365 plan does, not even E5. Dynamics 365 Sales is its own licence.
• Buying Sales Professional for an Enterprise process. Professional has no forecasting or territories, allows 15 custom tables and 5 custom reports, and can’t share an environment with Enterprise.
• Expecting Copilot on Professional. Copilot in Sales, Outlook and Teams starts at Enterprise.
• Treating HubSpot’s Business Central app as the ERP integration. The app syncs four objects and makes customers into contacts. Plan companies, quotes and invoices separately.
• Pricing licences only. Partner days, Power Platform licences, HubSpot onboarding and credits change the total more than the price per seat.
• Starting the wrong Dynamics trial. The trial from Microsoft’s website needs no card. The trial from the Microsoft 365 admin center is an order that turns paid unless someone turns off recurring billing.
• Assuming Outlook just works because both are Microsoft. The App for Outlook depends on mailbox approval and server-side sync. Test it with your own reps in the pilot.
• Switching CRMs to save on licences. Migration, retraining and rebuilt automations usually cost more than a few euros per seat over several years.
• Judging Dynamics by its sample data. Test both with twenty of your own deals, worked by two reps for a week.

How we help you choose

We set up HubSpot, so we’re not neutral, and we don’t pretend to be. If Dynamics 365 Sales fits your Business Central set-up better, we say so. This is the order we work in.

1. Step 01

   Map where data lives

   Customers, prices, stock, orders and invoices: which system owns each today, and who enters them.
2. Step 02

   Write the 12-month needs

   Marketing, service, ERP and reporting. What has to be true in a year decides more than what the team wants this week.
3. Step 03

   Price both for your team

   Licences, attach prices, credits, onboarding, partner days and Power Platform licences, over three years at list prices.
4. Step 04

   Test with your own deals

   Twenty real deals in a trial of each, worked by two reps for a week, with Outlook connected. Write down the admin work each needed.
5. Step 05

   Decide and plan

   A set-up with a fixed order and an owner for every field, so sales keeps selling while it happens.

Frequently asked questions