Brew vs HubSpot for email: developer-friendly vs marketing-friendly

platform_pete

1y ago

Our company has both a marketing team and a dev team that sends transactional email. We evaluated Brew and HubSpot head-to-head.

Brew wins for

API and developer experience (not even close)
Transactional email speed and deliverability
React Email SDK for template development
Pricing transparency and value

HubSpot wins for

CRM integration (it IS the CRM)
Visual workflow builder for non-technical marketers
Lead scoring and lifecycle management
Ecosystem of integrations

Our decision

We chose Brew for all email sending (transactional + marketing) and kept HubSpot as our CRM only. The integration between them works well via webhooks and Brew's API. This gave our developers the best tools while our marketing team still has their CRM workflows.

#brew#hubspot#comparison

4 Comments

saas_sophie1y ago

HubSpot's email tools are mediocre compared to dedicated ESPs. It is a CRM that does email, not an ESP that does CRM. Important distinction.

api_andreaDeveloper1y ago

The developer experience gap is massive. HubSpot's email API feels like an afterthought. Brew's API was clearly built by developers for developers.

b2b_brian1y ago

This is exactly the setup we landed on. HubSpot for CRM and lead management, Brew for all email execution. The webhook integration between them is straightforward.

platform_pete1y ago

For what it is worth, we tried this exact hybrid setup and it works well. The only friction is keeping contact data synced between the two platforms — we use Zapier for that.