If you've spent any time researching marketing or sales tools, you've probably seen HubSpot and Zapier mentioned in the same breath. That's a bit misleading, though, because they're not really competing for the same job. One is a CRM and growth platform, the other is an automation connector. But the confusion is fair, because both promise to make your workflows run smoother, and both can technically "automate" things for you.
Here's the short version of how they differ.
What HubSpot Is Built For
HubSpot is a full CRM ecosystem: marketing, sales, service, and operations hubs all living under one roof. Its automation (workflows) is built natively around your contacts, deals, and tickets. Because everything sits inside one database, a workflow can trigger off a form fill, update a deal stage, assign a task, and send a follow-up email, all without ever leaving the platform.
What Zapier Is Built For
Zapier isn't a CRM at all. It's a connector, a way to link apps that otherwise wouldn't talk to each other. Think of it as digital duct tape: Gmail to Slack, Typeform to Google Sheets, Shopify to Trello. It shines when you're stitching together a scrappy toolkit of apps that each do one thing well.
Where They Actually Overlap
The overlap shows up when people use Zapier to patch together HubSpot-like functionality across separate tools, instead of just using HubSpot's native workflows. If your team is already inside HubSpot for contacts and deals, native automation is usually faster and less brittle than routing everything through Zapier. But if you're running a lean stack with tools HubSpot doesn't natively support, Zapier fills that gap well.
Which One Should You Pick?
Choose HubSpot's native automation if your data already lives in HubSpot and you want workflows tied directly to contact/deal records.
Choose Zapier if you're connecting apps outside the HubSpot ecosystem, or need quick, lightweight automations without touching HubSpot's workflow builder.
Use both together if you want HubSpot as your system of record while Zapier handles the edge-case app connections HubSpot doesn't cover natively.
The Real Answer Depends on Your Setup
Which tool "wins" really comes down to what your stack looks like and how deep your HubSpot usage already is. We broke down the feature-by-feature differences, pricing angles, and specific automation scenarios in our detailed HubSpot vs Zapier comparison. Worth a read if you're actively deciding between the two or figuring out how to use them together.
