If you’ve had it trying to force spreadsheets and sales-based software to work for career services, you’ll like what you read next.

If you’re shopping for technology to facilitate better employer relations, you’ll appreciate this heads-up about complicated pricing and total implementation costs. 

And finally, if you’re one of those unhappy career services teams using Salesforce that doesn’t want to pay the 9% price hike, you might cry tears of joy discovering Career Forge | ERM. 

This employer relationship management software, built exclusively for career services, delivers more benefits for fewer dollars than Salesforce and Hubspot—ridiculously simple pricing.

Speaking of ridiculously simple pricing…

We started this article as a direct pricing comparison between Salesforce, Hubspot, and Career Forge | ERM. Then, we discovered you can’t compare complicated, layered matrixes to a single cost model.

So, let’s start with the thankfully UNcomplicated  Career Forge implementation costs. After that, it’s your call whether or not to keep reading the confusing Salesforce and Hubspot pricing matrices.

Career Forge | ERM

Your implementation costs for the first Employer Relationship Management (ERM) platform designed to forge powerful connections and elevate student job search outcomes are:

1. $49/month/seat billed monthly OR $44/month/seat billed annually (and NO contracts either way!)
2. $1695 one-time onboarding per career center

So, while there are only two cost factors, there are lots of benefits, including:

• Freedom to choose subscription level and billing frequency
• NO mandatory long-term commitments
• Not having to force transactional-based software to track relationships
• Scalability and fast access to crucial employer information
• Not battling spreadsheets to organize employer data and contact information
• Fast access to crucial employer information
• Advanced configurations and customization
• Never missing a touchpoint
• Monitoring employer engagement against specific goals
• Guaranteed seamless data handoffs during staff transitions (yours and employers’)
• White glove data assessment, transfer, and formatting
• Live, personalized training
• Unlimited, responsive customer support (sometimes from company co-founders and software engineers!)

And, of course, features to simplify your workload

• Automated email logging
• Contact tracking
• Task creation & assignment
• Custom fields
• Analytics and reporting

Robust benefits, convenient features, and easy budgeting; you won’t hurt our feelings if you bail on this article to request a 15-minute call or reserve your demo.

Searching for Salesforce Implementation costs

Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology with multiple software solutions. According to Ascendix^[2], a CRM and Salesforce consulting company, the average costs for each Salesforce implementation depend on how you buy the Salesforce license:

• Directly from Salesforce
• Subscribing via a Salesforce Partner
• Combining Salesforce and an AppExchange app

For conversation’s sake, let’s purchase the Salesforce CRM Sales Cloud directly from the source.^[3]

First, you decide which of the 13 “solutions” solves career services challenges, even though Salesforce didn’t design any specific options for career services.

Next, you choose one of five subscription levels for that solution. You can view pricing for four; the costs of the fifth service level are behind a “contact us” gate.

Then, you see seven features before you expand nine more line items to reveal up to 12 sub-options for a total of 115 features divided across the four licensing levels for one solution.

Are you as confused as we are? Or are you frustrated and worn out trying to decipher offerings? Let’s press on anyway.

Salesforce support

Do you want Standard, Premier, Signature, or Professional support services? All licenses include Standard support, but Premier is 30% of your net licensing fees (which you haven’t calculated yet). Interestingly, or discouragingly, only your account exec can reveal your Signature and Professional support costs.

How will you decide? Start by determining which 24 support features are necessary, nice but not required, or irrelevant.

Salesforce add-ons

You guessed it, another decision maze. Seventeen^[4] more options, but who’s counting? Prices range from $5-$100/user/month, $1250/month, $30,000/org/month, and $27,000/annual. It’s unclear which add-on works with which of the original 13 solutions, especially “Sales Cloud,” the option we tried to price in today’s conversation.

The (possible) bottom line

There are too many Salesforce configurations–albeit very few relevant for career services–to compare potential total implementation costs to the direct and all-inclusive   Career Forge | ERM’s $1649 one-time onboarding fee + $49 per month per seat billed monthly OR $44 per month per seat billed annually.

So, we don’t know the fiscal bottom line, but we do know Salesforce is complicated pricing for salespeople, and Career Forge | ERM is simple pricing for career services people.

Get software that makes sense and costs less.

Searching for Hubspot implementation costs

When your head stops spinning from the above scavenger hunt, you can start again to untangle Hubspot (HS) implementation costs.

Like Salesforce, HS is a sales support platform. In their own words^[5] Sales Hub

• “...Gives sales leaders total visibility into sales metrics--without waiting in line for help from an admin or analyst.”
• “Helps you store, track, manage, and report on each action a customer makes throughout the sales cycle.”
• “...monitor[s] deal metrics…”

What’s missing? The Sales Hub description doesn’t include managing the employer relationships crucial to the career services mission of students’ career development.

The HS pricing matrix is more complicated than Career Forge | ERM but less intimidating than the Salesforce pricing we reviewed. In a fair attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison, let’s look at the HS Sales Hub solution (vs. separate software “hubs” for Marketing, Customer Service, CMS, Operations, or CMS–any or all of which might have some functionality you want or need).

Here’s a summary level of the decision maze you’re facing^[6]:

1. HS Sales Hub
   1. Professional includes five users
      1. Starts at $450/month (billed $5400 annually)
      2. $90/mo per additional user
      3. $750 required one-time onboarding fee
   2. Enterprise includes ten users
      1. Starts at $1200/month (billed $14,400 annually)
      2. $120/mo per additional user
      3. $3000 required one-time onboarding fee

Features

As for functionality, there are 104 sales-centric features available for Professional, Enterprise, or both. HS advises you to “see all features and limits.” Good news: you can purchase add-ons to increase the limits on six features. Less good news: the additional costs range from $25-$500/month.

Apparently, HS realizes understanding their cost structure is challenging because they offer a DIY price calculator. Arguably convenient, but what if you unintentionally enter incorrect data? Or the algorithms don’t recognize a recent price increase?

Surprise parties and presents are awesome; unexpected implementation costs have short- and long-term consequences.

The (possible) bottom line

Like Salesforce, there are too many Hubspot configurations–albeit very few relevant for career services–to compare potential total implementation costs to the direct and all-inclusive  Career Forge | ERM’s $1649 one-time onboarding fee + $49 per month per seat billed monthly OR $44 per month per seat billed annually.

So, we don’t know how much you’ll pay for HS, but according to Forbes,^[7] “...when compared to other CRM competitors, HubSpot is without exception far more expensive.”

You need Career Forge | ERM because

• Your career services team needs a hassle-free technology solution to manage employer relationships.
• You want definite pricing to make a responsible, no-surprises purchase.
• You don’t have weeks or months to navigate onboarding and training.
• Third-party consultants and implementation specialists aren’t in the budget.

Get software that makes sense and costs less

^[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/salesforce-raise-prices-some-cloud-products-august-2023-07-11/

^[2] https://ascendix.com/blog/salesforce-implementation-cost/

^[3] https://www.salesforce.com/editions-pricing/overview/

^[4] https://www.salesforce.com/editions-pricing/sales-cloud/?d=cta-body-promo-588

^[5]https://www.hubspot.com/comparisons/salesforce-vs-hubspot?hubs_content=www.hubspot.com%2Fcomparisons%2Fbest-crm&hubs_content-cta=-white

^[6] https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales/enterprise?hubs_content=www.hubspot.com%2Fcomparisons%2Fsalesforce-vs-hubspot&hubs_content-cta=hsg-nav__link-active&products=sales-hub-professional_1&term=annual

^[7] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/hubspot-crm-pricing/