The Pardot VS Hubspot Migration and Switch Guide

Pardot vs HubSpot, even with technology and automation, true 1-to-1 people-based marketing automation, AI and personalization is incredibly hard to achieve. For companies to be successful, they must focus on building comprehensive buyer journeys and customer-centric campaigns. Marketers should leverage systems that can combine, analyze, model and automate these marketing signals to get closer to true 1-to-1 customer interactions.

In addition to collecting a rich set of data, marketers also understand what qualifies as a performant marketing technology and usable real-time systems essential for personalizing the customer experience and providing timely actions, report sand recommendations.

Marketers must evaluate the freshness of their data to remain relevant and ensure that their digital efforts are identifying consumers with the greatest propensity to buy. While marketing and sales alignment and handover require a better definition “relevance” and use data that point to a recent and immediate intent to buy, such as product page views, search terms or customer interactions, the marketing automation platform can play as a competitive asset into effectively crafting out masterful campaigns.

If you are considering switching between Pardot and HubSpot or even deciding of the systems you would like to adopt you will find here reasons why and how to migrate.

This guide is an outline covering:

Why switch from Pardot to HubSpot ?
HubSpot vs Pardot Side by Side Comparison of Strengths and Weaknesses
Old school e-mail campaigns versus integrative marketing and sales approach
Why migrate from Pardot to HubSpot
Still not decided to switch from Pardot to HubSpot?
Migrating your digital marketing assets from Pardot to HubSpot

Why switch from Pardot to HubSpot ?

If you have not decided why and how to switch from Pardot to HubSpot here is a brief side by side comparison of Pardot Strengths and Weaknesses.

Pardot strengths vs Hubspot:

It is owned by Salesforce but in fact it was purchased by Salesforce and it does not natively inherit the power of integration that tools like the Salesforce Marketing cloud has with the Salesforce CRM
Its got a good brand and a good technical backend, the 3d ranked by G2 crowd in terms of market presence and adoption
Unlimited API calls Pardot to Salesforce while HubSpot has 500,000 API calls p/d - not affected by HS-SF Integration if you plan on Salesforce being your CRM
Does affect API counts on SF

What are some of the Weaknesses of Pardot vs HubSpot?

Ranked way underperforming in terms of customer satisfaction, Pardot definitely is not a contender in the WOW factor that HubSpot as a leader delivers to users and customers
Pardot requires complex maintenance while HubSpot is very intuitive and is build with usability in mind. HubSpot also provides a whole series of HubSpot Academy lessons and courses that you can take for free even if you are not a customer
Relationship between partners & reps is much stronger with HubSpot ecosystem
Support is provided live on any channel via HubSpot tech support (phone, chat, e-mail etc.) while Pardot support is less responsive, takes a long time and may not be of help unless you pay for it. As a user of Pardot we had cases where the tech support was not able to assist with simple things like building a top or promotional banner carousel image
Total Cost of Ownership and Pricing is much higher with Pardot vs HubSpot. You will notice that even from upfront onboarding costs or the need to add multiple addon tools like for example Social Suite addons
Development usually need a full time dedicated person inhouse or outsourced to an agency partner with Pardot while with HubSpot it’s an easy do it yourself
The content management system, video integrations and hosting are a hurdle with Pardot while seamlessly functioning in HubSpot
Revenue attribution cannot be done in Pardot while it can easily be achieved in HubSpot

Bottom line HubSpot is more usable, easier to administer while you get better support and easier access to qualified HubSpot certified consultants and agencies. Long term this translates in more time for you and your team and better marketing and sales investments ROI.

As HubSpot gains more territory by introducing tools like custom objects and a customer oriented development product roadmap, Pardot leaps behind with little new features and functionalities.

At NNC Services we’ve had plenty opportunities to try and test different versions and integrations of HubSpot, Pardot and SalesForce CRM, and by far HubSpot is a better tool overall. But don’t take our work for it, check out the HubSpot reviews and the Pardot reviews directly from the SalesForce app exchange marketplace and draw your own conclusions.

HubSpot Reviews

HubSpot have ~600 review
Connecting HubSpot to salesforce

Pardot Reviews

~165 reviews

Source: https://www.g2.com/compare/hubspot-marketing-hub-vs-pardot

Old school e-mail campaigns versus integrative marketing and sales approach

For today’s marketer, automation can be incredibly complex while using email-centric automation tools like Pardot won’t cut it. You need to addresses the full funnel, from anonymous visitor to engaged customer. Though a full suite of marketing and sales tools is critical, most users find HubSpot better for even just email. (G2 Crowd reviewers score HubSpot at a 9.4 and Pardot at an 8.8 for email marketing.)

Migrating a complex marketing automation system does not have to be painful nor costly. But because of the apparent complexity of migrating your data and getting a new platform up and running, companies may postpone cutting the cord and deciding to go for the best solution up there.

Why migrate from Pardot to HubSpot?

We’ve covered this in a previous Why & How to Migrate from Pardot to HubSpot, but here are some more arguments to consider

All your digital marketing assets from Pardot can be rebuilt within HubSpot but we advice a Pardot Audit prior to undertaking a migration project. Any transition from one platform to another won’t be strictly apples-to-apples, but with the right resources you can discover how to best address those differences within your use of the tool
If you are wondering how long will the switch is a factor of on how quickly you want to get it done as immediately upon signing up for HubSpot you have access to all the tools

Still not decided to switch from Pardot to Hubspot?

If you are still on the fence about migrating from Pardot to HubSpot, here are some independent reviews:

Forbes
G2Crowd - 6100+ vs 1700+ reviews
TrustRadius - 1550+ vs 600+ reviews
HubSpot vs. Pardot (Side-by-side comparison) - 4100+ vs 500+ reviews
Datanyze

And here are some customer case studies for former Pardot users that switched to HubSpot:

Migrating your digital marketing assets from Pardot to HubSpot

Moving Contacts from Pardot to HubSpot

HubSpot’s Contacts Database is the central home of data in HubSpot. You can get in-depth information about the HubSpot Suites of tools here.
The contact records stored can be collected from: your CRM system, website traffic, forms, landing pages, imports, other connected tools, etc. HubSpot generates a highly organized and extensive profile for every record in the system, which includes behavioral data from every touchpoint leveraging AI to suggest what may even be great accounts for your company to target If you need more information on the HubSpot ABM features do checkout this webinar to understand how HubSpot Targeted Accounts work. You can setup customer properties for all your contacts and map anything for outside tools and integrations. You will not be able to simply download Pardot contact activity or history but there is a easy fix described bellow. Pardot stores your records in the Prospects database. You can download all of your data for importing into HubSpot by setting up custom fields in HubSpot for non-standard properties.
Pro Tip! If you would like to move customer data use the reporting tool in Pardot to export as much information as possible on your campaigns and contact activities, than merge it based on a contact property like e-mail address or name than import it and map it correctly into the HubSpot Contacts Database. Please reach out to us and one of our HubSpot Certified Developers can demonstrate how this is done.

Migrate E-mails from Pardot to HubSpot

Pardot is email-centric, but HubSpot’s email tool outperforms Pardot with the integrated flywheel strategy. The Email tool makes it simple to send thoughtfully designed, personalized messages to any of your Contacts. Additionally, it’s easy to send one-off messages to segments, or trigger message sends based on behaviors through using the Automated Workflows tool. When you’re ready for a deep dive, you can learn more about the HubSpot Email by connecting with one of our NNC certified digital marketing consultants. Building your emails is easy in HubSpot, and you’ll find you have the opportunity to design with great flexibility enabling you to create A/B tests in one step so that you can easily optimize your campaign even while executing your full automation workflow.
Pro tip! For simple e-mail or landing pages templates, a full rebuild in HubSpot is seamless. For more complex e-mails a NNC Services developer will assist you by exporting the e HTML file for each template from Email Templates in Pardot and than set it up in HubSpot.

How to move Pardot Automation campaigns and Drip E-mail Programs to HubSpot Automated Workflows

With HubSpot’s Workflows you can define a effective sales and lead generation funnel or buyer journey. Transitioning Automation Campaigns from Pardot In HubSpot workflow automation campaigns gets down to understanding your current automation rules, like changing a detail or a score on a lead’s or drip programs that trigger email sends to prospects depending on the prospect’s actions. Inside of HubSpot, the Workflows tool allows you to do both making it more simple and integrated as a experience.

Migrate landing pages from Pardot to HubSpot

Landing Pages From Pardot to HubSpot. In HubSpot, it’s easy to build amazing landing pages that look good on every device thanks to the live testing feature that shows you how your piece of content will display on any device. With HubSpot’s side-by-side editor, you can change your design, add text, images and other content, and view the changes in real time making personalization easy. Pardot and HubSpot have actual landing pages (the actual content) and templates. In Pardot copy all of the actual content from each landing page you want to replicate in HubSpot in HTM format and follow the steps indicated for e-mail above.

Don’t forget to export and back-up your data, document current Pardot workflows and discontinue your Pardot license once you safely switched to HubSpot.

NNC Services can support you in figuring out the right Pardot to HubSpot migration strategy and roadmap, the required budget of time and effort to achieve your migration goals, decide on the best HubSpot product licensing and pricing for your company and free onboarding and auditing of bot Pardot and HubSpot. Connect with us for further details.